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When I first started writing online, the idea of reading an e-book was still in its infancy. At that time, they were nothing more than fancy reports. And the idea of a work of fiction was still unknown. They were all non-fiction works that had something to do with either ways of making money online or how to start a website (which was still being done old school).

Today’s online publishing industry is light years ahead of the days of simple PDF reports and information packed e-books. Thanks to companies such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, we are now in the age of the full-fledged electronic publications. So how do we turn this into an online niche? By dissecting the industry as a whole and focusing on the individual sections.

Non-Fiction

It was what put the e-book on the map. And the informational piece is still as popular as it was 10+ years ago. The difference is the way they’re put together. Though there are a lot of people out there who want to write a great e-book, they either don’t know how to get started or they try and fail. Where should they start? Where can they find the best information? This is the type of stuff that almost everyone in the industry wants to know.

Fiction

There was a time when die-hard fiction fans swore they’d never read their books in paperless form. But thanks to the influx of gadgets such as the Kindle and the Nook, those same fans are reading more than ever before. This section alone could be turned into a niche all on its own. Now that they’re so easy to obtain, everyone who ever dreamed of writing that next great novel can do so and have it in the hands of thousands of readers without the worry of having it rejected by all the major publishing houses.

Publishers

Because of the number of fiction e-books coming out each year, there has been a huge surge of online publishers making their mark on the world. Some are as rigid as the mainstream publishers, while others will publish almost anything just to have a catalog of manuscripts for the public to buy from. Some work only in specific genre, while others will publish works of fiction of just about any genre.

Promotions

The one thing that still holds true with e-books and physical publications alike is marketing and promotions. Even with an e-book, you can’t sell anything if the public doesn’t know it exists. However, unlike the traditional methods, promoting an e-book doesn’t have to cost a small fortune. There are hundreds of cheap/free ways of promoting a book online. Many authors create entire websites dedicated to each title. Other ways include hosting Virtual Blog Tours and holding giveaways on various giveaway sites. How many other ways can you think of to promote a book?

The online publishing niche is hot right now. And with all the different publishers coming online and gadgets being created to read e-books, it’s only going to get hotter. It’s a very broad spectrum that has unlimited potential. What else can you think of that would work for this niche?

BlogEngage

September 12, 2011 | Category: Blogging Tips, e-book, make money, Promotion | 8 Comments

Blog Engage RSS Syndication Subscription Service Bronze Membership

In the coming weeks, Do It With WordPress will be turning one year old and to celebrate, Dave Clements has arranged a huge giveaway to celebrate.

The WordPress community has been immensely generous in offering up prizes for the giveaway, with over 25 prizes up for grabs for a total value of over $1800. The prizes include themes, plugins and other awesome WordPress-related goodies, so head over to Do It With WordPress now and get entered to secure your chance to win something awesome!

Here’s a full list of the prizes that are up for grabs in this contest over the next several weeks:

3 x themes from Themify
3 x themes from WPZoom
3 x themes from PremiumPress
2 x single site license for Formidable Pro
2 x theme licenses from Headway Themes
2 x single site licenses from Pippity
2 x Standard license from ThemeFuse
2 x OIO Publisher plugin
2 x themes from Theme Junkie
2 x $50 credit at Envato Marketplace

Professional license from Amember
Developer package from WooThemes
Essentials package from Press75

So what are you waiting for!? Join in and help spread the word.

BlogEngage

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

August 27, 2011 | Category: Contests, Promotion | 9 Comments

Blog Engage RSS Syndication Subscription Service Bronze Membership

Developing our blog takes time and dedication. Understanding how to grow an online relationship is a unique and interesting task. When we initially meet a new blogger, like in real life we’re automatically being judged.

Instead of it being our physical appearance and our attire it’s the look and feel of our blog and public profile. Joining Blog Engage will allow you to develop your brand and increase your blog traffic. Our community will get you prepared for a successful online blog marketing campaign.

Blog Engage is the foundation to your online blog marketing strategy. Don’t start alone like I did! Join the Blog Engage community, start meeting new bloggers. Once your relationships on Blog Engage start growing move to other networks searching out the same network of friends.

Once you start this method of marketing you will continue to branch out and reach more people. Assuming you have a good blog with great content you can almost guarantee success. Remember blog engage is the “Key” to this online marketing success!

Join a Blog Engage group and share niche specific topics with the members of those groups. Add them as friends and get to know them and what they like reading. Visit their blog and make sure to connect on Facebook and Twitter. Remember to build your network connections at all time.

