Is Your Blog Worth Five Million Dollars?

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Can You Really Make Money From Blogging

I finished listening to a brilliant podcast interview from Yaro Starak with seven figure Australian blogger, Alborz Fallah. You can gather a lot of great tips from how a regular blogger turned a hobby into a hugely successful million dollar business. Alborz went from writing about his passion for luxury cars as a hobby to employing regular content writers and attracting high profile investors to make him a extremely generous seven figure annual income through his Car Advice blog ( I love the slick template design).

Yaro Starak is renowned for his own blogs, namely Entrepreneurs Journey and his Blog Mastermind course. Now Yaro doesn’t presume that everyone who takes the course will become wildly successful overnight, or be in the same earning league as himself or Alborz Fallah. However the valuable content and education you will gain makes this course a superb bargain.

Who Is This Blog Mastermind Course Suited For?

Serious bloggers who want to take their hobby to the next level so that they can develop and grow their own blog into a revenue earner. Maybe you have a blog already and are not seeing the results you had hoped for. Or you may need to establish your blog as an authority in your niche and want to help kick start your business to success.

Visit Yaro Starak’s blog to listen to a recording of the interview. You also have the option to download the MP3 file, which is what I did to listen to at my convenience. Oh yes, you should definitely take a sneak peak at how Yaro makes money down at the Entrepreneurs Journey blog in his revealing two part video presentation.

Recommended Resources:

14 Top FAQs About Blog Mastermind

Are You Blogging For Dollars Or A Dime?

How To Learn The Secrets Of Six Figure Bloggers

Website Traffic Edition Of The Newsletter

It’s been a while since he last edition of the Miriadz Cyber Times Newsletter was published. However today’s issue is ready to read online.

The main subject today is “Website Traffic”!

Click here to check out the newsletter.

Enjoy!

Ad Surf Daily Generates Free Website Traffic

Ad Blindness

I’m sure you may be aware that it takes about 7 times or more for your ad to be absorbed by prospects. Well in my case I normally take the advice of my work colleagues who may have had prior experience with any particular program or product.

Now when I mention the words friends and colleagues I’m referring to people I am in regular contact with who share ideas and tips amongst each other. This is TRUE networking. Whereas with some people I only hear from them when they want to SELL ME SOMETHING. No explanations no HELLO or how are you today? JUST COLD HARD SELL!

That’s why it has taken about 5 times before I even considered one particular program. When you have friends that really research a program and have tested it out BEFORE announcing it to you is when you know people have your best interests in mind.

This is what is called true “LEVERAGE”. The same courtesy should be afforded to people who have subscribed to your mailing list and newsletters. Be sure you have reputable and trusted sources before considering endorsing a product or service.

Now we are all human and sometimes something doesn’t go as planned for a number of reasons. However at the very least test out a service and see if it can benefit you and your business.

Anyway with that said I want to share a website that allows you to surf for traffic to earn credits towards views to your assigned websites. It is similar to the way in which Traffic Swarm works. There is one main difference and that is if you decide to purchase advertising credits you can earn a residual income of 25% of your initial ad purchase.

Now most people are interested in driving more traffic to their website and Ad Surf Daily does just this for you. It is easy to register a free account and set up your websites. I recommend using a web page rotator such as Page Swirl or BizRotator so that you can easily manage multiple websites and keep track of statistics to.

Without tracking you have no clear way to evaluate results of your advertising campaigns. These resources are free to use so there is no excuse not to use them regularly.

Anyway I highly recommend Ad Surf Daily. You have the option of purchasing ad credits to boost views to your websites and can invite people you know to join too. I suggest using social networks to refer others. You can view some of the networks I am a member of here. Just remember to network with people and DO NOT just blast your latest opportunity to them. A signature fle under your name should suffice especially in forums.

These forums accept blatant ads. Participation is high so YOU MUST make your ad stand out and post REGULARLY.

Conquer Your Niche

Post Your Ad for Free

Free Advertising Blog

Biggest Internet Marketing Giveaway Ever From Reed Floren

I teamed up with Reed Floren who has called in some favors from a whole bunch of top online marketers and convinced them all to give you TONS of Products at no cost to you.

Reed’s massive giveaway launches today, Friday May 16th 2008 @ 09:00 AM CDT / 2:00PM UK GMT. Reed Floren’s Internet Marketing [IM] Giveaway JV.
This is going to be one of BIGGEST JV events to date so set your alarm clocks for the time of the OFFICIAL LAUNCH.

