By: Heidi Whitaker

After reading the book Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, by “The Secret’s” and “Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul’s” Marci Shimoff. , I knew that I wanted to start a forum for it. The book covers so many aspects that are relevant to members of the Connecting With Women / Real Guy Talk communities as well as my healthydivas.com community.

This forum is especially geared toward individuals building a network marketing business as well as individuals with autoimmune diseases such as Fibromyalgia, CFS, MS, RA, and others.

This positive group’s purpose is to help one another implement the principles that lead to building happiness from the inside.

What does that have to do with network marketing?

Think about it for a minute.

It is MUCH easier to recruit the perfect people into your organization when YOU are the kind of person that others want to be around. The fact is that people prefer to be around happy and optimistic individuals.

Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out teaches you HOW to be the kind of person that prospects want to go into a network marketing business with.

Being happy for no reason literally can make you an MLM magnet.

Being happy doesn’t cost you a thing. Learning how to be happy no matter what your circumstances doesn’t cost much either. You can get Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out from your local library. It is also available at Amazon.com.

I invite you to join the forum (even if you don’t read the book).

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Click to join happy_for_no_reason

Increasing Your Web Traffic Starting NOW

Internet. Business. Profit.

To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article and reading material you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful Internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty-gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday. [Read more →]

Scott’s December 5th training was based upon his article How I Made the Blog A-List (And You Can Too).  (Scott’s article is a MUST READ for community members who are serious about promoting their blogs.)

For those of you who were unable to attend Scott Allen’s training, please refer to the above article and notes below provided by Sandra Boyer.

Traditionally, making the A-list was measured through citations; in other words, who got cited the most.  Technorati uses this idea to measure blog authority in a time box for a period looking at the past 6 months.  They look for links to other blogs and keep track of all of them to know how many links are made to various blog posts for those past months. 
Google is slow on updating their database of links.  Technorati updates instantly the rankings of the top 100 and posts the updated list either daily or every couple of days. 
Authority is a count of number of inbound links as measured by Technorati.  Based upon this ranking, they can break blogs down into several groups.  A cut off point of 500 links in the last 6 months equals a very high authority.  The next cut off is between 150-500, which equals a high authority.  A medium authority is measured from 10-150, and a low authority is less than 10.  These authorities can be considered the A-list, B-list, etc.
Kinedia uses tools for URLs that lets you know your ranking.  Source URL is on that site where you can see your ranking. A link in a bloggers group can help find people who share your common interests. 

A great strategy is to build links—you build links, you build readers!!  Beside the search engine benefits, it also drives direct traffic from people who follow the link.
What builds links?

1. Basics.  Write well and write often.  Link to other bloggers!  Spend 50% of your time off your blog.  Read others blogs, get ideas, write posts in their discussion forums, and then turn it into a blog post for yourself.  Comment on others’ blogs.

2. Frequency of post is important.   It’s good if you do it, but it won’t break you if you don’t.  Don’t pan your blog if you go a couple of weeks without a post.  It’s better to keep up a fairly sustained effort for 6 months.  Every post is an opportunity for someone to link to.  A blog network (like Connecting with Women) helps.  It is tremendously powerful.  Your Sidebar links get counted.  An active community writing posts is great.  Write large comments on your blog and link back to the network blog.

3. Link list posts are link bait.  People love lists!!!  Lists are resources to people for people that are not easily searchable on search engines.  Some like big long lists such as Bootstraps and Mashables (high authority blog) have 100 elements broken down in categories, but ultimately it is a mini directory.  Go for shorter list, 10-20 that are carefully selected with commentary added to it to help people know about whether to click to it or not. Make sure you search around to see if it’s already out there.  You want to be original. 

4. Unique content.  There are original ideas.  Use your own unique perspective.  Tell your own story of how you accomplished something!  This is guaranteed to be unique content.

5. Blog carnivals–#1 strategy to get inbound links to your site.  (Originally they were considered  a traveling road show.)  Don’t participate in ones that have single host, use those that move hosts from week to week. At blogcarnival.com you can find them by category and find which ones that are active. You can find 5-10 carnivals to submit to.  If you can find 5/week, that’s 125 inbound links.  Consider hosting a carnival because those who submit will link to your blog, other regular readers will link to it.  You can get 20-50 inbound links for hosting and can get 200-250 links from hosting alone.  Highly proactive carnival strategy can get you to the A-list.

6. Make your blog page your home page.  When anyone links to anything on your site, it counts as a link.  Your blog page is pretty much your whole website anyway! One trick is Technorati doesn’t care.  They look at everything under the blog domain.  Any links to your blog get counted.  They just look to see if there’s a link to that page.  Let your homepage be your blog.

Tell the story of how you established a successful blog is link bait.

Blogs are a distributed conversation.  It’s all over the place.  It can be a conversation, not just a publishing mechanism.

SEE what’s out there and engage in what’s there!  Interaction is what makes it effective. 