Engage with our members and earn points. Set your goal on becoming a Top User! Your image is displayed in the sidebar linking to your profile along with the top results on the Top Users page.

Join Blog Engage today!

BlogEngage

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

July 6, 2011 | Category: Blog Traffic, Blogging Tips, Branding, Marketing, Promotion | 4 Comments

Blog Engage RSS Syndication Subscription Service Membership

I’ve seen many people simply not join a blogging contest because they have no chance at winning. I fully understand what it takes to win a blogging contest and it’s very exhausting for a blogger. If this is the reason you’re not joining guest blogging contests I think it’s time to reconsider.

Sure winning is great and we all love the extra cash but you have to understand all of the benefits that come with participating in guest blogging contests. This is your opportunity as a blogger to engage with other readers and gain traffic to your own website.

Building Relationships

I’ve meet so many people online during my last guest blogging contest at famous bloggers. I managed to gain many new Blog Engage members, rss customers and new blog readers. This has allowed our community to continue growing and excelling.

Creating Authority

Guest blogging can help you build authority in the blogosphere and help you gain respect from your fellow bloggers. This is how you can start making a name for yourself. Don’t miss out on these amazing marketing opportunities.

Writing Experience

I found by joining blogging contests it has made me more aware about the way I write on my own blog including things such as spelling, grammar and sentence structure. Guest blogging can help you build healthy writing skills you may have never learned or practiced other wise.

So if you’re sitting there in your PC chair and decided against joining our next guest blogging contest maybe it’s time to think again and reconsider. There’s so much potential and opportunity even if you’re not the winner. Remember you have to take advantage of all aspects within guest blogging.

Engage with your Readers

When someone replies to your guest blog make sure to engage with them. Visit their blog, follow them on twitter and reply to their comment. What you want to do is build up intellectual conversations that can turn into new relationships.

I hope my article inspires you to start guest blogging. I know it’s tough but you don’t have to win first place. There’s a ton of benefits that are included with guest blogging. Start taking advantage of this marketing opportunity and engage with bloggers in our next guest blogging contest.

BlogEngage

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

May 25, 2011 | Category: Blog Traffic, Contests, Promotion, Social Networking | 7 Comments

Blog Engage RSS Syndication Subscription Service Bronze Membership

When I first started online in 2008 I owned a website that was for sharing information. It seems the site is down now and no longer exists but back in 2008 it was directory of open source software scripts.

I didn’t even know what a blog was I simply enjoyed making free websites using free software. I eventually came across a free software script that allowed anyone to submit links into it and used this to keep track of all the open source scripts.

I guess it was about a month or two after I decided to start a community where the members could benefit from submitting links as opposed to me simply collecting links to free software script demo’s. I know many of you want to hear this amazing story about how I invented Blog Engage when in fact it was by luck.

For some reason I decided to create a social community for bloggers. I was hoping you would all come to share your links with us. At this time I was not a blogger, go figure the site would become a success. I seen all the other places bloggers had to market and I’ll be the first to admit they were either poor quality or the community was a bunch of not so friendly people. Ironically they also frowned on self promotion which as a marketer I thought wtf?

One of the largest issues I seen from all these communities was the inability to share links and share recent articles. If you did such an actions people would call you a spammer or other not so nice names. What I wanted to do was create a community that encouraged this type social sharing behavior and credit the bloggers with a points system based on how much they actually shared with one another. Little did I know I was about to embark on a three year Social Media Marketing and Branding career lol.

Three years later, 3500 (REAL) twitter followers and over 5000 registered members Blog Engage is one of the most successful online blogging communities in the blogosphere. Creating this community involved hard work, long nights and tons of mistakes. In fact I was one of the first you know! I took a niche market of digg and made it popular! Actually no, I took the niche market, you made it popular!

Many things have to be taken into consideration when launching a website and I wanted to touch base on some of these aspects today in this article.

Branding

It always amazes me when little or no effort is put into creating a strong brand for a website. What’s even more surprising is how many people are not providing any sort of consistency when selecting their social media profile image and user name.

Branding your website or profile is the most important part to starting and maintaining a successful website. The reason I say both is because people will be judging you from both. Many people know Blog Engage but on the same note many people know me as bbrian017. This is a special case and what I have managed to do is create a brand name for myself while at the same time marketing and promoting the Blog Engage community.

Something that was once unique

When I started blog engage I knew right away the difference between me and the other networks was the ability for blogger to market and promote their own articles without having a negative affect. I also wanted to create a community for social sharing. A community where members would vote, tweet, digg and stumble one another content assuming they found it helpful or interesting. This is when your blog article is Engaged!

