Ask me a question and get an answer. It’s as simple as that. Need some help with something, ask me a question. Want to know my opinion about something, ask me your question. Want to know if I like a certain make money online program better than another, ask me and find out. Do you want to know if I am really human or a machine, ask me and discover the truth.
Every once in awhile, I do a post like this where I allow everyone who reads it an opportunity to get a reaction from me based off the question they ask. I will answer as many questions as possible and avoid all the difficult ones. lol
Seriously though… if you need help, curious about something, or just want to know something stupid and off the wall such as, “Hey Garry, which do you like better… cats or dogs?” drop me a comment below and fire off your question.
This is a great opportunity for you if you need advice about…
- Blogging
- WordPress
- Search Engine Marketing
- Search Engine Ranking
- Search Engine Optimization
- WordPress Themes
- WordPress Code
- Internet Marketing
- Making Money Online
- Business, Product, Service Marketing
- Niche Blogging
- Social Networking
- Social Network Marketing
- Digg
- Propeller
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- RSS Feeds
- Yahoo Pipes
- Google AdWords
- Google AdSense
- Yahoo Publisher
- ClickBank
- Commission Junction
- LinkShare.com
- PepperjamNetwork
- Article Writing
- Tagging
- Keyword Targeting
- Domain Name Selection
- Web Hosting
- HTML Code
- CSS
- WordPress Plugins
- Sitemaps
- FeedBurner
- MarketLeverage
- OpenSource Software
- …. just to name a few things.
You seem like a pretty cool guy and while you aren’t as big as John Chow, Darren Rowse or Shoemoney you still have quite a few subscribers. A few weeks ago I contacted one of the above mentioned bloggers asking about writing a guest post for their blog. I was told to email them the idea and they would respond back. Still no reply over a month later…..
I know that we have both become friends since I started reading your blog and while I am a small fry blogger I have learned quite a bit from you and I have even helped you with a few things.
How important is it to you to connect with you readers and respond to them?
In all fairness… I have around 2500 subscribers. The above names mentioned have 10x that. With that said, I can’t begin to tell you how much email I receive on a daily basis. Jarret, your email that you sent into one of the three mentioned has been buried. He is not ignoring you, he doesn’t think that your article sucks… he simply is very busy and has a ton of email.
You should follow up by sending in another email. For me, it is just like a message board, new content gets bumped to the top. I have unanswered email that is over a month old that I had full intention towards answering, but it just gets buried alive.
Now for your question…
First off, let’s detach building web sites using WordPress software from traditional blogging. A lot of my niche sites are built using WordPress; however, they are not blogs and their health doesn’t depend on “connecting with the readers.”
GarryConn.com falls under that category of being a “Traditional Blog”, meaning… this is a blog where I write a post, subscribers read what I write, they react to my writing and then publish their thoughts using the comment form.
I value that…
For one… people choose (voluntarily choose) to invest time into reading what I have published. Secondly, they then turn around and invest even more time into publishing their thoughts in a comment. How could anyone ignore that?
I think that it is very important to respond to your readers comments. The comment form is the pipeline of communication between the author of a social blog and their subscribers. For me, comments out rank email, instant messages, and even snail mail.
I run my blog and treat my subscribers exactly how I would like to be treated on other blogs AND exactly how I WANTED to be treated when I was new to blogging. When I first started blogging and was trying to get my feet securely planted, none of the bloggers (at the time) who were more established than me would pay me the time of day.
I had a very difficult time becoming established and respected within my niche. All because everyone else wanted to be #1 and felt threatened by me, I guess. Whatever their reasons were, it only fueled my fire and motivated me to work harder.
In my opinion, responding to your readers who invest the time into commenting on your blog is one of the most important things you can do. Also taking the time to read the blogs of the authors who comment on your blog is equally as important; however, that is something I fall short in. I just don’t have the time. However, I believe that I interact with my readers much more than any of the three bloggers mentioned above.
Haha wow thanks for the comment. You could have turned that into a post!!
Another question…..is there a command for Google or Yahoo that will show the anchor text pointing back to a page of your site?
