You can imagine I was (to put it mildly) pleased about this because, on a personal level, I love the site and read it avidly, and on a professional level, it shows my content and my message matters to some people.

The benefits of having my article mentioned on Marketing Profs had some additional benefits, quite a few extra visitors and some kind people even hit the retweet button at the top of the article.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with ‘the pursuit of perfectionism‘ so let me get to my point.

The article I wrote was about trying to game spam filters by intentionally misspelling words in the email subject line and body text. This encouraged someone to leave me a comment along the lines of:

“If misspellings challenge credibility, Karl might do himself a favor by checking the word ‘flair’.”

Now, I did misspell flair (I used flare by mistake) and I have corrected that now so “thank you” for pointing that out.

My content had a minor error, it was not intended to ‘game’ anything unlike what is happening with how some marketers’ are writing their email marketing campaigns.

Why did this compel someone to leave such a comment?

Maybe the message I was putting out tapped a raw nerve, maybe ‘he’ engages in such email marketing activities and doesn’t know any better, maybe he is on a quest to rid the world of misspellings and feels this to be another personal victory, or maybe he just didn’t get the point!

If you are engaged in content publishing of any kind, and you get any type of buzz, you will get attention. The attention you get will turn some people into fans who grab your RSS feed, retweet your work, add you to their bookmarks, sign-up to your newsletter and may even tell people about your website.

Some people will come and leave again unaffected by your message, neither liking or disliking your work.

Others will feel the need to throw a bit of negativity your way.

I’m not perfect, I make mistakes but I will not let the fear of NOT being perfect stop me from sharing content that is of value to my readers.

There are 101 very successful product launches in the Internet Marketing realm that would never have seen the light-of-day if the product creators had to check everything was ‘perfect’ before sharing their content, sometimes good-enough really is good-enough.

Please do not let the fear of someone’s criticism or negativity stop you from sharing your content.

Making sure your content is 100 percent perfect all the time will slow you down and decrease your productivity, ’so just get it our there’!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Disclaimer: No words were intentionally misspelled in the making of this article.

There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and geeks (and yes, this does apply to me as I am a self-confessed geek).

Clicky is ideal for the newbie who has discovered the importance of visitor tracking and is finding Google Analytics too complicated.

The more experienced stat geek (I love my stats) will also love Clicky because they track more elements than Google Analytics. They even provide the stats in such a user-friendly way that you can get a stat fix with just a quick glance (this can seriously increase your general productivity, I have lost too much time reading through my website data!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on the big G, their Analytics program is amazing, is packed full of features, is better than 99% of website analytic packages on the market, and ultimately, is free.

But, and this really is a big ‘but’, the learning curve is very steep for someone who can be considered a ‘newbie’. Additionally, quite a few people who are running a small business and have an accompanying website do not always have the time to work through the given ‘how to’ pages that Google has kindly put together.

So, why is Clicky a more powerful alternative?

Clicky Web Analytics has the traditional features you’d expect but let me share with you a few of the additional features that have me excited!

• Juicy Visitor Details
• Twitter Analytics
• Dedicated iPhone Clicky Analytics
• URL Shortener Integration

If that still hasn’t whetted your appetite, how does this sound:

• Dedicated Wordpress plugin (yes, you can track you stats directly from your Wordpress dashboard)
• Spy on your visitors

The Wordpress plugin is for self-hosted Wordpress blog users and has recently been updated by Joost De Valk, over at Yoast.com. You can download the plugin directly from the Clicky website.

A great additional feature of the plugin is it can also be configured to update your Twitter account each time you upload a new blog post; this also includes a URL  shortener. as stated above, and tracks your links.

The ‘real time visitor tracking’ [*] is what gets me really excited! This feature allows you to literally spy on what your visitors are doing on your website as they are actually doing it. This is a bit like watching a Twitter stream but instead of tweets, you are watching the pages of your website update as your visitors navigate from page-to-page.

All you need to do now is head on over to the Clicky website and sign-up for an account. You’ll gain instant access to a trial period of a pro account (no credit card required to gain access) and will be downgraded to a free account when the trial comes to an end.

To get the complete access to the full range of services I recommend you take them up on their pro account offer, it only costs $59.99 for a whole year giving you a whole 6 months for free.

The do have other packages so I recommend you visit their site now to see what is the best fit for your website.

Here’s the link again: www.GetClicky.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley

[*] For real time visitor tracking that is recording using screencast technology visit Clixpy.com.

Twitter, everybody loves Twitter, so what on Earth could be ‘even better than Twitter’s Micro Blog platform’?