Leave comments on other blogs.  Whenever you do it, you put in your name and link to your blog.

P.S. Mark your calendar: Scott’s teleconference trainings are every other Wednesday evening. Scott provides the kind of help and training that most people trying to market online only dream of having access to on a bi-weekly basis.

If you did not receive an email with the information for Scott’s trainings, please contact your Connecting With Women mentor.

Video: Writing Blog Posts

The following video was taped at the 495 Business Expo in Sept of 2007.

10 Steps to a Killer Blog Post!
By Thomas Sinfield

Ever wondered why some bloggers seem to have all the success, while you are sitting there typing away post after post - with no one reading? Here are a few tips I have tested that have not only worked for me, but that I have seen implemented in the majority of the top blogs.

1. Chose Your topic Carefully -

The best of writers can talk about anything and make it sound good, but why make it hard on yourself? choose a topic that you are passionate about, and let your enthusiasm show shine. It will compliment your writing style and make for a more interesting read.

2. Study The Topic -

Read up on the subject your are about to write about. Find out what others have written, and let it spark some creativity in your mind.

3. Create A Killer Headline -

This is the most important step of them all. In fact it should probably be point number one, because if people are intrigued by your headline, why would they read the rest of your post? Don’t be afraid to flaunt your headline, people don’t like bland and mundane.

4. Deliver The Content -

Your headline has promised it - now deliver! There is nothing worse then reading the title of a article, thinking it is going to revolutionize the way you view a topic, only to find it is a boring ‘copy and past’ job, that has taken 2 minutes to throw together. This hits on point 2, make sure you study the subject so you can deliver the content!

5. Use Bullet Points -

formatting is so important! People like structure, and bullet points make articles much easier to read, and also helps the readers retain the information by giving them the key points of the article.

6. Choose Photos Wisely -

No one likes a bland blog, but that doesn’t mean just splashing a random photo here and there just for the sake of it. Make sure the images compliment the article.

7. Make Your Opinion Known -

People read blogs because they are written by people, people with opinions. If they wanted a scientific explanation to something they would consult a textbook, so let your readers know what you think personally about the topic you are writing about.

8. Use Lists -

I know there are so many top 10 lists and I’m sure everyone is getting sick of them, but the thing is, they work. A busy reader can easily scan the main points to see if its is of interest before deciding whether to read on.

9. Provoke Your Readers -

If you want to really grab your readers attention you have to challenge the way they think, question their beliefs and push their buttons. So start your blog with a statement or challenge that will make your reader need to read the next couple of lines to make sure you said what they thought they read.

10. Don’t Go On Too Long -

Say what needs to be said and then get out of there. No one likes a rambler. Enough said.

Thomas Sinfield is a young entrepreneur that is blogging about his journey through entrepreneurship at his blog http://www.thomassinfield.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Thomas_Sinfield
http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Steps-to-a-Killer-Blog-Post!&id=737223

During Scott Allen’s last training for the Connecting With Women community, he discussed his 50/50 rule - meaning that 50% of your time should be spent on your blog and 50% of your time should be spent on other blogs of your same topic.

One thing you should be doing during your 50% off-blog time is making comments on other related blogs. The following video tells how you can use commenting to draw attention to your own blog. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPT!

Video: Use Blog Comments To Get Traffic

Learn from an expert how using audio and video on your blog will make you more money.

Video: How to make money with Blogs

Clickbank.com is the biggest resource online for affilate programs.  The following is a video that teaches you how to use Clickbank to find the best products or programs for your blog.

If you have ever seen the movie or read the story Sarah, Plain and Tall, you know that Sarah answered an advertisement for a mail order bride in the hopes of making a difference in the lives of two young children whose mother had died. When times were hard, she stayed so that she could “make a difference”.

Popular blogger Seth Godin published an article telling the most effective placement of ads on your blog, the best types of images to use, favored paragraph and font sizing, and loads of information that is important to your success. This article is a must read for serious bloggers!

Visit http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/11/eye-tracking-ru.html and get the low-down.

Free ebook on how to build your Business using flyers -
http://www.homebusinessblogs.com/archives/326/free-ebook-on-marketing-your-mlm-with-flyers/
Free Webinar on how to get customer referrals
http://www.homebusinessblogs.com/archives/320/how-to-get-customer-referrals-through-relationship-marketing/
Free Publicity for Your Business
http://work-at-home.business-opportunities.biz/2007/08/22/submit-your-work-at-homebusiness-profile/
Free Traffic to Your Blog
http://www.blogrush.com/
Free Online Marketing Tips Course
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/internet-marketing/4486322-1.html
Competition for Home Based Business
http://www.thinkinghomebusiness.com/2007/08/03/competition-for-top-100-us-home-based-businesses/

Get free publicity by guest writing for Connecting With Women. If you have an unpublished article that you would like us to feature, please contact us using this form.