You’ll be able to access:

-tons of ebooks
-tons of scripts
-tons of everything you’ve ever wanted

The total value of these super freebie amount to more than thousands of dollars but they are being given away for FREE to YOU!

At 09:00 AM CDT / 2:00PM UK GMT, go to: The IM Giveaway

Check your time zones and don’t miss out Reed Floren’s special giveaway event will only be open for the next seven days ONLY.

Get FULL access at 09:00AM CDT!
The IM Giveaway

Good luck,

Nancy Redford

How to Start Your Perpetual Traffic Machine

MORE TRAFFIC = MORE VISITORS = MORE SALES!

Welcome everyone,

you should go to my newsletter and read my quickie review for Tinu’s new Evergreen product. if you want more traffic and do’nt want to PAY for it you need to read this for your free traffic resource.

Create Film Quality Online Videos With Animoto

Make a dynamic slideshow and embed your images in an Animoto video. Your images and music will never be the same again. A team of filmmakers and producers have formed a partnership to provide a unique service for creating online video with film quality finish.

So What Can You Do With Animoto?

With Animoto you can produce stunning slideshows similar to services other free applications like Slide and RockYou used on popular on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Animoto launched a Facebook application at SXSW in anticipation that the service will see further growth. Animoto lets you grab photos from free photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picassa, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket, or from your own personal images stored on your computer.

Plus there are lots of music tracks to choose from to add to your videos with the option to purchase the full tracks from the artists. So if you are an artist you can submit your music and gain more exposure and sales. Featured tracks or scan through several musical genre’s from Indie Rock, Hip Hop, Classical, Jazz and more.

You can post an Animoto widget directly to your MySpace profile in the section you choose About Me, Films or other places on your pages. At first I thought it’s would be an excellent way to get my completed 30 second short on MySpace quickly without having to copy and past code into my profile manually. However after I sent the video to MySpace I went to check on its progress with great anticipation but my video could not be seen. The only visible code was a thin black banner link with the Animoto link back to their main site. So I had to manually remove the code easier just to select “Post/Embed” online and select MySpace from there to get the code to paste carefully into your MySpace profile. Also if you want to embed your Animoto video onto web pages select “Other Sites” to get the embed code.

In fact the best way to embed an Animoto video without the links back to the website as can be viewed on TechCrunch Music Video Slide Show. At the end “Make new video” and “What is this?” Even the new style YouTube videos can be a pain when your video shrinks into the background to reveal a row of other videos. This can be a killer for marketing affiliate programs as your competitors videos may appear after your own.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who hates this new layout at YouTube.

Advantages & Disadvantages of The Free Version and Premium Service

The limitations on free 30 second Animoto Short are you cannot download your video but you can upgrade and edit your video at a later date so it is versatile in that respects.

Only full-length videos can be downloaded, but you can upgrade this video by doing an “Editing Remix” and changing the type on the “Finalize” page. No two videos are ever the same even after completing your video you can go back and remix it to create a new version with little effort.

You can use the 30 second shorts as an intro or slideshow but to get the full benefits of the service the real value is in the long feature film length video. YOU CAN MAKE A FILM QUALITY VIDEO without having any special equipment so it does have a huge advantage over services like OneTrumedia. You still have an Animoto logo feature at the very end of your video when uploaded to YouTube but it isn’t intrusive at all. If this bothers you just upgrade and download your introduction pieces into your favorite video editing software like the free Windows Movie Maker so you can add more content to your video and make it look more professional.

For just $3.00 or equivalent of just and just $30 per year with free hosting you just can’t beat the service for incredible value. I plan to use it to create professional looking introduction to my future video tutorials.

How To Get The Premium Film Length Service For Free

Once you are a user of Animoto you can give your friends a $5 discount voucher and get 3 months free premium access for yourself. Why continue struggling with producing videos and compromising with quality when you can get it all for a measly sum of $3.00?

The simplicity of the service with the auto generated animations so you DO NOT have to configure this yourself. Even a child can do it! See a complete demo here: Animoto-Make Impressive Slide Shows/Intros _Easy To Use_

This video was created by a brilliant young genius is a member of the YouTube Partner Program status due to thousands of video views he generates from his Channel. This gives him a share of the ad revenue such as Google Adsense on his video pages. Incidentally I found this video after my initial with Animoto so I could of saved myself some valuable time. LOL

Watch Submit Your Videos To Multiple Websites Using TubeMogul at YouTube

“Animoto Productions is a bunch of techies and film/tv producers who decided to lock themselves in a room together and nerd out.