OK Garry, I’ll keep the ball rolling…
Finding a niche or keyword to attack. How do you tackle this, even the start? I see that there are tools but what do you start with, an idea, something you read about, your kids mention???
cheers
Check out GameBoy’s last blog post..Buy A Death Knight Account Safely
Start with one words and go from there: Beer, Barf, Biscuit, Bench… doing simple words you can then find what some of the top keywords are within the one word listings.
Look at bench for example. A phrase I just found, “teak shower bench“. It has pretty decent cost per click, decent monthly traffic and low competition. Someone with a half decent blog could write a post with that post title and matching exact phrase in the content of the body a few times and end up ranking for that phrase pretty decently in Google.
Garry,
I am definitely one of your fans! Thank you for giving us all the opportunity to get your expert advice.
My question is how do I best published a weekly newsletter? For instance, do you have any recommendations for a good newsletter formating tool? Should I send html or plain text newsletters or both? Do you normally just email out a link that leads back to the entire newsletter so that you can have multiple links within the newsletter and it doesn’t trigger the spam filters in email systems?
One big question with lots of parts – maybe you can refer me to some sources to learn…thanks in advance!
Together, we are stronger.
Vicki Flaugher, the not so smart about newsletters SmartWoman
Vicki,
My weekly newsletter is a ton of fun. Any program that you use as your newsletter mailer should include HTML and styling tools. On my newsletter I provide both a plain text version and an HTML version. The HTML version doesn’t use images but it does have a lot of links.
Let’s take a closer look at my weekly newsletter. Firstly, I use Aweber. Aweber provides some amazing solutions for running a weekly newsletter.
In my weekly newsletter, I have multiple sections, just like any traditional newsletter would have. The sections I have are as follows:
Here is a screen shot of my weekly newsletter:
Hope all this has been helpful.
This is amazing – thank you, Garry. The solution I am currently using does not rate with this idea at all. I will make the change this week and then send you a link to check it out. Awesome!
Vicki
First off, I really appreciate you and your site. I’ve picked up some great info and ideas. Many thanks.
I set up a blog with Blogger and ultimately used Google to register a domain name for it so I could get away from the blogspot address. I’m now considering a transfer of the domain and hosting to the company that has all my other sites and at the same time switching to WordPress. Question- is it a good idea to do so and will I it affect PR, Alexa, etc. doing it?
A lot of SEO’s will say that changing the IP address of a blog will mess with its SEO a little bit. I don’t think that it does unless you use an IP address that belongs to a host provider that isn’t looking too good in Google’s eyes anymore.
Using places like HostGator.com and other widely known and accepted web hosts is your best option. PageRank, Alexa Ranking and all that good stuff shouldn’t be affected one bit.
ok Garry here’s a question for you:
What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Check out Randy Brown’s last blog post..Mozilla Shows Some Love For The Firefox Referral King
Hi Randy,
The average cruising airspeed velocity of an unladen European Swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 MPH.
Source: http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/
Be sure to stumble it and digg it… looks like that page is doing well in the social networks.
Garry,
I always enjoy your unique perspective.
Are some niches just not profitable? Or is it just an issue with the blog?
Thanks,
Laura
Check out Laura’s last blog post..Hurricane Ike
Some niches just are not profitable. For me, I am pretty much an AdSense nut… so you have to look to see how much AdWord Advertisers are willing to pay for the clicks. Typically stupid things like Beanie Babies don’t pay very well, while other things that are more expensive such as the stock market niche are much more high paying.
Niche Blogging is free articles the way to go if you don’t have time to write out individual posts every day?
PS: Jarret is a loyal reader of many blogs we both are small blog fry haha!
If you don’t have time to write articles then what is the point to blogging?
With that said, I guess there are ways to work around this. One you could hire a writer, or trade out professional services, “Hey man… I’ll wash your car if you write me about 10 posts on the Chrysler Lebaron.”
A second thing you could do is when you DO have time, you can write a bunch on content over the weekend and then use WordPress to schedule the content over the course of a month, say do one post per week, or something like that. If you were able to crunch in four posts over the weekend, literally you wouldn’t have to touch your blog for an entire month.
