Blog Blueprint: An Auto-Blogging Introduction

Purpose:
The purpose of this document is to introduce you to the process of auto-blogging. It will explain what
auto-blogging is and where most auto-blogging models go wrong. Finally, this lesson will cover what
you will be learning and creating with the Blog Blueprint system.

Auto-blogging – An Introduction:
1. What Is It?

Generally speaking, auto-blogging refers to the process of creating blogs that are set up to have certain
tasks done automatically. For instance, with auto-blogging you can publish focused content to your
blog(s) as well as automate the task of creating back-links using services like bookmarking and RSS
directories.

2. Why Use It?

There are three main reasons why auto-blogging is a valuable tool in your marketing campaign:

1. Love of the search engines:

Search engines absolutely love regularly updated content. In context of your relationship with the
search engines, the more updating that can be done the better it is for you.

At present, Google holds about 70% of the search engine market share. This means that 70% of search
engine traffic flows through Google. While other search engines are of value, you definitely want to
focus your attention on Google above the other search engines.

2. Time is money … don’t waste it:

Creating focused content or having to spend time configuring back-links can be very time consuming,
especially in markets that you have not yet proven to be profitable in. Auto-blogging can take care of
those tasks for you, freeing you up to focus on tasks that have a better return on investment.

3. Time is money … use it wisely:

Like already said, auto-blogging takes care of such time consuming tasks as focused content publishing
and back-link creation for you automatically. This frees you up to quickly set up multiple blogs with
which you can quickly test multiple different micro-niches for profitability. Once found, you can then
move on to expansion and domination!
Auto-blogging – Where Others Go Wrong:
Auto-blogging has been around for some time and the use of auto-blogging systems is not uncommon.
However, these systems have received a bad rap over the years because of their over-emphasis on
speed. For example, an old 2004 model of internet marketing suggested that internet marketers should
focus on fast results (quickest ROI possible) rather than on quality of content. The result? Blogs were
built with a mashup of useless content that had little to no value to visitors of the site. The hope was that
the site visitor would simply ignore the content and move straight on to clicking on the ads (after all,
that’s where the revenue comes in).

Well, in today’s tech-savvy market, this model no longer works. Not only are discerning visitors
demanding quality but so are the search engines. As already mentioned, search engines love updated
content but now they demand a more natural content flow. By ‘natural’ we simply mean that it has all
the appearance of human involvement. By producing quality updated content, you offer value to both
the search engines and your human visitors. So, while speed is an important component to the
marketing process, you definitely want to give attention to quality. If you haven’t already done so, don’t
forget to watch the video for more insight on the value to the search engines and to your site readers.

Blog Blueprint – Learning and Creating:

As mentioned earlier, this tutorial is an introduction to auto-blogging and the Blog Blueprint system. In
the following sections we will discuss the final two points of this introductory tutorial: what you will
learn and what you will create with the Blog Blueprint system.

What Will You Learn?

There are three main items that you are going to learn in this auto-blogging course:

• How to research and identify hidden and potentially profitable micro-niche markets around a
"Core Focus" that you can drive traffic and leads to. What’s a “core focus”? It’s any number of
things, such as an affiliate product, a website you already own, a business you have, or even an
opt-in you’re trying to get leads for.
• How to create small high-quality and high-value (value to search engines and humans) auto-
blogs for each discovered micro-niche that will promote the “Core Focus”.
• How to identify and filter out the money-makers and what to do with the winners and the losers,
with the intention of helping you focus your energy on the sites that make you a lot of money vs.
those that make you only some money.

What Will You Create?

The creation of your auto-blog network involves the following points. Remember, this is just the
introduction – each of these will be discussed in more detail in subsequent training sessions:

• Identify your “core focus” site (website, email leads, affiliate products, etc.)
• Create a number of micro-blogs, all pointing to your “core focus” site
 • After 3-4 weeks (usually), identify those blogs that are starting to earn good revenue and getting
good traction with the search engines
• Add more custom / unique content to the identified sites and start an aggressive traffic-
generating campaign
• Decide what to do with lower-earner sites (keep or flip?)
• Build more auto-blogs and repeat the process

Module 1 "Preparation" >> Lesson 2 "What Are You Aiming For?"

What Are You Aiming For?

Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to guide you toward the kind of thinking and behavior that can help keep
you focused and motivated toward achieving your financial goals. In this lesson we will …

• Discuss the question of what you are aiming for

• Present you with a campaign challenge
• Discuss the steps involved in completing the challenge

By the time you have completed this lesson, you should have …

• A clear idea of what your goals are and how to achieve them
• Created a visual motivator (in the form of a document) of the goals you wish to achieve
• Learned about the Blog Blueprint challenge and the steps involved in completing it

What Are You Aiming For?

In order to succeed with the Blog Blueprint, you MUST have some idea of what it is you are aiming for.
This idea is answered in the question “what are you aiming for”. In other words, what do you want to
earn?

• $200.00/month
• $500.00/month
• $1000.00/month
• $4000+/month
• Not sure??

The truth of the matter may be that you don’t know what you want to aim for. However, if you want to
succeed, you need to have something to succeed at:

• If you don’t know where you are going, how can you ever expect to get there?
• You must know what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it.
 • Having something to aim for means having a goal, which is crucial to your success.

Goals are CRUCIAL!

The fact of the matter is that goals are crucial to personal and professional success. So many ignore this
fact because they want to dive in and start doing things right away. Unfortunately, this approach just
leaves you spinning your wheels unless you have an idea of where you are going:

• Goals are the foundation of what you will build your business upon.
• Knowing exactly what you want to achieve is what will get you there.

Goals are not the only component to your success. While they are the foundation of what you will build
your business on and a motivator for getting there, goals are only the first step. You also need to have…

A Plan
Larry Elder, an L.A., California radio talk show host, said it well:

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

How can you achieve your goals if you have no plan to get there? You need to define your goal and
then build a plan to achieve that goal.

What is Your Financial Goal and Plan to Achieve It?

The fact is that 99% of you are taking this Blog Blueprint training because of a desire to earn more
money. Why else would you be here? So it’s quite reasonable for you to focus your attention on
establishing financial goals.

However, for some, focusing on money can be problematic in that it is seen as something negative.
Terms like “greedy”, “money hungry”, etc. are floated as criticisms toward those that focus on money.
But this does not have to be the case. Consider this…

Wealth is not negative, it is the means by which it is earned and spent that is.

In other words, if you use negative means to earn that money or spend that money in negative ways,
than it is reasonable for others to judge your focus on wealth as a negative. However, if you are using
positive means to earn that money and spend it in a positive way, than any judgment others place on you
can only be positive. So the key is to focus on the good that you can do with the money you earn and
always achieve your financial goal in a good way.

So be smart. The successful ones understand exactly:

• What they want to earn (the GOAL)

 • How they are going to earn it (the PLAN)
• How they are going to spend it (the SUCCESS)

The Blog Blueprint Challenge

You know why you’re here: you want to earn money. And we’ve told you that your financial success is
defined by setting a goal and then making a plan to achieve that goal. In this section of the training we
would like to present you with a financial challenge that you can define as your goal.

How would you like to be earning an extra $57,600 a year in PASSIVE income, one year from
now?

By “passive income” we mean money that is earned above and beyond what you are currently earning.
Achieving this goal may result in you being able to quit your current job but that is not the focus here.
The focus is setting the goal, establishing a plan to achieve it, and then reaping the benefits of
successfully achieving it.

Does the goal of earning a yearly income of $57,600 in passive income ONE YEAR FROM NOW
seem impossible?

Well, it’s not … we will show you exactly how to do it!!

Now, you can set your goals higher or lower if you want but whatever your goal, don’t be afraid …
YOU CAN DO IT!

Don’t look at the number and think, “that’s too hard.” This training will show you, STEP BY STEP,
how to achieve the goal of reaching $57,600.

Yes … YOU CAN DO IT!

Steps to Completing the $57,600 Challenge

$57,600 a year equals an average of $4,800 a month. To achieve this goal requires 5 steps:

• Answer the question “why do I want to achieve this goal”

• Create a visual for motivation
• Position your visual for maximum impact
• Create your plan
• Implement your plan

Step 1 – Answer the Question

Answering the question of “how much money do I want to earn” is a good starting point but you need to
follow this up with an equally important question: “what do I want the money for and how will I spend
it?”
To answer this question, you will want to list all those things you would like to spend the money on.
For example:

• A new car
• Support for a specific charity
• A new home or a cottage
• A dream vacation
• Investments
• Pay off debt

Any number of items can appear on this list. Now, as mentioned earlier, $57,600 a year equals $4,800 a
month. Taking your list of items, you can now decide how you will apply that $4,800 to those items.

Here is a made up example for you to see what is meant:

• $1000/month on a new Ford F150 4x4 (includes $250/month on insurance and maintenance)
• $500/month onto my mortgage to reduce it to be paid off in 5 years
• $1000/month into my 401K investments
• $500/month to my church youth group
• $500/month into savings for a vacation to Hawaii for 2 weeks ($6000)
• $750/month into my tax free savings account to achieve a balance of $9000 by the end of the
year
• $550/month into an education savings account for my children’s college. This will add
$6600/year.Do you see what was done here?

By doing this you create one list to answer the question of WHAT you want to spend your money on
and then follow this up with a second list that answers the question of HOW you will spend that money.

By breaking it down in this way, you are able to maintain your focus and gauge how well you’re doing
in meeting your goals.

NOTE: It is important to remember that this plan is focused on creating a yearly income of $57,600 a
year, which does not mean in one year from your start of the Blog Blueprint you will have earned a total
of $57,600.

This is important to understand when creating your individual financial goals. The number is based on
the principle that in one year from now you will be earning $4,800 per month, which is $57,600 per
year.

Step 2 – Create a Visual

The crucial step in realizing your goals is being able to visualize them. Being able to actually see what
you want to achieve increases the motivation to get it done.
In order to create your visual, you can take your list of items that you created and add images to each
item. In our example, we used Word to create a document for our visual template. Adding the images
adds an extra boost of motivation because you can actually see what it is you are aiming for. As well, at
the top of the template is your stated goal:

“My goal is to be earning an extra $57,600/year by (insert date here) so I can afford every month to
spend my money on the following…”

Put a date of one year from the time you begin executing your plan.

Click Here to download the blank worksheet template that you can use.

To see our example for reference Click Here.

NOTE: The images are taken from off the web (e.g. Google Images). Since this is a personal document
(not meant to be shared with anyone) it is okay to use any image you wish to as there is no copyright
infringement involved.

Step 3 – Position Your Visual

“Out of sight, out of mind.” That’s how the old adage goes. In other words, if you don’t see it, you’re
likely not to be influenced by it.

In this step you want to change this to “In sight, in mind.” Place your visual somewhere where it serves
as a constant reminder for you. You can frame or laminate it for emphasis, and place it somewhere
where you will see your goals EVERY DAY, whether at your workstation, your bedside table,
wherever.

Each day, REVIEW THEM! Go over your goals. Look at the images. Gain inspiration by what you
see and read. Then go ahead and continue executing your plan in a highly motivated way.

Step 4 – Create Your Plan

Now that you have your list of goals and a visual of them to help motivate you, the next step is to create
your plan. Your plan is really created by reverse engineering (working backwards) from what you want
to achieve to how you’re going to get there.

In this training, we’ll walk you through the $57,600 Blog Blueprint plan which is the plan you will
follow over the next year to achieve your goals. Now as you go through this plan you will see how you
can easily adjust the numbers to achieve whatever goal you want to achieve. You will also see how
realistic and achievable this goal is when following the Blog Blueprint system.

Based on experience, each blog you create with the Blog Blueprint system should earn you
approximately $40/month on average. You can earn even more (and we do) but $30 - $40 a month is a
good average income to achieve.
You will also find that many of these blogs will produce MUCH more then $40 per month (many times
more) but that is not always the case.
To do this:

• If you spend 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, you can build 10 blogs a month, which equals $400
each month from those 10 blogs.
• If you build 10 new blogs each month for 12 months, you will have created 120 blogs (each
earning $40 a month) for a total revenue income of $4800/month.
• At the end of 1 year, you will have 120 blogs earning you $4800/month for a grand total of
$57,600/year.

So your plan is to create 120 blogs over the course of the next year using the Blog Blueprint system.

Step 5 – Implement Your Plan

With everything in place (your goals defined, your goals listed and prominently displayed for daily
review and inspiration, and your plan for how to achieve your goals), the next step is to implement your
plan. Simply follow the exact steps of the Blog Blueprint system and repeat the process every month to
achieve the goal of $57,600/yr in one year.

• Step 1: Create a detailed list of what you would spend your money on.
• Step 2: Create a visual for motivation using our provided template. Click Here to download.
• Step 3: Post your visual at a place you can review them daily for maximum impact.
• Step 4: If not following the $57,600 plan, then create your own plan.

Going Forward
In this tutorial you have hopefully gained a clear idea of what your goals are and how to achieve them,
created and prominently displayed your visual motivator, and learned about the Blog Blueprint
Challenge and the steps involved in completing it.

In the sessions to come, we will get more into learning about market research, how to understand
affiliate marketing, etc. and then how to build, research, market and promote your auto blog empire that
is going to earn you a recurring income of $57,600/year in a year.

Are you ready? LET’S DO THIS!

Module 1 "Preparation" >> Lesson 3 "Core Focus"

Core Focus
Purpose:

The purpose of this lesson is to teach you the meaning of “Core Focus” and how it applies to your auto-
blogging campaign. By the time you have completed this lesson, you should have an understanding of
…

• What “Core Focus” is

• Why you want a “Core Focus”
• How “Core Focus” is not your only focus

What is “Core Focus”?

As you go through the Blog Blueprint system, you will build multiple auto-blog networks with each
network having its own “core focus”. What this means is that the auto-blogs for a specific network will
focus on a particular theme or, as we like to call it, a central “MONEY” point of focus.

Examples of “core focus” are:

• Lead capture: Perhaps you’re a real estate agent, a local photographer, an online marketer or
some other business-type entity. You can build an auto-blog network with a core focus of
capturing leads for your business.
• Specific products or services: You may have your own products or services or are connected
with an affiliate program that has products and services you promote. You can build your auto-
blog network with the core focus being to promote these products and services.

These are only two of many such examples of what a “core focus” could be and they are given to help
you understand just what a “core focus” is.

To effectively work with multiple auto-blogs on multiple networks, understanding “core focus” is
crucial even before you create your first network, as will become abundantly clear later on in this and
subsequent lessons.

Why You Want a “Core Focus”

While it is important to understand WHAT a “core focus” is, it’s equally important to understand WHY
you want a “core focus”.

The primary reason for wanting a “core focus” is that it helps make it easier to stay FOCUSED so you
are not going back and forth between unrelated markets.

For example, when building multiple blogs, you would find it difficult to follow through on different
tasks when jumping back and forth between multiple unrelated markets. For example, having one blog
on something like “used cars” and another for “wedding parties” would cause a disconnect. Having a
“core focus” for each network makes it easier for …
 • Market research: in order to be more effective in your research, it helps to stay on topic. In
other words, you can focus your research on a “core focus” rather than attempting to research
multiple topics at once.
• Content creation: whether you are the writer or not, researching and writing content on multiple
topics is challenging. Having a “core focus” allows efficient creation of content based on similar
related themes.
• Staying profitable: The bottom line for having a “core focus” is … the bottom line.
Streamlining your efforts through a “core focus” reduces your expenses, thus increasing your
profitability.

As you can see, having a “core focus” is invaluable to you in many aspects.

Don’t be too concerned if it seems a little unclear at this point, as each of these items will be covered in
more detail when we begin implementation.

NOT the Only Focus

The term “core focus” implies something: it implies the existence of other focal points. When we talk
about the various networks you will create with the Blog Blueprint system, we apply the term “core
focus” for each network. However, within each network you have many auto-blogs, and each of these
blogs can have a different “Make Money” focus.

This is how it works.

The “core focus” for the network defines the primary purpose for the network. Each auto-blog within
that network operates within that primary purpose but is also designed to generate other income
automatically. Your goal is to generate as much revenue as possible with each auto-blog and to do this
you are going to be integrating things such as:

• Affiliate offerings
• Mailing lists (also referred to as list building)
• Google AdSense and other pay per click systems (such as Chitika)

NOTE: Further explanation is provided at the end of this training document in regards to what affiliate
offerings, mailing lists and Google AdSense are.

The reason we want to make this clear is so you understand that a core focus does not mean you are
limiting yourself to only making money through one channel. Often times people can get anxious about
mixing in multiple methods of generating revenue in their blogs because they feel that it will distract
from the main purpose (core focus) of the blog.

The reality, however, is that not everyone is going to be interested in your core focus and you are then
left with two options:

• Provide nothing else and let them simply leave.

• Provide something else and generate more revenue (I like this option better).
Remember, you want to provide value to both the search engines and human visitors and that means
offering options to your human visitors.

The following is an illustrated example of what we’re talking about.

Let’s say I am a local photographer and my “core focus” is capturing leads for my photography
business. In the first image you see how I’ve created a network of five auto-blogs that all have a “Core
Focus” of capturing leads.

As previously mentioned, auto-blogs are not just focused on the “core focus”. This next image shows
one of the blogs “broken out” from the network. Lets say this particular blog is on the topic “Your
Town Photography” (replace your town with the town you live in).

Since the topic of this blog is “photography”, the content on this blog would logically cover such topics
as photography, how to, cameras, equipment and other related items (as shown in the below image).
With the way the search engines work, you wouldn't attract people just searching for photography in
your town. Even though they have arrived on your site, these other people may not have any interest in
following through on becoming a lead for your local business.

So do you just ignore them?

No. Instead, you offer them resources that they would be interested in and as a result increase your
potential to generate more revenue.

The cool thing with auto-blogging and using the Blog Blueprint system is that this is all done
automatically for you, so you can sit back and let the blog generate content, back links and, best of all,
revenue for you … all on autopilot.

Summary
In this training module we discussed how having a “core focus” will help you be more effective and get
better results with building your auto-blog empire.

We also covered how “core focus” is not going to be the only focus and why you will want to integrate
things such as affiliate marketing and list building to increase your revenue potential.

Be Patient
At this point you may have many questions and are anxious to get building your auto-blog empire. We
realize there is still a lot for you to learn but in our opinion...

Implementation is the BEST teacher!

Instead of focusing on teaching theories and/or principles, we are going to jump right into “Hands On
Learning” so each of the coming modules will address questions at the necessary time rather than
wasting your time trying to teach you things prior to having to use them.

Definitions
Affiliate Marketing

In an affiliate marketing program, a publisher receives a commission for generating a transaction, such
as a lead or sale, for an advertiser that the publisher is promoting. The advertiser provides its ads to
publishers and assigns a commission for each action it wants to accomplish. Publishers place the
tracking code for these ads on their Web sites, in their email campaigns, or in search listings. Whenever
a visitor uses these links to generate an action on the advertiser site, that transaction is tracked online. If
a product or service is purchased, the customer pays the advertiser directly, and the publisher is paid a
commission for that transaction.

An advertiser, also known as a merchant or retailer, is a Web site or company that sells a product or
service online, accepts payments and fulfills orders. Advertisers partner with publishers to help promote
their products and services. Publishers place advertisers' ads, text links, or product links on their Web
sites or include them in e-mail campaigns and search listings in exchange for commissions on leads or
sales.

A publisher, also known as an affiliate or reseller, is an independent party that promotes products and
services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission on leads or sales. A publisher displays an
advertiser's ads, text links, or product links on their Web site, in e-mail campaigns, or in search listings.
The publisher is paid a commission by the respective advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action
such as filling out a form, subscribing to a service (both lead examples) or making a purchase (a sale).
(Commission Junction n.d.)

