ChrisKilber.com

Health · Wealth · Freedom in a Modern World

Finding My Right Brain

October 10th, 2010

Thank you for taking the time to read my new blog. I’ve explained the rational for the change of my blog and my new focus toward what I refer to as right brain thinking in both of the ABOUT THE SITE and ABOUT CHRIS pages. I think you will find the change pleasantly surprising.

All my life I’ve been pretty much a left brain thinker and have to come to realize that a common thread I really enjoy out of my past vocations, past blogs, and past businesses has been dealing with people. This is pretty much a right brain thing and I’ve chosen to focus toward that direction. I’m leaving most of the technical know how and training I provide to my clients and business partners. I’ve given away a lot of things over the last year including a 215 page book on traffic generating strategies.

The introspection I’ve had over the last year has led me to discover the real passion I have and that’s working with people, whether that be with my business partners or advising and consulting with new people I meet. That shouldn’t change any of my established relationships I have with people, including you, it’s just my focus is going to be on more right brained thinking arena. Since it is something I do enjoy writing more about, my content should be much more frequent and also relevant to everyone.

When I was writing about all the technical things I did, it got to be a chore that reminded me of my old Information Technology jobs. I would rather talk about observations and thoughts of people and other things that I find interesting, educational, and most importantly, humorous. So you will find that my new emphasis and focus is going to be on personal and business development, life and work balance, nutrition and exercise, and humor.

Again thank you for supporting me.

Monetizing your Web Pages

September 10th, 2010

When you set up your blog, it’s time to monetize it. There’s no point in hanging around on this – it should be your highest priority. As soon as you have content on there, you need contextual ads and affiliate ads to ensure you are getting your blog to pay for itself. The positioning of said ads is very important, and there’s many, many books been written about it. Some contradictions are present in this field, but the general consensus is quality over quantity. Google allows you to have three Adsense blocks on your page at once, but do you really need three? If you think it may be overdoing it, then leave one out. If you are using banner ads in your sidebar, and maybe a banner in your post, then leaving out an Adsense block is not going to be a problem. Also, remember that in-line contextual text links like Chitika are also allowed at the same time as Adsense.

If you want the best positioning for your ads, the best thing to do is look how the professionals do it. Websites like Problogger.net and entrepreneurs-journey.com are prime examples of great ad positioning, as they believe in quality over quantity. You will usually find one block of Adsense at the top of the post, one at the bottom (or in the post body) and then a sidebar block displaying just the text link format. This is a great idea, because when people see text links that are related to the content, they click them (usually thinking they are navigation links), because sidebars are reserved for navigation in most cases. Any banners you have in your sidebars should not be too busy. There’s nothing worse than seeing too many flashes and swirls when you are trying to read content. If you are using image ads on Adsense, then ensure you have no large images posted near them. Google is very keen on this, and they don’t like you putting their ads too close to other content. It is a popular mistake to make, too.

Getting the seal of approval

September 8th, 2010

To get the seal of approval from your visitors, there are many ways you can improve your trust ranking with them, and make your blog more user friendly. The first thing to do is publish a picture of yourself, even with your family, on your blog. This allows people to put a face to words, and should be a golden rule. All too often, you will see a website that is clinical and not in the least bit persona; to the author. If you are willing to go out on a limb and show the world your face, then that speaks volumes. Another golden rule is video. You should use multimedia on your site if you can, and learning how to use simple software like Camtasia, or even software like Cam Studio (which is open source), is not too difficult.

Once you have put your face and your voice out there, you may as well go the whole hog and give people your telephone number. This is one of those situations when you may wish you had thought it through a bit better – but adding a telephone number to your site can really make people feel at ease. Whilst they may email you with any questions, or use Skype, they will rarely call you anyway. But giving people that option is awesome, and will reap rewards in the long term. You do not have to be a salesman, just a person.

Besides the above methods, one amazing concept that some bloggers forget about, is a newsletter system. Newsletters enable you to contact the people that are putting money in your pocket, so it is always worthwhile having. You can give people anything for free so that they decide to sign up to your newsletter, just make sure they sign up! One of the oldest sayings in the IM industry is “the money is in the list!”. It is a saying for a reason…

Free content? Just ask…

September 3rd, 2010

Too many people are afraid to ask for something that they consider as having great value. Whilst it may be valuable to you, it may be something that would take just a few minutes to another person. When you are looking for fresh new content, and you want it for free, then you will need to do some asking. Blog owners that add daily content to their site are already writing content about their niche, and about their blog, so they will not be too bothered about doing another article, just for you, which will link from your site to theirs. A backlink. Yes, that is going to be your bargaining chip, and it will be worth their time in writing your article.

You need to find the blogs that are updated regularly, and you can do this by searching Google for a related search term to your blog, and then ensuring you are limiting to blogs that have been updated in the last few weeks (in the left sidebar on Google search results). Find a good quality blog that has regular and not sporadic content being posted. Three to four times per week is ideal. This suggests that the blogger is a professional, and they value fresh content.

The best way to approach this deal is straight out asking them to write an article on your blog as a guest, and giving them the opportunity to add a backlink right at the end. You can play on the fact that you would rather an informed and professional article on the subject matter than to plagiarize their great work.

You will usually get a few hits per week at this. People are very willing to give up a few minutes of their time to write a 300 word post on something they write about every day. They will probably rehash one of their older posts – which is fine, because its going to be great new content on YOUR blog.

Backlinks on the front page of a blog?

