Here is it Wednesday night well after 7pm 8pm and I’m just now getting my post up on my blog. That’s because today is a big day in JackieLand. Today is the day that a goal I set in January has come to fruition.

Today is my first podcast! I spent the day creating my intro and outro music (with Hanna’s help of course), downloading and installing the plugin that will allow you to listen to the podcast ~ as well as distribute it to itunes for me.

AND most of all it’s the day that I got up the courage to actually DO it! I had a lot of stuff going on about talking. I am a great writer ~ I love to write. I can go back and edit, reword, rework my words, it’s not that simple when you’re just talking. I come from NY so I’m a pretty fast talker, and I always have so much to say I want to cram it all in to the next 5 seconds ~ and then there was the worry I wouldn’t have enough to say on my own to fill a 15 to 30 minute podcast. Yes, it seems absolutely contrary, but that’s what was going on.

To make this first episode a little easier for me I invited my fabulous friend, and accountability partner Mary K to join me so we could have a conversation. That conversation was about getting started. What holds us back ~ both mentally and physically and how we can overcome those things to get started.

Like anything new ~ it couldn’t just go as planned. There were many issues I had to figure out while uploading the podcast ~ so please let me know how your audio quality it. (There were many times when it sounded like Jackie the Chipmunk ~ but I believe I’ve gotten it fixed.)

So here it is! The very first K.I.S.S Cast ~

Keep It Simple So… You can get started!

Links mentioned in the podcast:

The planner sheets

Blog post on the planner sheets

I can’t wait to hear what your opinions, and I’d love to hear what you do to overcome those obstacles that get in the way of getting started. Feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

Related posts:

1. KISS Cast: Episode 2 Keep It Simple So… You Can Get the Clicks
2. Need Help Getting Started Blogging?
3. Content Creation Series ~ Creating Podcasts

As you may have seen in my last post I set a 72 Hour Product Creation Challenge for myself (and you!) to get on it and create a product in 72 hours.

I did it!

I have to say that Dave’s free report on Creating a product in 3 days TOTALLY helped me.  I had a plan ~ I always have a plan, and as most days in my life the plan went to shit.

I had this idea. I’d make a series of videos to outline the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint.  I planned to bundle them in a zip file so people could download them and watch them at their leisure.

Well, that wasn’t such a great idea. The file was huge. I would have had to upgrade my account at e-junkie to have them deliver it. It would have taken forever to download.

So I had to rethink. I’ve had plenty of people ask for more in depth information on the blueprint so I knew I was on the right track product wise ~ but delivery??? hmm…

What to do?

I then decided to upload the videos to my hosting and have people download them from there.

NOPE. That wouldn’t work either.

Then I decided to put them up on a site and have people go to the site to watch them. It wasn’t ideal ~ because I’d really wanted people with slow internet service to be able to take advantage of the videos ~ but I couldn’t really figure out any other way.

So then ~ instead of creating videos, zipping them, uploading to ejunkie and writing a post I suddenly had to create an entire wordpress site, a sales page, a thank you page, and …  :(

WELL… after 12 hours yesterday I was pretty much ready to quit.  But I talked myself out of it with the help of a challenge buddy, and started brainstorming ideas on how to make a wordpress site work.

The only real problem (other than the many additional hours of work) was keeping the content secure ~ if people came upon the site they would have all my content. not good.

So how to secure a wordpress site. That’s what I woke up thinking this morning.

I finally decided to treat it like a membership site and I bought an inexpensive plugin that was supposed to help me do that quickly and easily. NOT.  3 Hours Later and seriously annoyed and ready to once again quit this crazy ass project I decided to go for a bike ride.

It was super windy but it helped clear my head and I knew I could figure out something.

I Googled options on how to secure a wordpress site. I got on chat with Hostgator. I looked all around.

I finally found a solution that will work. I deleted the membership plugin and had to go back through all the posts to make the new system work. (this is like the 3rd or 4th time I had to go through and revamp all the posts for one reason or another ~ talk about frustrating)

Then I just had to get the sales funnel in place. Sales page, Thank you page, Payment button phew.