Social Media

Without the idea of social media marketing I don’t think Blog Engage would exist. The fundamental strategy for making Blog Engage a success was from meeting and adding new online friends.

Building Relationships

I add friends to my social network all the time. I’m very active on Blog Engage twitter, Stumble, facebook and so much more. Adding friends on these communities is key to the success of Blog Engage. I’ve always been lucky enough to have some great and amazing online friends that help me market and promote the community.

Generating Profits

I knew in order to continue my online activities I had to start generating a steady source of income. Coming up with this idea is not easy you all know that! I eventually came up with the idea to syndicate our members content for a monthly fee. I’ve also added other features and benefits into our marketing program and it’s been a huge success! Contest Sponsorship, Multiple Social Website Submissions, Adsense Revenue Sharing and more.

The customer comes first

I strongly believe customer service is key to the success of any online small business. I try my hardest to provide the best quality of service and support at all times to all paid and non paid members. This is by far the most important aspect of my business. I take great pride in our members.

Share your story…

If you want you can leave a comment and share your story! Who knows, if the article gets big enough I’ll add it a few places where it can become a special post and shared by many bloggers. So share your story! Tell us why you started blogging and where you came from.

BlogEngage

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

April 20, 2011 | Category: Blog Engage News, Blogging Tips, Branding, Marketing, Promotion | 3 Comments

Paid ad placement is a traffic-building strategy that can pay off like nobody’s business. It can bring in a whole new audience, build up a reputation, and even get the attention of top-tier blogs and Websites.

Unfortunately, many bloggers play it fast and loose when buying up real estate on other sites, even when intentions are pure. But instead of blowing your hard-earned cash on worthless, traffic-free adspace, here are the top 7 ad-buying mistakes you can make as a blogger, and how to avoid them like the plague.

Bad Placement

Under the guise that internet traffic is so diverse that demographics no longer matter since any kind of site can attract any kind of audience, countless bloggers have placed ads on absurdly irrelevant sites. Ensure that your blog is targeting precisely the same audience as the ad site to avoid placing ads about a Mozart blog on bieberfever.com or a quilting blog on youporn.com.

Bad Positioning

If you’re advertising on a site crammed with skyscrapers stuffed to the rafters with tiny ads, you might have been better off buying a single pixel on The Million Dollar Home Page. Google juice dilutes to homeopathic levels when you’re divvying up the pie to that extent and it all becomes a gray mass to the reader who will simply not bother to click on any of the ads.

Bad Content

As difficult it may be to imagine, a recent blogger’s ad read: “Beleive your sailsmen! There all talknig alot about my blog to!” Having illiteracy attempt to draw traffic to a blog is somewhat akin to hiring a 600 pound spokesperson to extol the virtues of your diet aids. Don’t just rely on your word processor’s spell check as: “Any miss steaks? Nun eye am a wear off!” passes the test but it’s still gobbledygook!

Bad Design

Does your blog ad look like a kindergartener designed it in MS Paint? There is no substitute for expert design to appeal to an audience and unless you have the Photoshop chops to conceive and execute a professional looking ad, you’re just wasting your time and money. Hire a freelance graphic artist and have them take over the design duties.

Bad Timing

All blogs have some level of inherent timing, from snowmobile blogs that go dormant in the summer to tech blogs that have nothing to report on Sundays. Your ads should be set to drive traffic to your blog at the times when there is actually content of immediate interest being posted. Placing your ads to fall at the wrong time is only going to succeed in speeding you off to bankruptcy court.

Bad Diffusion

Many bloggers are cash strapped so when they choose to place ads, they tend to make a big investment in one or two sites and then cry the blues when their traffic chart doesn’t show a single blip. Instead of handing over a big check to a single site, using an ad network will allow you to place your ad on various sites at once.

Bad Capacity

You’ve mortgaged your house, hocked your wedding ring, and borrowed money from Vito The Loanshark to place dynamite ads all over the web that are resulting in avalanches of traffic to your site… so much traffic that your server crashes. Or your host or blogging platform yanks your blog for exceeding your bandwidth limits and your visitors are treated to an embarrassing “Blog Suspended” page. In the blogging world great success is only a few gigabytes of traffic away from great failure.

Somewhere out there you’ll find bloggers who have committed all seven of these bad mistakes, thanks to poor planning, poor execution and other problems. Now that you can identify the pitfalls in buying ads, you can tackle ad buying with confidence instead of throwing money down the drain.