Affiliate Offerings

This refers to the products or services that the advertiser has set up to be sold by the publisher. The
publisher can then promote these offerings.

Mailing Lists

An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of
information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and
addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers,
but typically refers to four things — a list of email addresses, the people ("subscribers") receiving mail
at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a reflector, which is a
single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that
message to all of the subscribers. (Electronic mailing list - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia n.d.)

List Building
List building is the process of creating a list of email addresses, which is also referred to as a mailing
list.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this
program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are
administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. (AdSense -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia n.d.)

Chitika

Pronounced CHIH-tih-ka, is a search-targeted advertising network. The company serves over 2 billion
ads per month across thousands of websites. Chitika offers search-targeted advertising solutions. The ad
units can be used on websites alongside with Google AdSense or as an AdSense alternative. (Chitika -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia n.d.)

Bibliography

• AdSense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Adsense.

• Chitika - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitika.
• Commission Junction. Commission Junction - FAQ. http://www.cj.com/faq.html.
• Electronic mailing list - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_mailing_list.

Module 1 "Preparation" >> Lesson 4 "Being Prepared"

Being Prepared
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to walk you through how to prepare yourself for building your auto-
blogging empire. It will cover:

• Potential expenses that you may incur

• The importance of budgeting and what you will budget
• The “what” and “how” of tracking your expenses and time

A live example will also be covered in the video with some details of that example provided in this
document.

Expenses
Nobody likes to talk about having to spend money. When we think of having to do so, “expenses”
comes off like a dirty word. We’d rather sweep them under the rug instead of putting them on the table
to be dealt with.

The truth of the matter is, it TAKES MONEY to MAKE MONEY.

This is true of every business and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can ‘clean up’ our approach
to expenses.

So, just as with other businesses, auto-blogging does require some financial investment. However, in
context of the Blog Blueprint plan, your up-front investment is going to be minimal until your blog
proves profitable. The Blog Blueprint system uses a minimalist approach, resulting in little initial
content and backlink generation costs because it is handled automatically for you.

This approach results in LOWER COSTS for you because content and backlinks cost money. Having a
minimalist approach is a definite advantage over other marketing strategies, which require lots of initial
content and backlinks, resulting in HIGHER COSTS.

Potential Expenses
Though your initial costs will prove lower than what is incurred using other models, there are still some
expenses you need to be aware of.

The following is a list of those expenses:

• Hosting: the cost for hosting depends on the type of hosting platform or program you use. For
example, a shared hosting system can cost you about $10/month and will allow you up to about
20 auto-blogs.
• Domains: along with hosting, you will need to purchase domains. We are not going to be using
sub-domains, so you will want to make sure you only purchase domains. Our recommendation
is to use the popular .com, .net and .org extensions. The cost for domains is approximately
$10/domain.
• Content: in the Blog Blueprint system, you will need 3 to 4 unique and custom pieces of
content. If you outsource this task, you can expect to spend approximately $6 to $10 per
article. However, we will be showing you how to quickly write the initial content yourself and
with our system the rest of the content is automatic and FREE!
• Email Mailing List Software: this is something that we highly recommend. What this solution
does is manage your mailing lists for you. Implementing an email mailing list into your auto-
blogs can prove quite profitable. The cost for such software will be about $20 to $30 a month.
There are online solutions to this that work as well. NOTE: This is a “per month” cost, NOT a
“per blog” cost.
• Promotion & link building: once your blog becomes profitable you will want to increase
promotion. You may decide to use other paid tools to help you with that.

Now, it’s easy to understand if you are confused about how exactly each of these items play into your
building of your internet business.
Not To Worry! All of these will be explained in greater detail as we progress further in the training.

Budgeting
With all of these potential expenses, the importance of budgeting cannot be overstated. Budgeting is
crucial to your success. Having a monthly budget will help tremendously to ensure that you …

• Purchase ONLY what you need: without a budget, you may be tempted to follow in the
footsteps of those who purchase beyond what they need. For example, some people buy
domains that look good at the moment but they never go back to them. Another example is
having content created that never gets used. We really discourage these and other practices that
take you off focus AND off budget.
• Stay on focus: without a budget, you may fall victim to spending more money than necessary.
Your budget can help you stay focused so all of your activity, such as properly researching your
market, is done within budget, protecting you against frivolous spending.
• Run a profitable business: a budget is like a control mechanism positively affecting your
bottom line. Running your business without a budget, you run the risk of impacting your bottom
line in a very negative way. A well-planned and well-executed budget prevents that from
happening.

Tracking
As demonstrated, budgets are crucial to your success. However, a budget is only effective if it is
implemented. Many individuals have created well-meaning budgets but never followed them.

You NEED A BUDGET and YOU NEED TO FOLLOW IT!

Now, the easiest way to follow your budget is to plan and track. Tracking is crucial to ensuring you stay
…

• On budget
• On time

The What and How of Tracking

The first thought that comes to mind when thinking of tracking is blog performance. While the tracking
of specific metrics on the performance of your blog is important, that aspect of tracking will be covered
in a later module.

The aspect of tracking we are talking about right now deals with tracking the creation process of each
month’s batch of auto-blogs. This is very important as it will…

• Ensure you stay focused.

• Help you identify which blogs are the solid “money makers”.
Tracking need not be a difficult process. In fact, this can easily be done through the use of a simple
spreadsheet (e.g. Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, Google Docs). The spreadsheet is designed to help
keep you on track so you want to modify it to meet your specific needs.

For example, in the Blog Blueprint Challenge we are targeting 10 blogs per month but if your plan calls
for more, go ahead and make the necessary adjustments to your spreadsheet.

For the benefit of our training, we are using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. CLICK HERE to
download a copy of the spreadsheet.

The following image is an example of the spreadsheet we designed to help us track our monthly auto-
blog creation:

This spreadsheet is designed to walk you through the initial building phase of your auto-blog network.
Once you’ve determined the profitability of a blog, an additional worksheet will provide the ability for
long term tracking and maintenance of those blogs.

How to use this spreadsheet will be covered in greater detail in a later module but the following gives
you an idea of how you would go about using this initial phase spreadsheet:

• Core Focus: in this field you enter the core focus of your auto-blog network.
• Domain: this is the domain you are working with (e.g. toyboats.com).
• Research: have you found a domain? Have you researched the keywords for content for that
domain? If so, go ahead and check those off (enter an ‘X’ in the field).
• Setup: have you set up hosting for your domain? Have you set up your domain to point to your
hosting account? If so, go ahead and check those off.

Here is how the spreadsheet will look at this point:

Continuing on with the other categories (Content, Blog Creation, and so on), you will be able to simply
and efficiently track your monthly progress of building your auto-blog empire.

Now that we’ve reviewed the auto-blog tracking spreadsheet, there are a couple of action steps we
recommend you take:

• Step 1: Create a folder on your computer called “Blog Blueprint”. This will help you keep
everything organized as you proceed forward.
• Step 2: Create your tracking spreadsheet and save it in the folder you created in step 1.
Optionally, if you have Microsoft Excel, you can CLICK HERE to download a free copy of our
sample spreadsheet.

Be Patient
It’s been said before but to encourage you, we will say it again: be patient. We are almost there.
Implementation is just around the corner. But implementation without a solid foundation means
building a poorly supported business structure.

We don’t want that for you!

In the proceeding modules, we’ll start to dive into actually building your auto-blog network. As already
mentioned, we’ll go into greater detail on those points that are important to each step of the process.
Your challenge is soon to begin.

Brace for success!

Module 1 "Preparation" >> Lesson 5 "Getting Registered"
Getting Registered
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to provide you with a general overview of services required in building
your Auto-blog empire. It will cover:

• What services are necessary

• When you should register for the services
• Why you should register for these services

As you go along, action items will be presented and opportunity will be given to complete those action
items.

Register Now and Stay Organized

When building your auto-blog empire, you will discover that there are a number of services you will
want to take advantage of. You will need to create accounts at the services you choose to use. That
means a lot of URLs, usernames, passwords and other required pieces of information you will need to
manage.

You will also discover that these various services can have different target audiences in mind. Some
will be focused on both “New & Experienced” users while other services only want “Experienced” ones.

With this in mind, the following will cover the services you need to know about and take advantage of,
when to take advantage of them and why registering with them is of value to you in your auto-blog
empire-building.

Account Management Tools

A critical aspect of running your auto-blog empire is the ability to manage the many accounts you will
register at the various services. In this auto-blogging course we use a couple of tools that can help with
that management.

Account Management Spreadsheet: This spreadsheet is designed to help you keep organized and
provide a means for quick access to your important registered account information. An Excel version of
this spreadsheet can be downloaded at: http://www.blogblueprint.com/account tracking
Download the spreadsheet and store it in the Blog Blueprint folder you created in the previous lesson.

When you open the spreadsheet, you can see it contains five different worksheets:

• Email Accounts
• Affiliate Networks
• Hosting
• Domains
• Mailing Lists

Each worksheet is designed to help you record and organize account information specific to the service
the worksheet is named after. We’ll get into a little more detail on this later on in this lesson.

Roboform Browser Add-on: This recommended tool is a browser add-on that will securely keep all
your account access information on your computer and makes it extremely easy to access that
information. When you return to a site, Roboform recognizes the site and will bring up the
corresponding access information (e.g. username and password). It is all secured behind a password
that, once entered, enables Roboform to automatically fill in the access information for you.

Roboform can be accessed from http://www.blogblueprint.com/roboform. It is a paid product but a free

trial version is available for you to experiment with.

• Download the Account Management spreadsheet to your Blog Blueprint folder

(http://www.blogblueprint.com/accounttracking)
• Optionally, download and install the free trial version of Roboform
(http://www.blogblueprint.com/roboform)
Services
There are five initial categories of services that are important to building your auto-blog empire. In this
section we will give an individual overview of each service. This is intended to give you a basic
understanding of each service in order to get you up and running with building your auto-blog empire.
You will gain greater understanding of all of these services as you continue in the auto-blog training.

Email Accounts

Many of the services desired to help with building your auto-blog network have been victims of
spamming by spammers who create junk blogs then use throw-away email addresses from free email
providers like Hotmail and Gmail to spam those services. How the services protect themselves is to use
a filtering system that filters out email addresses from such email providers.

As a result, each auto-blog you create will have its own personalized email address such as
[email protected]. This will help distinguish you from spammers, enabling you to
successfully register and use those desired services rather than being filtered out.

While using this technique gets you around the spamming problem, another problem is created.
Following our auto-blogging steps, after a year of using individual domains for email addresses, you
will end up with 120 email accounts. As you can well imagine, this will be a major pain to manage.

Our recommendation is to create a central account that all other email accounts forward to. This is an
account that is not seen by anyone but you. For example, you can use one of the free providers. Our
recommendation is to use Gmail. The advantages of using Gmail are:

• It can be accessed from anywhere you can access the internet

• It has a built-in, powerful spam filter
• You can easily auto-filter and sort
• It is FREE!

Now remember, this email account will NOT be seen by anyone else but you, so when you sign up for a
service, you are not using your Gmail account (which will probably result in rejection) to create your
account with that service.

How you employ the use of email accounts in building your auto-blogging network is that each time you
create a new blog, you will create two email addresses. One will be used for “account creation”
(registering with the service) and the other will be used as a “contact forms” email. The “account
creation” email will not forward to Gmail but the “contact forms” email will.

As you continue on in the Auto-blogging course, the meaning and use of these things will become
clearer.
 • Create a new email account (recommend Gmail) that will be used as your central email account
for managing your auto-blogging empire emails.
• Record your new email account information in the Account Management spreadsheet by going
to the ‘Email Accounts’ worksheet and entering the corresponding information in the “Primary
Email Address” fields.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate programs are going to play a major role in your revenue generating and as a result you are
going to need to register with a few affiliate networks to get started. By doing so, you will discover how
easy it is to find lots of different products and services you can offer on your blog.

This differs from finding products and then determining whether or not they have an affiliate program
through which you can promote that product. Affiliate networks have thousands and thousands of
products to choose from and every niche is covered.

Though affiliate networks offer such ease in finding products and services to promote, it is important to
understand that not all affiliate networks are the same. In general terms, these networks can fall under
one of two categories:

• Newbie Friendly
• Not Newbie Friendly

By “newbie” we simply mean an individual who is new to affiliate marketing.

The issue of “newbie friendliness” is important to be aware of. Many networks only want experienced
marketers and as a result will require …

• A personal reference
• An application process
• Proof you are experienced

As you can see, this makes breaking into the affiliate marketing world a very challenging one.

Another issue facing individuals new to affiliate marketing is the misunderstanding that it is necessary to
register with all these networks now. Until you have established yourself and have a reason to expand
into other networks, you do not need to register with all of them. With our auto-blogging system, this
will not be required.

In fact, the focus of this training is to get you started ASAP and that means our training will only focus
on those affiliate networks that are “Newbie Friendly”. If you are not a “newbie”, feel free to use other
networks but for the purpose of this course we will be focusing only on the following affiliate networks:
 • Amazon
• eBay
• Clickbank
• Commission Junction

• Register for accounts at the recommended affiliate networks:

o http://www.blogblueprint.com/amazon (Amazon)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/ebay (eBay)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/clickbank (ClickBank)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/cj (Commission Junction)
• Record your affiliate networks information in the Account Management spreadsheet by going to
the ‘Affiliate Networks’ worksheet and entering the corresponding information in each of the
fields.

Note: Another service you will be applying for is Google AdSense. We will not be using Google
AdSense on any of the blogs until 4 weeks after they are created and we will cover this service in a later
training module.

Hosting:

With auto-blogging, you will need to invest in hosting accounts to “host” the many blogs you are going
to create. In this section will talk about the hosting options that you will specifically need to
successfully build your auto-blogging empire. As you build your empire, the reasons for the
requirements will be very clear to you.

Now remember, our goal is to get you up and running ASAP. Therefore, as long as you follow our
steps, those details that at first may seem quite confusing will become clearer to you.

For starting your auto-blogging empire, you will want a host that …

• Is Linux-based with cPanel management software installed

• Allows for WordPress installations
• Allows for XMLRPC communications with your blogs
• Has lots of hosting space and bandwidth
• Allows for multiple domains
• Allows for multiple email addresses
• Provides good, fast customer support

There are several other considerations as well. For example, the different kind of hosting plans you can
get are …

• Shared
 • Reseller
• VPS (Cloud)
• Dedicated

Each option has its own pros and cons, so explore these to see which best fits your specific
requirements. For example:

• Shared hosting is great for those just starting out in Auto-blog Networks … and even for those
that have been around for awhile
• Shared hosting uses a main, dedicated server shared with others, thus reducing the price
• Shared hosting can cause a problem. For example, if someone on that server gets into trouble
with Google, you could be at risk because the IP address used comes from the same server as the
problem user. This does not happen very often and is not likely to be an issue but you do want to
be aware of it. Of course, this is why you want to select a hosting service with excellent, quick
customer support. That way if a problem does occur, you can resolve it quickly.

You will host 10 to 20 auto-blogs per shared account so you want to make certain your hosting service
allows for this.

The reasons for having only 10 to 20 auto-blogs per shared account are …

• To protect your network and your work: It is possible for both search engines and people to
reverse engineer every part of your network by using your website’s IP address. By hosting on
different hosts and IPs (e.g. using a single host that enables multiple IP addresses), you are able
to separate and protect your network.
• Shared servers are limited: Since our auto-blogging system can be resource intensive, it’s
possible to exceed your account limits by amount of storage space, bandwidth usage, etc.
Restricting your hosting approach to 10 to 20 blogs over multiple hosts and IPs, you prevent this
from happening.

As you can see, the preferred method of hosting for a “newbie” is shared hosting. Why not use the
others when starting out?

• Reason #1 – Money. VPS, Reseller and Dedicated hosting can be very expensive. For example,
a dedicated server can cost from $300 to $500 a month.
• Reason #2 – Complicated. These types of accounts require much more management and are
considered overkill for someone that is just starting out.

The bottom line in all of this is to Upgrade As You Go!

Shared accounts cost only about $7 to $10 a month and are the easiest option for getting started. Returns
on your auto-blogging will easily pay for that. After a couple of months of growth you can than
consider investing in other options, such as multi-IP shared hosting, VPS (sometimes called ‘Cloud’)
hosting and dedicated hosting.

What you need to remember is …

 • Do not try to penny pinch on hosting
• Do not get more than what you need when starting out … you want to spend as little as necessary
but do not skip quality
• It is good to know how each specific hosting option works but that is not what this course is all
about. The fact is that the best experience is hands-on … so follow our advice, start small with a
basic shared account, do NOT over-analyze this and then work your way up as needed.

• Register for a shared hosting account at one of the recommended hosting networks.
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/bluehost (Bluehost)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/hostmonster (Host Monster)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/lunarpages (Lunar Pages)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/hostgator (Host Gator)
• Record your hosting information in the Account Management spreadsheet by going to the
‘Hosting’ worksheet and entering the corresponding information in each of the fields.

Domains:

Domains play a major role in how well your auto-blogs rank in the search engines. In this course we
will focus on purchasing new domains for your auto-blogs that focus very tight on specific keyword
phrases.

In the coming modules you will be researching to get keywords for domains and content. At that time
we will dive deeper into specific domain strategies such as …

• How to pick the best domains

• Why we are focusing on new domains
• What are aged domains
• Other important factors to be mentioned later (e.g. why do we only use specific domain
extensions)

For this lesson, all that is needed is for you to understand that you will be purchasing lots of domains to
create your network and as a result will need an account at a solid domain registrar.

• Register with at least one of the recommended domain registrar networks.

o http://www.blogblueprint.com/godaddy (GoDaddy)
o http://www.blogblueprint.com/namecheap (Name Cheap)
 • Record your domain information in the Account Management spreadsheet by going to the
‘Domains’ worksheet and entering the corresponding information in each of the fields.

Mailing Lists:

Part of the overall strategy of the Blog Blueprint will be to teach you how to make as much money as
possible. Part of how that is accomplished is by implementing some sort of email list building strategy
into your network.

In order to properly manage your email list, you are going to need to invest in a third party email list
management system.

There are two options for email management software: free and paid. Right away we will tell you …
DO NOT BOTHER WITH FREE!

If you are going to take email marketing seriously, you are not going to want to waste your time having
to manage your own system. If you use a free system, that is exactly what is going to happen. Things
like email delivery rates, etc. are going to take up a lot of your time being managed.

So, best option – LEAVE IT TO THE PROS!!

They will make sure your emails get through. As well, they will protect you from any possible legal
issues that may arise.

When deciding on a paid service, some of the things you look for are …

• An established service
• Multiple pricing options based on list size. When starting out new, you will have a very small
list and so you don’t want to be paying more than a few dollars. This can range from about $12
to $20 a month when starting out. As the list grows, it will go up a little bit, e.g. some accounts
with up to 3000 leads will cost about $25 a month.

NOTE: If you have 3000 leads, you’ll be making much more than $25 a month … JUST
FROM THE EMAIL LIST … so it proves to be very profitable.

• Multiple lists per account, e.g. when you create your account, you can have an unlimited amount
of mailing lists within that one account.
• Inclusion of auto-responders so you can send automated responses to everyone on your list.
• Fast customer support. This is very important because if your mailing list should malfunction for
whatever reason, you want to be able to quickly get the problem resolved.