I hadn’t wanted to do a full sales page ~ but realized it was going to be the most effective way to tackle the problem and so I did it.

Finally 8 hours later ~ here I am. Writing this post telling you I’ve done it.

I’ve created a product I’m REALLY proud of. It’s WAY better than videos in a download. I didn’t quit even though I really thought about it at least 3 different times.

It wasn’t easy. I had to rethink the plan many times, but I didn’t quit. I didn’t quit because I had set a goal for myself. Not only had a set a goal for myself I had said it out loud ~ in front of all of you!!! My word, to you and to myself means something.

Things will always be hard. I’m sure they could have been a lot easier ~ and they can be easier for you depending on the project you take on. No matter how hard it ends up being you CAN get through it though! Be ready to spend copious amounts of time to get the job done.  I suggest you get a buddy ~ someone who can talk you out of quitting in the middle of the night when things aren’t going right. Come up with a plan and be ready to change the plan completely if need be. Find a way to get obstacles out of your way. I am so grateful to my Mom for taking Hanna to see Shrek yesterday ~ it gave me a good 6 hours of peace and quiet.

Then JUST DO IT!! No Matter WHAT!!!

So for all of you out there who have been patiently waiting for more help creating profitable Squidoo lenses here it is. The fruits of my labor for the last 48 hours.

Squidoo Christmas Cash Lens Video Series

If you by any chance run into any problems during check out please let me know so I can fix them right away.

Related posts:

1. 72 Hour Challenge ~ YES! I’m Challenging YOU!
2. Weekly Blogging Challenge #1
3. Weekly Blog Challenge #6

Today we’re going to learn how to create a squeeze page. I just found this squeeze page software that is going to make life so easy for you and there’s a 15 day free trial.

Before we get to creating the squeeze page, let’s talk about what makes a squeeze page convert. When I say convert I mean makes people put their names/emails in and click submit.

The point of a squeeze page is simple. Give people two options. Fill in the opt in box or click the back button.

You don’t want additional stuff on your opt in page ~ you want good solid copy, and an opt in box. That’s it. So that actually makes them quite simple.

Pieces of a squeeze page.

1. Headline.

The headline is where you really grab the readers attention.  It’s good to let them know how they will benefit in your headline.

Here’s some examples:

Give me 2 minutes and you’ll have a squeeze page created

Learn from a Giant squid how to make squidoo work for you

Finally, put together the pieces of the internet marketing puzzle and start making money

See how that works?

The headline is generally in red and in a larger font. Yes, it seems a little screamy ~ but it works, and it gets people’s attention.

2. Subheadline

The subhead is a little bit smaller and usually in black. It goes just below the headline and tells a bit more of the story.

Here’s some examples:

If you’ve always wanted to make money online, but just haven’t quite figured it out…

Learn step by step how to choose a topic, find great products to promote, set up a new squidoo lens and start making money!

Learn from a Giant squid a simple system to rake in the cash this year. It’s not what you think …

3. Bullet Points

Your copy for a squeeze page is going to be short and sweet. Bullet points work fantastic for this.

When creating your bullet points you want to focus on the BENEFITS the person will receive from opting in ~ not the features of your product. Above your bullet points you may put in a statement like “you will discover” and then your bullet points can be super short for example:

create a product

find profitable keywords

learn to care for your horse

choose the perfect ride on toy for your child’s needs

which stand mixer will work best for you

See… these are benefits ~ what the person gets out of it.

4. Opt in box

The opt in box is the last piece of the squeeze page puzzle. While the opt in box itself will be created in the template you’ll have to go in and add your specific code so it is hooked up to your autoresponder.

The opt in box usually has a short headline, quick instructions to fill in their information, the fields where they fill in their information and a privacy notice at the bottom.

When you use a squeeze page template or this handy dandy squeeze page software I’m going to show you it will all be there ~ you just have to tweak it to fit your needs.

