Make Money Online

Twitter Tips and Tricks To Drive Traffic To Your Sites

Posted on 24. Aug, 2009 by Michael.

Hello Everyone,

Every month I receive around 100,000 visitors to my websites just from Twitter alone and so can every single one of you! I know a lot of you enjoyed the tips I shared in my FREE eCourse about making money online blogging and driving traffic to your blog from Twitter so today I decided to do an updated twitter guide so you can benefit more from Twitter like myself. The great thing with Twitter is the people using it are so diverse, whatever your business is about, you can find people related to your business. I remember a friend was talking to me just before we went for dinner about how he thought Twitter was just for Internet Entrepreneurs and he wouldn’t be able to get people related to his business to follow him on Twitter. He runs a clothing company online offering some of the top brands for great prices. I quickly started a fashion focused Twitter account and before we went for dinner I started adding some followers. When we returned from dinner he had already had sales from being on Twitter for 1 hour. I was happy because he let me pick some shirts from his warehouse for showing him how to do it.

Got you interested now? OK, let’s take a look at how I did it for FREE:

Driving Traffic From Twitter To Your Blog

When I use Twitter, I use it so I can update my readers about what’s new on my websites and what I’m doing, just like everyone else seems to do. The different, everyone else has around 100 followers and so it doesn’t really make much of a difference to the traffic that goes to their website. I have around 80,000 followers now and I will share how you can quickly catch up.

Now before I go too far, I think it is important to say that while I am a huge fan of Twitter (being able to search real time about current happenings or events is awesome) – I should say that of late, Twitter has also been the subject of spammers or automated accounts set up to drive traffic to less than good websites. What I am about to reveal is not about being a spammer, it is about legitimate business people getting the best out of twitter and also about legitimate business people being fully up to speed on the techniques other Twitter users are using.

Lets get Started:

The first thing you need to do to get more followers is add more people, but adding 80,000 people must take for ever… Luckily there are tools that will allow you to automatically do most of your Twitter marketing, from adding people, deleting, tweeting and much more. I personally recommend two great pieces of software, Market Me Tweet or Tweet Adder, they both allow you to add more people, but Market Me Tweet also gives you a bunch of extra branding options.

This is the way I add people, it doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just how I do it. Firstly find some big names in your industry that will have people following them that will also be interested in following yourself. For example if you have a Celebrity blog, you may want to go Perez Hilton’s twitter profile, then click on followers, now in the top left will be a button saying “Add All Followers”. It will automatically start adding one of his followers every 2 seconds till its added 1000. Then after 1000 people it will stop adding, this is because Twitter has a limit to only being able to add 1000 friends a day. Now you do this every day, usually at the same time, I recommend between 4 – 6pm (that is UK time) as this usually is the most active time on Twitter and you’re more likely to get people follow you back if they are online at the time you add them. Usually from adding 1000 people, I will get around 400 view my profile and click my website URL which means I get 400 highly targeted visitors in 24 hours. Bare in mind this is just the first point of contact, they will also revisit when I tweet and more people will visit when my followers retweet my tweets to their followers.

Finding Twitter profiles related to your niche can begin to get hard, when I struggle to find people related to my niche’s I use a website called WeFollow which basically lists top Twitter users in different groups, for example in Social Media category Mashable is the top profile, he runs the top blog about social media which means if you also have a blog about social media, you would do good to follow his followers.

Deleting People On Twitter Can Be Important

A lot of the stuff I’m about to share with you is stuff I don’t use myself because its not necessary for me but it is definitely something you should know about, even if you don’t use it all. The first thing about adding 1000 people a day is that you will be following 600 people more every day then will be following you back so your account will have a lot less people following it then your following which will not make you look very popular. With Twitter, you want to make yourself look as popular as possible so people will be more likely to follow you, think about it this way, would you follow someone who is following 500 people and only has 200 people following him back? probably not. But if the person is following 500 people and has 50,000 following him back then he will look like he has something good to say so you will be a lot more likely to follow him, so social proof is really important! Below are some tips and tricks you can use to cut down the amount of people you follow on Twitter.

Automatically un-follow everyone who doesn’t follow you back is the first step to getting down the amount of people you follow. Now I don’t recommend you do this every day as it won’t give your new followers enough time to follow you and check your profile out so you should do it perhaps twice a week. The script you should use for this is Twitter Mutuality, you can unfollow everyone not following you or choose to unfollow everyone.