Their first release is Animoto, a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using their own patent-pending technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

The heart of Animoto is its newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. It analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film…”

–Animoto

To read more about Animoto and get $5.00 off using this code => fvngzoat. Visit Animoto to test run a free demo today. Once you are a user of Animoto you can give your friends a $5 discount voucher and get 3 months free premium access to make film length videos for yourself.

Even more reasons to get into creating online videos regardless if you want to feature yourself in the video or not.

Create Google & SEO Friendly Page Titles

A great way to learn good effective search engine optimization is through video tutorials. People find video easier to follow as they can watch each step of the process. If you’ve heard of Aaron Wall, who is renowned for his excellent ebook aptly titled the Seo Book you’ll know that he is a leading authority on SEO.

Aaron also has a super resource at his blog where he openly shares a wealth of free resources, tools and training for any webmaster such as a Keyword Suggestion Tool and Rank Checker amongst otheres. On that subject today I have included one of Aaron’s videos for you. Enjoy!

Watch Create Google & SEO Friendly Page Titles at YouTube.

Virtual Smart Agent and The Rise of Chat Software

If you viewed some sales pages lately you may have come across a virtual agent window which pops up ONLY if you click away from the sales page. I must admit the first time I came across one of these ‘Virtual Agents’ I assumed it was a LIVE AGENT that I could have a text chat with. However it soon became apparent that the whole chat conversation was scripted after I entered random questions and gibberish. Now that could confuse and annoy people and defeat the whole purpose of good customer relations.

So What is a ‘Virtual Agent”?

Simply put a virtual agent is an automated chat solution for your web site.

I don’t have any personal qualms on the service but I do believe the fatal flaw is that
visitors expect to know whether they are interacting with a REAL PERSON and can easily istake the automated software to be a live customer service representative.

You could argue that UpSell is another innovative business idea from Mike Filesaime as it has proven to increase conversion rates for clients. Upsell is aimed at closing sales where people are about to click away from the sales page without making a purchase and can save lost sales by offering a time sensitive discount. It must be working well for some Internet marketers because closing lost sales is a bonus to their business. The service is completely free of monthly charges or upfront fees. All that is required is that you need to have an existing sales revenue of at least 50 sales per month to be eligible for the service. Clients agree to provide UpSell with commissions on each sale made so there are no up front costs.

Most people are familiar with regular Chat Support where a LIVE AGENT conducts a text based messaging system in real time so that you can ask questions and get immediate feedback and response. Examples can be found Volusion.com where you can test run the software for free using the trial before deciding whether to upgrade.

Virtual Smart Agent

A new launch from David Guindon aptly name ‘Virtual Smart Assistant’ at first appears to be similar to Mike Filesaime’s UpSell service but the visitor is fully aware that the Virtual Assistant is not a live agent so there are no surprises. You purchase the software to install on your web site and do not have any monthly commissions or monthly fees whatsoever and no sales minimums. So from a cost perspective this option could be right for you.

Advantages of Virtual Agents

Closes sales where people would not have made a purchase
Gather feedback from visitors as to why they decided not to buy
Can help to improve conversion rates
Helps you to establish where to make improvements to your sales page
Customers can get a special discount or deal
Set it up to build your opt-in list even if people still do not buy

Disadvantages of Virtual Agents

People want to communicate with real people not scripts
May alienate your visitors who may feel cheated that they could have lost out on a discount if they bought straight away ( buyers wouldn’t be aware of this unless they returned to the site)
May annoy people who do not like technology resembling pop ups

If I had to choose I would go for live chat assistance because customer service is a key area of business that cannot be compromised. People want to interact with people first and foremost. The only way to find out if a virtual chat agent would be of benefit to you and your business is to test out the software and split test your results. Remember that the primary objective of a virtual assistant is to close sales or set it up to build your opt-in list. It should not be used as a substitute for your customer service enquiries.

I do like the concept but would not be tempted to use it for my own needs. There could be good use for it on large commercial web site’s to get people to take up a trial offers, especially if the trial is free.

It would be interesting to get feedback from people who are currently using virtual chat agents on their web site. Are you using a virtual agent on your site?