I’ll get back to TweetGlide in a minute but first let me explain my problems with Twitter.

You are probably the same as me, you understand the potential of Twitter, you love how it allows you to follow people who influence you as well as allowing those you influence to follow you.

So, you spend a lot of time promoting your Twitter profile, probably just as much as you promote your website and blog! Here’s the thing, although Twitter ultimately owns your profile, wouldn’t it be a great place to promote yourself just that little bit more than just having that one single link in your ‘about me’ area.

Okay, you can upload your own Twitter background with a few images of links but that isn’t as powerful as providing your profile viewers with a clickable link.

But what if you could? What if you could add some elements directly to your Twitter profile page that gave you extra promotional possibilities for yourself and your business? What if you could monetize your profile, wouldn’t that be great?

Some people absolutely hate sponsored Tweets but I haven’t heard much objection to monetizing the Twitter profile page itself.

Well, all the things you wished you could do with your Twitter profile just became possible!

Take a close look at the two screenshots below and tell me if you can spot any differences?

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

I bet you noticed straight away that the second screenshot has 125×125 sized banner ads. Let me share another screenshot of that particular sidebar so you can take an even closer look.

After the ads I have a widget that shares the recent posts from my blog followed by my DandyID buttons that allow people to connect with me on other social networking sites. I also, at the time of writing, have a ProfileFly button and a share on Facebook button.

Have you guessed how I’ve done this?

Returning to the title of this post, I made a claim that there was something even more important than TweetGlide! Don’t get me wrong, the desktop app is great at what it does and if you haven’t downloaded it yet then I recommend you get it now!

Here’s the link: TweetGlide Desktop Application

More important than the TweetGlide app is the accompanying blog that you also get! Why? Because it is a more powerful version of Twitter, allowing you to make the changes you only wished Twitter would allow you to make.

What’s more, the changes I made to my profile took me five minutes. Just imagine what you could do if you took the time to really play around with it.

You’ll need to download TweetGlide to gain access to your very own version of the blog.

Fire-up TweetGlide and then locate the manage blog button. Click on the button and your default browser will load your profile blog page with you already logged in.

When you click on the settings button at the top of your TweetGlide profile page you will be taken to the back-office as seen in the screenshot below.

As you can see, the elements that I have added to my profile page are managed by placing code into the individual widget boxes.

You can then choose the order of how the widgets are displayed by using a drag-and-drop panel as seen below.

You probably have lots of ideas of how you can improve your profile page so what are you waiting for, if you don’t have TweetGlide yet go and download it now.

If you come up with a customisation idea that you think is truly awesome then come back here and leave a comment with your TweetGlide profile link so I can take a look!

I think you’ll agree with me when I say that the blog is probably more important than the application itself.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Are you following me on Twitter yet?

P.s.s Don’t forget that you can place optimised links on your TweetGlide profile using keyword rich ‘anchor’ text. Just another benefit of getting one of these blogs for yourself.

I have a confession to make, my secret voodoo blogging methods aren’t going to send you unstoppable floods of traffic and make you rich, but they will give you a better blog. If you are looking for a system that will help you earn cash from blogging the you have a limited time to grab Bloggers Payback before the price goes up; you may already be too late!

Right, now that’s out of the way let’s get back to my not so secret voodoo blogging methods. The reason for this post is to reveal some fundamentals to blogging. You see, people jump into blogging and in the progress of creating their blog often skip the basics.

The tips I’m going to share will add that little something extra that a lot of people overlook… keep reading and all will become clear.

1. Tell Your Readers Who You Are

Seriously, this is such a small thing but it can have a big impact on how your readers interact with your blog. I am still surprised how many blogs I come across where the blog posts were written by ‘Admin‘.

You may write a killer post that compels your readers to start commenting, but instead of being able to address you in a conversational way they will probably stick to more generic responses. Just compare the following:

Scenario A

Hey, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips.

Michael

Scenario B

Hey Kelly, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips

Michael

Okay, not drastically different but now let’s follow Michael as he leaves your blog and starts chatting to a friend on Twitter.

Friend: ‘What have you been doing today?’

Michael: ‘Just reading a few blog posts, one of the posts blew me away!’

Friend: ‘Really, what was it about?’

Michael: ‘It was about some secret voodoo blogging methods.’

Friend: ‘Sounds awesome, who wrote it!’

Now, if we return to scenario A for a minute, Michael will say something like ‘erm, not sure but here’s the link …’.