Those are the main parts of a squeeze page. Here’s some examples so you can see them in action.

Internet Marketing Tutorials ~ I didn’t write this page ~ but I did write all the tutorials. Gives you a chance to see some different writing styles.

Squidoo Product Lens Blueprint This is my squeeze page for the blueprint you are all probably familiar with.

Remember, these are just outlines and they may or may not work in your niche. You might have to tweak things a bit to make it feel good for you. Here’s some more examples outside the IM niche.

Organize your life

How to choose a stand mixer

As you can see they look a little different, and that’s ok. It’s whatever works in your niche, and you may have to test a few things to see what works for you.

One other thing ~ it’s pretty hard to find opt in pages for non IM sites ~ so creating one for your site will definitely put you a step ahead most other people in your niche!

Squeeze Page Software

I just found this software this morning. It looks great. They are having a special where you can simply retweet their homepage and get a 15 day trial to the software. Very cool.

The software will walk you through (in literally 10 minutes) all the things we’ve talked about above. You can easily change colors, for everything, add headlines and subheadlines, bullet points and your opt in box just filling in the blanks. Too cool.

Go ahead and watch the video and see how easy it is.

Once you’ve finished and saved your squeeze page to your hard drive you then upload it where you want it using your FTP client. Once you’ve uploaded it you can go in to your cpanel and add the code for your autoresponder and save.

I usually set up a new directory for my squeeze page.

ex. www.internetmarketingformommies.com/blueprint ~ blueprint is a new directory.  All I have to do to make my squeeze page to show up is name it index before I upload it. By naming it index it will be the page that opens when you open that folder.

That’s the basics of creating a squeeze page ~ and with squeeze page software it can be easy as pie. I highly recommend you try it out.

Remember, if you don’t want to hassle with all this I can do it for you. Whether it’s creating the whole squeeze page and uploading it or just uploading. Don’t let the technical pieces stand in your way of getting your squeeze page up and live!

Related posts:

1. How Do You Manage Life and Internet Marketing
2. Radically Increase Your Opt In Rate With NO Extra Work
3. Take Advantage of Easy Monetization (Real Life Example)

Today we’re going to start our blogging journey. This journey begins with picking a topic. A niche if you will. While other projects we’ve done together have started at a keyword research tool, this one does not.

This project starts in you.  In your heart, in your mind, in your spirit.

This one starts with passion. What is it that you just can’t stop talking about. What is you could talk about for days, weeks, years? That’s what you’re going to blog about.

Now before you start thinking let’s look at a couple thoughts to avoid:

1. It won’t be profitable: Now is not the time to think about profitability ~ there are so many ways to monetize/make money/be recognized for your blog. If you automatically dismiss your passion because YOU believe you can’t make money at it ~ you will be doing yourself a disservice. There is a way to make money with just about everything.

2. I’m not an expert: We  covered your internet expert status yesterday. Just get the thought out of your head. If you can talk to your friends for more than an hour at a time about a topic you’re expert enough.

3. Yeah but, Yeah but, Yeah but…. whatever your yeah buts are let them go. This endeavor is going to be successful because you get started. You will never know if you’ve hit a profitable topic, are writing interesting posts, or if anyone else wants to read your stuff until you get started.

The biggest obstacle

The biggest obstacle in your blogging career is going to be coming up with something to say regularly (like at least 3 times a week regularly) for the long haul.

It can be hard to know in the beginning to know if this can be a long term thing. That’s when you have the most ideas flying around in your head and you have that invincible “I could write on this forever” feeling. Here’s my suggestion, and it’s made my life so much easier, both on this blog and the new one I’m doing.

If you’re really having hard time thinking of something one thing you can do is go check out some of the topics other people are blogging about. This might spark some ideas, and also help you let go of any “oh I couldn’t blog about that…” stuff going on in your head. One of my favorite places to do that is in blog showcases. This is one of my favorites. It’s Studiopress. Click on the “showcase” tab and just look at what other people are doing. We’re not looking at themes right now we’re looking for a topic. We’re just looking around here.