The next thing I do and do recommend you all do is use a site called UnTweeps which will allow you to automatically un-follow anyone you are following who hasn’t updated their profile in a few days, you may choose any amount of days you like but I think a fair amount of days would be 7 because for some reason they could just not of been able to get online. This is a great tool because if they haven’t updated then they won’t be seeing your Tweets, a lot of them will be following you back so it will make you look even popular because they won’t un-follow you because they don’t use anymore.

If you do get to the point where your following 40,000 people and you realize you really don’t want to be following all these people, then to delete everyone is really simple. Its something I don’t 100% agree with but I do see this happen a lot and then people will think your super popular. If you want to do this, the tool to use is Twollow which will allow you to delete 2000 people at a time.

Using Twitter and Blogging Together

As I mentioned above, using Twitter to drive traffic to your blog is super important and is one of the reasons for my success. To get more out of Twitter, you want to promote Twitter on your blog in a few different ways. One of the most well known ways is to add a TweetMeMe button which includes a counter of how many times people have retweeted your blog post and it allows other people to automatically retweet it themselves. To use this counter and others TweetMeMe have, click here.

For those lazy people or for those who like everything automated this next resource is really good. If you pre-publish your blog posts like me when you go away on vacation or when you have guest posters and won’t be around then you can automatically tweet when new posts are published on your Wordpress blog. Twitter Poster will take the title of a new post and will submit it to the Twitter account specified in the options. It will also add the link back to the post, allowing your twitter followers to access the post details

Other Twitter Tools I Use

Managing 80,000 Twitter followers is impossible, you can’t see what your real friends are doing and the updates that are important. For me its important to see what Young Entrepreneurs, Gurus and Web Designers are saying so I set up a group for each and added the necesary people to each group so I don’t miss a tweet – you can do this using TweetDeck.

As a lot of you know, I went away for a couple weeks and didn’t really update my sites for a month, over that time I still wanted to boost my traffic so I asked my VA to pre publish 100 tweets, a new tweet had to be sent every 2 hours and once the 100 tweets have been published, just repeat. To do this I used pre-publishing software, TweetLater. You can also use TweetLater to send automatic messages when someone new follows you, welcoming them and recommending your website. Although this is great to do, it isn’t really effective anymore as it seems everyone does it (I have over 10,000 messages, I guess 9,950 are automatic).

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. What are your honest thoughts about Twitter because everyone has different opinions I would like to invite you to voice them so everyone gets the full picture and perhaps I could prove you wrong

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Tim Schmidt Interview – Make Big Money Online With Membership Websites

Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Michael.

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Hi Everyone

You know, one of my goals here at IncomeDiary.com is to bring you unusual and interesting guests and interviews – individuals that you may not hear of anywhere else.

Today’s guest – Tim Schmidt is one such guest. Indeed I was tempted to call this interview – My Most Shocking Interview ever — shocking because of the Niche Tim is involved in and Most Shocking because of the number of members Tim had in his association and the member retention that Tim has with his association. In short Tim and his company make a lot of money!

Funny enough, I have just been on Tim’s personal blog and he says: “He is a guy who you’re going to either like a LOT or dislike a LOT – and he for one, hopes you like him”

Seriously, Tim is one of the nicest guys I have every met – a very generous and inspiring Entrepreneur – No matter if you agree with Tim and his association (and some of you – especially outside the USA) will not, please listen / read what Tim has got to say. There is so much here, we can all take away and apply to our businesses.

If you are looking for Tim’s recently launched Tribal Marketing Course, click here!

Transcript of The Interview:

Michael Dunlop: Hello, everyone! This is Michael Dunlop from Income Diary, and today I have a great guest called Tim Schmidt. I first met him a few years ago back when my dad invited me to come as his guest to the an Internet Mastermind meeting with Yanik Silver. I was really interested in what he’s saying. He’s always kept me watching when he does his presentation, and so I’ve invited him here today to share some of his information. Welcome Tim.

Tim Schmidt: Thank you, Michael. It’s great to be here. I’m excited to talk to you today.

Michael: Brilliant. All right, I’ll jump right in there and mention what you’re doing. You’ve got a web site called United States Concealed Carrier Association, which you describe as the ultimate resource for the armed citizen. Can you please explain how you got into this niche?

Tim: Oh my gosh, we’ll be here all day if I have to tell you the whole story. Really, for me the niche came about after I started having kids and I just felt this need to be able to protect them. At the time I owned this engineering business, Michael, and it was a decent business, way to make a living. But I was working myself to death, and you know in America it’s very common for citizens to be armed. We’re talking the good guys of course!

I saw this huge gaping hole in the market, that nobody was addressing the needs of people that wanted to be armed citizens. So I thought, “Hey man, this is my calling!”