However, in scenario B Michael knows who the author is and he was so impressed he is just about ready to tell the world. His response will now more likely be, ‘Kelly wrote it, here’s the link … she knows her stuff!‘.

This small tip really helps with word-of-mouth and social media marketing where people like to talk about people!

Having your name displayed also makes it easier for people to contact you regarding joint ventures etc.

You can enhance this even further by adding some extra elements just like you will see on this blog.

Below this post you will see an author bio box that is being created using a free Wordpress plugin.

If you would like a similar author bio box on your blog then you can get the plugin from the Devils Backyard and is called About The Author Box Plugin. The About The Author Box plugin also works for multi-author blogs making this a great plugin.

While you are at it you should head on over to Gravatar and sign-up for your free account. You will then be able to add a photo that will be used for your comments on other people’s blogs. Do that now, come back here and leave a comment (using the email you signed-up for your Gravatar) and your beautiful pic will be displayed next to your comment for all to see.

You can change your display name in Wordpress under the Users tab where it says profile.

To enable Gravatar for your comments then you’ll need to enable Gravatar by going to the Discussions page under the Wordpress Settings tab.

Let’s move on to the next tip…

2. Hide the date

Well, you may not want to hide the date of your blog posts but rather move it to below the content.

Why? Because people love fresh content!

Let’s say you have written the best ever post all about widgets but the post is now 3 years old.

When people do a search for widgets in Google they may come to your page see the date and hit the back button. You know it is the best ever timeless piece written about widgets but people love fresh and right now content.

Moving the date below the post will decrease the chances of this happening. People will no longer see the date until they scroll down the page and hopefully your content will have grabbed their attention by then.

You will have to play around with your blog theme to make this possible. We use Elegant Themes eBusiness Theme which allows us to hide the date with one click of a button in the theme admin area.

I’m glad you are still reading and have stuck with me this far, so let’s head on to the final tip.

3. Ask your readers to do something!

Do you want your readers to interact with your blog? Well, then you need to ask them to! When you write your next blog post be sure to end it with a call to action.

Conclude your blog post with a statement that is a good fit for your content.

Examples:

A blog post about social bookmarking:

Now you’ve discovered the power of social bookmarking why not test it out right now by clicking here and adding us to your bookmarks.

A blog post about RSS feeds:

Now you’ve walked through our tutorial for using RSS Readers to stay-up-to-date with the blogs you enjoy, click here to add ours.

A blog post about a product launch:

What I want you to do right now is click on the link and grab your copy of Blogging Payback before the price goes up!

You see, sometimes you really do need to tell people what to do to get the results you want.

I hope you have found this post useful, before you go, be sure to join me on Twitter as I’ve finally got myself an account!

Best wishes,

Kelly-Anne

2009-10-30  photo credit: revjim5000

If you have come to this page looking for a free viral tell-a-friend script then you won’t find a recommendation here! What you will find is a warning that you should probably take the time to read.

I’d never knock anyone for trying to save money in their business but there are just some things with a free price tag that may end up costing your business so much more.

Here are the fundamental flaws to using a free tell-a-friend script and why you should avoid it:

1. Security

Security is one of the major concerns of computer owners and Internet users alike. Having a website that is safe and secure from any type of attack may become a security risk due to using a tell-a-friend script. Here’s the problem, even some high-profile and heavily promoted paid-for scripts have vulnerabilities that could leave you and your email address book open to attack; you can ‘Google it’ for more information about the security issues and I recommend that you do.

2. Script Updates

This is an issue that affects the Wordpress plugins scene and is not exclusive to free scripts but it is a major concern when security, your website, and your integrity are at risk.

You see, you download the script, you install it and it works great. You start getting visitors to your website like never before, and then, SNAP, something breaks. You now need to contact the developer for some quick support and when you visit the homepage you discover that the developer has discontinued support due to ‘a lack of time’ or ‘new ventures’.

What happens if your main source of revenue is from your website and the tell-a-friend script needs an update that is NOT forth-coming and it ends up causing a misconfiguration of some kind, taking your website offline.

You see, no matter what way you look at things, if your website is attacked due to a vulnerability in the script or your email address book is used to send out mass spam email, or the script causes your site to develop errors and not load properly, you will only hurt your…

3. Reputation

Yes, your integrity and your reputation is explicitly tied into your website and service. If you are attacked by hackers or spammers that use a vulnerability in the script, then your customers may turn to you for an explanation.

I’ll leave this with you, but if you do use a free viral tell-a-friend script then make sure you thoroughly research the offering before installing it onto your website.