I don’t like using content that has already been indexed somewhere else on the Net. I only use unique content that has never seen the light of day on another server. Either I write it myself, pay someone else to, or trade out professional services.
what is yahoo pipes and why are you using it?
Did you enjoy the whooping my Gators put on your Volunteers last Saturday?
LOL
AL
Yahoo Pipes is a user interface that allows people to do some crazy things with mashing and mixing up RSS and ATOM feeds without having the experience needed in programming. Simply pull out various widgets connect them together (just like you’d do with plumbing) and save your work and watch your masterpiece go to work.
Want to find free iTune Downloads? Check this out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=2CjCN7vB2xGeK_FufOgC8A
Want to see what David Cooley is up to? Check this out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=mPBEKJ7d3BG86BmQy6ky6g
Want to get the best deals online? Check this out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=RBAIg_lN3RGoRPvNBx2yXQ
Want to see what I do everyday online? Check this out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=rFgMXiYx3RGmi0iAiXrL0A
Want to get the best price on an iPhone? Check this out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=7dfe57f6098ae71e59a3f4ace965e1b4
How about the ten most recent clearance items at Wal-mart?
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=aoG84B233BGjwiiA1vC6Jw
Perhaps you’d like to have a better search bar on your WordPress blog?
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=7Hxu5qmC3BGvjA0Nn0artA
Want to find the best deal on an airplane listed on eBay?
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=SrJDIxCQ3BGQYew_JhOy0Q
Yahoo Pipes allows you to build and reshape just about anything you want. It is the coolest thing I have seen since the invention of toilet paper… well, maybe not that cool.
sweet action! thanks man!
Check out Allyn Paul’s last blog post..Honest Review of the Neuton Battery Powered Mower
Ok… now I am going to be a show off.. here is lawn products within 20 miles of a given zip code. Default zip code is set to 37043, which is my home town of Clarksville, TN.
Go here to snag a copy.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=Hls1IKmK3RGQXS5RBR50VA
The great thing about Yahoo Pipes, is that if you find something you like, you can CLONE it, as they call it… which basically means get a copy for yourself. From there you can use it AS IS or you can edit it and make adjustments, edits or improvements.
Some questions for you Garry:
What’s are your favourite WP themes of all time …. (including and excluding adsense ready themes)?
What the best thing about blogging for you?
and what’s the worst thing?
Check out DOC’s last blog post..Stamp Collecting Tools
My favorite WordPress Themes are the ones that I build and use for myself and distribute among my readers. My current distribution is ThemeClick, which is the theme you are currently using. I am really starting to dig the theme being offered by David Cooley, that works very well.
The best thing about blogging is two things: making money online because I don’t have to deal with working in a corporate environment and listen to some asshole bark orders at me. I can’t stand working in corporate environments. I love working for myself. It is the best thing in the world.
Second part, I love being home with the kids, I love being able to sign my son up for ANY SPORT that he wants and I love never missing a SINGLE practice or GAME and I love being able to just jump in the van and take my family out anytime we want without having to get the “Approved Time Off” from some stupid job.
Working for a company is for the birds… working for yourself is the best thing anyone can do. And having a full time job as a blogger is in my opinion, the SINGLE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD!!!! I love it and everyday I can’t wait to get started and at the end of the day I can’t seem to pull myself away and CLOCK OUT.
The worst thing about blogging… Hmm… NOTHING! It is the perfect job.
Excellent reply Garry …. especially the fact that you are able to utilise the ‘net’ to prioritise your family.
Check out DOC’s last blog post..Stamp Collecting Tools
I even rob my neighbors so that I can blog while at my son’s football practices:
http://www.garryconn.com/have-you-considered-securing-your-wireless-home-network.php
Hi Gary….. thanks for letting us pick your brain. I was reading over some entries on your blog and I have notice some references to Micro Niche Finder. Do you still use that program and do you find it helpful in locating profitable niches.
Thanks again……….eric
Check out Eric D’s last blog post..Keep Your Website Simple And Watch Your SEO Efforts Payoff
Micro Niche Finder kicks BUTT and is the BOMB… you can’t go wrong with picking up a copy. Enter your name and email address and watch a free video demonstration.