• Register at one of the recommended mailing list management networks

 o http://blogblueprint.com/aweber (Aweber)
o http://blogblueprint.com/icontact (iContact)
o http://blogblueprint.com/constantcontact (Constant Contact)
• Record your mailing list information in the Account Management spreadsheet by going to the
‘Mailing Lists’ worksheet and entering the corresponding information in each of the fields

Summary
In this lesson we reviewed the services you should register for and had you register for each of them so
you can be ready to go once you start building your auto-blog empire.

The information in this lesson about the services was just an overview – all that has been presented here
will become clearer and clearer as you continue further into the auto-blogging course.

Module 2 "Research" >> Lesson 6 "Core Focus Research"

Core Focus Research

Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to teach you how to go about doing your “Core Focus” research. By the
end of this lesson, you should have an understanding of …

• How to find your “Core Focus”

• Why start with a proven product or service first
• How to find a “theme” core focus (Method 1)
• How to find a “specific product” core focus (Method 2)

What Are You Trying to Accomplish?

When starting out building your auto-blog network, one of the first things you need to do is identify
your core focus. In this module, your goal will be to identify a product or a theme of products that you
will potentially focus your initial auto-blog network around.

NOTE: This is a top-level check to find potential products so you do NOT want to be doing in-depth
keyword research at this point.

By the end of this lesson you will have identified a list of potential core focus items. You will then use
this list in the next lesson to dig deeper in order to reveal which ones are best to move forward with,
along with a list of keywords and domains, to start building your entire network.

REMEMBER – we are NOT focusing on one blog at a time but a whole network of blogs. This is very
important to remember as it’s a critical aspect of our Blog Blueprint strategy. You want to identify right
away what the core focus of your entire network is and therefore shouldn't waste time researching
individual products for a single blog only to find out it doesn’t work.

How to Find Your Core Focus

There are a variety of methods that can be used for determining your core focus. In this lesson we will
be focusing on “Affiliate Products”.

In the previous lesson we mentioned four affiliate networks we would use in our training:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Clickbank
• Commission Junction

In this lesson, the focus will be on Amazon and Clickbank. The reason for this is because they are very
easy to get started with and offer excellent resources for determining profit potential.

We will not be using eBay because it is good for monetizing individual blog posts on each blog but is
not good for a core focus because eBay operates primarily with auctions in mind and since auctions end
this would not make for a good core focus.

We will also not be using Commission Junction (also referred to as CJ). CJ tends to be a little more
complex and some providers will need pre-approval. If you already have experience with CJ, then feel
free to use it. Our focus on CJ will come in a later section where we discuss the use of our powerful
content plugin.

As mentioned, there are a variety of methods on how to find your core focus. In this lesson we will use
two recommended methods. You are free to choose whichever suits you best or you can use a
combination of both. The methods we'll focus on are:

• Method 1 – a “theme” core focus using Amazon

• Method 2 – a “specific product” core focus using Clickbank

Note: If you are going to be focusing on a product or service that you currently own, then you will still
want to go through this lesson as you will be wanting to incorporate affiliate offerings into you auto-
blogs.

Starting With Proof

Before we demonstrate these two methods, let’s answer the question of why you want to start with a
proven product or service versus another strategy such as starting with a domain.
The Blog Blueprint focuses on finding the product or service first and then matching it up with the
audience. This allows us to ensure the niche we are getting into is something that already has …

• Proven products for sale

• A large active buying audience

Using this Blog Blueprint strategy you only have to find out which audience is least marketed to and that
will be where your opportunity lies.

Method 1 – Using Amazon

Using this method, we will:

1. Identify a potential category for a potential theme. Amazon has categories, sub-categories and,
in some markets, even sub-sub-categories. In the video, a live example takes you through how to
investigate these categories for a potential theme.
2. List all the sub-categories followed by checking each one individually to ensure they have
products that are on page one of the “Best Sellers” for that category and …
o are selling for at least $100
o have at least 10 reviews
o have a 4+ star rating
o are in stock (so you can buy new)
3. Take the list of sub-categories and tweak them to ensure they represent the niche as good as
possible.

A category may be worded in such a way that it won’t provide good keyword research results so
you are going to want to massage those words a little because sub-categories are the top-level
keywords we are going to begin our research on.

4. Use the Google Keyword Tool to check traffic of the market to ensure there are a minimum of
100 [exact] match terms with at least 1000+ local monthly searches with a CPC of at least 50
cents.

[exact] is one of three matching methods. The other two are [exact broad] and [phrase]. [exact ]
will use your term exactly as it is laid out – the exact words and in the order they are written, e.g.
“keyword phrase A” will only produce matches that have exactly that. Potential matches like
“keyword A”, “phrase A”, “Keyword phrase”, etc. will not be considered a match. By using
[exact] you get the most realistic number of traffic for that term.

CPC (cost per click) of at least 50 cents represents two things:

o It shows there are active advertisers in that market
o If you decide to monetize your blogs with AdSense, you know AdSense will return a bit
of CPC to you because you will get about 40% of whatever they charge CPC. Though a
little more complex, this is all you’ll need to know for the moment.

For a live demonstration of this, watch the above video and begin at timestamp 5:57.
Method 2 – Using ClickBank
Using this method we will:

1. Identify a category of products

2. Check that the “Initial $/Sale” is at least $20 and the “Gravity” is 50 or more
o “Initial $/Sale” is at least $20 means that you can expect to earn $20 a sale, taking into
account refunds or any ClickBank charges
o "Gravity" is another ClickBank calculation that works out to be approximately how
many affiliates are promoting the product, how well the product is doing, and a few other
factors. The value of 50 is good for auto-blog networks as opposed to paid advertising
such as PPC, which generally you’d want to have a minimum value of 100.
3. Check for affiliate support, meaning that the product has affiliate support such as banners, etc.
4. Look at the sales page and ensure it looks good (clean, professional, etc.).
5. Use the Google Keyword Tool to reverse lookup the URL to find related keywords and check
that there are at least 100 [exact] match keywords with a minimum of 1000+ local monthly
searches as well as a CPC of at least 50 cents.

For a live demonstration of this, watch the above video and begin at timestamp 1:28.

• If using Method 1: “Amazon” – Create a list of as many theme-related Amazon product sub-
categories that match your criteria. Try to have a finished list of 10 or more (8 would be fine but
10 or more works best in case any of the sub-categories don’t produce results). In the next
lesson we will identify the products that you will start your auto-blog empire with and the
domains and keywords you will use. Also, we’ll be creating a network map so you’ll be able to
understand exactly what your network is going to look like.
• If using Method 2: “ClickBank” – Create a list of 5 ClickBank products that match your
criteria. In the next module we will identify the one product that you will focus your initial auto-
blog network on and the domains and keywords you will use.

Summary
In this training module we have demonstrated the steps for finding your auto-blog network’s core focus.
You’ve learned why it’s best to start with a proven product or service first and the two methods for
finding a core focus.

Module 2 "Research" >> Lesson 7 "Keywords"

Keywords
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to learn how to find the keywords for domains and content that will be used
for creating your auto-blog network. You will learn to…

• Expand keywords
• Use Keyword Corral PRO to do further research on selected keywords
• Determine potential domains for selected keywords
• Determine good domains based on researched value of keywords
• Determine good keywords to use for blog content

The lesson includes action items and specific live examples that will reinforce the training in the use of
keywords to build your auto-blog network.

The videos for this lesson are broken into two parts:

Video 7a:
Video 7b:
Keyword Corral PRO:
As mentioned above, you will be using the Keyword Corral PRO tool (the paid version of Keyword
Corral that you get access to) in order to perform your keyword research. Keyword Corral PRO is a
powerful tool that allows you to quickly analyze and filter keywords based on different criteria.

If you are not currently using another keyword tool then of course it is recommended that you start with
Keyword Corral PRO. Now, this module does NOT go into great detail of how to use Keyword Corral
PRO but …

• It does show how to use it for the required tasks of this training module.
• Support is provided for this tool should you have need of it.
• It’s FREE!

You will need to have Keyword Corral PRO installed on your computer and registered using the email
address you used to sign up for your Blog Blueprint membership. You can Click Here to download
Keyword Corral PRO.

Other Keyword Tools:

There are keyword tools other than Keyword Corral PRO that you can use. If you happen to be using
one of them already, feel free to continue using it. The important point is being able to complete the
required tasks of this lesson, not which tool you use to complete that task.
 If you wish to use other keyword tools, two paid
tools that are highly recommended are:

• Market Samurai
• Micro Niche Finder

As these are third party tools, we do not provide

support for these but they are very effective tools
to use and provide similar data to Keyword
Corral.

NOTE: As indicated earlier, Keyword Corral is

the tool of choice and will be referenced
throughout this training. If you are using another
tool, simply exchange that reference for your tool
of choice but recognize some points (e.g. field
references within Keyword Corral) may not be
applicable.

General Flow:
Below is a flow diagram that shows the general flow of how you go about finding, researching and
implementing keywords in the development of your auto-blog network. You may want to print a copy
of it to use as a visual marker while you progress through the training.

As we do progress through the training, each segment of the flow diagram will be explained in further
detail. As well, a live example of how this works is given in the video, so be sure to view the video for
that.

Module Goal:
The goal of this lesson is to take the product list you created in the previous lesson and try to find
available domains and keywords, the purpose being to be able to market your product with those
domains and keywords. Your goal is to get as many domains as you need for your monthly plan.

In this lesson you may discover that you won’t need to go through the whole list to build a satisfactory
network. If the first product has enough domains and keywords, you can create your network all on that
product as your core focus.

Now don’t worry that you somehow wasted your time researching for those other items on your list.
Even though you may only use the first or a few of the items on your list to go forward, the list can still
serve as a reference for when you want to expand or build a whole other batch of domains and blogs.
As well, you can create more than one network. For example, if your plan is to have 10 blogs per
month, you may use 5 blogs for one core focus and the remaining 5 blogs for a separate core focus. This
is as variable as you care to make it. Remember, it’s YOUR business – build it how YOU want it! Keep
in mind though - since you're just starting out, it may be best to focus on just one or two.

Step 1 – Expand Keywords:

Looking at the flow diagram, you can see the first step is to expand your keywords. For example, if you
were looking at coffee makers, you will want to give thought to how you can expand your keywords for
that product. This is done by …

• Keeping phrases to 2 and 3 words. The intent is to keep it high level, so a list of phrases that are
only 2 and 3 words (preferably 2) is a good beginning.
• Thinking about who would be interested. Think outside the box. For example, if your product is
coffee makers, consider people other than those who are looking for coffee makers, such as those
looking for different types of coffee, or those looking for espresso machines, or perhaps those
looking for coffee beans.
• Checking Amazon books, product types, Google insights (breakout terms), synonyms (machine,
maker, equipment), Google wheel. These are just some of the many ways you can check on
expanding your keywords so feel free to use whatever ways work best for you.

• Create a list of 10 different keywords. Create a list of at least 10 different keywords all related
to your core focus. For example, create a list of at least 10 different keywords for people who
are looking for items related to the item you’re selling. A live example of how this is done can be
followed along with in Video 7a, beginning at 4:41.

Step 2 – Keyword Corral PRO:

Once you’ve determined your list of keywords, the next thing you want to do is to get domains that you
can use for your network. First you need to research the availability of domains. This is done by …

• Entering one variation at a time in Keyword Corral. Your variations come from the list you
made in the previous step.
• Filtering keywords with the following settings:
o Cost per click (CPC) of at least 50 cents. The reason for this is you want to ensure the
keywords you’re keeping are ones that people are paying advertising on. This will show
that it’s a buyers’ market and that people are making money in that market (implied by
the fact they spend money on advertising).
o Local search of at least 1000. Any less than this and you’re likely to struggle getting
traffic to your site.
 o Keyword phrase of at least 3 words. Using a keyword that is a little more long-tailed will
allow us to be more niche-specific.

As you proceed with this step, you may find that you’ll adjust these settings to narrow the results.

• Check for available domains - Using your list with the above settings, perform a check for
available domains via your keyword tool Keyword Corral PRO. You can follow along with the
live example in video 7a, which begins at 8:34.

NOTE: Keyword Corral PRO will only check to see if .com, .net and .org domain extensions are
available. The reasons for this are Google appears to give less authority to domain extensions such as
“.info” or “.biz” and people tend to give perceived value to a website that has a .com, .net or .org over
the other extensions.

This of course does not include country specific domain extensions. If you are specifically targeting a
market in one specific country then you may want to check if the primary extension for that country is
also available. For example in Canada it is “.ca” and in the UK it is “.co.uk”.

Step 3 – Potential Domains:

In this step you will process the list of domains created in the previous step to determine if they can be
used for building your network. Those domains you are processing are referred to as ‘potential’
domains. To change the status of a domain from ‘potential’ to useful, it must meet certain criteria based
on the values of saturation and competition.

The steps you follow from here depend on the answer of whether a potential domain is useful or not. If
the answer is ...

• Yes: you need to check saturation for keywords with domains and then check the competition for
each keyword that has a saturation of less than 100.
• No: since there are no potential domains, what you want to do is select from 5 to 10 keywords
that do not have available domains. You will use 3-word keyword phrases that, although they
have no domains yet, still look like they would be good domains to market to your niche. This
would mean they have medium traffic and are low in competition. Repeat step 2 to determine
the availability of domains for those keywords. Once done ...
o Check the competition.
o If competition is low (below 5000 is good, below 1000 is best), then check if domain
variation is available. Using redusedcars.com as an example, domain variation could
mean:
§ Rearranging the words, e.g. redcarsused.com or redusedcars.com.
§ Adding a word or a single dash, e.g. buyusedredcars.com or red-used-cars.com.
 § Removing a word, such as stop words like ‘the’, ‘and’, or ‘or’. Stop words are
words that Google doesn’t really pay attention to and therefore can be removed.

The idea here is that we’re going to check to see if domains are available as well as check to see if the
original domain is even ranking. Often people buy domains but never use them, so you want to take
advantage of this. Just because they’ve bought domains doesn’t mean we can’t compete with them
using a variation of the domain. Determine the one with the lowest competition and go for it!

Saturation and True Competition:

As mentioned, for a desired domain to go from a status of ‘potential’ to ‘useful’, you need to check the
saturation and competition values. The following explain these terms in a little more detail:

• Saturation is an indicator of how much article marketing has been done for the keywords of the
potential domain. This value is determined by searching ezinearticles.com, currently the top
article directory on the web, for articles that have titles containing keywords you are searching
on. The result will give you an estimation of how aggressively other people are marketing for
your particular niche. Your target value is less than 100 as this indicates there is still room for
you to compete in that market.
• True Competition uses filtering to determine better results. Google provides you the use of
filtering commands allintitle, allinanchor and allinurl which, when used, will only return results
where …
o allintitle – keywords are found in the title of the page
o allinanchor – keywords are found in links to the page
o allinurl – keywords are found in the URL of the page

Once again, the lower the number the better it is. Under a thousand is great, 5000 to 1000 is pretty
good, 10000 to 5000 means it’s getting pretty aggressive in that market and anything above 10000 is
very aggressive. Now when we say ‘aggressive’ we are talking purely from the perspective of a brand
new site. If you have an established site, the numbers can be varied but for the purpose of this training
module, you want to follow these numbers.

Recommendation: When checking for saturation, don’t check “All Saturation” and “All Competition”.
The reason for this is because it can take a lot of time for the software to query Google. Starting at the
lower numbers, methodically work your way through until you get results you can work with. For
example, start with saturation values “< 10” and check the competition for those. If unsatisfactory
results, move to saturation values of “10 to 30” and so on until you find results you can work with.

One major advantage to this methodical method is that you don’t get yourself into trouble with Google.
If you overwhelm Google with queries (e.g. All Saturation, All Competition), Google may put a
temporary block on your IP for being able to search on Google, which will then cause the software to
stop working.
 • Check viability of domains - Now that you’ve found potential domains, you want to determine
the viability of them for use in your network’s particular niche. This means checking the
saturation and competition values that each of your selected domains have and determining from
there whether or not they are good for marketing. You can follow along with the live example in
video 7b, which begins at 4:18.

Step 4 – Good Domains:

Now we’re at the point of acknowledging whether or not we have good domains. As with the previous
step, it’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, so depending on the answer we …

• Yes: Get domain(s) and then find two other keywords to use for content (including promotion
content) on your blog. For this you want to try looking for 4 word phrases with decent traffic
(400 local searches or more). The advantage of these slightly longer phrases is the competition
will be less and it will be easier to rank. Of course, 3 word phrases are still applicable and can
have great results as well.
• No: If you don’t have any domains yet that meet the criteria to this point, return to step 2, enter a
new keyword variation in Keyword Corral and then repeat the process over again.

Going through this step, you will:

• Select those words that have 400 to 1000 local searches or more.
• Get saturation (less than 50 is a good value).
• Start with the lowest saturation and work your way up on getting competition results.

Do these steps until you find results that have the lowest saturation and competition figures and also
relate directly to your blog. At completion you will have your domain and two keywords.

• Find keywords to use for content - Now that you’ve determined the good domains, you now
want to find keywords you can use for content on your blog. You can follow along with the live
example in video 7b, which begins at 11:15.
• Record your information - Remember the Blog Blueprint spreadsheet you downloaded in
lesson 4? Use that spreadsheet to record your domains and keywords that you are now going to
use to create your auto-blog network.

Summary
In this lesson you’ve learned how to …

• Expand keywords
 • Use Keyword Corral to do further research on selected keywords
• Determine potential domains for selected keywords
• Determine good domains based on researched value of keywords
• Determine good keywords to use for your blog content

The action items you followed can be summarized as:

• Finding a domain and two other keyword phrases for an auto-blog

• Repeating the process until you have enough domains and keywords to meet your monthly plan
of auto-blogs. If you are following the $56,700 Blog Blueprint plan, that would be enough for
10 blogs.
• Recording your information in the Blog Blueprint spreadsheet.

Important: The numbers and data shown in this example are not set in stone. You WILL need to try
and think for yourself. If during the process results don’t come back exactly as outlined in the training,
don’t feel you should just move on.

Instead, think outside the box – if no keywords are available, try variations such as adding words. Think
of how you can market to this niche, the idea being to find where it’s not already being aggressively
marketed to and then target that.

Conclusion
If you haven’t done so, go ahead and complete the action items listed in the above summary. If you are
new to this process, just take your time and follow each step slowly and carefully. It WILL get easier –
that’s guaranteed!

Module 3 "Set Up" >> Lesson 8 "Domains, Hosting and Email"

Domains, Hosting and Email

Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to learn how to configure your domains, hosting account and email
accounts for blogs in your auto-blog network. Along with live examples from the video, this document
will cover …

• Setting up your domain and having it point to your hosting account

• Creating a main contact email account for your blog
• Forwarding your main contact email to a central email management account
• Creating a filter in your central email management account to organize your forwarded email

The creation and setup of the blog that will be associated with this domain and email account will be
covered later in the training.
 Domain & Hosting:
In the previous lesson you determined those domains that you wanted to work with in building your
auto-blog network. We recommend that you go through the ‘Domain & Hosting’ section with one
domain at a time to gain familiarity with the process.

