Blogs and forums have the best potential for leaving comments.

Blogs

In blogs, they usually ask for your name, email address, your web site address (URL), and your comment. When the comment is approved, they link your name to your web site, next to your comment.

If they do not ask for the website URL, they can’t link to it and you don’t get any goodness from the comment. Look at other comments on the site and check if any of them are linked to external sites.

It is possible to put your URL in the comment itself. Sometimes it automatically becomes an active link and sometimes it just sits there looking like text. At least someone could copy and paste it, but that’s 3 steps harder than a real link. Check other comments to see how it works.

If you just throw your URL in the comment, it looks kind of spammy, so I wouldn’t do that. If there was a legitimate reason to put your URL in there, you might get away with it.

In order of effectiveness: 1. a blog that links your name, 2. a good reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 3. a good reason to put your URL in a comment that is NOT linked, 4. no reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 5. no reason to put your URL in a comment that is linked, 6. writing your comment on a piece of paper and leaving it on the sidewalk.

The 10 for 10 Challenge

One thing you might be tempted to do, if you’ve read my SEO book, is use your keywords as your “Name”. The good thing is that your site gets the benefit of not only getting a link, but the link is for your keywords. The problem with this is that everyone knows you are playing the system if you say your name is “Handmade Jewelry”. You lose credibility with the readers and the blog owner probably won’t even approve that comment, so you’ve wasted your time and annoyed the owner.

If you are a FireFox user (and why wouldn’t you be?), there’s a plug named “easyComment”, for the browser that populates common blog comment forms automatically. Install it, fill out the preferences with your name and URL, then any time you are on a blog post with a comment form, click the button and your name and URL are put into the form.

easyComment can be downloaded from here: easyComment https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9095/

Forums

Forums are a bit different. Again, check to see what others are doing and how the links work. Usually, you will have to create a profile with a “signature”. The signature is a bit of text that is inserted at the bottom of each of your posts, like a signature. Put your URL in there. Link it using your keywords if possible.

It’s possible to put your URL into the body of your post, but again, don’t just throw it in there. Have a good reason for mentioning it. “I was just discussing that very issue yesterday on my blog. See my post here: http://www.yoursite.com/post.html”. That’s a reasonable thing to do.

Try to use your keywords, but not too blatantly. Make sure they are giving you a real, working link. Check the other comments and posts to make sure you understand how that site works. Be interesting, genuine, authoritive, humble, and helpful.

You do want links for their SEO goodness, but you also want real people to be interested enough to come check out your site and start a conversation. Write for real people first, then review for keywords for the search engines second.

Now, go out there and leave some comments!

It will look nothing like this.

Etsy has put a lot of people on the mailing list, so I figured that would be the clear winner, but there are people who have never heard of Etsy on the list.

There are also a surprising number of people who have Etsy shops, but are tired of the fees and lack of control, so they are looking for other ways to market their product.

The clear winner is the book on Internet Marketing.

It was split evenly between people who like “step by step” instructions and those who like “general principles”. I guess I’ll have to write it from both perspectives and do both!

I will be working on the book over the next couple weeks, so if you have any suggestions or specific questions you want addressed, please leave them in the comments below.

Thanks to everyone who responded. You guys rock.

Sure enough, they mentioned the forum thread about SEO help written by Warmth’s Felt Mice and Mouse Ornaments about her positive experiences with the book (for which I am eternally grateful).

If that’s you, welcome! Please stay and look around a bit. After you read the book, come back and check out some of my other articles here. There are plenty on the home page and you can search for more.

If you are interested in having your very own web site, here’s a new page that I just published days ago about a new web site deal.

$50 Off – Gain Control With Your Own Web Site.

In the last newsletter, I gave out a coupon code worth $50 off the normal $150 price of a web site installation. If you email me and can tell me how many other forum posts were mentioned in the email from Danille, I’ll give you the same $50 off.

Thanks again for stopping by. Hope you enjoy the book and the site.

If you have any specific questions, please leave a comment below.