There is an alternative and the fact you’ve read this far probably means that you are seeking a solution. Karl recently wrote about a secure tell-a-friend script that was used by the StomperNet guys in a recent launch and it is the only one we would recommend you use.

Best wishes,

Kelly-Anne

photo credit: tranchis

One of the best blogging solutions is to attach a self-hosted Wordpress blog to your existing website. In the past the only way to do this was to download the Wordpress files to your desktop and then upload them using your FTP client followed by playing around with the configuration options; this was enough to prevent the non-techie-type from jumping into blogging with a self-hosted blog.

A real simple solution has come along that makes those manual upload days seem like something from the Internet dark ages, that solution being Simple Scripts. This guide will walk you through the installation process.

You will need a hosting account that gives you access to Simple Scripts. We use Host Monster to host the majority of our websites as they use cPanel in the user back-office. CPanel has revolutionised the ease of configuring your website, managing email clients and domains etc. The other reasons we use HostMonster is because the customer support is top notch, exactly what you need when something goes wrong with your site and you need to get back online quickly. Oh! Did I mention they are very affordable, with HostMonster you are not compromising on service either, making this a win win for you.

Head on over to HostMoster and register for an account here.

After you have signed up for an account simply follow the instructions to set up your domain etc. Assuming you have done this and have a website already with HostMonster then you’ll want to log into your cPanel area.

Now, how to easily install your self-hosted Wordpress blog.

Scroll down until you find the Simple Scripts icon under the heading Software / Services.

For this example I am going to attach a blog to a squeeze-page of mine for a report about how to use Joint Ventures to generate targeted traffic to your websites and promotions.

Inside the Simple Scripts area scroll down to Blogs and click on Wordpress.

Now click on Install.

Step 1 – select the latest stable install and where you would like your Wordpress blog to be installed.

If you have an existing site that you want to attach a blog to then type ‘blog’ as the subdomain or whatever else you wish to call it (blog being the most logical).

In the image above you can see that I am installing Wordpress to the subdomain ‘blog’ on the GuruTrafficSecret.com domain.

Now you’ll want to select your login details, password and blog name. You’ll also want to tick the check box where it says ‘automatically create a database’.

Lastly, accept the terms and conditions.

Now click ‘complete‘.

If your installation is successful you will see the above screen. Your login details will also be emailed to you.

To login to your new wordpress site just add /wp-admin to the end of your URL. The login for GuruTrafficSecret is now at

http://www.gurutrafficsercret.com/blog/wp-admin

Log in to your website to configure your blogs information.

To make your blog stand out from the crowd you should install a new theme at the first opportunity.

Visit the Guru Traffic Secret blog to see a live demo of a Wordpress blog and the first and only post.

I hope you found this post informative and easy to follow.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. To get the most out of cPanel and your website I recommend you sign-up for Discover cPanel as soon as you can. You can visit the site now and get instant access to a free video packed with information that you can put to use straight-away.

Have you ever wanted an easy way to remember your passwords that is safer than the post-it notes plastered across your monitor. Well, I use a tool that will be right up your street. My favourite piece of software for this is Roboform and this post covers why it a part of my ‘marketing toolkit’.

With Roboform, you just enter all your details ‘once’ and then every time you need to fill in your name and address etc, you simply click a button and that’s it, everything is ‘auto-filled’ for you.

Visit the Roboform site and click on the link that says ‘Or Start Free Trial’.

I recommend you purchase Roboform Pro straight away as you can save unlimited passwords and identities (set some up for your family members too); and the Pro version is very cheap at just $29.95. If you just want to give it a test run then go ahead and click on the ‘Or Start Free Trial’ link and an .exe file will begin to download.

The way the file downloads will depend on what browser you are using but either click on Save File or Run for the program to set up as shown in the photo below.

Now create your identity. Insert your name and click the OK button.

This will take you to the next screen where you can input all of the information that you fill out when you are joining new sites and entering into affiliate programs.

Once you have completed these steps Roboform will conveniently sit at the top of your browser as a toolbar for when you need to use it.

The free trial allows you to remember around 30 passwords.  Another amazing feature of Roboform is the ability to select a website from your saved passcards (log-in details) and Roboform will take you to the website and log you in automatically; just imagine how much time this will save you over a day of browsing.

Roboform also features the following:

• Manages your passwords and allows you to log in automatically
• Fills in long registration and checkout forms with one click
• Encrypts your passwords for complete passwords
• Generate random passwords to maximise password strength
• Back up and synchronize passwords between computers
• Fight phishing and defeat keyword loggers…

What are you still doing here, go and download your copy of Roboform and increase your productivity today.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: Freddy The Boy

If you are not sure what I am talking about then just take a look at the screenshot below of Google Images holding my site in a frame.