The steps to follow at this stage in building your auto-blog network are:

1. Purchase the domains that you selected in the previous lesson. Though we recommend going
through this section with one domain at a time, you will want to purchase all of them at once.
2. Set the name-server of the domain. When you signed up for hosting, your host should have
provided you, via email, with a name-server, e.g. NS1.NAMESERVER.COM &
NS2.NAMESERVER.COM. You will use the offered name-server to set the name-server your
domain will use to point to your host.
3. Create an account with your host. If you’re not just starting out, you will already know about
setting up accounts with your host. However, if you’re new to this, it’s recommended you use a
shared basic account. Whether you’re new to this or not, if you’re using a shared basic account,
then you may have to set up an add-on domain.
o Creating an account: When you signed up with a host, you created a hosting account.
Within that account, you set up separate accounts (kind of like sub-accounts) for each
domain.
o Add-on domain: When you registered for your shared hosting account, you were likely
given a root domain, e.g. redracecars.com. Add-on domains are basically sub-directories
within that root domain. Each add-on domain will then point to the corresponding sub-
directory. This will appear seamlessly to end users who likely won’t even realize they
are in a sub-directory.

Each of these steps will be covered in detail during the live example so if you are confused by any of
these points, the live example should clear up that confusion for you.

NOTE: It usually only takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour for your domain to resolve to
your server. However, we recommend you allow 24 hours before determining it necessary to do any
troubleshooting.

• Step 1: Purchase your domains and update the name-server to point to your hosting account.
• Step 2: Add the accounts to your host.
• Step 3: Update the Blog Blueprint spreadsheet with the necessary information.
(http://www.blogblueprint.com/blogblueprintxls)

The video provides a live example of steps 1 and 2. To view this example, start at 2:48.
NOTE: The example used in the video may not look the same as what you see within your hosting
control panel. However, if you followed the advice given in lesson 5 of which services are
recommended for signing up with, all of the functionality will be available so if you don’t see it as in the
video example, you simply need to look around within your control panel to find it.

Email Accounts:
For each blog in your network, you will be creating two initial email accounts. One account will be
used for main contact information and the other will be a throw-away account that will be used for
creating accounts at third party services when you start promoting your blog.

In this lesson we will only focus on creating the email address that will be used as the main contact
email for the blog. This is vital to helping you communicate properly with anyone trying to contact
you. To expand on this thought, this is an important email address to have from a “due diligence” point
of view because …

• If anything is wrong with your blog, especially matters that enter the legal realm such as
copyright issues, etc., you want to provide a means for someone to contact you regarding the
issue(s).
• You want to make sure you have an open access channel to communicate with people about your
blog, even reasons not related to legal or error issues.

The second email account is important as well but because it serves a different purpose, you want it to
be separate from your main contact email account. As mentioned, this second account will be used in
context of promoting your blog. It will be used to sign up for useful third party services you will utilize
for promotion. As a result, you will receive a lot of emails, some wanted from the services and a lot of
unwanted from various other sources. This is why it’s important to keep it separated from the main
contact account.

Creating Your Main Account:

In a lesson 5 it was recommended that you create a central email management account which you can
forward emails to (we recommended Gmail for this). Now you will create the main contact email
account and forward it to that central management account.

In order to create and forward your main contact email account, you …

• Log into your hosting account and click on the icon called “Forwarders”.
• Click on “Add Forwarder” and create an account called ‘[email protected]’ (‘contact’ is
just an example; you can use any address you like). You then forward this to your central email
management account.
• Log into your central email management account and create a filter to organize emails that come
from that address you just created. In Gmail, this means applying a label to the
incoming/forwarded email, which is similar to other email services simply put it in a
folder/directory.
REMEMBER – this contact email account is to ensure that you get all blog-specific communications,
making it extremely important. It will enable you to be reached if any issues with your blog need
addressing, resulting in you being able to communicate properly with visitors to your blog.

• Step 1: Create a domain-specific email account on your host and forward it to your central email
management account.
• Step 2: Create a “Filter” to organize your emails in your central email management account.

You can perform these action items while following along with the live example in the video starting at
7:13.

Summary:
In this lesson you have learned to …

• Set up your domain and have it point to your hosting account

• Create a main contact email account for your blog
• Forward your main contact email to a central email management account
• Create a filter in your central email management account to organize your forwarded email

Module 3 "Set Up" >> Lesson 9 "Initial Content"

Initial Content
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to talk about initial content as it pertains to setting up your blog. Along
with live examples from the video, this lesson will cover …

• The two types of content you will create (Blog, Promotional)

• Understanding the demographics of your audience
• Outlining the content and creating your meta info
• Writing your content

Types of Content:
There are two types of content that you need to consider when initially setting up your blog. They are
Blog and Promotional. The following helps to explain what each one is and how they apply to creating
and using your blog.
Type 1: Blog

This content is the main content that will appear on your auto-blog. It is highly recommended that you
make your initial content 100% unique and focused on promoting the product which you initially
selected and for which your blog is being created. This is considered the best strategy because having
product-focused, 100% unique content has proven results.

When you create your initial content for your blog, be sure to create 3 separate articles. The one article
will appear on your index page and the remaining 2 articles will appear as posts on your blog. This
lesson will cover some of the detail of this but more will be explained in another lesson where you will
add your initial content to your blog. The reason for having posts instead of pages is because posts, once
published to your blog, will automatically go into your RSS feed. This will also occur for blogs that are
just being newly promoted.

At this point, it is important to understand that when you create your content, for each article you want
to make sure …

• It contains at least 400 words.

• It has 2% to 5% keyword density (for search engine friendliness).
• It has paragraphs with no more than 4 sentences each (for human reader friendliness).

These are critical points for success that have been proven in the market. Keyword density either
impresses the search engine or turns it off, so you want to play by the rules there. Having no more than
4 sentences in a paragraph has been proven to get readers to read most of your content and most likely to
follow through then if you had all your information heavily packed into larger paragraphs.

IMPORTANT – Your Index Page:

As mentioned, one of the 3 articles you create is going to appear on your index page. As a result, you
will find that you need to view it a little differently than your other two posts. This is necessary because
…

• This article is the first thing visitors to your blog will see.
• This article will link to the other two posts that you create from within the content, so it will need
to have the primary keywords of the other content in them.

Again, you want to give special attention to these points. First, a good portion of traffic to your site is
likely to land on your index page, so the rule of “good first impression” applies. This is where you can
welcome the reader to your blog, talk a little bit about the blog and speak to “why” the reader is there,
e.g. you’ve been searching hard for this product, you’re tired of losing energy all the time, etc.

Second, your index page is important for “impressing” first time visitors to your blog but you also want
to link them to the posts where they can learn more about the product you’re trying to promote. Using
keywords from those posts not only helps from a search engine optimization perspective, but it also
helps your readers readily understand what they will come across should they click on the link.
Type 2: Promotional

This second type of content is a single article that you will use for the initial promoting of your blog.
You want to do a little bit of initial promoting because you want to be able to get some natural activity
occurring around how Google discovers your blog. A good time frame for doing this promoting is about
a week after your blog was first established.

When writing this article, keep in mind that its intent is to promote your blog, not the product the blog is
promoting. Obviously it’s okay to mention your product but stay the course of your primary goal -
mention the product then invite the reader to visit your blog for more information.

Now, similar to the blog content, you want this promotional content to …

• Contain at least 400 words

• Have 2% to 5% keyword density
• Have paragraphs with no more than 4 sentences each

Differing from the blog content, you want your promotional content to …

• Contain a resource box that links to your blog

The resource box is a requirement. It serves as an action point to your advertising of your blog. It
typically is the last paragraph of your promotional article and may even be highlighted somehow, e.g. in
a box. Very important to the resource box is the inclusion of a link to your blog.

Demographics of Audience:
Before you start writing your articles, it is important to understand the demographics of the audience for
which you are writing. For example, understanding the age and gender of your audience will help you
cater your writing to that specific demographic, talking to them in a language they are familiar with and
addressing the issues they have. Needless to say, this will result in better written articles.

Two ways you can go about determining your demographic and a better way of reaching that
demographic are:

• Enter your top level keyword into Google, then take the top results and enter them into
Quantcast.com (a metrics provider for advertisers, etc.)
• Go to forums and find out the issues people want addressed and the language they are using

To understand this in greater detail, view the live example starting at 4:37 of the video.

Outlining Your Content:

A critical step in developing your auto-blog is the writing of good content. There are a number of ideas
about how to go about writing good content but our recommendations are …
 • Do NOT just wing it
• Do NOT rely on your writer
• DO have a purpose

Some will urge you to just start writing. Without focus, how will you write content that is of value for
your readers?

Others will use writers and expect them to produce good content simply by providing them the
keywords. If you want good content, tell the writers exactly what you want.

Writing without purpose cannot get you the results you want. Before writing a single word, define the
purpose for what you are writing. Your purpose may be to get readers to buy a product or to opt in to an
email list. Whatever your purpose, define it then write for it.

Each of these points can be addressed quite easily by creating an outline for your content. By doing this,
you are enabled to create content that works!!

How to Create an Outline:

Creating an outline is relatively simple. The following shows the various steps involved.

Step 1: Title

When creating your title, you should make certain that …

• It contains 4 to 9 words but no more than 70 characters (including spaces)

• It has the primary keyword phrase, once and in the beginning
• It is an attention grabber for potential readers

The importance of these points should not be underestimated. First, search engines use your title as the
title for your listing in search results so having a good title just makes sense. Also, Google only shows
70 characters in the listing title so you do well to keep your title under that limit.

Secondly, anyone in online marketing knows the importance of keywords. Keywords are important to
being noticed by the search engines as well as to how you are ranked by them. This is why it’s good to
use your primary keyword phrase once and in the beginning.

Finally, no one argues the value of getting the attention of potential readers. Having a keyword-rich,
easily read title not only gets the attention of readers who happen onto your site (e.g. through a link from
another site) but also, as a result of how search engines use your title in their listing, your title can grab
the attention of searchers.

Step 2: META Description

By creating this prior to your content, you will discover that creation of your article content will flow a
lot easier, assuming you match it up with your META description. When creating your META
description, you should make certain that …

• It contains no more than 155 characters (about 25 words, including spaces).

• It has the primary keyword phrase right in the beginning.
• It answers the questions brought up by the title. It’s not that the title is in question form but that
the title immediately brings questions to the mind of the reader, such as why they should visit
your site and what will they get for doing so. Your META description can answer those
questions.

To understand the value of this META description, do a Google search for anything. In the results list,
you will see short descriptions under each of the provided links.

That description comes from various sources:

• As a result of coding which submits your blog to certain directories, Google may use that
directory information. This is not an issue for blogs created using the Blog Blueprint system.
• As a result of no META description provided, Google will do a random selection of text from the
content of your blog.
• From the META description you created for your blog.

It’s also good to know that the META description is important to search engine ranking. It’s not as
important as the title but this should motivate you to produce a good quality META description both for
the value to search engine ranking and to helping potential readers.

A great way to look at this combination of Title and META description is to compare it to a classified
ad. A good, attention-grabbing title will draw someone to read the ad which may result in them
following through on the action point listed in the ad. This same principle plays out with search engine
listings so it’s worth paying attention to.

Step 3: META Keywords

Along with Title and META Description, you want to provide META Keywords. These keywords should
…

• contain no more than 5 keyword phrases

• have the primary keyword phrase in the beginning
• contains at least one top level broad term, for example, “coffee maker” as the broad term for our
sample “grind brew coffee maker"

Unlike Title and META Description, META Keywords are not important for search engine ranking. This
used to be the case but that has changed. Search engines now give ranking weight to ‘tags’ (to be
explained in a later lesson), something your META Keywords can be used for.

Step 4: Summary
Each of the previous steps dealt with creating content (e.g. title, description, etc.) for the benefit of the
reader and the search engines. The content created in this step is intended solely for the writer and is
meant to tell what the content will be about. So whether you’re the writer or not you will want to
include this as it will help you when you’re about to write the content.

When you create your summary, it should include …

• who the target audience is (e.g. gender and age)

• what product or webpage is being promoted
• specific topics you want covered in the content (e.g. information gathered from Yahoo Answers
and various forums)

Step 5: Create the “Resource Box”

As mentioned previously, your resource box is like the action point of your promotional content. Your
resource box should …

• be about 2 sentences in length

• tell the reader how they can learn more
• contain links to your website

Your resource box is not unlike the “call-to-action” advertisements you would see in something like
Google Adwords. In fact, it’s a good idea to take a look at these because the people who make them
place great value in them (after all, they are paying for them) so you know you are looking at something
worthwhile.

Another important point about resource boxes is that quite often article directories (one of the key places
where you submit your promotional article) won’t allow you to put links in your content except in the
resource box so having one enables you to provide a link back to your actual site.

So be sure to follow the points of what makes a good resource box and you should do well with your
promotional content.

Example:

The following is an example of an outline for our sample “grind brew coffee maker”:

• Keyword: grind brew coffee maker

• Title: Grind and Brew Coffee Maker Review and Comparisons
• Description: Grind and Brew Coffee Maker. Click to check out my detailed reviews of the best
grind and brew coffee machines. Compare before you buy.
• Keywords: grind and brew coffee maker, coffee maker, coffee machine, coffee grinder
• Summary: Create a 400+ word article that is targeted to a female audience of 40+ years of age.
The content starts out with the benefits of a grind and brew coffee maker and then explains how
with so many options, it’s hard to know what to pick. The article will explain how the purpose of
the blog is to help them make the best decision and encourages them to check out my personal
 favourite, the “Cuisinart DGB-900BC Grind-and-Brew Thermal 12-Cup Automatic
Coffeemaker” (details of product can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DGB-
900BC-Thermal-Automatic-Coffeemaker/dp/B000T9XPHC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-
garden&qid=1282593133&sr=1-2). Address the following issues when recommending this
product.
o Budget (money)
o Ease of cleaning
o Ease of use
• Resource: Shopping for great deals on the best <link>Grind and Brew Coffee Makers<link>?
Check out these great prices on top brands like the Cuisinart-DGB-900BC at
http://yourdomain.com.

NOTE: the <link><link> was just for demonstration purpose. It indicates where a hyperlink will
appear during actual application of the resource box.

Writing Content:
When it comes to writing the actual content, there are three options we consider as the best for this task:

• Option 1: Write it yourself.

• Option 2: Completely rewrite existing content.
• Option 3: Use article writing services.

Each of these will be discussed in further detail below.

Option 1: Write It Yourself

When using this option, you want to follow the A.I.D.A. principle:

• Attention: Get the reader’s attention with the headline.

• Interest: Relate to the reader and get them interested in more. An example would be to explain
your frustration of trying to figure out the best product at the best price.
• Desire: Explain how you can help them, thus creating a desire for them to take action. An
example is telling them they no longer have to look around because you’ve already reviewed
them all and now all the reader has to do is follow your advice.
• Action: Tell them how to take action. This is when you say CLICK HERE.

The A.I.D.A. principle is not only effective for creating / writing your own material but it equally
applies to the other options we’re looking at here, so be sure to keep it in mind no matter which option
you choose to use.

Option 2: Rewrite Existing Content

In the first option, you created what you wrote. In this option, you are still doing the writing but this
time you’re using existing content to help you with it rather than coming up with it on your own.
Since you are rewriting existing content, you want to make sure you rewrite the entire article. The goal
here is to achieve 100% uniqueness. The best approach to this is to simply rewrite every sentence in
your own words. Others may suggest rewriting phrases but full sentence rewrites tend to have a higher
degree of uniqueness.

One thing that can help you achieve uniqueness is to mix in forum thread conversations, product
testimonials and other information from various sources on the web. Don’t just rewrite the person’s
content but use that content as a template that you can use as a starting point to ‘create’ your own new
and unique content.

A good example of how to do this is to go to a site like Amazon and combine the Amazon description
and testimonials into a unique, completely rewritten article.

Another option may be to visit a site like EzineArticles and figure out how to rewrite the content found
there. The only downside of this option is that the article you find is not promoting your specific
product and therefore requires more thought and effort for rewriting it to suit your promotional product,
but using the framework of what you find there can definitely give you some good ideas.

Whatever you choose to do when rewriting, be sure it’s 100% unique and in your own words.

And remember, use the A.I.D.A. principle. It could very well mean an improvement on the original
owner’s content.

Option 3: Use Article Writing Services

The last option we suggested is to outsource the writing of the content. This particular approach can be
handled in a couple of different ways: either use a service like Elance to ‘hire’ writers you manage to get
the writing done or sign on with a service that manages the writers for you and charges you a nominal
fee for the content they produce.

When you’re first starting out, the former option of using a service like Elance is not very practical.
You’ll discover that writers are inconsistent with turnaround time (e.g. from time of request to time of
delivery), the quality of the product is usually poor and you’ll spend a lot of time managing (e.g. go onto
service site, find writers and hire them). You essentially become an article-writing manager which is not
what you want to do.

The latter option of signing on with a fee-based service will prove to be more of an advantage to you. In
fact, we recommend using such an article-writing service, particularly if it’s an established one. Such
services manage and audit the writers for you, have a much more reliable turnaround time and all you
have to do is submit the work to be done.

Three such services that are recommended are:

• http://blogblueprint.com/articlez
• http://blogblueprint.com/textbroker
• http://blogblueprint.com/99cent
All three of these are very good options with the third service considered the favourite. From a cost
perspective, you are looking at about $0.99 per 100 words, making it a fantastic option. The only
downside to using that service is that your turnaround time is about 10 days.

Of course, with any of these services you’ll have at least a few days turnaround. However, if you’re
closely following the Blog Blueprint strategy, the turnaround time actually becomes an asset. When you
reach the point where you know what keywords you need content for, you can submit your requests and
continue on in the strategy while the content is being created. By continuing in this methodical manner,
you’re able to create and prepare the blogs for content to be published to without losing any time waiting
for the content to arrive. By the time you finish that work, you should have your requested content well
in hand and ready to go.

NOTE: one disclaimer about these services is that you may need to go in and tweak the delivered
writings to ensure quality. Also, the service articlez doesn’t really like to write product reviews whereas
99cent is quite good about this. But again, all three services are very good options.

Of course, if you’re already established in this industry and therefore using another service that you are
currently satisfied with, there is no need to change. It’s entirely up to you.

• Step 1: Find out the demographics for your target audience

• Step 2: Create an outline for your content
• Step 3: Create your content (or get it created)

Summary:
In this module you have learned about …

• The two types of content you will create (Blog, Promotional)

• Understanding the demographics of your audience
• Outlining the content and creating your meta info
• how to write your content

Module 4 "Installation" >> Lesson 10 "Blog Installation"

Blog Installation
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to get into blog installation. The two key points that will be covered are ...
 • The installation of your blog
• The initial settings for your blog

Note: If you are a "Platinum Member" or have upgraded to have access to the "Auto Blog
Installer", I recommend that you still follow through Lessons 10, 11 and 12 before using the Auto Blog
Installer, which is focused on in Lesson 13. You want to ensure you understand how WordPress installs
and works (including plugins and themes) so you can better take advantage of your blogs once installed.

Before You Begin:

Before you begin, it’s important to understand that this lesson goes through the process of manually
setting up your blog with the use of a service called "Fantastico", which is a standard feature of the web
hosts we recommended earlier.

While there are third party "paid" auto-assisting options for installing and configuring a blog (which will
be covered in a later lesson), initially going through it manually will help you to better understand the
process, which can be very helpful if you have to do any troubleshooting of your blog.

Finally, as you go through live examples of the steps included in this lesson, you may discover that the
interface for your hosting site is different than the one in the example. If you have followed the
recommendations of this course, you would have signed up with a hosting service that contains all of the
functionality demonstrated in the live examples, so you need not worry about the differences. Simply
search for the corresponding functionality and you should be good to go.

As a last ditch effort, you can contact your hosting service provider for assistance with finding the
needed functionality.