My wife looking for sea glass on a recent trip to Jalama Beach

If you read “The Care And Feeding Of Search Engines, A Simple Guide To SEO“, you know that there are many, many things that you can do to increase your search engine optimization and get more traffic.

The very easiest way to get traffic is to comment on other people’s blogs and leave a link to your site. They usually link your name to your site. Don’t be obnoxious about it. Don’t oversell yourself or be rude, but leaving a link is common and acceptable.

The other benefit of commenting on other people’s blogs is that they usually read your comments. If you are witty and relevant enough, they might even come check out your site. If you have great content on your site, (and you do, right?), then they might even become a fan of yours. Maybe they become a friend. Poof! A relationship is born.

The hard part of commenting on other people’s site is that it takes time. You don’t see results right away.

I nagged coached Deborah, my wife’s friend with the sea glass jewelry site, to leave comments. (Did you notice that? I linked to her again. Darn, she’s good.) Her attitude was “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever…” but I kept after her. She tried hard, but it was difficult to keep up the energy when the results don’t come quickly.

She checks the number of inbound links to her site using Site Explorer, a tool I discuss in the book.

I got this email from her recently.

We’ll today I’m officially over a thousand. Am I supposed to put this in a diary of something? I remember in late October when you were on me about having 46…It was drudgery to even think about posting comments, etc. Now it’s the 1st thing I do for work every morning. Thanks for the push.

-Deborah

It warms my little heart. Yes, she went from 46 inbound links to over a thousand. It took her 5 months. She achieved it. Along the way, she’s made new friends and her site is better known to the community.

I’m so proud.

I'm sorry for everyone who doesn't live in Los Angeles,
but this was the sunset on New Year's Day.

This is my New Year’s post, as required by the Federation of Internet Marketing Bloggers.

Looking back over the last year, it’s shocking to me to see how my goals for the business have changed. When I started out, I was a web developer, building small businesses web sites. That was working well, but it was, well, work. Find a client, sell a client, build a site, be done with it.

I was looking for more of a partnership with someone. I wanted to be able to share what I’ve learned about Internet marketing and building web sites with someone who would benefit from it. I have the tools and I needed someone who needed the tools.

Then I found Deborah at Mermaids Purse Sea Glass. She was a friend of my wife’s who needed some help on her web site. She had a product that was very cool, that people would buy if it was marketed well. At my wife’s urging, we built her a site.

I always thought that everyone was just like me and knew this Internet stuff, but it was all new and exciting stuff for Deborah. I was as excited to show her as she was excited to learn it. As I talked to her about strategies for selling her stuff on line, I realized that a lot of people want to sell their products on line, but don’t know how.

They want to avoid spending too much time or too much money on building and promoting their web site. They want avoid common mistakes. I get all of that. I can show people how to accomplish all of that. The light went on in my head.

I’ve been learning how to put together a training program, an “integrated learning environment” or ILE, so that I can easily show people how to do this stuff. The forum was the first visible part of that. Videos and audios and web pages and PDF files are coming. We’re working on the course outline right now.

The new year will see the launch of this new site. I’m still working on the details of it, but I expect it to launch at the end of February.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or feedback that you want to share about this idea, maybe what you’d like to see in it, please leave me a comment or send me an email with the form to the left.

And that s’up.

I got an email from a client the other day. They had hit a wall and needed help. They didn’t know what to do next. They found themselves sitting at the computer, staring at the screen, not knowing the next step, frustrated.

Every business, every website is a journey.

It’s not something that you create and then put on the shelf, waiting for the money to roll in.

What do you do when you hit the wall? We could talk about productivity and organization. I hate those words. I just want to know what to do next.

It’s time to take a deep breathe. Site back. Relax. Talk to someone. The goal is to get a plan and figure out what the next step is.

I like to make a list and prioritize it. I like to talk to my wife. Sometimes, just explaining something helps you figure out the next step. My wife is good at nodding and smiling when I explain technical stuff. Just the act of putting it into words helps me gain perspective. “Glad I could help” she says, as she wonders what that was all about.