Hi Garry-
I have subscribed to your site for about 2 months and have learned alot from it as I am looking to start a blog soon. What is the benefit to starting a plan with host gator compared to just signing up for word press or blogger.
Thanks..Mike
Hi Mike,
First off, Blogger.com and WordPress.com have total control over your blog. You could wake up one morning and receive an email from them saying that your blog h as been cancelled.
Secondly, WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to monetize your blog. Blogger.com does, because Google owns them, so you can use Google AdSense. However, still… the best way to go is to get your own domain name and get setup on your own web hosting plan.
As you know, I recommend HostGator.com because they provide extremely affordable web hosting and their plans are geared specifically for WordPress bloggers.
Hi Garry,
I’ve started building Adsense niche sites. I’ve got so many ideas and I’m just running with them, but my problem is promoting the sites. I get one idea set it up and then I’m off to building another niche site. Then I’m like, wait slow down, I need to promote these.
So I started article marketing long tail keywords. I am seeing some results, do I just continue submitting articles to my site and different articles to article directories? What do you recommend for promoting niche sites? And how long should I spend promoting one site to get it off the ground? My first goal is to build 50 niche sites. But, I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage them! Thanks so much!
Here is a copy of my 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan, I think that you’ll enjoy reading this:
The 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan
Common in the insurance business you will hear things like the 80/20 plan. What that means is some insurance plans will cover 80% of the bill while leaving you with the remaining 20% balance. With Internet marketing, I have coined my own 80/20 plan and indeed put it into practice.
My business is mainly in developing niche sites that are run using WordPress. I write content that targets very high paying keywords in Google AdWords. My content indeed is very well written, unique, useful, entertaining and informative. The goal in mind though is to monetize it using Google AdSense. Some content I write that targets certain keyword phrases need a little more boost than others. Most of my content targets longtail keywords. However, some do not and need additional love.
The 80/20 plan that I follow is very simple. I invest 20% of my time writing content and 80% of my time marketing it. Depending on the strength of competition of the keyword phrases I am targeting will dictate the level of depth I go into marketing each article or page I create. For me, Internet marketing is a primary method of promoting my content on the Internet. It combines two elements: search engine marketing and social network marketing.
Search engine marketing is really simple if you think about it. All that is required is a search engine optimized web site or blog and your ability to write content in a creative way that caters to both humans as well as search engines. In other words, in order for you to rank well for the keyword phrases you are targeting, you have to carefully write your material in a way that uses the keywords and related terms in your content a certain way and at a certain frequency. All in all though, it’s not difficult but it does take some time to master.
The tricky part is social network marketing. As mentioned above, there are times when I want to rank for more competitive keyword phrases. These terms fall outside from what I would consider being longtail. Long tail keyword marketing does not require backlinks, while targeting more primary keyword phrases do. That is where social network marketing kicks into gear.
Many people look at social network marketing in terms of scoring votes of your submitted content into these various networks. While voting does indeed play its role in the my big picture of social network marketing, it doesn’t take the role you may think it does. Many of these popular social networks NOFOLLOW their links. So even though the page that your submitted content appears on ranks well in the search engines, you dont’ get credit for the links.
What is the point towards getting your content submitted into social networks? Well, really the point and reason why I like my content listed in social netowrks is for the fact that if someone else likes what they read, they may in return write a post about it on their blog which will provide a direct search engine friendly backlink to my content and or home page.
Internet Marketing isn’t just limited to search engine marketing and social network marketing. You also have the element of email list marketing as well as instant messenger marketing. Email list marketing is great because you can send out direct email to your subscribers and inform them of the content you wrote. Depending on how close you are with your subscribers, you can possibly even ask your subscribers to link to your newly published content. In doing so, you are establishing backlinks to your content.
The same is true for instant messenger marketing. If you have about 25 buddies in your instant messenger contacts and speak with them daily. You can easily ask them to check out your newly published article or web page and ask if they wouldn’t mind providing you with a backlink to it.