Michael: Brilliant. And how did you take your calling to online marketing and start making money from it?

Tim: Well, I’d like to tell that I just studied for three days and learned everything, and then just did it and was an instant millionaire. But of course the real story was nothing like that. It was brutal. Everyone hears stories about, “Oh, I did everything wrong.” Well, I truly did everything wrong, Michael.

I started this association not as an association, but as a print magazine. And let me tell you, the fastest way to become a millionaire is to start publishing a print magazine with two million dollars. You’ll burn through that first million really fast.

So I started the magazine by itself, and not only did that business not make any money, but it literally almost destroyed my engineering business because it was sucking all the cash out of it.

Not until I actually transformed the magazine into an association and an online business, that’s when it actually started to take off.

Michael: OK. You keep mentioning your association. For my readers, that’s a membership website then?

Tim: Well, it’s actually a membership website on steroids. It’s a membership website, but people don’t just become members. Yeah, they become members, but not just of the website, they become members in something that they believe in. And so they’re associating themselves with the other people that belong as well. Not just, “hey I’m going to join this membership site to get information.” “I’m going to join this membership site to belong, and because I believe in what these people believe in.

Michael: Brilliant. One of the biggest problems with membership websites is keeping members month after month. Has making it an association helped to keep members all the time? And is there anything else you do to keep your members subscribed?

Tim: Oh, yeah, Michael. You just hit the biggest… I mean, that truly is the biggest problem with membership sites. And that’s because most membership site owners are doing it completely wrong, in the sense that they’re… I’m not going to say they’re tricking people, but they’re really giving their members no reason to stick around. I think your typical membership site has a continuity stick rate of less than seven or eight months. I’m sure there’s some membership site owners are thinking, “Oh my gosh, if my people stuck around for seven or eight months I’d be ecstatic!” Whereas with my association, my average stick rate is over two years.

Michael: Wow!

Tim: It’s actually 26 months. And the reason that is, is because it’s just what I said before. My people feel like they’re a part of something. It’s something they believe in, and it’s not that they just feel it. They truly do, they belong to a group of likeminded individuals who share a common passion. And there’s lots of things that I do, on purpose, to kind of fan the flames and to fuel that fire, and it actually works brilliantly.

Michael: Brilliant. How would you recommend people to – membership website owners – to get their members involved and want to do exactly that?

Tim: Well, the first thing you’ve got to do right is you have to do a good job in your topic selection. One of the things I put together, like I mentioned before and I’ll just warn your listeners or your viewers, Michael, is I actually used to be an engineer. Once you’re an engineer you’re pretty much always an engineer. So I love making flowcharts and spreadsheets and mind maps. It just kind of makes my inner voices quiet down. But one of the things I did when I was tasked with teaching some people how to do this, I created this topic selection flowchart. This thing is truly foolproof. Actually, I give that away in a free e-book that I give out, and I’m sure you’ll have links to your members can download that.

Making that topic selection is key. But once you get that — let’s say that you’ve gone through that flowchart, you’ve got a solid topic — there’s seven key components that you can inject into your business to cause that belief feeling, that belief factor, to really get elevated.

I could go through all seven of those, it would take quite a while but…

Michael: Just give us your favorite, your top one.

Tim: OK, my favorite is… It’s funny when you said the favorite because I truly do have a favorite.

Michael: I thought it was going to be a hard one.

Tim: Oh no no! My favorite aspect, of what I call my tribal formula, is to isolate and identify the enemy of your group or your members. OK? Now here’s why that’s important. Because psychologically the human being, it’s much easier to rally around and coalesce around something that people have in common that they dislike than that they like. Does that make sense?

Tim: Oh my gosh, it’s no mystery why that’s my favorite, because everybody loves to gather around something they don’t like. So identifying that enemy really helps to congeal that effort. And probably the other big one, I’m going to give you a little bonus here, is, I would say… probably the other most important one, this is probably the least favorite because it’s the most work. But any good tribal association needs to have a leader. And invariably the leader is going to be essentially the entrepreneur, the business owner, you or I, whoever founded this tribe or this association.

To many people that’s a daunting task, and there are many, many people who try to do something like this but they shy away from that leadership role. So therefore the association, it never really happens. And it’s because of that one simple reason that the owner was not willing to stick their neck out and actually lead. It’s not nearly as difficult as you think it really needs to be.

Michael: That’s top advice. I couldn’t agree more. I’m sure my listeners are thinking, “Wow, I’ve got to start my own association, because I’m sure I could take my business through the roof!” Could you give us some examples of how people can add an association to their web site, or what type of associations are possible?