Blog Installation:
Before you install your blog, there are some settings which need to be taken care of with your hosting
service. To do so, complete the following:

1. Log into your hosting account and click on the “Fantastico” icon.
2. In the left navigation menu, click on “WordPress”.
3. Click on “New Installation”.
4. In the “Install on domain” section, select the domain you wish to install a blog for.
5. Leave “Install in directory” blank. You could enter a directory here but if you used add-on
domains when installing your domain in the previous step, you would leave this blank.
6. Enter in your admin access preferred username and password.
7. NOTE: Do not bother with the “base configuration” as this will be modified later in a different
module.
8. Click on “Install WordPress”. WordPress will create all the information for you. Be sure to save
that information for future reference.

If you need to, you can follow these steps in the video, starting at 3:21.
If your web host does not provide "Fantastico", you can install it following the detailed installation
guide found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

NOTE: There are two forms of Wordpress – wordpress.com and wordpress.org. Wordpress.com will
host a blog for you online, treating it as something like a sub-domain. This has nothing to do with the
auto-blogging system you’re being trained on.

Wordpress.org is a blogging platform that Wordpress allows you to install on a server. This is the
platform you will use in this training course. Again, the installation guide for this installation is found at
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

Blog Management Spreadsheet:

Important to your business is the ability to manage your assets. The blogs of your auto-blog network are
assets you want to manage very closely. To help you with this, we’ve created a spreadsheet that enables
you to track the information of your blogs, such as access information and details related to the
profitability of your sites.

To be able to use this spreadsheet, download it from http://blogblueprint.com/blogmanager and save it in

your Blog Blueprint folder.

In this lesson, the primary use for the spreadsheet will be to record your initial blog information, such as
URL, username and password, etc. You will want to make sure you also put in the ‘Built Date’ of your
blog. Do not put in ‘Today’s Date’ as that field gets filled during another process to be explained later
on in the course.

NOTE: When you first put in your ‘Built Date’, you may notice the value “#DIV/0” in one of the Leads
or Revenue fields. Just ignore this as it will correct itself when entering data during another process to
be followed later on.
 • Step 1: Create your blog (includes configuring settings with your hosting service).
• Step 2: Download the spreadsheet from http://blogblueprint.com/blogmanager.
• Step 3: Record your blog access info.

Initial Settings:
Now that your hosting service is configured and your blog is created, there are some initial settings that
need to be configured on your blog. Perform the following steps to complete the initial configuration of
your blog:

1. Log in to your blog admin area by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin. This will provide a login
screen where you will enter your username and password.
2. Once you are logged in, click “Settings” >> “General” and update the email address with the
domain-specific email address you just created. This is the one that forwards to your central
email management account.
3. After entering the email address, click “Settings” >> “Writing” and...
o In the “Remote Publishing” section, click the checkbox beside “XML-RPC”. This will
allow your blog to be communicated with different services via XML-RPC. This is
something you may want later on and so this will be covered in a later portion of the
training.
o In the “Update Services” section, delete the URL. When you first create your blog, you
do not want it to be pinging any services, preferring instead to have it discovered
naturally. A red flag may be raised when a new blog is engaged in pinging so deleting the
URL solves this issue.
4. Click “Save Changes”.
5. Click “Settings” >> “Permalinks”, then...
o select “Custom Structure” and enter %category%/%postname% (note the / between the
two). The default URL is a bit messy. This change will produce a professional looking,
user and search engine friendly (e.g. keyword rich) URL.
o NOTE: You can configure this any way you wish. For example, some prefer to just have
%postname%.
6. Click “Save Changes”.
7. View the blog and make sure the permalink is working.
8. Back in the admin area, click “Posts” and remove the “Hello, World” post.
9. Click “Links” and remove the default links.
10. Click “Pages” and remove the “About” page.

These steps are done as a matter of future consideration. By completing them, you make sure your blog
is ready for linking with other services, that it can generate professional, ‘friendly’ URLs and that it does
not come across as spammy. All of these points are of good value going forward.
If you need to, you can follow these steps in the video, starting at 9:37.

• Step 1: Update your blog settings with the recommended initial settings.

Summary
In this module you have learned about …

• The installation of your blog

• The initial settings for your blog

Module 4 "Installation" >> Lesson 11 "Initial Plugins Installation"

Initial Plugins Installation

Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to learn about plugins. The key points that will be covered are …

• Explanation of what plugins are

• How to install plugins
• What plugins to install

What Are Plugins?

A plugin is a software program that can extend the capabilities of a program, browser, etc. In the
context of blogging, a plugin adds functionality to the blog that otherwise may not be there. In this way,
functionality is streamlined such that the base application provides minimal capability and then extends
that through the use of user-selected plugins.

Wordpress, our blogging platform of choice, uses a number of plugins to extend its already powerful
capabilities. There are quite a number of them offering you a variety of custom functions and features
so that you can tailor your blogs to your specific needs.

Important:
This lesson does not cover all the plugins we recommend you to use, including AutoBlogBuddy. We go
into detail on aditional plugins in "Lesson 16- SEO", but you do not need to worry aout those plugins at
this point. The same goes for Auto Blo gBuddy, which is covered in detail in "Lesson 17 - Auto Blog
Buddy". Do not rush ahead, follow the training as laid out and when you get to Lesson 16 and 17, you
will be ready for those plugins.

Installation of Plugins:
There are three recommended methods for installing plugins on your Wordpress blog. They are …

• Auto-install: Wordpress has a built-in feature that allows easy installation of plugins. Detailed
training of this process can be found on the Wordpress website at
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Add_New_SubPanel.
• Plugin Central: A plugin itself, this plugin gets installed before any other plugin. Then, once
done, you are able to enter in (manually or copy and paste from a pre-existing list) a list of the
plugins you want installed and it will do so automatically.

NOTE: For Plugin Central to work, the auto feature must be available. Otherwise, you will not
be able to use Plugin Central and instead have to use the manual installation method.

• Manual: Depending on the set-up of your host, you may not be able to use the auto features that
are built into Wordpress. As a result, you will need to install the plugins manually. Like the
training for auto-install, detailed training for manual installation can be found on the Wordpress
website at
http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins#Installing_Plugins.

A quick walk-through of how to do an installation is given in the main video for this lesson. It is not as
extensive as the detailed instructions linked to above, but it will at least give you some idea of how to go
about successfully installing your desired plugins, whether doing so manually or using the auto feature.

To see the walk-through, simply click on the video link and start at 1:38.

NOTE: The walk-through is very basic instruction on how to do the installation. In the next section of
this lesson you will be given a list of recommended plugins to install. Some of the plugins will have
short videos to assist you with their installation and configuration so be sure to take advantage of them if
you are uncertain of how to go about it.

Plugins to Install:
In this section you will learn what plugins to install and how to go about installing and configuring those
plugins for effective use in building your auto-blog network.

There are a couple of things you need to know before we get into the list of recommended plugins.
First, you will discover the list changes continuously over time. Whether because we want to add new
or existing plugins to our blog, have modified any plugins we personally have developed and need to
update them, or to remove any currently used plugins that have become obsolete, we ensure the list is
kept as current as possible for the benefit of keeping pace with changes in the environment and industry.

Secondly, the list contains two important sections: “Activate Now” and “Activate Later”. The purpose
of dividing the recommended list into these two sections is to ….

• Make sure you activate only those plugins that are immediately relevant to your blog
development.
• Prevent you from activating plugins prematurely that have features which should NOT be
activated until later on in the life cycle of your blog, e.g. site caching and pinging of services.
You will be informed as to when the best time is to activate the plugins that are in this section.

The list contains several plugins. ALL plugins can be installed at this time but remember, activate
ONLY those in the “Activate Now” section. In order to access the list, simply click on
http://blogblueprint.com/plugins.

Plugin Installation and Configuration:

This section will cover the installation and configuration of several of the plugins you will install on
your blog. The reason not all plugins are covered here is that those which are not present either do not
require configuration or are self-explanatory. For basic instructions you can refer back to the
‘Installation of Plugins’ section of this lesson.

Plugin Name: Plugin Central

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plugin-central/

Plugin Description: Plugin Central improves the management of plugins by allowing you to install
plugins directly. This is done by typing the name of a plugin or the URL to a plugin’s zip file. You can
also use the multiple-plugin install feature, which allows you to move your plugins from one blog to
another. This plugin displays the status of plugins in need of update on the Dashboard and also allows
you to update all plugins at once with a single click.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Plugins” >> “Plugin Central”.
• In the text box provided, enter the list of “Plugin URLs” provided in the file:
http://blogblueprint.com/plugins.
• Click on “Install Plugin” and the system will automatically download and install all the
recommended plugins. If any of the recommended plugins are already installed, then the “Plugin
Central” will indicate that it could not write to that folder.
Plugin Name: Akismet
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

Plugin Description: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look
like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's "Comments" admin screen.
Recently this plugin has added a PRO feature that is not required and you are still able to use the
Wordpress.com API http://en.support.wordpress.com/api-keys/ to use this plugin. This plugin is default
with most Wordpress installations and should already be added to your plugins directory.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Plugins” >> “Akismet Configuration”.
• Enter in your Akismet API Key, then check the box beside “Automatically discard spam
comments on posts older than a month” and then click “Update Options”.
• If you do not have an API key, you can get one from: http://en.support.wordpress.com/api-keys/.

NOTE: You can use the same API key for all your auto-blogs in your network but we do recommend
getting a new API for each network (just our own personal preference).

Plugin Name: Broken Link Checker

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Plugin Description: This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if
any are found. There is a paid option that provides a few extra features but is not needed (we don't use
it).

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Settings” >> “Link Checker”.
• The only settings we recommend changing are under the “General” tab:
o Check: Send me e-mail notifications about newly detected broken links
o Check: Apply custom formatting to broken links
o Check: Stop search engines from following broken links
• To see any broken links that have been identified, you can click on “Tools” >> “Broken Links”
in the left hand navigation in your wp-admin area.

Plugin Name: Cbnet Ping Optimizer

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cbnet-ping-optimizer/
Plugin Description: Once you set up your blog’s “Update Services” (covered in a later lesson), your
blog will automatically ping these various services each time a new post is added. The problem is that
Wordpress will also ping these services when simple edits are made to your blog. If you ping the various
services too often, they will blacklist you and consider your blog a spammer. To prevent this and still
take advantage of the power of “pinging” this plugin will ensure that none of the services are pinged too
often.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Settings” >> “cbnet Ping Optimizer” to see the settings
page of this plugin.
• There are no further actions required for this plugin right now. Once your blog is completely
ready to start promoting, we will add a list of URLs to this plugin. This is covered in a later
lesson.

Plugin Name: Platinum SEO Pack

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/

Plugin Description: Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Platinum SEO”.
• Leave all default items checked.
• Enter the title, description and keywords you used for the index article into the corresponding
“Home Title”, “Home Descriptions” and “Home Keywords” fields.
• In “Post Title Format” change it to %post_title%.
• In the “Page Title Format” change it to %page_title%.
• Check “Use Categories for META keywords”.
• Check “Use noindex for Categories”. Category pages contain content from the different posts
and as a result can often be considered “internal duplicate content” by the search engines, which
can mess up your search engine rankings. By checking this option you will still allow the search
engines to visit the category pages and follow the links but you prevent them from indexing the
content, which means those pages will not appear in the rankings and therefore will not cause
any internal duplicate content hassles.
• Check “Use Tags for META keywords”.
• Check “Use noindex for Tag Archives”.
• Check “nofollow category listings on pages”. You do not want the category pages indexed in the
search engines and therefore you will want any links pointing to the categories to be nofollow.
• Check “nofollow category listings on posts”. You do not want the category posts indexed in the
search engines and therefore you will want any links pointing to the categories to be nofollow.
• Check “nofollow archive listings on pages”. You do not want the archive pages indexed in the
search engines and therefore you will want any links pointing to the archives to be nofollow.
 • Check “nofollow archive listings on posts”. You do not want the archive posts indexed in the
search engines and therefore you will want any links pointing to the archives to be nofollow.

Plugin Name: RSS Footer

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rss-footer/

Plugin Description: This plugin makes it easy to add a line of content to the beginning or the end of all
the articles in your RSS feeds, for instance to display a link back to your blog. The power of this comes
from the fact that you will be submitting your RSS feeds to different services when you start promoting
your blog. Many of these services will create unique pages for you that contain the contents of your RSS
feed and by using this plugin you can ensure that each of these pages link back to your blog’s important
pages.

Plugin Instruction:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Settings” >> “RSS Footer”.
• Check to ensure that the HTML links to your blog with the correct keyword. If not, update the
HTML and click on “Update RSS Footer Settings”.
• Once we have added the initial content to your blog, you may wish to also add links to those
posts as well. It is not recommended that you put more than 3 links in here.

Plugin Name: Secure Wordpress

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-wordpress/

Plugin Description: This plugin provides help to secure your WordPress installation.

• Activate the plugin.

• Leave plugin with the default settings. If you would like to review the default settings, then you
can see them at “Settings” >> “Secure WP”.

Plugin Name: Sexy Bookmarks

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/

Plugin Description: This plugin helps to get your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous
social bookmarking sites.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• In your blog’s wp-admin area, click on “Settings” >> “SexyBookmarks”.
 • In the “Enabled Networks” section, click on “Most Popular”. This is a personal preference, but
you may select whatever networks you wish to use. You can select “Most Popular” and then
also select a few other preferred networks as well.
• Under the “Functionality Settings” area, there are options for Yahoo Buzz and Twittley. If you
have not selected these as networks to use then you can skip this step. If you have selected them
then:
o Select the “Default Content Category” for “Yahoo Buzz Defaults”. Leave the “Default
Media Type” as Text.
o Select the “Default Content Category” for “Twittley Defaults”.
o In the “Default Tags”, enter in 3 tags that best represent your blog.
o I also recommend you select “Yes” for “Open links in new window?”.
• Under the “Plugin Aesthetics” area, select your preferred “Background Image Option”.
• Under the “Menu Placement” area, click “No” for “Show in RSS Feed”.
• Click “Save Changes”.

Plugin Name: SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/

Plugin Description: This plugin adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to your WordPress installation on
the comment form, registration form, login, or all. In order to post comments or register, users will have
to type in the code shown on the image. This prevents spam from automated bots. It also adds security.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin

• Leave plugin with default settings. If you would like to see the default settings, in your blog’s
wp-admin area, click on “Plugins” >> “SI Captcha Options”.

Plugin Name: StatPress

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/statpress/

Plugin Description: A real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about blog visits. It
collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc. This plugin is great
for auto-blogs as you do not want to enter Google Analytics on all your blogs, which can create an easily
traceable footprint.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• Leave this plugin with the default settings. If you want to check out the default settings, then in
your left hand navigation menu, click on “StatPress”.

We will go into more detail about using this plugin in a later lesson.
Plugin Name: To Title Case
Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/to-title-case/

Plugin Description: Automatically convert post titles on-the-fly, so the first letter of each word in the
title is capitalized. This helps ensure your blog has a more professional appearance.

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• There are no options to modify.

Plugin Name: WP No Category Base

Plugin URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-no-category-base/

Plugin Description: As the name suggests, this plugin will completely remove the mandatory 'Category
Base' from your category permalinks ( e.g. myblog.com/category/my-category/ to myblog.com/my-
category/ ).

Plugin Instructions:

• Activate the plugin.

• There are no options to modify.

• Step 1: Install the recommended plugins.

• Step 2: Activate the plugins from the “Activate Now” section of the plugin list.
• Step 3: Configure the settings for each of the activated plugins.

Summary:
In this lesson you have learned about …

• What plugins are and how they impact your blog

• How plugins are installed
• What plugins to install now and which ones to install later
• How to configure your activated plugins

Module 4 "Installation" >> Lesson 13 "Auto Blog Installer"

Auto Blog Installer
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce you to "Auto Blog Installer".

Description:
The Auto Blog Installer is a tool designed to save you a lot of time in installing and optimizing your
auto-blogs. It will enable you to install a blog built and formatted with a premium theme that uses
plugins recommended in the Blog Blueprint training series. All that will be left for you to do is to log
into your account, tweak a few settings and add your content.

There is a limitation to the installer. Due to the large number of hosting providers that are available, it is
not possible to support all of them with one single tool. That said, be aware that the installer will only
work with cPanel hosting providers. The following is a list of recommended providers for which the
installer will work and for which we do provide installer support:

• Bluehost – http://blogblueprint.com/bluehost
• Host Gator – http://blogblueprint.com/hostgator
• HostMonster – http://blogblueprint.com/hostmonster
• Liquid Web – http://blogblueprint.com/liquidweb
• Lunarpages – http://blogblueprint.com/lunarpages

Using Auto Blog Installer

In order to use the installer:

1. Log into your BlogBlueprint account.

2. Go to 'Tools'.
3. In the 'Quick Jump' drop-down list, select "**AutoBlogInstaller**".
4. In "Step 1: cPanel Info":
a. Select your "Hosting Account" from the drop-down list.
b. Enter your cPanel URL for your hosting account. This is the cPanel access URL your
host provided for you when you signed up.

NOTE: Different hosts use different approaches and therefore the URL may be a
different format. For example, your domain name may be good enough for some hosts
while a very specific host URL is necessary for others.

c. Enter your cPanel username and password.

d. Optionally check "Auto-updater".
 e. Click "Test Login". Assuming your credentials are correct, you should eventually see a
green bar (indicating the login test passed) and "Next Step" button. If it fails, adjust your
credentials and try again until you succeed.
5. In "Step 2: Database":
a. Enter your database host. Most will be able to leave the default ("localhost"). Those who
can't probably have an external database server and therefore would need to provide the
necessary path (e.g. IP Address) to the database. This information should have been
provided in a welcome email received from your host.
b. Enter a database name. This is the name of the database that is going to be created for
your blog. Be sure to…
i. Make it unique by checking the names of other databases you may already have.
ii. Make it short, as there is a limitation on the length of the name. After the
underscore there should be less than 7 characters. Some hosts actually allow up to
8 but since this is inconsistent, the recommendation is keep it to 7 or less.
c. Enter your database username and password.
i. The username can be the same as the database name.
ii. Use any password you want but accepting the default is okay as well.
d. Click "Create Database". When completed, you should see a number of green bars
(successfully completed database creation tasks) and a "Next Step" button.
e. Click "Next Step" if all succeeded.
6. In "Step 3: Configure Blog Info":
a. Enter your blog's admin username and password. You can use whatever you want but
"admin" and the self-generated password are okay to use.
b. Enter your admin email.
c. Select where the blog will be installed into:
i. Subdirectory – if checked, enter the sub-directory you want the blog installed
into. Do NOT include the prefix, e.g. for installation into rootdirectory/blog,
enter "blog" in the field.

NOTE: if installing directly into the root directory, leave this and the following
option unchecked.

ii. Addon Domain – check this option if installing into an addon directory rather than
a sub-directory. This field is case-sensitive so be sure to enter exactly how your
server has it.
d. Enter the site URL, e.g. yourdomain.org.
e. Enter a title for your site. A temporary value is valid as you will be optimizing your blog
later on in the process.
f. Optionally enter tagline.
g. Select your desired template. You can preview the look of your template by clicking on
the preview link which will open up a window showing you a preview of the theme
layout.
h. Click "Setup Site".
i. Click "Done" once all automatic steps show completed.
When this process is completed, you will see summary information which you can use to review the
creation of your blog. Simply go to your blog's login page and enter the appropriate credentials.

Optionally, once you've checked things out, you can "Add Another Site".

Optimizing Your Blog:

Now that your blog is created, you can go in and begin to optimize it. The auto blog installer installs the
premium theme "Frugal" along with plugins, etc. This is a theme for which we own the complete
license to, which enables us to provide it to you and our other members.