No matter what you do, always remember the 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan. Once again, use 20% of your free time towards creating content and 80% of your free time marketing and promoting your content. If you do that, you’ll see super huge results.
What are some other ways that you can market and promote your content? If you have some ideas, feel free to share them below in the comments.
Hey Garry,
Do you actively promote ALL your niche sites?
I mean, if you are running 20 or 30 sites in different niches it would get to the point where there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to add content to and promote EVERY site to the same degree.
Is it a case of concentrating most of your attention on prmoting 1 or 2 of the sites, and just posting long-tail based content to the rest, letting them go and hoping for the best?
I do the absolute minimum needed to get my blogs ranking well in Google.
Hi Garry,
I am working on a couple of new sites at the moment that I wouldn’t usually use WordPress for but as you know I have been learning the ins & out’s of WordPress for a few months now so have decided to go ahead & use it for these new sites to see how it pans out.
Once I have the sites completed, I know I can gain organic search results over time & can even provide relevant links from other sites of mine but can you recommend any other ways of getting links/traffic to an affiliate based site?
With your Micro Niche Sites, do you invest time in link building to these sites or are they a truly build, walk away & see what happens type of sites?
I do want to build, walk away & see what happens with a few of these sites but I also want them to at least generate an asdense monthly payment along with some affiliate payments, ‘webmaster welfare’ as I have just seen Zac Johnson call the adsense part of it…
Any advice is well appreciated.
Thanks, dave.
Check out dave’s last blog post..The Diamond
I great way to get organic links is to have a bunch of friends who will bend over backwards for you. If you simply be a super nice guy and help people as much as you can afford to, when it comes time to asking for help in return, such as asking for a few backlinks on some blog posts that you have keywords you are targeting on it, friends will grant these requests.
Secondly, friends will also voluntarily advertise your blog or site on their blog or site if you ask them to. This is very successful because the post comes from the author in which many people follow.
Look at it this way, tomorrow, if I wrote a blog post and told everyone to check out Mark Mason’s Blog because he is offering something that I feel everyone will enjoy, he will end up getting quite a bit of traffic because I suggested to my readers that he has someone worth their while.
Asking… it never hurts to ask. The worst someone can say is, “No!” Never take offense when someone says NO, it’s a crap shoot… some people will grant your requests, others will not… no big deal.
I ask for TONS of favors from my friends, but also too I work my ASS off to make sure that I help them TWO FOLD in return. At any given time, and I am not tooting my horn, I can get well over 100 high quality backlinks to any site I want within just a few hours.
However, there too is a balance… you can’t link build too aggressively. Google red flags that…. you got to maintain a nice steady pace and build as naturally and organically as possible.
You asked me if I invest time into link building? YES! On sites that target keywords that are too strong and competitive just to rank organically on their own without backlinks, yeah… I get links. These links though aren’t just, “Hey Bob, can you add me to your blogroll?” These are very well thought out and personalized backlinks that I put a lot of time into scoring.
Growing a site in a competitive niche is very much like being in chemistry class. I don’t spend too much time with competitive keywords, I more go after the ones that just naturally rank on their own in the top ten simply by creating the content, getting the page indexed and filling a VOID in the GOogle SERP.
Thanks for the fast & honest reply Garry.
I have been online for a long time now but never in the blogging business so the type of friendly backlinks you refer to, I can’t really rely on yet..I have lots of happy clients, but asking a client who has a site on their tattoo studio or whatever to provide a link to my new hotel site just wouldn’t work & I wouldn’t even consider it as it would be way off their core content.
Now that I am getting into blogging platforms, but probably for the wrong reasons (i’m not a true blogger but can now thankfully populate a blog with relevant content from any platform)…I’m still experimenting for SEO reasons & ease of use for any of my clients to get their own relevant backlinks from their niches.
So, can I ask another question? If you build a site tomorrow on a new topic not typically covered by bloggers & completely irrelevant to your online network, how would you promote it?
dave.
Check out dave’s last blog post..The Diamond
Hi Garry,
My question for you is, what are your top 5 most profitable sites?
Thanks for sharing your amazing insight on MMO.