Create a mind map ~ or in a less fancy term ~ make a blog plan.

Here’s how I did mine ~ just for some ideas.

1. Take your overall topic.

2. Break it down into different areas of interest you can write on about that topic.

3. Break those topics down into smaller bite sized ideas/concepts/wanna talk abouts

You have just created a mind map for your blog.

The number 1 thing ~ is your overall topic (your title/domain name type stuff)

The number 2 thing is your categories.

The number 3 thing is your posts.

Here’s an example of how simple I’m talking here ~ not rocket science.

things 1: I want to talk about internet marketing strategies:

thing 2: free platforms, niche blogging, authority blogging, list building

thing 3: squidoo, how to set up a lens, how to use hubpages, how to create a link in a module etc
how to set up wordpress, how to get traffic etc
how to choose a topic, how to get traffic, how to build a network, twitter etc
how to create a free giveaway product, how to set up aweber, how to…

you get it? It’s very simple, and if I sat down and mapped it out you’d get, well… this blog.

You can map this out as far as you’d like ~ write it down on a big piece of paper to do the brainstorming, then when you get to the posts part ~ write them in on a calendar. You will no longer have to waste time wondering what to write about on your blog (which totally saves me like 30 minutes a day!!).

Here’s a great post that does a better job creating a visual of this concept.  If you like the more techie way of doing this you can use this free mindmap software and map it out, or this one if you want to do it completely online.

Remember, this should be fun! This is the launching of a new project. Have fun with it. If you have kids and they have a great big floor pad of paper get down there with them. Let them have one side to create a project and you create your project on the other side. (That’s what Hanna and I did recently ~ I have since hung the big piece of paper over my (extremely messy) desk to continue writing down ideas/thoughts and other stuff when it comes)

Lighten up with this, have fun, don’t judge. You can’t get it wrong. Just play with it and see what you come up with.

If you find you can’t really think of many different things to write about on your topic you might want to go check and see if there are some forums on the topic. Go in, look around. Look for threads with lots of replies. Look for questions that get asked repeatedly. Look for hot topics. These can help spark some ideas on things to write about.

If you don’t find any forums on your topic you might want to broaden your topic a bit. This is not a tight niche site, you want to give yourself plenty of room to move around ~ but you do want to keep it related to the topic.

One other thing I particularly like about having this type of map is I can see if I’m staying on topic or not. If my idea doesn’t fit in one of my categories ~ then it probably is not a tight match for my site. (or I need to add another category lol)

One more thing about categories ~ this is how people will get around your site and find your information.  We’ll get into this more when we choose a theme, but you might want to think about how many categories you’re going to have. While there’s no right or wrong ~ if every post ends up being its own category it will be hard to get around your site and find what people are looking for. (If you have or want a bunch of categories there are themes that can show  your main categories and you can put more specific categories under them and see them on a drop down menu ~ which is working VERY well for my other site ~ but more about that later.)

I did a little searching this morning and found a couple other posts I really like on the topic of choosing a topic for your blog.

The first is from Yaro Starak ~ my blogging mentor ~ with his simple take on how to choose a niche.

The second is from Darren @Problogger ~ he’s the master so I thought it would be good to get his opinion!

The last one is from Steph at The Everyday Blogger ~ I love the example she gives in this post.

I know there are some of you who will freak out a little bit that we’re not doing more analytical data diving for this process ~ but just go with it. Have some fun, relax. It will be ok. I promise.

So here’s my thought and I’d like your opinion on it. For this process it’s great to take your time, but you aren’t going to know anything until you take action so I was thinking about doing a Weekly Action Challenge ~ like post them on Sunday so you can work on them through the week. The content on the blog will help you take the steps during the week.

I’m thinking about getting one of those linky things so you can come back and post your link when you finish the challenge and we can all check out each other’s blogs and spread the word around. Win/win/win/win let me know.

Since it’s already Wednesday you’re going to have to get to it this week.

Here’s this week’s challenge:
Choose a topic and create a mind map/plan for your blog.