This theme is very robust and contains a lot of completely customizable options. This enhances your
ability to create very unique looks between the many blogs you'll be creating. While we've provided a
few templates (preset layouts/options) using this theme, you are more than able to change things to your
own style.

'Frugal' Optimization

We do recommend you follow our steps towards optimization. The following will tweak the Frugal
theme in order to optimize your blog according to the Blog Blueprint system:

1. Go to "Settings" >> "General". Ensure that the following fields are correct:
a. Site Title
b. Tagline
c. Wordpress address (URL)
d. Site address (URL)
e. E-mail address
2. Go to "Settings" >> "Permalinks". Update your permalinks to a custom structure,
e.g. %category%/%postname%/
3. Go to "Users" >> "Your Profile". Change your nickname to better reflect your blog. This name
is different than your username and is what will appear as the author of the post:
a. Name – Add a nickname that relates to the topic of your blog and then click "Update
Profile".
b. Name – In the drop down menu beside "Display name publicly as" select the nickname
you just created.
c. Contact Info – Update the E-mail address with your contact email for the blog.
d. Click "Update Profile".
4. Go to "Posts" >> "Categories". Enter in your categories for your blog.
5. Go to "Pages". Edit the following pages:
a. Terms
b. Privacy
c. Disclaimer
6. Still in "Pages" – Update the following pages with your own content:
a. About
b. Index Page – Replace This Text
7. Go to "Posts". Delete the example post and add your two unique posts.
8. Go to "Frugal Theme" >> "Settings/Uploads". Replace the header graphic with your own
custom graphic.
9. Go to "Frugal Theme" >> "Main Options". Do the following:
a. Links & Codes – Update your "RSS Subscription Link" with your domain.
b. SEO Options:
i. Homepage Meta Description – Enter in your blog's homepage meta description.
ii. Homepage Meta Keywords – Enter in your blog's homepage meta keywords.
c. SEO Title Options: Home Title Display – Enter in your blog's homepage title.
d. Footer Layout/Design Options: Add Text/Links To Footer – Ensure all links are correct
and rearrange the order of the links to keep things a little unique for your blog.
e. Click "SAVE".
10. Go to "Frugal Theme" >> "Feature Options" and make the following adjustments:
a. Home Top Featured Content – Select the "Page to Display".
b. Click "SAVE".
11. Go to "Frugal Theme" >> "Header Design" >> "Header/Logo Options" and:
a. Ensure that the correct logo is selected in the "Logo Image File Name".
b. Click "SAVE".
12. Go to "Plugins". Activate the following plugins, if not already activated:
a. Google XML Sitemaps.
b. Redirection.
13. Go to "Plugins" >> "Akismet Configuration". Enter in your Akismet info (wordpress API key)
and click "Update Options".
14. Go to "Plugins" >> "SI Contact Form Options":
a. "E-mail: (Form 1)":
i. Update the "E-mail To" with your email address.
ii. Update the "E-mail Subject Prefix".
iii. Click "Update Options".
15. Go to "Settings" >> "SEO Smart Links":
a. Update "Custom Keywords" with the keywords and URLs for your index page and two
other primary posts.
b. Click "Update Options".
16. Go to "Settings" >> "XML-Sitemap":
a. Uncheck "Notify Google about updates to your Blog".
b. Uncheck "Notify Bing (formerly MSN Live Search) about updates to your Blog".
c. Uncheck "Notify Ask about updates to your Blog".
d. Uncheck "Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file."
e. Exclude Items: Exclude posts: Enter the page ID# of your index page.
f. Click "Update Options" (The pinging will be re-enabled after your sitemap is properly set
up). This is to avoid unnecessary notifications being sent to these services before your
site is ready.
g. Once your settings are saved, in the top section click on the "Click Here" hyperlink found
in the line that says, "The sitemap wasn't built yet. Click here to build it the first time."
h. Check to ensure that your XML Sitemap was created properly. It will be located at
"yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml". If it is created properly, then:
i. Check "Notify Google about updates to your Blog".
ii. Check "Notify Bing (formerly MSN Live Search) about updates to your Blog".
 iii. Check "Notify Ask about updates to your Blog".
iv. Click "Update Options".
17. Go to "Settings" >> "DDSitemapGen":
a. Exclusion: Add the page number for your index page.
b. Miscellaneous: Enter the URL to your XML sitemap.
18. Go to "Settings" >> "Simple Tags":
a. Administration – This is an optional but recommended step. Enter in the API keys for at
least one of the three services:
i. OpenCalais
ii. Alchemy
iii. Zemanta
b. Click "Update Options".
19. Go to "Links" >> "Link Categories". Update the link categories.
20. Go to "Links" >> "Links". Update the links so you include:
a. One to your index page with the word "Home".
b. One to each primary blog post with their primary keyword.
c. At least three high authority links to related resources.
d. Ensure you assign each link to the appropriate category and, for the links that point to
external resources, make sure to select under "Target" the "_blank – new window or tab"
option.
21. Go to "Links" >> "Nofollow Links". Select the index page link and then click "Mark Links
Nofollow".
22. Go to "Appearance" >> "Widgets". Depending on the template style you selected to install with
you will need to update as follows:
a. Sidebar 1 – This is NOT the side bar for your index page but is the side bar for your blog,
pages and posts:
i. Text – This is the image that appears at the top if the side bar. You can replace
this with a related image. This will later be used for either an ad, banner or opt-in
form.
ii. Links – In the drop down select the category for your blog's internal navigation
links and click "Save".
iii. Better Blogroll:
1. Change the "Title" to something like "Good Resources".
2. Add the category name of the list of external resources to the line "Show
Only Links From These Categories:
(comma separated, blank for all)" and then click "Save".
b. Home Sidebar – If your template shows a sidebar on the index page then you will need to
update this widget:
a. Text – This is the image that appears in the top if the side bar. You can replace
this with a related image. This will later be used for either an ad, banner or opt-in
form.
b. Links – In the drop down select the category for your blog's internal navigation
links and click "Save".
c. Links – Select the external resource category and click "Save".
c. If there is no sidebar on the index page but instead sections at the bottom of the page,
then you would use these widgets:
 . Home Bottom Left: Links – Select the category for the internal navigation links
and click "Save".
a. Home Bottom Middle – You do not need to modify this but this is the recent posts
widget.
b. Home Bottom Right: Links – Select the category for the external authority links
and click "Save".

Summary:
In this lesson you have learned about …

• How to use Auto Blog Installer

• How to optimize your blog using the Frugal Theme

If you followed these instructions step by step, you are now ready to move on to the next lesson. Though
some of these settings can and may be modified later, it is best to start with these settings as you proceed
in the Blog Blueprint training until you are comfortable enough to make adjustments on your own.

Module 5 "Optimization" >> Lesson 14 "Important Content"

Important Content
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to learn about important content you need to have installed on each of your
auto-blogs. The areas that will be covered are …

• What pages you NEED to have on your blog to protect your business
• How to create these important pages
• How to properly link to these important pages

Disclaimer:
The intent behind this information is to ensure that your business is protected. That said, we want to
make sure that the following is clearly understood by you as you go forward in the training:

• We are NOT lawyers providing legal advice. If you require legal advice, please contact your
personal lawyer.
• The information provided in this module is what we follow and are now sharing with you. We
do not intend to mean you are obligated to follow this information although we certainly
recommend it.
 • We are not responsible for how this information is used. This is YOUR business and therefore
YOUR responsibility to protect your business.

Pages You Need to Have:

In order to protect yourself from potential legal issues and to ensure that your blog is looked upon
positively by the search engines, there are five pages that you will want to add to your blog right away.
These pages are …

• Contact: This page ensures that if there are any issues with your blog, you can be contacted
directly about them. As well, you will find it builds trust with visitors to your blog.
• About: People love to check out profiles and ‘About’ pages to learn more about a person or a
website. By creating such a page, you can help increase the level of trust the visitor has in
regards to your blog.
• Disclaimer: Like how we use the disclaimer given above, this page can help limit the liabilities
that could arise from the information on your blog. Liabilities could be someone blaming you for
providing health advice and appearing to be a professional health practitioner or purchasing a
product that was not a good quality product and blaming you for telling them that you used it and
it worked, when in fact you have never used the product at all. Both of these types of issues
could cause serious legal issues with your business. An example of a disclaimer you could use
might be to state that you are an affiliate and the information on your blog is purely for
information and revenue generating.
• Terms of Use: This page will explain exactly how your blog can be used and who has
permission to access it. This is especially important because of the Child Online Protection Act,
a legal rule in the U.S. which governs the protocol of sites which may contain content not
suitable for those under the age of 18. Such sites are required to restrict access to those who are
under the age of 18 and may face legal action if they do not. For your own protection, this
should be applied even if you are outside of the U.S.
• Privacy: There are two main reasons for this page:
o If you are collecting any data from your visitors, you need to disclose what happens with
data that is collected. This page is designed for that disclosure.
o If you use Google AdSense, Google requires that you have a Privacy page.

Creating Your Pages:

“Contact” Page:

In order to create your Contact page, you need to execute the following steps:

• Step 1: In your blog’s wp-admin, go to the plugin section and activate the “Fast Secure Contact
Form” plugin
• Step 2: Go to “Plugins” >> “SI Contact Form Options” and ensure the email address is correct.
Once done, go to “Usage” section and copy the shortcode for the form [si-contact-form=’1’].
 •Step 3: Go to “Pages” >> “Add New” and create a
page with the title “Contact”. Select the “HTML”
(as opposed to “Visual”) editor option and, in the
body of the page, paste the shortcode (including the
square brackets) you copied in the previous step.
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the
“allow comments” and “allow trackbacks” options then click ‘Publish’.
• Step 5: View the page and test that the comment form works. If it works, you should receive an
email in your email management account’s inbox.

A video demonstration of how this is done is provided in this lesson’s video, starting at 3:35.

“About” Page:

In order to create your About page, you need to execute the following steps:

• Step 1: In your wp-admin, go to “Pages” >> “Add New” and create a page with the title
“About”.
• Step 2: In the body section, add a related image. Make sure you have permission to use the
image (try clipart.com for usable images) and, if possible, have the image include a person. This
builds personality into the blog as well as giving the perception that the “About” page is about
that person, even though you don’t reference that person in any of your blog’s content. If you’re
branding yourself, you can use an image of yourself, otherwise, as is usually the case with auto-
blogs, simply use an image related to the content of your blog that has a person in it.
• Step 3: Write a 3-5 sentence blurb about your blog that provides the following:
o What the blog is about
o What kind of content will be found on the blog
o Examples of topics the blog covers
o Why the visitor should feel safe using your blog
o How to be contacted
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options then click ‘Publish’.

NOTE: Though you can do so, it is recommended you do not put any links on the About page.

The image to the right is an example of an About page. You’ll notice this sample page appears quite
personable. The image relates to the content of the blog while creating a perception of a person behind
the blog rather than an automated process. It has a nice welcoming phrase, information about what the
visitor will find on the site, a stated goal and a means for the visitor to make contact. By all
appearances, this site comes off as very trustworthy and worth any time spent on it.

NOTE: It is not recommended that you put links on your About page that promote products or services.
If you wish to link to internal pages on your blog that is fine but trying to make a sale with your About
page can cause your blog to lose credibility and appear too pushy (in our opinion anyway).
IMPORTANT – Disclaimer Reiterated: Previously we provided a disclaimer regarding the material
covered in this lesson. This portion is intended to reiterate the disclaimer and especially apply it to the
context of instructions to be supplied for the remaining three pages needed for your blog.

In the following instructions, links to templates that you may use to create your needed pages for your
blog are referenced. It is very important that you understand …

• These templates are 100% optional. These are the templates we use but you are not under any
obligation to use them for your blogs.
• We make no claims and take no responsibility for your use of these templates.
• We are NOT qualified legal representatives. Therefore, if you want or require legal advice on
the use of these templates for your business, please seek professional legal help.

The following sub-sections will now go into detailed instruction on how to add the remaining three
needed pages to your blog.

“Disclaimer” Page:

To add your Disclaimer page to your blog, complete the following:

• Step 1: Go to http://blogblueprint.com/disclaimertemplate and download the example disclaimer

template. If the file opens directly in your browser, simply copy and paste the content as you go
through these instructions. Optionally, you can copy and paste the content to a text file and save
it in your Blog Blueprint folder.
• Step 2: In your wp-admin, go to “Pages” >> “Add New” and create a page with the title
“Disclaimer”.
• Step 3: Paste the contents of the template file into the body section. Be sure to replace the
template tokens (including the square brackets) with the associated information. The tokens in
this template are:
o [URL] – this is the URL of your blog.
o [CONTACT] – this is the URL to your contact page.
o [DATE] – this is the date the disclaimer was last updated.
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options then click ‘Publish’.

“Terms of Use” Page:

To add your Terms of Use (TOU) page to your blog, complete the following:

• Step 1: Go to http://blogblueprint.com/toutemplate and download the example TOU template. If

the file opens directly in your browser, simply copy and paste the content as you go through
these instructions. Optionally, you can copy and paste the content to a text file and save it in
your Blog Blueprint folder.
• Step 2: In your wp-admin, go to “Pages” >> “Add New” and create a page with the title “Terms
of Use”.
 • Step 3: Paste the contents of the template file into the body section. Be sure to replace the
template tokens (including the square brackets) with the associated information. The tokens in
this template are:
o [URL] – this is the URL of your blog.
o [CONTACT] – this is the URL to your contact page.
o [DATE] – this is the date the disclaimer was last updated.
o [COUNTRY] – this is the Country Code of the country you run your business out of,
which may differ from the country you are living in.
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options then click ‘Publish’.

“Privacy Policy” Page:

To add your Privacy Policy page to your blog, complete the following:

• Step 1: Go to http://blogblueprint.com/privacytemplate and download the example privacy

policy template. If the file opens directly in your browser, simply copy and paste the content as
you go through these instructions. Optionally, you can copy and paste the content to a text file
and save it in your Blog Blueprint folder.
• Step 2: In your wp-admin, go to “Pages” >> “Add New” and create a page with the title
“Privacy Policy”.
• Step 3: Paste the contents of the template file into the body section. Be sure to replace the
template tokens (including the square brackets) with the associated information. The tokens in
this template are:
o [URL] – this is the URL of your blog.
o [CONTACT] – this is the URL to your contact page.
o [DATE] – this is the date the disclaimer was last updated.
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options then click ‘Publish’.

A demonstration for adding these pages can be viewed in the video, starting at 10:06.

Navigation:
Once each of these pages is added to your blog, the navigation menu that appears at the top of the page
will contain a link to each of these pages (assuming you’re using the free theme we used to demonstrate
this lesson). This may be an issue for you as it will appear quite cluttered and can be intrusive to the
general layout of your blog.

To correct this, the navigation menu can be edited. In our example, we actually remove the navigation
menu from being displayed on the page and move the links of the needed pages into the footer. To see
how this is done, view the video starting at 11:22.
 • Step 1: Create the following pages on your blog:
o Contact
o About
o Disclaimer
o Terms of Use
o Privacy
• Step 2: Update your Blog Blueprint spreadsheet to show these tasks are done.

Summary:
In this module you have learned…

• What pages you NEED to have on your blog to protect your business
• How to create these important pages
• How to properly link to these important pages

Module 5 "Optimization" >> Lesson 15 "Adding Reader Content"

Adding "Reader" Content

Purpose:
As a follow-up to the previous lesson’s training on adding important content,, this lesson will deal with
equally important content – the content the reader will be interested in. The areas that will be covered
are …

• Editing the content

• How to add the content to your blog
• Using images in your content
• Affiliate disclaimer

Editing the Content:

Before you add content to your blog, you need to make sure it’s in good condition. What this means is
…

• It reads well and makes sense

• It has been checked for spelling and grammar
• The paragraphs are broken up to be no more than 3 to 4 sentences in length
By doing these things you will ensure the content is attractive and easy-flowing for your reader.
Chances are you’re using a writer for your content so before you can submit what they’ve written, you
definitely want to perform quality control on it.

What you do NOT want to do at this point is SEO the content. While important, this can be and should
be accomplished later. Right now you’re just looking to get your content prepped and ready to be
posted to your blog. The SEOing of the content will happen later.

How to Add the Content to Your Blog:

The content you’re handling in this lesson will be posted to two different pages on your blog. Those two
pages are the Index page and the Blog page. Each of these is handled a little differently, which will
clearly be understood as we go along.

Create the Pages:

To start with, you will need to actually create these pages in order for them to be available for content.
Starting with the Index page, execute the following:

• Step 1: Go to your blog’s wp-admin area and click on “Pages” >> “Add New”.
• Step 2: Enter the title and body of your content in the provided areas.
• Step 3: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options.
• Step 4: Make sure you do NOT add any tags. If using the simple ‘tags’ plugin, it will insert tags
into the post and you do not want that for an index page.
• Step 5: Make sure you do NOT enter any SEO information. If you are using the Platinum SEO
pack the settings there will be used. As well, this is the index page and so any SEO input is
unnecessary. This is true also if you are using the Frugal theme.
• Step 6: Once completed, click ‘Publish’.

The next item you will take care of is adding the Blog page. To do that, execute the following:

• Step 1: If not already or still there, go to your blog’s wp-admin area and click on “Pages” >>
“Add New”.
• Step 2: Enter the title ‘Blog’ and leave the body section empty.
• Step 3: Once completed, click ‘Publish’.

Configure the Pages:

If you are not using the Frugal theme, you want to configure wp-admin to handle your Index and Blog
page appropriately. To do so:

• Step 1: If not already or still there, go to your blog’s wp-admin area and click on “Settings” >>
“Reading”.
• Step 2: In the section “Front page display”, check “A static page (select below)” then …
 o for “Front Page” select Index page
o for “Posts Page” select Blog page
• Step 3: Click “Save Changes”.
• Step 4: View your blog’s Index page (home page) and check to ensure that the correct content is
being displayed.

NOTE: the Blog page will not show anything yet until you add at least one blog post.

When you’re viewing your site, whichever page you selected as your front page will be the page you
arrive at when you first visit your site as this was intentionally configured as a static page for your blog.
If you put “/blog” on your URL (e.g. if your site is abc.com, to visit your blog you would type
abc.com/blog) it will take you to your blog. However, until you actually have a post on the blog, going
there will only result in a 404 error so be sure you have a post on your blog before trying to go there.

Create the Blog Posts:

Now that the pages are added and configured for use, your next item is to add blog posts. To do this:

• Step 1: If not already or still there, go to your blog’s wp-admin area and click on “Posts” >>
“Add New”.
• Step 2: Enter the title and body of your content in the provided areas.
• Step 3: Under the title, click “Edit”. The link you see there is the URL defaulted by converting
your post title to a URL. You want to change this to only contain the keyword of your post’s
content. Once done, click ‘Ok’.
• Step 4: Under the “Discussion” section, uncheck the “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks”
options.
• Step 5: Under “Platinum SEO Pack” (or, if using the Frugal theme, the Frugal “SEO” section),
enter the title, description and keywords for the content. Do not check any other options.
• Step 6: Do NOT add any tags.
• Step 7: Click “Publish”.
• Step 8: Repeat these steps with your second post.

A live demonstration is provided for the above steps. To view this, view the video starting at 5:54.

Using Images:
The use of images on your blog is invaluable to your business. Using images that relate to your market
help your visitors identify with it PLUS they are a powerful way for getting people to take action.

When considering the use of images, keep in mind that you are striving for a professional looking
presentation. Being consistent in your use of images is a big step toward maintaining that professional
appearance.