Tim: Sure, yeah. There’s really two different ways to do this. The one way is where you take your business and the business itself, you just rename it and it becomes an association. And the other way to do it is if you already have a business that you’ve invested heavily in the branding or the name of your business. A good friend of mine, Carrie Wilkerson, is a perfect example of this. She came to me and said, “Hey, Tim. I want to start an association.”

And her business was called the Barefoot Executive, which is a fantastic marketing position, and she had a lot of time and energy, not to mention money, invested in this brand, and we were not going to call it the Barefoot Executive Association; that doesn’t make any sense.

So instead, we made a completely separate entity called the Association of Work-At-Home Women that just so happens the Barefoot Executive owns this association.

So there are two separate things, whereas with my business, my magazine just went from being Concealed Carry magazine to I just named it the United States Concealed Carry Association.

It is really just as simple as that, just figuring out what sounds good, and I am a big fan of modeling other people’s success. So just look around to find an association or an organization or a group that is similar to your market and just model it after that. That usually works quite well.

Michael: Brilliant. All right – thanks for that. The next thing I want to ask you made me laugh a lot, when you were presenting at Yanik’s Mastermind. Quite often, I am not very good at keeping track of what is going on or listening to what everyone is doing, but you were showing us how you market and make more sales through a few techniques you do, and the one I am talking about is your broken toe sale. I would just for you to explain to my readers how you monetized having a broken toe.

Tim: Well, it pretty much came down to I broke my toe in a sparring match in Tae-Kwan-Do, and I was feeling bad for myself because it really hurt.

Tim: It wasn’t like my little pinkie toe. It was my big toe, and I literally broke it right in half. So I decided just to have a sale. I got the x-rays from the doctor and I took a picture. Anyone who breaks their big toe, your foot swells up to twice its size and it turns all black and blue. And I just used that story, that hey, I broke my toe and I am angry, and I am going to have a big sale on products. I mean, you really don’t have to be too creative.

The whole concept of the reason why – the reason why doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to be a reason.

So, we sold a truckload of products in seven days, and I felt a lot better about my toe.

Michael: I am sure. So, you have explained to us you are quite personal with your marketing and your sales and even with your website members because you are the leader. A lot of people don’t really want to be personal and they call it sometimes personal. What would you say to them to make them want to do it and how they can do it?

Tim: That really would be a case by case situation. Most people that claim to not want to do it, they really don’t have a good reason. They sound like they are a fugitive from the law and they can’t do that. Maybe there are two or three people like that, and if that is the case, I would recommend that they create an alias.

The bottom line is that human beings relate the best with other human beings. Human beings don’t relate to entities or corporations or giant gleaming buildings. It just doesn’t work that way. You are really giving yourself a big handicap if you are not willing to put out a personality front that says, “Hey! Look at me! I am like you. Come and join me; we will be in this together.” That is such a powerful positioning.

Michael: That is brilliant. I like that. Thanks for sharing that. I have a couple more big questions before I get to our quick fire ones. I understand you have an online store. You have done seminars. You have your membership website. You did a print magazine and so much more. What was your favorite method to make money online and why?

Tim: Oh, man, Michael. I would say that my favorite method is selling a subscription product with a physical product upsell. And a lot of people will say, “What? A physical product upsell? Why would you want to go through the hassle of that?” Well, here is why. First of all, it is not that difficult to find good fulfillment resources to do it for you, so it is not like you are going to have to be sitting in the back room putting boxes together.

So few people are willing to go through that hassle that it helps to put you in a much more positive, competitive situation because you are sending out nice physical products where most people are not. So, it just makes is a much easier positioning standpoint.

And if you can sell a subscription – whenever we do an upsell for physical products on our subscriptions, we get 40-45 percent will go for the upsells, so it is like printing money.

Michael: Brilliant. You did mention earlier that your retention rates are at a crazy 26 months. What does it take you to keep because quite a lot of people, they get membership and they will not do much more once they sign up? Do you offer a lot more content? What do you do to keep giving them more?

Tim: The quick answer is we do everything.

We do whatever it takes. We have a very active Members Only private forum which takes some doing. There are about a half dozen moderators that aren’t paid, but we reward them with generous gifts every quarter. Then I have a moderator manager. Forums can be a little wild animal, but when they are paid forums, they are actually easier to manage, and that is actually awesome, fantastic, automatic content generation itself.

The other thing is we actually send out a physical magazine to our members. Everybody doesn’t have to do a glossy magazine like I do; they can just do a newsletter, but human beings love to receive things in the mail that they like. Junk mail, sure; nobody likes junk mail, but people like to get stuff in the mail.

