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Secrets to Success
Deborah Cole Micek
and John-Paul Micek
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Make money through bookmarking
Setting up social-bookmarking accounts is critical to building your list, growing your tribe and boosting your sales. You only have to do it once and it keeps working always.
After you've created your post (or page) on your blog, and bookmark it on bookmarking sites, the search-engine spiders are going to come to these sites. Search engines love the social-bookmarking sites because they're highly ranked -- and highly credible, because the content is filtered by humans.
The spiders immediately follow the link back to your site, check the bookmarked post, go back home and further increase your ranking.
More people are coming into social-bookmarking sites, and the regular users of these sites are rating your content. They're doing keyword searches based on what they're looking for. They find your content and they're able to interact with it. Some people are just discussing the content and ranking it.
Others like what you have to say, think it might be of interest to their audience, so they will actually create a blog post. When that happens, the search-engine spiders are going in and crawl- ing these blog posts, further enhancing your ranking.
The open-search users are just coming in and doing keyword searches. They find your content and they link over directly to your posts.
You're getting all these different channels of traffic just from having your blog posts regularly bookmarked in all the social-bookmark engines. More traffic eventually means more money. But, here's what most people are missing: Open-search visitors are finding you through the search engines at Google or Yahoo, and are generally coming into your home page. If they find a regular blog page, the likelihood of them taking action is slim to none. Most of the time, they'll click away, leaving your site.
Therefore, you need a focused name-capture on your home page where it will get the visitor's attention as soon as they land on that home page. That name-capture can be to sign up for membership privileges or a special report; or maybe a downloadable video series. Whatever it might be, there is an exchange that is taking place. They're giving you at least their first name and e-mail address in return for some type of free content or information of value.
When social-bookmark visitors come into your site, it's very likely that they're coming directly to a post or a page on your site, not the home page. So you need a short-form name capture in a visual hotspot -- in the sidebar or the header -- duplicating what is on the home page. You're not doing double work; you're just creating a short form of what's on the home page.
The key is to get the visitor to take action and join your subscriber family.
John-Paul Micek is the lead business coach at RPM Success Group Inc. Reach him at
JPM@RPMsuccess.com or toll-free at (888) 334-8151.
Deborah Cole Micek, chief executive officer of RPM Success Group, is a business success coach and life strategist. Reach her at
DCM@RPMsuccess.com or toll-free at (888) 334-8151.