If you want to share your own experience as a customer or webmaster please feel free to add your coments. You may also want to read what Rosalind Gardner wrote about on the subject of virtual agents.

Getting Into MySpace

Hey today’s the day when all of the pranksters come out to play so be on your guard. HAPPY APRIL FOOL’s DAY!

I just wanted to let you know that I gave gone against all of my principles and set up
a MySpace account. Like many I view MySpace and similar sites as a place where people just mess around and get in trouble at work! However after several colleagues have been boastingabout how they are making money from their collection of MySpace accounts I had to see for myself what the fuss is all about!

So far I am looking for REAL friends, people in my industry, people I know online and
of course my visitors and subscribers.

You’ll certainly recognize a few Internet and Affiliate marketers amongst my MySpace friends. So before I add a permanent link to my sidebar I wanted to cordially invite to you to addme to your MySpace friends and of course send me a “Friend Request” to be a part of my crowd too.

I will probably add a personal video or slideshow later when I find some good photos of me, friends and family so hang tight until then. For now you’ll just have to get accustomed to “The Better Half Of Me”, this slogan will make more sense once you visit my page at MySpace. One very positive aspect I have found with having and sharing my MySpace account is that I get to see some of my long term subscribers who have added themselves as friends. Normally I don’t bother to add an image of myself online but I guess people really do like to see you in photo or video.

Do you think we are getting more voyeuristic and narcistic with Web 2.0 sites online?

Well I don’t like looking at myself too often unless I’m brushing my teeth.

What do you think?

I remember Mark Wielgus talking about how more bloggers should do video to reveal themselves to their readers or at least make their own videos for content and to boost their SEO. Mark’s personal view is that text only blogs can become dull and he prefers to watch video blogs or listen to podcasts, especially if he has been a long term subscriber.

I personally enjoy reading articles with the occasional video here and there but long
audios I hate unless it’s a Teleseminar. Anyone who rambles on for a length of time is
mind numbing for me so I’m not into podcasts, even though they are extremely popular and good from a marketing perspective.

Even popular bloggers do not have a photo of themselves on their blogs in the “About Us” section like DoshDosh but for me it’s the content that counts. Besides maybe some people look so bad it would be a crime to reveal themselves. I do like caricatures of people and have seen everything from Homer Simpson to Jessica Alba on avatars.

What are your thoughts on photos, videos and audio over text based blogging?

Don’t forget to visit: http://www.myspace.com/nancypredford

Related Articles:

The Great Web 2.0 Experiment With MyBlogLog

Do You Blog For Love Or For The Love Of Money?

6 Quick Ways To Promote Your Web Site For Free

Mike Filesaime Launches PayDotCom Widget Ads

Mike Filesaime has launched a new widget for his PayDotCom web site. You’ll find an introductory “How To” video presented by Michael Ambrosio. Easy to set up and add to your blog, especially if your blog theme is “wigetized” or widget ready. Where you can go into your admin area to view your “Presentation” and simply copy and paste your PayDotCom Widget code into your widget box. You’ll can view the complete process in the video.

Once you register at PayDotCom you automatically become an affiliate allowing you to earn commissions on referrals.

Another passive way to earn PayDotCom commissions
Showcases your listed PayDotCom products on other people’s web site’s and blogs
Quick and simple way to promote PayDotCom marketplace products

Choose from a variety of categories depending on what type of products and services you wish to appear on your widget.

- Computing & Internet
- Sports & Recreation
- Home & Family

- Money & Employment
- Business to Business
- Fun & Entertainment

- Marketing & Ads
- Health & Fitness
- Society & Culture

Choose from 18 color templates to blend you PayDotCom widget to best match your site’s look and feel.

I must admit that it’s been a while since I last logged into my account but when I did I was pleasantly surprised by all of the changes. For instance there is now the following updates for this year:

Mar-11-2008 Cash Affiliate Referral Program
Mar-10-2008 Login Page Ads
Mar-07-2008 Site-Wide Ads
Mar-05-2008 Widget Feature
Jan-20-2008 New Feature Related to the Mailing System

Premium Text Link Ads - 30 Maximum - these ads are displayed throughout the site. I haven’t personally used them but if anyone would like to share their experiences please “Add Your Comments”. Or if you’d like to showcase your site where your PayDotCom widget is featured you’re welcome to do so by leaving a note and link in the comments.

I may decide to place the widget on my newsletter front page later today to test out whether people are interested in viewing PayDotCom products and the marketplace.