For example, depending on the market of your blog, you may consider using cartoon and / or photo
images. Consistency would suggest using one or the other rather than mixing them together. As well,
using photo images instead of cartoon images adds to the level of professionalism your site can achieve.
It’s our recommendation you use photo images instead of cartoon images but it’s entirely up to you.
Just be sure to plan what images you use around the key points – consistency and professionalism.

One very important point to stress, however, in the use of images is to make sure you have permission
to use the images on your blog.

Below is an example of the use of images. You’ll notice how each of them is consistent with the market
of the blog (coffee makers) and nicely laid out for good, professional-looking posts.

Notice where the images are placed? An image in the header lets your readers know what the blog is
about. An image in the sidebar enhances that understanding and can be updated with promotional
images. Then you want to have an image in your primary content that can be used as a “call to action”.

At this point in the course you don’t have to worry too much about providing images as it will be
covered in the SEO lesson. The above is simply an example of how it can be done.

That said, we do recommend you at least add a header image and a sidebar image. The process for this
is simple – simply create or acquire an image you want to use, then add it to your blog by finding the
location where the current (your theme’s default) header image is provided and replace it with your
selected header image. See the video demo on adding the footer image for an example of how this can
be done.

Image & Header Resources

If you are not familiar with editing images and creating headers, the following are excellent resources to
help you...

• XHeaderPro: (Save 50% with coupon code XHP50BBP) This is a very powerful little tool that
makes building a header graphic an absolute breeze. I personally own and love this tool!
• Gimp: This is a very powerful free tool for working with images. It is overkill for most of you,
since it is meant for advanced image editing but if you like to work with images, it is a very good
alternative to the more expensive paid tools like Fireworks and Photoshop.
 • ClipArt: This is my number 1 resource for graphics for my blogs. The reason i love this site is I
NEVER have to worry about copyright issues with my images. A membership to this site gives
you complete access to thousands upon thousands of images that you can use for all your
business needs.
• MorqueFile: An archive of public images that you can use on your blogs. Be sure to check out
the license at http://www.morguefile.com/license/morguefile/ so you do not get yourself in
trouble :)
• Flickr: This popular site also has a powerful search filter that lets you find images that will
allow you to use them on your blogs. To access these:
o Create an account at Flickr and then sign into your account.
o Go to advances search at http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/
o At the bottom of the advanced search page go to the "Creative Commons" section and
select "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" and then "Find content
to modify, adapt, or build upon" and "Find content to use commercially ". This will
ensure the images you return are good to use on your blog.

COOL BONUS:
As a bonus for taking this course, we are providing you with a collection of images that you can use for
your header. You are able to legally use all of the images provided. Here are the links for downloading
the zip files from our server:

• 50ProfessionalBizHeaderTemplatesSet1.zip
• 50ProfessionalBizHeaderTemplatesSet2.zip
• 50ProfessionalBizHeaderTemplatesSet3.zip
• 50ProfessionalBizHeaderTemplatesSet4.zip
• 50ProfessionalBizHeaderTemplatesSet5.zip
• 21GraphicHeaders.zip
• 24HeaderGraphics.zip
• 50HeaderGraphic.zip
• 27HeaderJPGGraphics.zip
• 20HotNicheHeadersV2.zip
• 15nicheheaders.zip
• 13_Halloween_Template_Header.zip
• 101TranspBizImg.zip
• 1000web2icons.zip

Affiliate Disclaimer:
In 2009 the FTC of the U.S. started to come down hard on affiliate marketers. They had good cause –
many affiliate marketers were scammers.

As a result, it became good policy to add an affiliate disclaimer on your blog. This helps ensure that all
your blog pages clearly explain to your readers that your blog is an affiliate blog.
The affiliate disclaimer is different than your site’s main disclaimer. It may contain similar information
but essentially all it does is provide a short piece of information informing visitors to your site that your
blog makes money through affiliate marketing.

You need not worry that an affiliate disclaimer provokes visitors to your site to quickly leave out of a
negative reaction to your disclaimer. It will be strategically placed in a non-intrusive location on your
blog and, in fact, is usually not even read by most visitors.

One way to add your affiliate disclaimer is to create an image that contains your disclaimer and then add
that image to the footer of your blog. An example of an affiliate disclaimer image can be seen in this
downloadable zip file (http://blogblueprint.com/disclaimerimage).

Adding the Disclaimer Image:

Adding an affiliate disclaimer image to your blog goes through a similar process as adding images. To
add the disclaimer image …

• Step 1: Go to your blog’s wp-admin area and click on “Media” >> “Add New”.
• Step 2: Click on “Select Files” and then select the file you want to upload.
• Step 3: Once uploaded, you will notice the image is given a “File URL”. Copy this URL.
• Step 4: Click “Save All Changes”.
• Step 5: Go to “Appearance” >> “Editor” and find “Footer” in the right navigation section (this is
the footer.php file).

NOTE: This is the process generally used when editing a free theme. It may be different for
premium themes and training on those is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

• Step 6: Add the following code then click “Update File”:

<img src="URLTOFILE" alt="disclaimer for WEBSITEKEYWORD">
o URLTOFILE = the URL you copied in step 3.
o WEBSITEKEYWORD = the keyword being used for your website.

NOTE: Ensure the file can be updated before applying changes. You may need to change the file
permissions, which is done through your cpanel admin area, or, if using FTP, changing it there. You
may need to play with this to get the image in the right location.

A live demonstration is provided for the above steps. To view this, view the video starting at 13:18.

• Step 1: Add your content to your blog and create the index page plus two regular posts.
• Step 2: Update your header and optionally add images to your sidebar and in your content.
• Step 3: Add an affiliate disclaimer to your footer so that it appears on all pages of your blog.
Summary:
• About editing the content and how to add the content to your blog
• About using images in your content
• About the affiliate disclaimer and how to add it to the footer of your blog

Module 5 "Optimization" >> Lesson 16 "SEO"

SEO
Purpose:
Even though we have covered various parts of SEO in other lessons, this lesson will be very SEO-
focused and will actually get into implementing SEO into your blog. This lesson will cover …

• What ‘SEO’ is
• Defining Internal SEO
• Defining External SEO
• Executing Internal SEO

What is ‘SEO’?
Definition and Function:

As a definition, SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization".

As a function, SEO is the process of optimizing a website to achieve higher rankings with the search
engines. The goal of this optimization is to hopefully achieve higher levels of "organic" traffic.

When talking about "organic" in context of web traffic, we are referring to the kind of traffic that comes
from unpaid listings at search engines, directories, etc.

SEO "Players":

There are several "players" in the search engine environment. To name a few, there is...

• Google
• Yahoo (English version "Powered by Bing")
• Bing (previously known as "MSN Live Search")
• Baidu (pronounced "buy doo", a huge Chinese search engine)

Since the Blog Blueprint’s intention is to help you gain the greatest presence online and therefore tap
into the highest possible levels of traffic, our main SEO focus is going to be on three of the major (by
volume) players. They are, of course, Google, Yahoo and Bing. In particular, what you will be trained
on in the Blog Blueprint training will be focused on Google, which holds the largest share of the search
engine market, easily outstripping all of the others combined.

Now, all three of these search engines share similar SEO criteria. However, from an ROI perspective, it
is most effective for you to focus on the industry leader, which is Google. The side benefit of this focus,
of course, is that a well-optimized and well-ranked site in Google usually means it will rank well with
the other search engines.

Internal SEO:
The process of optimizing the internal code of a website to help improve its rankings with the search
engines is referred to as ‘internal SEO’. You may also hear the term ‘On Page’ or ‘On Site’
optimization.

Some people say that internal SEO is not an important factor for ranking with the search engines. This
would imply that they do not understand the principles behind SEO and as a result are not taking proper
advantage of it.

Some examples of internal SEO that we will be focusing on are:

• Keyword Density – this is the amount of times a keyword appears on a page, often represented
as a percentage (e.g. keyword density and keyword percentage usually mean the same thing).
• Sitemaps – this is a page on your site that links to all internal pages on your site. This is very
helpful in enabling search engine spidering, the process of search engines seeking to locate all of
your internal pages.
• Internal Linking – this is how internal pages on your site are linked together and what
keywords are used as the anchor text for each link. The anchor text is the text which is seen by
your reader and is hyperlinked to another page. An example of an internal link would be:
<a href="http://yoursite.com">Keyword Anchor Text</a>
• "Title", "Meta Description" and "Meta Keywords" tags – these tags provide information for
the search engines to understand what your page is about and is often used to produce the results
in the search engines, meaning the search engines use those tags when searches are being
performed.
• File "robots.txt" – this is an important, powerful file that you can utilize for your site. Subject
to whether or not sites agree to abide by the instructions of the robots.txt file, you can limit
access only to those resources that provide value to you and limit those resources to the specific
pages you want them to be able to access.

To explain "robots.txt" further, any auto-blogging system you use will take up a fair share of resources,
e.g. bandwidth, memory, etc. Your goal is to keep usage from external entities to a minimum, especially
if you are on a reseller’s host, as many of you are. By blocking entities such as spidering programs that
are only looking for backlinks or search engines that don’t provide you any value, you help minimize the
usage while still enabling entities that DO help you achieve your SEO goals.
Also, your site is made up of many files and some, such as affiliate redirects, you do not need to be
found by search engines, etc. A robots.txt file enables you to open access to your site while at the same
time denying unnecessary access to those files.

More detailed training on the development and use of this file will be provided later so don’t be too
concerned if you don’t know how to do that now.

External SEO:
When you think of external SEO, think "link building". Also referred to as "Off Page" or "Off Site"
SEO, external SEO is primarily focused on link building, the process of getting other websites to link
back to your website. Link building is vital to long-term success with the search engines, especially
Google.

As with internal SEO, more training will be provided on external SEO, particularly when we get into the
lesson where we focus on promoting your blogs.

Internal SEO Process:

There are several items related to the Internal SEO process. In the proceeding sections you will find
details on each item as well as accompanying demonstration videos.

It’s important you cover each step carefully, so take your time and be sure to cover each one.

Create your HTML Sitemap

Description:

There are two types of site maps we will be focusing on in the Blog Blueprint – HTML and Google-
friendly XML. The XML sitemap will be covered in a following step.

The HTML sitemap is a page which will link to other pages on your site. You decide which pages
appear on this page and which ones don’t. Having this page enables users and search engines to more
easily get around on your site.

Steps:

Creating this page in Wordpress is very easy. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area, go to "Plugins" and activate the "Dagon Design Sitemap
Generator" plugin.
2. Go to "Pages" >> "Add New" and create a page with the title "Site Map". Select the "HTML"
(as opposed to "Visual") editor option and, in the body of the page, add the token <! --
ddsitemapgen -->. This will tell the plugin to insert the site map data into this page.
 3. Under the "Discussion" section, uncheck the "allow comments" and "allow trackbacks" options
then click ‘Publish’.
4. Go to "Settings" >> "DDSitemapGen". Under the "General Options" section, enter your
"Sitemap page slug". This is the reference that appears at the end of your URL. For example, if
you enter your page slug as "site-map", this will result in the following URL:
http://www.yoursite.org/site-map
5. Once entered, click "Update options".
6. Exclude the default index page link from being listed on your site map. This prevents the
possibility of it being seen as duplicate content. To do this,
a. Go to "Pages" and hover over the page you’ve designated as your index page. Note the
‘post’ value displayed in the status bar of your browser window:
http://www.yoursite.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=15&action=edit
b. Go to "Settings" >> "DDSitemapGen". Under the "Exclusions" section, enter ‘post’
value (e.g. 15) into "Excluded pages".
c. Under the "Miscellaneous" section, enter the "Full path to XML sitemap" value. For
example,
http://www.yoursite.org/sitemap.xml

You will be creating this file in the next step so you will want the link entered here.

1. Click "Update options".

2. Go to "Appearance" >> "Editor" and add to your footer the link to your site map. This is
important so that search engines find your site and all the pages that are on it.

Create your Google XML Sitemap

Description:

This is the second of the two sitemaps that should be created for your site. An XML sitemap, often
referred to as a Google sitemap, is similar to an HTML sitemap in that it links to all the pages you want
linked to on your site.

While the HTML sitemap is mostly intended for visitors to your site, the XML sitemap is purely intended
for the search engines even though it does come in a more human-readable format than when first
developed.

In addition to linking to pages on your site, an XML sitemap will also contain information such as:

• URL of the page

• Priority for the page – this indicates how important you think the page is and will direct search
engines on how often to come back and check on it
• Change frequency - how often the page is changed (e.g. daily, weekly)
• Last change - the last time a change was made to the page

Steps:
Like the HTML sitemap, creating this page in Wordpress is very easy. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area, go to "Plugins" and activate the "Google XML Sitemaps" plugin.
2. Go to "Settings" >> "XML-Sitemap". Make changes to the following options:
a. "Sitemap files" - check "Write a normal XML file (your filename)" and "Write a gzipped
file (your filename +.gz)".
b. "Update notification" – uncheck each of the "Notify …" options. You will want to
activate these at some point but when first building your blog, it’s recommended to leave
these unchecked until you your site is stable – this prevents multiple notifications, which
especially for a new blog, may come across as suspicious to the search engines. When
your site is stable, you will go back and check each "Notify …" option. Note - If using
Yahoo, your Yahoo application ID will be required.
c. "Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file" – uncheck this as you will be creating
your own robots.txt file.
d. "Build the sitemap in a background process …." - be sure this is checked.
e. "Post Priority" – check "Do not use automatic priority calculation …." Using one of the
other options will result in priority being increased with the volume of comments on your
site. This is unneeded when starting out.
f. "Location of your sitemap file" – check "Automatic detection" and verify "sitemap.xml"
is entered in the filename field.
g. "Sitemap Content" – check "Include homepage", "Include posts" and "Include static
pages".
h. "Exclude posts" – enter the number of your site’s index page. If you don’t remember the
number, refer to step 6a in "Create your HTML Sitemap" above.
i. "Change Frequencies" – set "Homepage" and "The current archive …" to daily, "Posts"
and "Static pages" to monthly, and "Categories" to weekly. The remaining ones can stay
as default.
j. "Priorities" – set "Homepage" to 1.0, "Posts" to 0.6 and "Static pages" to 0.2.
3. Click "Update options".
4. Click "rebuild the sitemap". Once done, verify your XML sitemap. Either type in the XML
sitemap’s URL (e.g. http://www.yoursite.org/sitemap.xml) or get to it from your site’s HTML
sitemap which will now contain a link.
5. Once verified, go to "Settings" >> "XML-Sitemap". Under "Update notification" check each of
the "Notify …" options you want to use. Remember to have your Yahoo application ID if you
plan to use Yahoo here.
6. Click "Update options". A rebuild will not be necessary as it will be done automatically and sent
to the search engines the next time a post is made.

NOTE: In order for the settings to be applied, and particularly the rebuild, it is necessary to have the
‘.xml’ and ‘.gz’ versions of the file on your site. If the rebuild fails, the permissions or the absence of
these files may be the cause.

To correct this, follow these simple steps:

1. Log into your hosting account.

2. Go to "File Manager".
 3. Verify that you are in the main directory (indicated by the presence of two sub-directories – "wp-
admin" and "wp-content").
4. Click "New File". In the entry field, enter "sitemap.xml" and click "Create New File". Enter
"sitemap.xml.gz" in the entry field and click "Create New File". Click "Cancel" to exit.
5. Once created, scroll down to each of the files and modify the permissions. Values "6 4 4" should
be okay but if not, try "6 6 6".
6. Return to your wp-admin and perform the rebuild. It will indicate if everything is done correctly.

Create Your robots.txt File

Description:

A non-mandatory file on your website, robots.txt instructs bots on where to find your site and what
pages they can access. Bots, or ‘robots’, are programs used by such sites as Google to gather
information for their databases.

To view your site’s robots.txt file, simply add "robots.txt" to the end of your URL.

http://www.yoursite.org/robots.txt

The top line of the file will have a link to your site’s XML sitemap.

Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.org/sitemap.xml

Under that, a recommended entry is Google’s ‘Mediapartners’ agent. By allowing this agent access, you
prevent white space or public service ads from appearing on your pages when you’ve added Google
Adsense to your site. This happens if Google has not had opportunity to index the page or determine
what it is about. The entry looks as follows:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

The remainder of the text can be organized however you see fit. In the example robots.txt file we
provide you, you’ll see the text organized into segments or groupings simply for readability and
management.

For example, the next two groupings are preceded by "User-agent: *" followed by a list of directories or
files with each list item preceded by "Disallow". This represents the directories and files we don’t want
any search engines to have access to. Of particular note are the image files – since searches for images
can result in non-profitable access to your site, you’re better off just disallowing the search engines from
accessing them.

Following these is a long list of user-agents that are prevented from accessing the site. These are
selected not necessarily because they are ‘bad’ but because they don’t serve any monetary value to you
and would simply use up bandwidth and other resources if allowed access. The entries for these would
look similar to the following:
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

Having "/" as a "Disallow" value prevents any access to any file or directory on your site.

NOTE: Before getting into how this file gets added to your site, it is important to mention the affiliate
redirect entry. In the video you’ll notice an example of it under the first grouping of "User-agent: *"
preceded by "Disallow" (e.g. "Disallow: /deal/"). The redirect appears under hyperlinks on your site
(e.g. instead of showing the actual affiliate URL, it shows the redirect "/deal/"). By disallowing this in
your robots.txt file, you prevent the search engines from being able to follow where the hyperlinks go.

You can access a copy of our sample file here: http://blogblueprint.com/example-robots.txt

You can copy the file as is but be sure to make changes as indicated in the file:

• Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (EDIT THIS LINE AND REMOVE THIS TEXT)

Modify the portion in red (e.g. put in your URL) and remove portion in and including the brackets.

• Disallow: /affiliateredirect/ (EDIT THIS LINE AND REMOVE THIS TEXT)

Modify the portion in red (e.g. put in your redirect folder) and remove portion in and including the
brackets.

For more technical information on this file, visit http://www.robotstxt.org/.

Steps:

To actually add this file to your site:

1. Log into your hosting account.

2. Go to "File Manager".
3. Verify that you are in the main directory (indicated by the presence of two sub-directories – "wp-
admin" and "wp-content").
4. Click "New File". In the entry field, enter "robots.txt" and click "Create New File". You will
not need to change permissions for this file.
5. Go to http://blogblueprint.com/example-robots.txt in a separate browser tab or window and copy
the contents.
6. Return to your hosting account, scroll down to your robots.txt file and select "Edit".
7. Paste copied contents into the edit field.
8. Change sitemap and affiliate redirect values then delete bracketed text (including the brackets).
9. Click "Save Changes".
10. Verify your robots.txt file by visiting it (e.g. http://www.yoursite.org/robots.txt). As well, verify:
a. All your folders are correctly entered
b. "Disallow" is correctly defined. For example, "Disallow: /" means no access at all,
"Disallow:" (with no proceeding value) means full access.
 c. You have not left spaces or extra characters. The search engines are very particular and
may not respond how you wanted. For example, too many spaces between groupings is
not advised (one is ok). Also, special characters like ‘#’ have special meaning in the
robots.txt file so be sure to leave those out.

Activate and Configure Your Redirection Plugin

Description:

A redirection is simply a command that instructs browsers and search engines how to handle a specific
link. Two such redirects are 301 and 302.

The 301 redirect is called the "move permanently" redirect. When you use this redirect, it forces the
reference to the original link to automatically refer to the link of the 301 redirect. For example, if you
have site "abc.com" and configure a 301 redirect to "dogs.com", then when anyone types in
"www.abc.com" it will automatically send them to "www.dogs.com".