That is actually another one of the Tribal Formula components; it is called a habit. If you can get your prospect or your member or your customer into the habit of getting something physical from you, it is difficult to give that up. So that is another component.

The other thing that we do is we keep a running email dialogue with our members, but we are constantly getting more and more and more and more, and I think it just naturally generates this feeling of reciprocity. They just don’t want to leave.

Michael: Well, obviously, it is working for you, so that is good work. So, my last big question here is tribal marketing. Now, you have recently done a seminar, and I think you were mentioning to me earlier that you were bringing out some type of product.

Tim: Yep. I am actually putting the finishing touches on my launch sequence for Tim Schmidt’s Tribal Formula.

Michael: Brilliant. And what is it? I know a lot of my readers won’t even know what tribal marketing is. Do you want to explain briefly what it is?

Tim: Well, really, it is just the name I came up with that describes how I transformed my crappy magazine business into literally an online publishing empire that almost runs by itself with unbelievably long continuity stick rates, and we sell tons of products. It is really how I implemented the seven key components of building belief in a group of people that transforms them into people that instead of just being customers who are focused on products and services, now they are members who are mostly focused on belief and belonging.

Michael: Brilliant. And where can my readers pick up this product?

Tim: Very shortly, they will be able to go to TribalFormula.com. The product won’t be available yet; the launch date is not until July 1st, but they will be able to get into the sequence. I am actually releasing some super exciting videos. I do a lot of teaching and also a lot of crazy stuff on the videos that will make my broken toe sale look like watching Sesame Street.

Michael: Brilliant. So, I ask my readers: I am interviewing. Is there anything you want me to ask? Here are a couple quick questions to ask you from them. How important is passion in your business?

Tim: It is extremely important. What your readers should do is they should go to that site and get the e-book, the free e-book. I have this flowchart, and the very first thing on the flowchart is passion. The flowchart itself will actually help them select a passionate niche that has profit potential. If your passion is something that is completely unprofitable, then you would be stupid to go into business doing that because you are not going to make any money.

But everybody has multiple passions, so I just help people select something that they are passionate enough about that has profit potential, and you would be amazed at how passionate you can get about something that initially you had a little passion for when you are making a lot of money doing it.

Michael: I can imagine. [laughs] My other question from my readers is: what changed in your business to jump your sales recently? I was looking at your sales page; I was looking at your profit, and it jumped up, from December to January, like 100 percent. How did you take your business up?

Tim: You know, what I did was I finally gave in and I started delegating. Up until that point, pretty much the whole operation was the Tim Schmidt show, and starting toward the end of 2008, I finally put on two marketing – I call them my hired guns. These guys are paid mostly on performance, and I kind of turned over the reins. They don’t operate autonomously, but I have given them much more freedom, and as it turns out, they actually are better at a lot of the stuff than I ever was. That is really the main jump right there.

Michael: That is good. So, you were explaining to us earlier that you were an engineer. How did you take the transition, going from engineer to Internet entrepreneur?

Tim: How did I take it? You mean how did I do it? What do you mean?

Michael: Yes. A lot of my readers, they are in their nine to five job. What made you get into being an entrepreneur?

Tim: You know, Michael, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I suspect that your listeners, your readers, probably feel the same way because people that want to be entrepreneurs usually have always thought about it. And how I made the jump was I tried to do the traditional way; I tried to go to the bank and get a loan from the banker. You know what he did? He laughed in my face.

It is funny now, but I tell you, it was the worst feeling in my life at the time because I really needed the money. At least I thought I did, but I was creative, and I came up with a way to boot strap it myself, and I just made it work. When I started my first business, I had a wife who had to quit her job because we had just had our first baby. So I had responsibility all over the place. It just comes down to you have to figure out a way to make it happen.

The only difference between the entrepreneur who has success and the one that doesn’t is the one that has success is the one that just refuses to accept any excuses. There is always a way to make stuff work.

Michael: What is your favorite thing about the Internet lifestyle?

Tim: I hate to sound sappy on you, Michael, but unlike you, I didn’t get my start until I was an old guy. I am 38 years old, I’ve got young kids, and for me, the best thing in the world is to go. I am the only dad that comes to school every Friday, and I have lunch with my kids at school. All the kids know me. I think that half the teachers think I’m unemployed.

I love it. I’m the kids’ baseball coach. I’m the Cub Scout guy. I get to do whatever the heck I want, and I love that. So, at this stage in my life, I love being the dad that I always dreamed about being. It’s just unbelievable. Sure, I love to go Baja or racing the cars and do all that fun stuff. That’s fun as well. I love doing that, too, but for me, the set whole family thing is just unreal.