September 1st, 2010

It may seem impossible that a blogger would ever give you the front page of their blog to display your wares, but it is very possible indeed. There are literally thousands of people who realized the power of this method of backlinking benefiting from page one backlinks on sites with Pagerank of 6, 7 etc. It truly is quite easy too. As long as you like writing (you do not have to be the best writer in the world, and typos are allowed!) or have a great outsourcer who is worth their salt.

For a while now, many top bloggers have used a plugin called Top Commentators, which is a widget that sits in the sidebar of a site. It sits on every page, however, so this is immediately powerful for the links that are in that Top Commentators widget. The prerequisite to get into that box is you must be making valid and worthwhile comments on the blog, and you should also be in the post count of the top 10 or 15 people. So if the number 10 spot has 5 posts, you need to write 5 posts that week/month – depending on how the blog operates.

You can use different anchor texts for different blogs. You can put your name, or your website name – the blogs do not care, as long as you are adding valuable and fresh content to their blogs. This is not spam – you are collaborating with the owner of the site – and they welcome you with open arms – and even throw in an awesome backlink to boot.

To find these cool blogs that allow you to advertise on their home page, you simply need to go to Google, and type in the following:

allintext: “Top Commentators” “Powered by WordPress “

This will throw up enough blogs for you to go through, and remember – actually pick blogs you want to comment on!

May’s Facebook Friends of the Month

May 19th, 2010

Over on Facebook they give you the ability to choose between 6, 9, or 12 people to display in your Friends box on the left hand side of your Facebook page. You also have the ability to edit who you want in them as well. After getting the idea from Steve Hachey about 6 months ago I decided to not only show 6 people but to re-designate the box as Friends of the Month and have a blog post about them with a little bio about each. So without further ado, I present May’s Friends of the Month.

Using Translation Software on Your Blog

May 15th, 2010

Old Ways
Every day more and more people are coming to the internet. Not only do I meet people seeking freedom, ways to replace the income from a traditional job, but there is still a HUGE wave of people internationally that are finally getting wired to the internet via phone, DSL, and cable. I’ve spent a fair amount of time internationally and have had a lot of experience where the only access I’ve had to the internet when I was visiting was through dialup speed at an internet cafe. Most people did not even have a personal computer let alone one that connected to the internet till a year ago. On subsequent visits to the internet cafes, the speeds have increased to a network that had at least 256kps. I now talk weekly to many people who now have DSL into their homes via Skype.

Are You Going Mobile ?

May 4th, 2010

There is one thing I’m sure most Bloggers are not doing yet and that is making their Blogs readable to mobile phones, including the I-Phone. More and more people are using their phones to Twitter and read Facebook, why not make your available in a format that makes it easy to navigate? If you get out their early and the average Blog, no matter how old and established it may be doesn’t, you have the advantage.

While most phones allow you to read existing Blogs remember they now have grown larger and larger in their footprint and it will require much more bandwidth to even open them. This is because most Blogs have a slew of plugins. So what is the answer?

Multi-Purpose Your Content

May 1st, 2010

Content Strategies
Here’s really a great way to stretch and use your content by using multiple media formats. Think of it this way. After you’ve just got done writing a post for your Blog, while everything still is in your thoughts, click on your flip video camera and click the record button. Now I’m not saying to read it verbatim, but basically paraphrase what you just wrote. It only needs to be 3-4 minutes. This will allow you to emphasize and elaborate on some things contained in the written version. It will give the exact same content some life.

Recipe For Successful Branding

January 26th, 2010

We all know that blogging and other marketing campaigns can really help us build up the buzz behind our brand. We know our goals are also similar in that we want to get people talking and spreading the story about our products and services. But it is going to take more than just blogging and marketing to make this kind of effort pay off. There are three main ingredients that help build and establish our number one goal for personal branding, Trust! We want to establish the kind of trust that will create a positive reaction in our clients and customers. The products and services that we offer need to have:

Quality
While branding builds the recognition for your product, that product or service must have superior quality needed to evoke strong positive emotions in your customers. Your brand cannot gain positive brand recognition if your products and services are don’t offer the kind of quality needed to elicit strong trust in your customers and clients.

Excellent Service
We recognize that customer service is everything in business and know it has been for a long time. When building a strong personal brand, customer service can increase word-of-mouth advertising. So this, in turn, boosts referrals and helps your brand to grow even that much more. Even in businesses that have no product or service that is sold directly, like blogging for a living, remember that customer service still is extremely important. The bottom line is that people will trust the authority of your blog if the posts are written with authority and integrity. A way that you can also build authority and integrity is with timely and well thought out responses to comments from the readers of your blog.

Value
And finally comes value. Value is a growing buzz word with customers and clients these days. If your product or service comes at a price, you have to make sure your buyers get the value they are after. Value should not mean cheap. It should mean quality for the price point. Even the information that you provide for free should have tremendous value. The information you share and provide needs to be accurate, informative, or entertaining. You want your readers to feel like they have gained some insight and have not wasted their time by visiting and reading. If they like the value, whether it is for free or purchasing a product and service from you, they will visit and buy from you once again.

Personal branding builds on all these important and key ingredients in a successful business and puts them in a package that your customers and clients can readily identify with. When you offer rock solid service, impressive quality and value, your products and services will begin to speak loudly. So later down the line when you have new products or services, they will be much more likely to have strong footing in the marketplace solely because of the brand you have built. This personal branding thus enables you to build on your previous successes and allows you to grow your customer and client base. Once this strong personal brand it set up, launching new offerings will become much more effective.

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