First, let me thank you for the invaluable content that you have shared with us on this blog. I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of months now, and it has totally got me thinking in the direction of a niche blog network.
Having said that, I know that your focus is on quantity of blogs, rather than trying to drive enormous amounts of traffic to any single niche. So, here are a few questions:
1. What is the average monthly income you expect from a new niche blog? I mean, if a niche blog is profitable at $25 a month, do you expand from there into adjacent niches?
2. How in the heck do you manage your time to take care of 100 blogs (I think I read that number somewhere during the cowpetition?)?
3. If I have a base domain name, say http://www.mymedia.com (made up), can I put multiple blogs on sub-domains from an SEO standpoint? Will Google penalize me for having stuff like nzairplanes.mymedia.com and industrialcarpetcleaning.mymedia.com, etc?
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. You are, quite honestly, one of the very few blogs I read on a daily basis. I follow you on twitter, and find that it is a great way to know when you are posting something new. Thanks again for everything you do!
Michael,
Thanks for reading the blog and thanks for dropping me a comment. It is always great to talk to more and more of the “silent readers” who read my blog for some time.
Any blog that yields a profit is a good blog. For me I can build a niche blog and have around 20 articles or so written in about 8 to 16 hours total time.
Once that blog earns enough money to cover my time invested, the rest is free money. As far as expanding into adjacent niches, that all depends on how profitable the founding niche blog is. If I am making very good money with that niche, you better believe that I’ll start eating that entire niche like cancer by creating similar blogs.
Now, you asked me about sub domain names versus true domain names. You can build sub domain names off your main domain name just fine… nothing wrong with that. However, I choose NOT to do that because I also consider the face value of an independent niche blog versus a sub-domain.
In other words, if worst come to worse and I need quick CASH, I can ALWAYS ALWAYS resort to selling my niche blog in SitePoint.com to get quick cash for something of an emergency. You can’t sell a sub domain. Well, I guess you could, but you’d get far less money that what it’s worth. Domain names are cheap. Web hosting is cheap. Just go with running separate domain names. That would be my advice to you.
Hey Garry,
Is there any way to pull the content from a Yahoo Pipe and post it in a wordpress blog?
Yes… go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3h6ROs__II
This video was done last year.
Thanks again David…
Ya! I want to ask a question.Does anyone know about PPC advertising and does it really work or not?
Ok look man… I am not trying to be rude… well, maybe a little bit. But here is a snippet from your web site:
Why do you run a blog that makes people believe that you are some kind of superman expert in making money online, then come to my blog to ask me for advice? I just don’t get it…
PEOPLE… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP MAKING BLOGS ABOUT MAKING MONEY ONLINE IF YOU DON’T KNOW A F?*&ING THING ABOUT MAKING MONEY ONLINE.
Do you know how many people you are screwing over just simply by wasting their time or making them believe that you can teach them how to make money online? Do you know how many bills have gone overdue because people have invested time into reading your blog and have failed to earn money?
Why do you have a make money online blog, but then come here to ask me such a simple question related to sheer BASICS of the business of making money online? I just don’t get it. Blog about Bambie, blog about G.I. Joe, but dude… don’t blog about making money online if you don’t even know what PPC is. WTF?!?!?
I think here we find a best information.Internet Marketing Strategy – What Is The Fastest Way To Make Money Online ?
See this comment:
http://www.garryconn.com/ask-me-a-question-and-get-an-answer.php#comment-23240
Heres an odd ball question G.
Ive been tooling around with a few blogs I have. And was wondering or trying to figure out if google counts and or compares the # of words on the template against the # of words in a post. SO to get to the point. If your template has 500 crawlable words on the template should the # of words in your post be the same greater or lessor.
Or am I just being dumb?
Check out shane at make money blogging’s last blog post..I Scored some freebies for you From Derek Gehl
How old is your blog? How much do you earn?
Morning G, How on earth are you structuring your blog to display the posts as you are doing now, getting good with php I guess, you crafty bugger!!!
Check out shane’s last blog post..Are you selling the click ?
What’s your bank card pin #?
Check out Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Guest Post: Article Marketing Experience – Dominique Goh