Michael: Wow. I am glad you shared that with everyone because I am sure that would inspire a lot of people to get off their ass and actually take action.

Tim: Yeah, and you know what? It should inspire them, Michael, because they ought to.

Michael: Yeah.

Tim: Amen to that.

Michael: Brilliant. Alright. I’ve got my quick fire questions to end off this interview. So I am just going to throw them at you, and give me your first thoughts or answers. Is there anyone that I look up to and model yourself on?

Tim: Oh, man. I would say Thomas Jefferson.

Michael: All right; cool. What do you like best about the Internet?

Tim: The best thing about the Internet is the speed at which you can test and roll out and implement. It is awesome.

Michael: Brilliant. And what do you least like about the Internet?

Tim: This is easy. It is way too distracting. [laughter]

Michael: I can agree with that one.

Tim: The only way I can get stuff done is when I can get myself away from the Internet, but everything I am supposed to do is on the Internet. [laughter]

Michael: You don’t know how much that makes sense to me. That is exactly what I think. Alright. And if you could go back in a time machine and start all over again, what would you do differently?

Tim: I would put more focus on learning, and as I was learning, I would not question advice from people who had done stuff before me.

Michael: I agree.

Tim: That is a fancy way of saying all the information that I needed to do what I did was in front of me, within three months of my learning process, but, Michael, there are some things that still took me two and a half to three years to finally start doing, just because I was bull-headed.

Michael: Yeah. All right, honesty. And my last question here is: what is the best advice you have ever been given? I’m sure you have a good quote. I’m always seeing you tweet all these great quotes.

Tim: Yeah. The best quote I was ever given was by my dad. He told me, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” [laughter]

Michael: That is good. I like that. All right. Thanks, Tim, very much. Is there anything you would like to share with us? Any plans, personal business-wise, that you are going to be doing in the near future?

Tim: Right now, the sole thing that I am super excited about is just the launch of my product. We are having so much fun filming all the videos for this and putting it all together. So I am really excited about that, and I am excited about the people that I know are going to be helped by it. That is probably the biggest thing. My son, Tim, Jr., is testing for his black belt in Tae-kwan-do this weekend. So I am pretty pumped about that, too.

Thanks Tim — as always, whenever I hear you, I come away thinking I could do so much more. Thanks for the inspiration.

Check Out Tim’s websites:

http://www.tribalmarketingassociation.org

http://www.usconcealedcarry.com

Who is Tim Schmidt

Remember:

The only difference between the entrepreneur who has success and the one that doesn’t is the one that has success is the one that just refuses to accept any excuses. There is always a way to make stuff work.

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Chris Elwell Interview – Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines

Posted on 21. Apr, 2009 by Michael.

Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Chris?

I’m the President of Third Door Media. We educate internet and search marketers. We also provide marketplaces that connect buyers and sellers of search engine marketing related products and services.

You run the largest website for search engine optimization, do you think SEO is still important for bloggers?

Absolutely. It would be a shame for anyone to write great content, only to have its value limited because they didn’t implement SEO best practices.

You have a network of related websites, Sphinn, SMN and SMX, what are the benefits of launching related websites? Is it true when they say the best competition is your own competition?

Each of our sites does something different, so they compliment each other rather than compete. Search Engine Land publishes news, analysis and opinion. Sphinn.com is a social news site that allows the community to post, vote and comment on best-of-web content. Search Marketing Now provides in-depth presentations and white papers on topics relevant to internet marketers, while SMX is the home for our worldwide conference series. Search marketers have different needs, and each of our sites is aimed at satisfying one or more of them.

How can Search Engine Marketing let you run your website on autopilot allowing you to earn a passive income from your websites?

Call me old school, but I don’t believe you can have a meaningful revenue stream by having anything on autopilot. You have to work sites just like any other business in order to maximize their potential.

Tell us what working on the Internet is like for you, is it long hours?

I work really hard, and I think most people who run Internet businesses do too. There is probably a little more flexibility when you’re running a business like ours, but at the end of the day there’s no replacing the effort that it takes to make any business successful.

Tell us about Sphinn, a social bookmarking website for search engine marketers. Why did you decide to launch it? Where are you with Sphinn now?

Sphinn is a social news site. My partner Danny Sullivan wanted to launch it to provide a place for the community to discuss important issues with news stories serving as the catalyst and expand Third Door Media’s profile beyond search marketing. We created Sphinn on an open source platform called Pligg, but are preparing to launch a completely updated version with advanced moderation tools and other functionality. It is very exciting.

