How He Became A Money Making Blogger & I am still not!

PART – I

Let me first introduce my self, I am Hardik Shah, A successful SEM specialist & a parttime Web Designer. I started my internet career as a blogger 4 years ago, I was brought in to this industry by my friend Dhaval Raja.I am really thankful to him for doing that. Anyways now lets get back to the point. As i started my career, I was a damn Noob, just like any other newbie i wanted to learn all I could to make quick money online, I tried everything that I could, I literally spent plenty of my time on Digital Point. As a matter of fact, I learnt all the SEO gimmicks. I learnt spamming gimmicks. I also worked on blackhat techniques. I did spend some good amount of money for purchasing some stupid SEO softwares & ebooks. Frankly speaking in a year or so, I had all the knowledge that an intermediate marketer would have. I was not a pro but i was not a noob anymore, I knew my way out in the blogging world. The sad part is I had everything that I could learn from & use,

But I FAILED

It was indeed a massive failure. I spent so much of time & money but all I had in my hands was a Massive Failure. My Blogging Attempt was a massive failure(It still is, I left fulltime blogging long back, I Gave UP).
PART – II
On october 10 2007 , My younger brother who still was just 16, Asked me, “Bhai(Brother) , I want to start a new blog , Will you please allow me to use your Ad-sense ads on my blog?” , I was stunned , I mean, I couldn’t understand what was on his mind, I thought he was looking for some Click Exchange kind of stuff, I threatened him “If you do click exchanges or anything stupid, I will not give you my ads.Google is very strict about this & I Can’t take risks.” He politely replied , “Bhai Trust Me! I will not risk your account. We can make good money if you allow me to use it, Please!!”. I said okay, He started his first blog on a subdomain on Blogger.

I was quite sure that even after having some good amount experience in the industry, I could not make any money,Not even 10$ , My brother is also going to fail. Out of my curiosity when i checked his first day’s traffic stats, He drove 795 unique visitors & made 5.45$ in total earnings, Wow I said, Something which i achieved in almost 6 months, He did it in a single day. Over a period of time he had a fixed monthly income from google adsense. Something which I couldn’t do even though I had so much of experience.

I was literally thinking about,

* What did he do in such a short time?
* How come he got rankings in Google on very first day?
* How come he is able to do it & I am not?
* What went wrong for me & right for him?

To find the answers I went in to his Website Analytics Stats, What i found was he had a steady flow of visitors from social networking sites like orkut & facebook. 80% of the traffic was from these sites, Now I thought he must would have spammed there heavily. I shouted at him, “Hey, Adsense TOS does not allow spamming” & he said, I didn’t spam..

The Most Interesting Part

After having some discussions with him, I realized where I went wrong & he did not. What he did was,He was an active member in a bunch of communities, He was the key player & moderator for a bunch of communities, He helped others a-lot of times. He eventually had so many relations in the virtual world that people loved him. When he started the blog, He told everyone in his networks, Some of his friends who were community owners allowed him to post links to his blogs, they literally wrote positive reviews about his blog . He went viral on that front, & boom he had easily achieved something that everyone(like me) wanted to achieve desperately.

One more thing he did differently was, After doing it for a smaller period of time he did not give up like me, Though it was at times boring for him, He was consistent. I was more of moody when i was working on all these. Where as he was literally hardworking. He was punctual,If he wanted to post 15 articles in a month then , He would.
I started helping him in making the blog search engine friendly, I did some link building work for him, I started working on the seo front & he was on the social & the posting front. & we had our way on the internet, Though i eventually started helping out other’s businesses on the SEM front, My brother still consistent, He never misses a single posting schedule. Oh i forgot to introduce him , He is Bhavyesh Shah , He doesn’t want to get in to the limelight, So he wanted me to not to include any of his personal details or blog details in this PDF. Sorry to Disappoint .

Lessons To Learn:

* Be Social
* Be Active
* You have to go to people first, If you want them to come to you.
* Be Consistent
* Seo Helps but it is not Necessary
* Don’t GiveUp
* Work Hard
* Party Harder

How to Drive Huge website traffic from linkedin?

Linked-in one of my personal favorite networks, A place where professionals meetup. It actually can help getting lot of traffic… Here are some quick 50 tips on linkedin traffic…. This is a do follow blog & Your comments are appreciated….