When you get it done come back and let us know. And as always if you have any questions please ask away.

Related posts:

1. Choosing and Registering a Domain Name for Your Niche Blog
2. Choosing Your Blog Settings and Theme
3. Choosing Keywords for Niche Sites

Social bookmarking, just like blog commenting is a quantity vs quality thing, in my opinion. There are millions of places to bookmark your posts and your site, but before we get to that let’s try and get clear about what social bookmarking is, why you might do it and how it can help you.

What is social bookmarking?

Back in the olden days ~ you know a few years ago ~ when you wanted to keep track of sites you liked you clicked the “bookmarks” tab at the top of your page and then clicked “bookmark this page”. Now if you are a organized OCD person, like myself, you created tons of folders in there to help you keep track and organize the sites you bookmarked.  When you wanted to go back to a site you simply opened the bookmarks tab in your browser and clicked the site you wanted to go to.

While that method still works ~ it has a few drawbacks.

1. You can’t get to any of your bookmarks unless you are on your computer. (which is terrible when you get snowed in for a few days in another city and don’t have access to your computer)

2. You can’t share your bookmarks with anyone else ~ well unless they’re sitting at your computer.

3. Your bookmarks don’t give you any benefit as far as getting links back to your site.

Then things began to change. The internet began to grow and more people were on it, and it started to get social. People wanted to share that great site they just found with their friends ~ and anyone else who had an interest in that topic.

Thus began social bookmarking.

It’s the same thing as your bookmarks tab it’s just online. Now when you want to save your favorite site so you can find it later, or share it with a friend you usually click a little icon in your favorites bar which will save a link to that site on your favorite bookmarking website.

This is a perfect way to save and share websites.

You have access to them from anywhere you have an internet connection ~ all you have to do is log in to your account at your favorite bookmarking site and there are all the sites you’ve bookmarked.

While you may have bookmarked the sites your bookmarks are published online, which gives everyone the ability to see them.

Because you’ve bookmarked them online and now there’s a link back to the site you bookmarked on this other website you’ve created a backlink to that site.

While bookmarking websites were created for personal and social use it didn’t take long for internet marketers to figure out just how exciting and useful these new sites could be. They starte bookmarking their own sites, their own posts, their own pages and low and behold the links they created by doing this had some benefits.

1. People found their bookmarks when searching for something related on the bookmarking site and went to their website (they got traffic)

2. The links that were created by bookmarking their site created backlinks and helped them improve their search engine rankings.I mean the entire idea of bookmarking is that it’s a site someone likes enough to bookmark ~ those are the kind of sites Google’s looking to rank in their search engine and offer up for people when they come looking for some information.

Here’s the problem.

As with most things internet marketing people seemed to think, well hell, if Delicious works well for this ~ let’s make MORE bookmarking sites ~ in fact, let’s make a  MILLION bookmarking sites.

Now let’s bookmark all our pages on ALL the million new bookmarking sites and just rise meteorically to the top of google for whatever keyword we want.

Well… that worked for a while.

But Google didn’t get where they are at by being stupid. It doesn’t take long for them to catch on to people trying to game the system, and now mass bookmarking really doesn’t have the effect it used to have.

So to bookmark or not to bookmark?

Absolutely, you want to boomark. But here’s the deal, you want to find a FEW (3 or 4) bookmarking sites that work well for the topic you are writing about.

There are basically 2 types of bookmarking sites available now.

1. Regular post a link bookmarking

2. Voting bookmarking.

Regular bookmarking ~ this is just your basic here’s a link to a site I like bookmarking. This is sites like Delicious.

Voting bookmarking ~ this is where you submit a link and people can vote on whether they like it or dislike it.The more votes your site gets the higher on the site it goes. The holy grail of these sites is to get to the front page. These are sites like Digg and  Sphinn. A front page link on Digg can mean enough traffic to kill your server ~ that’s good, and before you get all excited it’s super hard to do ~ and works best with certain kinds of content.