You are known as the authority website in the Search Engine Marketing niche. What advice would you give a new webmasters to dominating their niche?

Write great content. Producing content is a virtuous circle. Great content gets indexed, linked to and discussed. All of those things lead to more visitors and recognition in the community you serve.

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

Do something your passionate about, not because you think it will make you a lot of money. If the money part doesn’t work out, you’ll still have done something your proud of.

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

Eventually, I’d like to teach and coach high school football. I figure in another 10 years (I’m 48 now) I may have mellowed enough to be good at those things. The idea of “retirement” seems foreign to me; I plan to skip that in this life.

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Dean Hunt Interview – Buzz Marketing King

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by Michael.

Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Dean?

I am info publisher, perhaps best known as a leader in Buzz/Viral Marketing… some call me an eccentric marketer, I like to make money, but I also like to do it by my rules, and I like to have fun also.

You are very well known on the Internet for buzz marketing and driving insane amounts of traffic to websites, how did you get into this?

Like most good things, I got in by accident. I moved to Spain 6 years ago, and didn’t speak a word of the language. I had nothing but a laptop and an Internet connection, so I studied, tested and learned as much as I could…. Mainly because I had nothing else to do.

I used to keep notes all over the place, and then one day I had an idea – why not create a blog so that I could store my notes and ideas online.
I never really intended to make it popular, it was more for my own amusement, 6 months later I had 245,000+ unique visitors in a 10 day period, and that really launched me into a totally different level.

What advice would you give bloggers trying to tap into buzz marketing and driving these insane numbers of traffic to their own website?

Stand out from the crowd.

The worst thing you can be is generic. Also, try and magnify aspects of your personality… for example, you can be super funny, controversial, loud, shy, whatever you want, just magnify it.

And remember, a person who is loved by 50% and hated by 50% will make a fortune, a person who 100% of people think is ok, will go broke.

You run a buzz marketing membership website with my father, Barry Dunlop. Why should my readers check BuzzProfits out?

It is the place where we store the techniques that quite simply, we don’t want to publish on an open blog.

They are that good.

Most people setup a site, do some posts, get the occasional comment, the occasional link etc… and the lack of progress frustrates them… they can’t figure out why some people have popular sites and make tons of cash, and they are not achieving this.

I know EXACTLY what makes great content, and what’s more, I know ways to achieve it with minimal effort and time, afterall, I have the attention span of a 6-year old boy that is high on sugar. So I engineer tricks and techniques so that I get maximum output from a minimum amount of time and effort… AND, all my tricks and techniques are free.

If this sounds interesting, then it is simple, join Buzzprofits.com
In fact, the first 100 people to join will get coached, and access to me personally… I charge up to $14,000 per DAY for intensive coaching, so to get access to me for $47 is frankly ridiculous.

It wont last for long, I can assure you of that.

On your blog you have some really crazy things such as claiming you have 6 billion RSS readers, website run by killer bunnies and you can’t get a review for less than a million dollars. Do you think by being so out their and “edgy” has helped you become a more successful blogger than others?

Absolutely.

I have killer bunnies on my blog for two reasons:

1) It has absolutely NOTHING to do with my subject
2) Nobody else has killer bunnies on their site

It might sound crazy, but I can’t go to an event without people coming up to me and saying things like: “Hey, you are the guy with the killer bunnies, I love your site!”

This wouldn’t happen if I had a boring site.

The 6-billion readers, $1 million dollar review etc are all my protests to the stuff that most webmasters and bloggers do.

I like to be different, make my own rules etc… so this is my way of having a little fun.

Running a Internet Business gives you choices and freedom to do what you want, when you want. What would you say the Internet Lifestyle is for you?

Options.

I love options!

When I watch tv I will often have 3 or 4 different remote controls on my lap, simply because I like to be able to choose whatever I want. It represents freedom for me.

So, in life, if I want to travel, then I can… if I want a new car, I can get one, if I want to stay in bed until noon, then I can… even last week, I was playing xbox360 with you, when really, we could have been working… but that is why we are both entrepreneurs. We have the freedom, flexibility and options that most people just don’t have.

You have had quite a lot of success online and because of this been invited to speak at seminars and on webinars. Do you think without the Internet you would be so loved and followed?

I doubt it.

I am more comfortable behind a keyboard, it gives me time to process my thoughts.

Speaking at events is fun though, I love to party, and I find the REAL networking happens at the bar.

I will be speaking all over the world in the next 12 months, it is very exciting. Webinars are cool as well, I enjoy those.