1. Check the Expertise Requests option in your profile.
2. Complete your profile as thoroughly as possible, and include interests, an avatar, and business information.
3. Connect with as many business associates as you can, since they will help you to network with like minded individuals and companies.
4. Learn from others and gain new knowledge, so you can become an expert in other subjects and topics.
5. Ask questions.
6. Answer questions. Use your knowledge to your advantage by answering peoples’ questions thoroughly and expertly, and you’ll gain other users’ confidence.
7. Check your home page on LinkedIn fairly often. It contains industry updates, news, and postings from associates.
8. On company profiles, the top five most popular other profiles are displayed on the home page. This is important since it will show others who you associate with, so be aware of who your top five are.
9. Choose the top 5 who will link back to you, so there is a reciprocal benefit.
10. Be sure to explain your work experience in as much detail as possible. Don’t just list employers or experience, but instead expand upon it by showing others’ what you’ve done in detail.
11. Comment in the discussion forums as much as you can so your profile gets noticed.
12. Update your status with useful content and information as much as possible.
13. Feel free to implement keywords in both your profile and your content, so that your information comes up in search engine results.
14. Do not forget to include your LinkedIn profile link in other places like Twitter, Digg, and other social media websites.
15. LinkedIn is also a useful employment tool, so if you’re hiring, use it to find good employees.
16. Customize your buttons. This will make your profile look more professional and give you more control.
17. Include your skills and specialties and be sure to expand upon your current business.
18. Obviously, include your company URL somewhere on your profile.
19. Have a plan in place when you begin to build your network, otherwise you may end up getting some contacts you don’t want, and not enough of the ones you do.
20. Do not just be friends with people because they ask you to. It looks a little odd for a professional member to be friend with their partying buddies from college. Leave the casual online friendships to Facebook.
21. Look at network statistics to see what is going on with your account and the progress you’re making.
22. Keep in mind the number of characters in profile fields are limited, so you may want to do a few practice runs first before publishing everything.
23. Include past education and past companies/experience, not just your current business or company.
24. Customize your public profile’s URL so it’s easier to link this to other pages and people will remember it much better.
25. Utilize the reference check tool to find out how long someone worked for a company and much more.
26. Ask others within the community for advice. Since this site was designed for networking, people are usually more than willing to answer questions and give help.
27. Use the site to help get a much clearer picture of your competition.
28. Compliment others and give them praise when you’re speaking to them, so that they reciprocate. It makes both of your profiles look much better and can increase your exposure and ratings.
29. Do not only mention what you’ve done, but include what you’ve produced. Be sure to post results from your actions and include facts and figures if possible.
30. Use numbers, and show people percentages and actual, real numbers that back up the claims of your success.
31. The top of your summary is what visitors see first so be certain you’re including the most vital information here.
32. Utilize the answers tool as an opportunity to show off you expertise.
33. If you’re in need of a graphic designer, web hosting provider, or any other service, LinkedIn has its own services area where you can trade off with others who are among the trusted network.
34. Use your LinkedIn page link in your blogs, Twitter, Digg, your website, etc.
35. Try to become a recommended service or company by establishing a good reputation. People will flock more towards ones that have the “recommended” status.
36. Be sure to enable the “show website” feature in your profile.
37. Make sure the full view and websites options are also checked so that the information in your profile is public.
38. LinkedIn is mostly designed for targeted marketing, so be as specific as you can when you choose your industry and expertise.
39. Use the website as a tool to make connections within your business niche, and then expand upon those connections on other social media sites.
40. Be willing to work at building your network; it takes time to get a lot of solid connections.
41. Make use of the option to be indexed so your information appears on Google and other search engines’ results.
42. Use the Q&A feature to ask others their opinion of your website, product, etc.
43. Feel free to introduce yourself to other members. Don’t always wait for others to approach you first.
44. Ask others to recommend you if they have had experience with you.
45. Think of LinkedIn as your “home base” for all of your other marketing tactics.
46. Edit your profile often and rearrange things as needed, so you are always up to date and new content is there as well.
47. Use the groups feature to meet others, post feedback, and get a feel for what other companies are up to.
48. Start your network base with people you know and trust, and build from there.
49. Be as professional as possible at all times.
50. Always be aware of spelling and grammar.

Press Release Submission Guidlines

Press Release Submission Guidelines, How to write a press Release?

Continuing from our previous post about press releases & backlinks, Here we have a quick guide on how to prepare your press releases, These are some of the basic points that needs to be considered while writing a professional press release
(Even when you are doing it solely for search visibility   )

• Press Releases are always supposed to be written in 3rd person language
• If you are writing it for your self or for your business, Always write as if you are describing your neighbor’s business to your cousin brother. (more…)