Not all sites that hold your site in a frame are bad, my objection is when the offending site has ads plastered everywhere.

Another objection of mine is the traffic I get from Google Images. You see, Google Images brings me a lot of visitors that wish to copy my images to use on their websites or projects, yes, I have tracked the clicks on my site and some of my images show a high click rate indicating the visitor’s intentions.

The simple solution to this is to install a small plugin known as the Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin by Semiologic.

You can download the plugin directly from the site by visiting the Semiologic Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin page or, alternatively, you can download the plugin from the Wordpress Plugins Directory.

Below is a quick video showing the plugin in use. The video opens in a new window (sorry no sound)!

The video shows me clicking through to my site from Google Images, as the page loads, frame buster kicks and forces the site out of the frame.

I am yet to discover any negative effect to using this plugin or any penalties netted out by the search engines. I’ve been using the plugin for a few months now and I haven’t had any issues.

On a side note, Semiologic have a special Wordpress package that will help you dominate any niche with their out of the box solution. Click on the graphic below and you’ll see the whole host of pro-member only special plugins that you will not find any where else!

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

For a live example of this site breaking free of a frame click here.

This post is about blogging as a way of generating targeted traffic to your business website and promotions as well as creating, growing and engaging with a community of readers.

What you will see below is a PDF document that is Day 5 of our Website Promotion Success Email Mini-Course.

I recommend you sign-up for the course and to our newsletter as you will get extra benefits that you will not get from reading the blog alone.

The report you are about to read covers the benefits of blogging for your business, how to get started and some useful resources you may find handy.

Blogging is a great way for small and medium (even large) companies to extend their reach across the major search engines.

Although there are many blogging platforms a standalone (self-hosted) blog is going to be one of the best introductions to your online business as it will allow you to continually create search engine friendly content in a intuitive way; you may like our post on Wordpress SEO plugins.

The report is short but is packed with practical information that you can start implementing straight away.

If you find the text is too small then use the buttons on the top right side of the document to switch to full screen mode or toggle page size. Enjoy!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you found the report useful why not leave a comment.

photo credit: Annie Mole

The services I am referring to are:

Search engine submission services for small businesses.

If you have come across these services, don’t stop, keep moving. If you are paying for such a service then cancel your payment immediately, you are wasting your money.

Let’s take a second to look at the claims that come with these services and dispel the myths that they are selling:

“We submit your website to 1000s of search engines increasing the chances of people finding your website.”

1000s of search egines? Get real!

If you are tracking your visitor statistics using Google Analytics or similar you will have very useful information at your finger tips. What I want you to do right now is to go to your Analytics account and look at your ‘Traffic Sources‘ and find the ‘search engines‘ data.

The screen-shot below was taken from my Analytics account:

How many search engines can you see?

Other than the different country variants (we are happily read across the globe) the search engines in the list are Google, Yahoo and Aol. Google has the largest share of the search engine market so having them as the main referring search engine in our site statistics is typical.

Now, can you see these 1000s of search engines in your referral stats?

I didn’t think you would!

Last question, the last time you used a search engine… which one did you use?

Returning to the claims of the search engine submissions services:

We submit your website to the search engines on a monthly basis.

Oh come on!

The big players of search, Google, Yahoo and Bing, do not need to be reminded that your website exists. If you are paying an on-going fee for such a service please terminate your payment!

Continually submitted your website to ‘anywhere’ may get you and your business website listed as a spammer.

I don’t want to confuse anyone and I understand that you may be left wondering what you should do to alert the search engines when you launch a new website .

The simple answer is that you can do NOTHING!

Google, Yahoo and Bing are powered by super computers that WILL find your website.

You can speed things up by getting some quality inbound links from authority websites pointing directly to your website. You can learn more about securing quality inbound links by following the tips in our newsletter and mini-course.

Another thing you should be doing is adding your XML Sitemap to Google so that they know what pages on your website are important to you.In doing this you may also make Google aware of pages that they have not yet indexed.

You can add your Sitemap by registering your account with Google Webmaster Tools. If you do not have an XML Sitemap you can use this free tool to have one created in a very short space of time.

You can also do the same with Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center.

With this information in hand please do not pay for a search engine submission service for your business website (or any other website for that matter), the search engines will find you.

Final words, read what Google have to say about submitting your website to them (this does not include registering your site with Webmaster tools but is talking about the sumbit URL method.)

To your success,

Karl Foxley