Sometimes, you just don’t know the next thing to do, the next step to take.

If you’re at a complete loss, then just take some step, any step. If you start to move forward, you’ll soon figure out if it’s the right direction or not. If you get frustrated and stop, you will fail. If you take the wrong step, at least you know it’s the wrong step.

Just take a step, any step, and you’ll be fine.

PS – This photo was taken at dawn, as the sun peeked over the mountains behind me. This road goes to a point, overlooking Palm Springs and the entire lower desert area of Southern California. A couple hundred yards form this location, you can literally see for 100 miles. It doesn’t look like much here, but just around the corner…

Do You Use Etsy To Sell Handmade or Unique Products Online?

If you would be interested in answering some questions, here’s what I’d like to know. Feel free to skip any that you don’t want to answer. If you want to copy and paste these into an email and send them to me that way, please do so. You can also use the Contact page.

Depending on the responses I get, I may group the results and report only the composite information, or I may want to publish individual responses if they are interesting and valuable.

I may have follow up questions, based on your responses. I promise to not do anything with your name and email that you don’t give me permission to so. It’s just so that I can follow up with you.

Please tell me if you give me permission to publish your responses in my blog, either with or without your name. I can link to your Etsy store if you want me to. Entirely up to you.

Thank you very much for your time and patience.

1. How long have you been selling things on Etsy?

2. Have you tried selling any place other than Etsy, online or in person?

3. What venue works the best for you and why?

4. What tips do you have for people who want to sell on Etsy? What is the best way to sell there?

5. How technical would you rate yourself, on a scale of afraid of computers to building your own web site?

6. What do you like the most about Etsy?

7. What do you like least about Etsy? (You knew that was coming.)

8. Any advice about things to watch out for when selling on line?

9. Have you ever tried using your own web site? Did it work? Why? Why not?

10. Any advice for a person just setting out to sell their own handmade products?

11. Any other stories, advice, or comments that you’d like to make?

You should set up addresses like support@ and sales@ and information@, just to look professional.

Set up your email application to log into that account, then use it to send and receive email.

You should also have a “catch all” account that will probably get filled with spam, but you’ll also get those emails with misspelled email addresses that you might otherwise miss.

You should set up addresses like “support@” and “sales@” and “information@”, just to look professional. You, or someone, should be able to log in and send and receive email at each of your custom addresses.

Also, don’t let any address lay dormant. Make sure that someone is logging into every account, every 10 minutes. “I sent you an email last week. Did you get it?” is not the question you want to hear.

Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for.

1. Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for. Be short and to the point. They have other pages on the site for in depth information if they want more detailed information. This is for people to know at a glance what they are looking at.

2. Your address, phone number and email address. Be sure to put all of this information in full, including the street address, city, state and zip code. Put the area code with the phone number.

3. Hours that your business is open.

4. A list of cities you serve. If someone searches for the type of business that you have plus the city name, they can find it in the search engines.

Unlimited bandwidth and server space are not that critical. Don’t be swayed by those claims. Price and support. Again, I recommend Powweb. Click the button on the right to get more info about them.

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Support

Customer service is a critical element of web hosting, especially if you are creating your first website.  To make sure you get the benefit of quality support, you should find out if the company has a phone number, email address or live chat.  You can take this one step further by making contact before signing up to judge their response time.  If they take days to reply or blow you off completely, there is no need to waste your time.

Reviews

One way to find yourself a good shared host is to read reviews online.  This should give you a good idea about who you will be dealing with and what to expect.  At the same time, you shouldn’t rely solely on web hosting reviews.  Some could be written by internal sources at a particular company while others could be written by competitors.  If you want helpful reviews, try to get them from somebody you can trust to provide honest opinions.

Status

Every web host had to start somewhere, but it’s always a good idea to sign up with a company that has been in the business for a while.  Several providers have crumbled despite seeming as if they were off to a good start.  By doing business with trusted names with documentation to back up their claims, you can better assure that your experience with shared hosting will be a positive one.

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