Introducing the Miniscule Guide to Golf

I'm working on a new book, the Miniscule Guide to Golf... although I do not think I will turn it into a Kindle book as that is severely limiting my audience, as I'm fiding out with the Miniscule Guide to Making Money By Blogging. I don't think the Kindle is the right forum for how to books.... books on golf might be a different kettle of golf balls, though.

I may just turn thr Miniscule Guide to Making Money by Blogging into an ebook and sell it on my website.

Anyway, even though the book itself is several months away, it's time to start creating buzz about it now, so I've created a new blog for the purpose, and any golfers here are invited to check out:

http://minisculeguidetogolf.blogspot.com/

Not that there's anything to look at there at the moment. I'll start serious posting tomorrow.

Microsoft, Yahoo agree on long-sought search deal

Microsoft, Yahoo agree on long-sought search deal

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. has finally roped Yahoo Inc. into an Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc.

The 10-year deal announced Wednesday gives Microsoft access to the Internet's second-largest search engine audience, adding a potentially potent weapon to the software maker's Internet arsenal as it tries to better confront Google, the leader in online search and advertising.

Google tried to stop Yahoo from falling into Microsoft's camp. Last year it formed its own proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo, only to be forced to retreat from that alliance after U.S. antitrust officials threatened to sue.

See the link for the complete article.

How To Submit Your Site to SearchEngines

It used to be real easy to submit yoiur site to a search engine - they all had very prominent buttons that said, "Submit site." Now you have to dig and dig.

Well, here's the link to submit it to google:

http://www.google.com/addurl

and yahoo:

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

or use this multi-submission page:

http://www.phaster.com/design_url.html

Viral Video examples: Nora The Wonder Cat

Here's a viral video, which you can use in your own blogs if you like.

To get the code, click on bottom right hand arrow pointing upward. This brings up a menu box, click on the only thing active, which looks like a little dashboard. That causes the code for the URL to come up on the screen.

And if you're watching just to see what it's about...give the musicians about a minute, then the cat starts playing the piano. (Probably the camera was left running for weeks and weeks to get enough footage, but it's impressive nevertheless!)

Making Money With Blogging

When using viral videos to stimulate visitors to your blog, make sure you don't use too many. One a week is more than enough. Any more than that and your visitors won't beleive they are getting quality content, especially when your blog is supposed to be teaching them how to "make money" with something.

In order to be able to track your hits, and know that you're even getting any, you should add a counter to your blog. The one I use is called StatCounter. It's free, and it gives you tons of information.

Now, even though blogger is set up where it is supposed to announce new blog entries to the search engines automatically, it's also a good thing for you to do that announcing yourself. I'll show you how tomorrow.

Potter Puppet Pals: Snapes' Diary

I don't have time to write in this blog today, so I'm going to go with another viral video. This one's very popular, thanks to the obsession with the Harry Potter franchise.



Keywords: potter puppet pals harry potter half blood prince jk rowling daniel radcliffe rupert grint emma watson

(I find it interesting that the video is entitled Snape's diary and yet the creator doesn't put Alan Rickman's name in the keywords

If it doesn't work, try, try again

A few posts ago I advised you to use viral videos in your blog, because that would generate quite a few hits for you. And as an example I posted that wedding video that has been so hugely successful on YouTube.

Well, to date it hasn't generated a hit. But I know why. If you do a "Google search" on wedding entrance video," the top 7 results are for the same YouTube video. So that negates my hits right there. Sometimes if a video is too popular, this tactic doesn't work. However, after a couple weeks when the furor over this dies down, I expect those top 7 results to dissipate to top 3 or so, and my blog entry to be right up. So, it's just a matter of being patient.

I find these viral videos most useful with my sports blogs. A video of a referee in a college football game taking out a quarterback on the run, a college baseball umpire being deliberately thrown at by a pitcher, with the catcher ducking out of the way, things of that nature, have always done well. I had had high hopes for the LeBron Gets Dunked On video, but when the footage was released it was impossible to tell who was who, so I didn't even bother to post it.

But these viral videos keep on giving. For example, I posted a video of world-renowned women's college basketball coach Pat Summit singing Rocky Top at a men's baskeball game, wearing a cheerleader uniform. This was to repay the favor of Bruce Pearl,who had shown up at one of her games with his shirt off and Go Lady Vols painted on his chest. That post gets no hits during the off-season, but as soon as the Lady Vols start playing, people start searching for that, and find my blog.

One very successsful viral video I had on my science fiction blog was "How to Destroy an Evil Clone." A man had his baby daughter in one of those Gumbo chairs, or whatever they're called, and with stop motion and the help of a few other babies and a cute dog named Kody had made a very entertaining video. In fact, he had three or four of them. These were uploaded at Yahoo Videos rather than YouTube, but you still had the capability of embedding them.

Anyway, I don't know when or why it took place, but those videos are no longer available on Yahoo. I believe the man's website is still up - all proceeds from the site were to go to his daughter's college fund - and I can't understand why he would take the videos down when they would direct people to that site, but for whatever reason, they're gone.

That's the problem with viral videos. On this occasion, the man who actually created them took them down, but on other occasions people have created something very popular, but didn't get clearance to use the music, or a scene from a TV show or something, and if someone complains, the video is arbitrarily removed. Most annoying. I'm all for copyright protection, but when you're getting free advertising for your product, why complain?