That’s what I was talking about finding a few site that work with your content. Not all content/niches will be suited to all bookmarking sites ~ especially the voting type sites. Now you can submit any site to delicious, but you might want to be a little more careful when you submit to Digg. Their readers enjoy a certain type of content, and if your content is completely dissimilar to the content people generally like there, or doesn’t fit any of the categories they offer you can possibly do yourself more harm than good by bookmarking there.

The best way to tell if your site is a good match for any given bookmarking site is to go over and take a look around. Look at the links on the front page. Look at the links in other categories ~ is your content on the same track? If not, you might want to refrain from submitting it there.

Some helpful tips for bookmarking:

1. Whenever you can let other people submit your stuff. Which means provide people with a way to submit your content. That may be a plugin you add to your site offering a way to submit your content to a range of sites ~ which allows your reader to pick their favorite site.

2. Remember this is a social thing ~ it was not intended for internet marketers to just bookmark all their own content. Make sure you’re bookmarking other sites you like throughout the day ~ it only takes a second and it makes it easy to find them again when you need them later.

Great bookmarking sites:

Delicious.com

The big daddy of all the bookmarking sites. You can easily add a bookmarking widget (links to a video showing you how) to your favorites bar and click it whenever you want to add something to your account.

Spurl.net

Another basic links site. This one has dofollow links so it is worth considering.

Digg.com

Digg is the biggest of the “voting” type bookmarking sites. Be careful digging your own stuff too much, and make sure your content is a good match to what readers are looking for.

Mixx.com

This is another voting site. It seems to have a wider range of acceptable content though.

Tagfoot.com

My personal favorite bookmarking site ~ and the one I am able to actually keep organized and use is Tagfoot. It’s still in beta and requires an invite. I love tagfoot because not only is there space for “bookmarks” there is also space to add things to your “wishlist”, you can add pictures, videos, news. It really allows me to keep everything really organized and accessable.

If you want to use tagfoot ~ and you’re going to use it to really bookmark stuff ~ not just your own stuff let me know and I’ll send you an invite.

So this is a traffic series ~ where’s the traffic coming from?

At this point, unless you land on the front page of Digg or Mixx direct traffic from social bookmarks is probably not all that likely. The point of adding your site to bookmarking sites is to get some good backlinks that will help you rank better in the search engines, which will drive more organice, highly targeted traffic to your site.

Now we’re back to the quality vs quantity debate.

If all I’m getting is links then why shouldn’t I submit to every single bookmarking site I can find?  It’s a question I hear frequently and here’s my answer.

How does that make you stand out from any other Tom Dick or Harry who can also submit all their content to every bookmarking site out there. Do you think Google doesn’t know internet marketers play the game ~ do you really think they are going to count 674 links from bookmarking sites and consider it a bonus to your site? Personally, I don’t.

Do you think that if you have some links from the best/favorite bookmarking sites that might look to google like people really liked what you wrote and saved it to a bookmarking site? I do.

It’s also about TIME. How much time do you have to do this internet marketing thing? Do you have a couple hours to spend bookmarking for little results? OR would it be better to spend your 2 hours working on something that is going to give you bigger and better results?

I personally can’t find the time to do a bunch of bookmarking. I’m much happier to have a few accounts ~ tagfoot, delicious, stumbleupon ~ that I actually USE as social bookmarking sites. Yes, I submit my own content once in a while, but mostly I use them to save things I want to find later. When I do save something of my own it slides in without notice and looks completely natural ~ to the people who look at my bookmarks ~ as well as to Google.

My Bookmarking tips:
1. Choose 3 or 4 bookmarking sites you like.
2. Create accounts and use them to bookmark sites you like.
3. Add your own content once in a while when it’s really good.
4. If you use twitter have your bookmarks go to your twitter account (a few less tweets you have to make every day)
5. Don’t spend more than 5 or 10 minutes a day worrying about bookmarks.

Related posts:

1. Social Bookmarking ~ How to Get Started
2. Web Traffic Tips: How to Use RSS
3. Web Traffic Tips: Article Marketing