April 8, 2011 | Category: Blog Revenue, Blog Traffic, blogging, Blogging Tips, Business, Business Blogging, Marketing, Promotion, Promotion, Marketing, SEO, Text Ads | 5 Comments


As blog engage continues to grow we have to remember without the help and dedication of our members we wouldn’t be where we are today.

I have spent many days and nights marketing and promoting blog engage trying to encourage bloggers to join, submit and engage with other bloggers.

To be truly successful we need the help and support of all our blogging members. We need you to tell your friends about us, we need you to help market and promote. I’m not asking for much simply a suggestion to your blogging friends to check out our community or perhaps even a simple blog article about out community.

I work hard to ensure the quality of content within our website. We have a lot of great bloggers and members that share content daily. Helping blog engage market and promote is like helping your friends market and promote.

All members have the ability to invite friends. You simply click the link on the main page and upcoming page that says, Invite your blogging friends to our community. That will take you to a page where you enter their e-mail for the final registration process and set up.

So if you know anyone within your specific niche and would like to invite them please do so. We are always interested in new meeting new members.

Let your friends know on twitter that you have blog engage invites to any blogger that is interested in joining. If you’ve been a member for more then 2 years and haven’t blogged about us I think it’s about time. We need our stronger bloggers to step up and let their readers know about blog engage and how beneficial it is for bloggers to john us.

Write a blog article – Tell your blog readers why you enjoy blog engage. Let them know the benefits of using our community. Describe to them why you joined and perhaps a reasoning for them to join as well.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

April 27, 2010 | Category: Promotion, Social Networking | 3 Comments

As you guys know, Google updates Page Rank every 2-5 months. You might think, why can’t it get here sooner? But as an SEO enthusiast starting out a new blog (like me), you would know that it is just ample time to get a blog started and kicking. I had a newer blog last February that got to PR 3 in 50 days and I was pretty happy with my accomplishment. I don’t know if that is the usual or not, still glad. Mind you, I heavily promoted it and such so I would assume that a not promoted blog would achieve less.

So what lesson have we learned here? Promote heavily (after approximately 5 posts), but wisely. Most would think that it’s just about getting backlinks everywhere and forum postings, what’s more to think about? If you have a lot of time, money, and a whole team in your hands, then this is really no problem, but chances are is that you have limited time and resources. All your time is already spent posting quality content (you do post those right?) so you only have a bit of that left to actually promote. You have to remember that posting is just one half the battle, promoting is the other. That is why you have to also choose where to promote and budget how much time you will allocate for that particular promotion.

As a Newbie Blogger and being only 21 years old, I have no money in my name. That is why I don’t use Ads or PPC to promote my site. All the strategies I have used so far are free namely because I am broke; but don’t get me wrong, these promotion techniques can be just as effective. Of course, if you have the cash to spend, then you can opt to use paid advertising along with free ones; mixing them up is obviously the best way.

In any case, remember that you have only a few months to do this before Page Rank update sets in, and after that you would have to wait approximately 3 more months to rank up again. Can you honestly wait that long, knowing full well that you could have done better? I would personally hate myself.

So my advice, Promote your Blog for Free Right Away! (You have nothing to loose really, except perhaps time.)

.

BACKLINKS, ADVERTISING, SOCIAL MEDIA

Backlinks are the heart and soul of your promotions. The more backlinks you have, the higher you are in Google’s search engine list. There are actually a lot of free ways to achieve this.

Bookmarking
One obvious way is too submit to bookmarking sites. A lot of you would already be familiar with popular Bookmarking Sites. Not all bookmarking sites are Do Follow though, so you might want to check first if you prefer those.

I am not saying that No Follow Bookmark Sites (like Digg) are no use as they will also be crucial for driving traffic through your link if dugg enough. So it is best to submit to a lot of these, Do Follow or No Follow, also to have a more even and natural link distribution, that looks more natural for Google Bots.

Commenting
Lots of people are quite lazy to do this but I think it’s good to let people know that you are interactive, can’t hurt to get the free backlink either. A tip would be to write your name with your site or whatever keyword you are promoting that does not look spammy. Using your name only is not building up your keywords even if you are gaining links. Using the keyword only might be trashed by the moderator.

When commenting, Do Follow Sites have more worth as they pass on link juice, but that does not mean to say to forget No Follow Sites, as these are also composed of good sites that can build your reputation. People will see you as a person that is not just after links but actual interaction. Also, if you provide a good enough input to the discussion, people might even click your link.

Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for Commentluv sites as that would mean double links for the price of one. Don’t forget that a lot of blogs that use Commentluv is also Do Follow. Checking out for Keywordluv is also good so you will be sure that your good comment with a keyword gets approved.

Link Exchange
Remember to do this ONLY if your site is REALLY relevant to the other and that you would be able to expect traffic to actually come from the other site through your link there. There is no actual link value here as Google cancels out Reciprocal links.

I have one site that offered me a link to a PR 3 blog. I was like wow, that’s so nice of him. But then I realized that this guy runs a sort of Link Farm in his SEO blog, seeing as he has about a hundred other Reciprocal Links. I’m pretty sure being related to Link Farms can be bad for your reputation with Google and you can even go way back their Search Query. So yeah, really bad idea, don’t exchange links with this kind of guy.

When Exchanging Links, people most of the time check the PR of a site because this can also be reflective of how much traffic that site actually gets. Mind you though, this is not the only thing you should check. Also consider how many actually comment in the other site and if there really is interaction, so that there is a possibility to bring that interaction into your site. Even a PR 0 blog is worth something if it has lots of traffic and people who actually interact. Personally I think this is better compared to a dead PR 4 blog.

Submitting to Web Directories
This is actually not very effective but still a Backlink nonetheless. Thousands of sites are in directories so chances are you won’t get much link juice out of it. It still can be pretty useful though especially if the blogs are sorted into Niche and someone might stumble in your blog if you are placed in the right one.

Posting in Forums
Some forums allow a couple of links in signatures so it is best to tap into that. Mind you, some forums require a number of posts firsts before you can place links in your post. It’s also not just about the links but also actually advertising your blog within your posts to gain some traffic from that forum. I have to warn you that some sites actually BAN accounts or IP Addressees for ruthless advertising, so be careful and remember to read the terms and conditions before posting anything. I would recommend Digital Point Forums and Webmaster Forums as these (from experience) result to a lot of interaction whenever you make a post.

Using Gain Traffic Programs
Although not Web Directories, Entrecard and LinkReferral are also sorted into categories. It serves a double purpose of sorting your blog for people to find and gaining traffic for your blog. Other Gain Traffic Programs include Adgitize, BlogExplosion, and TrafficSwarm, among others.

For Entrecard, you can also actually use this as a free banner advertising platform. All you have to do is drop on blogs to gain Entrecard Credits (EC). You can then use these credits to buy Banner and Text Ads from other Entrecard users that have the widget. I highly recommend this program and I am very happy with their service so far.

Guest Posting
(This is my first guest post in my life ever! Yay! I’ve been meaning to post sooner but I thought that I have to make a relatively good one when submitting to Blog Engage. I like this Guest Posting Site best as I can actually feel the interaction and community.)

Anyhow, some blogs allow duplicate content, but even if the Guest Posting Blog demands for unique content, you have to see this as an investment. A really good blog can help convert readers into your own blog and make people read other posts in your site just by ‘sacrificing’ that one post. You can also gain links from this from the signature and within the post. Remember to use Hyperlinks relating to your site so the keyword can be counted by Google. This is true for anywhere, even forums and comments. Try to Guest Post in as many sites as possible to spread the word of your awesome existence. Guest Posters actually carry some sort of status and people see you as quite the expert in the topic you are talking about.

Using Social Networking Sites
Facebook has at one point exceeded Google in traffic as lots of people proceed directly to facebook to check their profiles several times a day. I really have no idea how they were able to do it as I am not an avid facebook user, but I bow to them as this is quite a feat. I mean, people use Google several times a day too right?! And that links you to millions of sites! So you can just imagine how good facebook has to be to defeat Google. Twitter, on the other hand, has reached more than 10 billion tweets, which is more than the number of people in the world, now that’s also something. It would definitely be a SIN not to use these Social Media platforms. They don’t work? Get over yourself. They don’t work because you don’t know how. :P

Start small by just linking or tweeting your posts, even a complete newbie would know how to do that. In time, you should actually learn to pick up other good posts to link or tweet so people will be more motivated to follow you.

So that’s it, my entire Cheapskate Promoting Strategy. I hope you guys were able to learn a thing or two. I am relatively new to SEO so I hope the experts don’t roll their eyes thinking that it is another “How to Promote Post”; I know you guys might have already read something like this a million times over. Being an even newer blogger before though, I would have loved to read something like this, so that is why I wrote about it. If there are any objections to my methods I would be more than happy to hear about them. Thanks for reading!

Until Next time,
Tini | Inzone Internet

April 23, 2010 | Category: Marketing, Promotion | 9 Comments


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