Promote Yourself On Your Own Blogs

The purpose of this blog is to help get sales for our new Kindle book: The Miniscule Guide to Making Money By Blogging. It is also to provide a 24-7 HELP DESK for people who have questions about getting their blog started and how to monetize it.

But we're not going to throw away the opportunity to promote some of our other Kindle books - or pamphlets, rather:




Don't have a Kindle? Get one!

Google Adwords Tutorials

If you want some more information about using Google Adwords and/or Adsense, here are some videos I found at Youtube.





Google has a whole series of tutorials there for Google AdWords, so check 'em out.

Draw Traffic By Embedding Viral Videos

Pay attention to viral videos at YouTube.

For example, five days ago, a couple posted their wedding video online. Instead of walking sedately down the aisle, they danced.

After five days, the video has already had 2,292,241 hits. So, you take a video like this that is extremely popular, and you embed it into your blog, using the same keywords and description that they used... and when people start doing google searches to try to find it... they will find it at your blog.

If it's a video that matches the concept of your blog, that's great. If it isn't, you just put OT in the header, like OT: Watch this great video. And in the body of the text say something like, "I know this is off-topic, but I saw this great video of YouTube of a wedding dance (or whatever) and thought I'd share. Then, "This is the JK Wedding Entrance Dance." Or, to give as much info for potential searchers, describe it a bit more, "This is the popular video of that couple who danced to Forever as they entered the wedding hall."

Should you use Google AdWords?

Google has two advertising programs, Adwords and Adsense. The one feeds the other.

Google Adwords is used by those people who have something to sell. They write up an ad, of about 15 words, and choose a lot of keywords. Whenever someone conducts a search using their keywords, their ad will show up on the Search Results page. If someone clicks on that ad, they are brought to that person's website, where about 1 % of them will end up buying something. (A 3% conversion rate is the ideal, most websites have a 1% conversion rate.)

The keywords the person selects cost money. From 5 cents to 10 cents, 50 cents to a dollar. Because of this, AdWords should only be used by those people who are selling big ticket items on their site.

(I made an expensive mistake in this regard, many years ago. I had just started a science fiction website, and though I could increase my chances of getting into the search engines quickly by using Adwords to drive readership there. My only income stream on the site was Adsense and Amazon.com.

No matter how hard I tried choosing my keywords, I could never get the cost-per-click to go below ten cents, and frequently it was considerably higher than that. After three days I'd accumulated a $30 bill. But the people who went to the site would click on *one* ad themselves, for which I'd earn a whole penny! And although lots of people would check out Amazon.com, not a one bought anything.

So I canceled my campaign and just worked at building the website the straightforward way, by adding content on a regular basis, and establishing a presence in various newsgroups where I displayed my knowledge of science fiction in all its media forms, and used my website URL in my signature block.

After a couple of months, it was like *snap." Overnight the visitors came, the clicks on the Google ads came, and I was getting several small payments a day which over the course of the month added up. And although Amazon was always disappointing , Christmas time is always very good.

However, if you're selling a big-ticket item, something that will earn you $20 or more should someone purchase it, then using Google Adwords to drive people to your site can be a good thing.

You would not use Google Adwords to try to drive someone to your blog! That will occur naturally, after you've had the blog for a month or so, and have 30 entries chock full of text that someone is going to search for, eventually!

Using Google Adwords to Find Keywords to put in Your Blog Entries

Your 24-7 HELP DESK:

Many pundits will advise you to search for keywords on a particular topic (which are actually phrases), and then use the most popular of those keywords three times in a 300-word block of text, regardless of whether or not the phrase actually makes grammatical sense.

For example, what are the most popular search phrases for "Making money by blogging"?

Go to:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

and input "making money by blogging." Aftr entering a Captcha to prove you're a real person, hit enter, and wait for the results. (This webpage is provided by Google AdWords to help people choose keywords for their ads.)

Looking through dozens of phrases, I find that the word "blogging" had over 550,000 searches in June. "Blogs" 6,120,000. "Online work" 301,000. "How to blog" 165,000. And the piece de resistance, "blogger", 4,090,00.

Now, all of those phrases/words are ones that would legitimately come up in any blog entry about "how to make money by blogging." You just write your entry naturally, and it will all fall into place. That's the way it is with most blogging - or even websites - where you're trying to attract visitors. Just write naturally, and the hits will come.

Now, since The Miniscule Guide to Everything is a brand new blog, created in order to serve the clientele of The Miniscule Guides, I don't expect it to be indexed in the search engines for another week or even two. This doesn't worry me. I have announced this blog in a couple of my other blogs, and I'll be using its URL as my signature when I go to the message boards in a few more days and establish a presence on various newsgroups.

I expect the keywords I've listed above to generate hits for me for months and years to come, once that indexing takes place.

One thing I want to emphasize to all people looking to make money online is to have realistic expectations. The economy is bad, and lots of people want to do exactly what you're doing, so you're going to have competition. Be patient. Provide quality content. Everything else will come from that.

Resources for : Making Money By Blogging

If you've purchased our KINDLE book: The Miniscule Guide to Making Money By Blogging, you have purchased a never-expiring Help Desk. Have questions about your blogging account? Send us an email at GastropodGraphics.

Here are the hotlinks to the affiliates you'll want to join as you begin your blogging career:

• https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/
• https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
• https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/index.html
• http://www.clickbank.com/index.html

Manifesto

This is the first post in The Miniscule Guide to Everything.