What would you say is the biggest single reason for your success?

My desire to not follow the crowd.

Most people try to fit in and copy what everyone else is doing, I like to be more of a maverick or renegade.

Also, my imagination.

A big reason for my success is because I surround myself with very intelligent people who are doing better than me, have you found doing this yourself to help you have better results? What tips would you give other Internet entrepreneurs looking to find like minded people to hang out with?

I appreciate the value in this more than ever, but I used to live in Spain, so it was very hard for me to find people of serious caliber over there.

Now I am back in the UK, and visiting the States regularly, I am learning loads.

I also am in Mastermind groups, both online and offline, there is huge value in those.

Twitter is currently a great way to network… but remember that Twitter is just the ignition, you need to take the relationship to the next level by getting on IM, email, the phone, meeting in person etc…

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

Outsource the things that you hate doing, model yourself on someone who is already where you want to be, and try the FREE ‘Max Traffic‘ program.

We launched Max Traffic today actually, basically, it is a free, 7-day course, that consists of 7 emails. Each email gives a technique to help anyone generate tons of traffic.

We teach some really crazy techniques, such as:

* Ethical Mind control

* How to STEAL traffic from your competitors and get them to thank you for it

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

Focus on your strengths, network like crazy, and live for today.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

“If you don’t value your time, nobody else will.”

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

We have loads of huge projects planned for the next six months… we are going to be creating a course that basically teaches people how to become famous in their niche… this will enable them to charge more, make more money, get tons of opportunities, speaking gigs etc…

It will be awesome!

If you want to know more about me and my techniques, visit:

Buzz Profits :: Dean’s Blog :: Dean on Twitter :: Dean on Facebook

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Aaron Wall Interview – SEO Book

Posted on 01. Mar, 2009 by Michael.

Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Aaron?

We have a diverse set of revenue streams, with many of our sites being search driven. We make money from affiliate offers, direct ad sales, contextual ad sales, business partnerships (like the Kick Ass Keyword Guide I did with Wordtracker), a bit of consulting, and running a membership site on SEO Book.com where we offer the #1 SEO community and the best SEO training guides available online.

What’s your number one income stream for SEO Book and why do you think its been so successful?

We recently started doing a bit of affiliate marketing, adding a couple affiliate links to our SEO Toolbar, but most of our income from this site comes from running the membership site. Why is the membership site so successful? Because it is simply the best spot online to learn SEO. Just yesterday one of our members mentioned in a thread that he thought I should increase our price 50%. And when I came out with our competitive research tool a paying member asked if they could donate more to the site because they appreciate all the value they were getting.

We live in a society that bitches about getting short-changed, where there is corruption everywhere. And yet, our customers are telling us they want to give us more money…that is a good sign for knowing that they are getting good value and will stay subscribed for a long time. Our SEO training program is just over a year old, and some of our members have been subscribers since day 1.

What advice would you offer a blogger trying to improve their search engine rankings? Any top SEO tips?

If you are blogging you need to own ideas. As Brian Clark said, think territorially rather than thinking about fitting in an existing hierarchy.

You are known as the authority website in the niche, SEO. What advice would you give a new blogger to dominating their niche?

Ironically, that was the filename of that Copy Blogger post I just linked to. So I would say read that post, and think of ways to give away great value…and keep giving away great value (using new formats, different strategies, new ideas, free tools, etc.) until you have built up so much demand that you can’t satiate it all.

What shouldn’t bloggers be doing when monetizing their blog? Which monetization technique do you dislike the most and why?

For a blog I hate monetizing via AdSense. Most blog readers know what AdSense ads are and do not click them…so using it really makes a blog harder to link at, while providing next to no revenues. Along this same line of thought is don’t worry about making money starting from day 1. Create a great site that people trust and want to return to. First impressions count for a lot, and it makes a bad one if a blog is whored out with ads starting at day 1.

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

It is hard to over-invest in learning so long as you are willing to take action. If you are in doubt of an idea, start a blog on the topic and try to network and build up social capital. If that works then it will be easier to launch a higher profit business strategy from there.

Don’t worry about trying to satisfy everyone. Really satisfy those who really care about you and what you offer.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

Hoard great domain names and work in high money niches.

Also, don’t surround yourself with people who try to prove that everything should be free and spend all their time in public forums chucked full of hype and spam. You are better off cuddling up with books (and blogs) from really successful people that you wish to emulate in time.

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

I am quite content with where we are at right now. I just hope to keep building out our footprint on the web, building more brands, and building more value into our sites…hoping that it helps us increase profits coming out the other end.

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