This redirect also helps the search engines keep up with the information for your site. Knowing you’re
using a "permanent move" redirect, any association to your old link is updated to coincide with your
new one. This update doesn’t take place right away but eventually will do so.

The 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. An example of when you might use a 302 redirect is when
you’re doing maintenance on your site. You can place a 302 redirect to a "Site under maintenance. Will
be back soon." page. This will help search engines to understand that this is only a temporary change so
don’t bother updating the associations with any long term association with the new link.

There are many ways to create redirects. You can use your .htaccess file, php code, javascript and so
on. The simplest way, of course, is to use a redirection plugin.

One of the great features of the redirection plugin is its ability to cloak affiliate links. Search engines,
especially Google, do not like pages that appear to be full of affiliate links as this can appear spammy.
By cloaking these links to appear as internal links, you satisfy the search engines while still providing a
link to external sources for your readers. This works in unison with your entries in the robots.txt file
where you make it so the search engines are not even aware that these "internal" links are actually
redirects.

As an added bonus, you also make the links look nicer as affiliate links tend to be long and full of
different characters and codes.

Now one important thing to note when using this plugin is that you want to be sure to activate it only
after you’ve finished setting up your blog, including creating your pages, etc. The reason for this is
because the plugin is coded to react to changes in your site (e.g. pages, page names) as a way of keeping
current with any redirection associations it may have. This is good functionality but can produce
unexpected results when first putting your blog together, such as re-associating a redirect with a page it
was not intended to. Not to worry, though – you are able to easily change or remove any redirects that
require it.
Steps:

The first redirect you should set up is your index page. Recall that when you were setting up your blog
you created a page that you then associated as your index page.

This resulted in there being two such pages (the default one and the one you associated). You want to
be sure that everyone ends up on the same page.

To set this redirect up, perform the following steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "Pages".

2. Scroll down to your index page. Hover over "View" then right-click and copy the URL (Link
Location).
3. Go to "Plugins" and activate the Redirection plugin.
4. Go to "Tools" >> "Redirection". Paste the copied link location into "Source URL" then enter a
"Target URL". Optionally, leave other values as "URL only" and "Redirect to URL".
5. Click "Add Redirection".

Next, you want to be sure to set up redirects for your affiliate links. To do this, perform the following
steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "Tools" >> "Redirection".

2. Enter the affiliate link into "Source URL" then enter a "Target URL". Optionally, leave other
values as "URL only" and "Redirect to URL".
3. Click "Add Redirection".

Final Note: Sometimes you discover that a page is redirecting that shouldn’t be. You go to "Tools" >>
"Redirection" and don’t see the redirect listed there. To discover where the redirect may be, follow
these steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "Tools" >> "Redirection".

2. Click "Groups" in the navigation bar near the top of the page.
3. In the listing you should see "Redirections" and "Modified posts". Click "Modified posts".
4. Check the erroneous redirect and click "Delete".

Add Authority Links:

Description:

In the eyes of Google, websites are meant to be resources. Google wants to be able to provide value to
its users and that is accomplished by providing resources on topics the users are looking for. Being a
website that does this helps it to be treated as an authority site.

Examples of authority sites are sites like Wikipedia, health sites, top-level sites like government sites,
etc. These are resource-rich and therefore easily rank as authority sites. A couple of great resources for
finding authority sites are dmoz (http://www.dmoz.org/) or Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/) as
listed sites generally have authority with Google.

Another option is Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/). Here, just as with dmoz or Yahoo Directory, you
simply enter your keyword as a search parameter then scroll the results for links you think are valid for
adding to your blogroll (a list of links usually placed in your side navigation bar). A recommendation is
to select sites that have an

Alexa ranking value of less than 100,000. A little higher is okay but below that is better.

Regardless of where you acquire your links, a good number to have for your blogroll is about 3 but if
you are using the Better Blogroll plugin, you will want about 10 and only have three links appear at a
time.

As a means to greater value and profitability of your site, you want to be able to link to these authority
sites. Now authority sites themselves won’t provide you with any short-term monetary value in the
sense of making money off of them but linking to them gives you credibility with Google.

As a result, long-term monetary value can be realized because credibility with Google means a greater
likelihood of higher page ranking and higher flow of organic traffic.

Steps:

To use a plugin for linking to authority sites:

1. Log into your wp-admin area, go to "Plugins" and activate the "Better Blogroll" plugin. NOTE:
An optional plugin, this plugin was not mentioned in our earlier lesson on plugins. The power of
this plugin is that you can add multiple links for your blogroll which will be rotated differently
for every page on your site. Since it was not mentioned before, you may not have it already
installed. To acquire the plugin, either:
2. Go to this link http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/better-blogroll
3. Go to "Plugins", click "Add New" then enter "better blogroll". Follow the steps for installing the
plugin. Be sure to activate it once installed.
4. Go to "Links" >> "Link Categories". Here you will create categories that your links can be
associated with as well as for the "Better Blogroll" widget.
5. Go to "Links" >> "Add New". Enter a name, the URL.
6. Scroll down and select a category (you can select more than 1). No description is required.
7. Scroll down to "Target" section and check "_blank – new window or tab". This will cause a new
window or tab to open when a user clicks on the link, leaving your site still open and accessible.
8. Click "Add Link" to save.
9. Go to "Appearance" >> "Widgets" and then "Better Blogroll" in your sidebar.
10. Enter a title for your blogroll. This will appear on your page above the links in the blogroll.
11. Optionally enter a description for the blogroll.
12. Select the number of links to show in the blogroll and the order to show them. A good setting is
3 links in random order but you can configure this however you wish.
13. Check "Show Text Links?" Nothing else needs to be shown.
 14. Enter category(s) in the "Show Only Links From These Categories". If more than 1, be sure to
comma-separate. This will show the links that you associated your selected category(s) with.
15. Leave the rest of the options unchecked and click "Save".

Set Up Simple Tags Plugin:

Description:

The Simple Tags plugin is a powerful plugin that allows your blog to automatically insert relevant tags
within posts. These tags link to internal pages on your blog, which in turn help to interlink your blog’s
content.

If a post or page on your blog is not internally linked to, Google and the other search engines feel that
you do not deem it to be of value and as a result this may cause it to lower in the search engine rankings.
By effectively interlinking your blog (using Simple Tags, Related Posts and the HTML Site Map) you
can ensure that the search engines will not penalize any of your content for lack of internal linking.

Steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and activate the "Simple Tags" plugins
2. Go to "Settings" >> "Simple Tags".
3. Under the "General" tab, uncheck "Active tags for page"
4. Under the "Administration" tab, leave all default settings. It is also recommended that you
register for the API services that are referenced in this section. These services will help ensure
you get the best tags possible for your blog
5. Leave the "Auto link" tab with the default settings
6. Under the "Meta Keyword" tab, uncheck "Automatically include in header"
7. Leave the "Embedded Tags" with the default settings
8. Under the "Tags for Current Post" tab, select "Singleonly" beside "Automatically display tags list
into post content", set the "Max tags display:" to 3 and delete the line "No tags for this post"
from the "Text to display if no tags found" section
9. Under the "Related Posts" tab, select "Singleonly" beside "Automatically display related posts
into post content", set the "Maximum number of related posts to display: (default: 5)" to 3 and
then remove the lines from "Enter the text to show when there is no related post" and "Enter the
positioned title before the list, leave blank for no title"
10. In the "Related Tags" tab change the "Maximum number of related tags to display" to 3.
11. Leave the "Tag Cloud" tab with the default settings and click "Update options"
12. Go to "Posts" >> "Auto Terms" and check beside "Active Auto Tags".
13. Optional - In the "Keyword list", enter in a list of keywords that are comma seperated, click
update options and then (if your blog already has some content on it that you want to tag) click
the "Auto terms all content". This will then add good keyword tags to posts that are already on
your blog.

Adding and Optimizing Internal Links:

 Description:

Now we are going to add some links to your blog. The first set of links we want to add are the affiliate
links.

Assuming that you have an auto-blog that has primary content that is promoting an affiliate product, you
are first going to want to create affiliate redirects. This was discussed in the steps covering the
redirection plugin.

The next thing you will want to do is add those affiliate redirects into the content of your posts.
Recommendations for this are:

• Create an image or use a banner from the affiliate product you are promoting.
• Enter in a few "call to action" links, using redirects, on your index page and the two other
primary content pages.

When you’re adding these in your posts, be sure to include the following tags in your code:

• rel="nofollow" – this is because it’s an affiliate link and so we don’t want any credit being
given to this link whatsoever. It is already being blocked in your robots.txt file (recall
"Disallow" for redirects) but this is an added precaution.
• target="_blank" – this will cause the link to open a new window so you won’t end up losing
the person off your blog.

Here is an example of the code:

<a rel="nofollow" href="youraffiliateredirect" target="_blank" >Check this out here.</a>

You will want to add these to your index page and the two primary post pages that you’ve added.

To edit your posts for your affiliate links:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "Posts" >> "Posts".

2. Click "Edit" under the post you wish to make changes to.
3. Locate in the code where you are using affiliate links.
4. Add the nofollow and target tags as instructed.

Now you want to link your home page to your two primary articles. Recall how earlier when the articles
were being created that you needed to make sure the index page article contained one of the keywords
for each of the two primary posts. The reasons for this are …

• It shows the search engines, Google especially, the priority you want to give the pieces of
content you’re hyperlinking to because you want them to know these are important for indexing
and ranking highly
• It helps guide the bots through your site so they are able to easily index every page
To edit this, simply follow the steps for editing posts and add the <a href> tag with the URL for the
primary post you want to hyperlink to. Don’t forget the "nofollow" and "target" tags.

The next thing you want to do is add navigation to your sidebar. This navigation will include links to
both of your primary content posts and to your home page. The home page link is important because
you always want to provide a way for your visitors to get to the index page of your blog.

An important detail about the home page navigation link is that you want to make sure it uses
"nofollow". The reason for this is that Google will look at the words used in the navigation and
associate the page with those words. You don’t want Google to associate "home" with your home page
so by setting "nofollow" you prevent that from happening.

There are two ways in which you can add these links and the nofollow tag to the home link:

1. Using the text widget, enter the HTML codes for the links including nofollow for the home link.
2. Using a plugin, configure nofollow for the home link and just use your blogroll to display the
links.

You can choose either way. If you decide to use the plugin, the steps for using it are as follows:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "Posts".

2. Click "Add New" then enter "nofollow links". Follow the steps for installing the plugin.
3. Activate the plugin.
4. Go to "Links" >> "Categories". You want to verify you have a category called "Navigation".
5. Go to "Links" >> "Add New". If they don’t already exist, add three links – index (home) page
and your 2 primary content pages.
6. Go to "Links" >> "Nofollow Links". This will list all the links for your blogroll. Scroll to and
check your home page link.
7. Once checked, scroll back to the top of the screen and click "Mark Links Nofollow".
8. Go to "Appearance" >> "Widgets". Select the "Links" widget and put it into your sidebar.
9. Edit the "Links" widget in the sidebar – Select "Navigation" from the drop-down list, check
"Show Link Name" then click "Save".

All that remains now is to make sure that you add a link to the index page that does use keyword (for
search engine value). Since it was already stated that "Home" is set to nofollow so Google won’t
associate your index page with that word, you need to locate the link using keyword in a different
location. That location is the footer.

Simply add a link to your footer that uses the primary keyword for your index page.

SEO Smart Links

Description:
SEO Smart Links is a great plugin for adding even more "interlinking" power to your blog. This plugin
will automatically interlink posts based on keywords and will also allow you to specify which keywords
and URLs you want to ensure get linked.

Steps:

1. Log into your wp-admin area and activate the "SEO Smart Links" plugins.
2. Go to "Settings" >> "SEO Smart Links".
3. Under the section "Internal Links" check:
a. Posts
b. Pages
c. Comments
d. Do not check "Allow links to self"
4. Under "Excluding" check, "Prevent linking in heading tags (h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)".
5. Under "Target" have only "Posts" checked.
6. Under "Settings" check:
a. Process only single posts and pages
b. Process RSS feeds
c. Do NOT check "Case sensitive matching"
7. Under "Ignore Posts and Pages" add the page and post numbers for your index page article and
your two primary posts.
8. Under "Custom Keywords" add the keywords and URL's for your index page and two primary
posts.
9. Under "Limits" set:
a. Max Links: 2
b. Max Single: 1
c. Max Single URLs: 1
10. Click "Update Options".

Web Page Analyzer and Your Primary Content Pages

Description:

Web Page Analyzer (WPA) is a powerful application designed to help you fully optimize your web
pages to be as search engine optimized as possible. It’s of value to you that you run this application
for the three primary content pages of your site – the index page and the two primary posts.

If you haven’t already installed WPA, you can CLICK HERE to download it.

Once the software is downloaded and ready to run, you are going to analyze the index page and the two
other primary posts that you made. You will need to analyze each one separately. To do this:

1. Enter the URL of the page you want to analyze and then the keyword phrase it is optimized for.
Be sure not to use keyword phrases that contain less than 2 words. Reasons are:
a. You don’t really want to be optimizing for keyword phrases with such a low word count.
b. Results are less reliable for 2-word keyword phrases.
 2. Let the software then run through its 23 steps and return a results report that will contain a score
plus some recommended changes for you to do. It is important to understand that WPA is a tool
intended to help you with optimizing your pages and therefore does not guarantee you’ll get
higher ranking by using it. However, we have used this tool with great results and highly
recommend it. That said:
a. Don’t worry if something on the report can’t be corrected.
b. Set your goal for a WPA score of 85 or higher. Having it in this range lets you move on
without worrying if your page is not optimized enough.

To help you understand the results of the WPA tool, it is recommended that you download the WPA
cheat sheet that can be obtained by clicking the "Training" link in the top of the WPA software
navigation.

Quick Search Engine Indexing

Description:

Now that your blog is set up, you want to notify the search engines that it is ready. The following is an
extremely effective strategy for getting your blog indexed in the search engines (especially Google) and
also getting you an easy keyword-rich backlink.

Steps:

1. Go to http://www.howismysite.com and enter in your blog's URL. Howismysite.com will then

generate a unique page for you with the URL similar to howismysite.com/yourdomain-com
2. Scroll down to the section "Other Resources" and click on each link and allow each page to fully
load. These are services that will analyze your blog and create custom pages for you on high
authority sites. The search engines constantly visit these sites and will quickly find your site
through them.
3. Copy down the RSS feed URL for your custom page at howismysite.com and the URL of the
custom page itself then go to ONLY one of the following services and submit your
howismysite.com page:
o http://ping.in/
o http://pingomatic.com/
o http://pingoat.com/
o http://pingates.com/
o http://www.pingmyblog.com/
4. Submit the RSS feed from your howismysite.com page to the following RSS Feed Directories.
No Registration Required:
o http://www.feedagg.com/add_feed.php
o http://abcfeeds.com/index.php?act=submit
o http://www.blogbunch.com/suggest/
o http://www.feedlisting.com/submit.php
o http://feedpass.com/
o http://www.feedplex.com/add-url.php
o http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html
 o http://metafeeder.com/suggest-feed.html
o http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp
o http://www.rssmotron.com/feed_eater.php
o http://ribix.com/rss/submit/
o http://www.twingly.com/ping
o http://www.xmeta.net/users/
5. Optional – Submit the RSS feed from your howismysite.com page to the following RSS Feed
Directions. Registration is Required:
o http://feedbite.com/
o http://www.feedage.com/
o http://friendfeed.com/
o http://www.rssmountain.com/
o http://www.xfruits.com/

• Step 1: For each blog, complete the steps of the Blog Blueprint Internal SEO process.
• Step 2: Update your Blog Blueprint spreadsheet and update it to indicate which sites have been
SEO’d.

Summary:
In this lesson you have …

• Learned what ‘SEO’ is

• Learned what ‘Internal SEO’ is
• Learned what ‘External SEO’ is
• Executed the steps for ‘Internal SEO’

Module 5 "Optimization" >> Lesson 17 "Auto Blog Buddy"

Auto Blog Buddy

Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce you to the Wordpress plugin “Auto Blog Buddy”. It will be
presented in multiple parts with each part having its own video demonstration.

Part 1: 'ABB' Plugin

 Description: Auto Blog Buddy (ABB) is a plugin that can take your blog and make it into a
powerful auto-blogging tool. If you have access to the Auto Blog Installer, then the Auto Blog Buddy
plugin will be automatically added.

To download the plugin, you can get it from the downloads section of the Blog Blueprint members area.

Once you have installed and activated the ABB plugin, you'll be able to scroll down in your wp-admin
area and see AutoBlogBuddy in the navigation sidebar.

ABB membership comes in two types - 'Regular' and 'PRO'. The difference is reflected in the features
made available to you:

Feature Regular PRO

SK Setup
Amazon
eBay
Translate
Social Linker
Social Linker PRO
DataFeeds
PLR Import
Internal Link Booster

We will be covering each of these individually as we proceed with the training.

ABB Plugin Main Page:

When on this page you'll notice just a few things such as …

• ABB version number

• ABB update notice (if applicable) – tells if an ABB update is available
• latest ABB news
• List of posts with relevant information (Category, keywords, etc.)
• Link Cloaking section (to be discussed later)
• An export/import section – once everything is set up, you can export your settings.
Alternatively, if you've exported before, you're able to import the settings.
• An additional settings section that contains
o An alternate content posting order option – when SK articles are not available, you can
define the order / priority of where the next articles will come from.
o A pending items deletion option – makes it easy to delete a whole bunch of comments at
once, especially spammy ones. These are comments that are pending approval.
Steps:

In Part 1 of setting up ABB plugin, there are several steps to be followed:

1. Log into your wp-admin area, go to "Users".

2. You will notice an already existing user that you created when you installed your blog. Click
"Add New" at the top of the screen.
3. This user will be responsible for all of the SK (Syndicate Kahuna) and ABB posts. It helps
distinguish those posts that are automatically posted (so will have this new user's name
associated with them) from ones you've added yourself (will have the default user's name
associated with them).
4. Enter a username. Try to make it something that is associated with the blog and has a positive
tone to it. For example, on a blog about coffee, a good username would be 'coffeelover'.
5. Enter an email address. Wordpress registration requires this as it sends registration information
to new users. Since we don't care about that and the email address we enter here is not one that
gets checked, we can enter anything you want here. For example, you could enter
[email protected].
6. Enter a password for the user. Be sure to repeat for verification.
7. Uncheck "Send Password".
8. Select a "Role". You want to select either 'Administrator' or 'Editor'. The reason for this is
because the permissions for these types of users work effectively with the way we have
communications with your blog set up. The recommendation is to select 'Editor' since you don't
need the full administrator privileges.
9. Click "Add User". NOTE: This information is used only for communicating with your blog so
any personal information you've entered will not be used for any other purpose.
10. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "SK Setup". 'SK' stands for Syndicate Kahuna, our huge network of
authors and blogs that publish and receive content. Configuring SK to communicate with your
blog enables it to receive a flow of unique and high quality content from the network.
11. In the "Step 1: Log into Syndicate Kahuna" section, enter your SK username and password. This
is the same as your blogblueprint.com username and password. If you don't already have an SK
username and password, click on the provided hyperlink to go through the process of setting up a
user account on the SK network. Doing this step enables your blog to communicate with the SK
server with recognized account credentials. Once done, click "Log In". This will produce the
"Step 2 …" section.
12. In the "Step 2: Enter Site Information" section, enter / select the appropriate information for each
option:
a. "Posting Username" and "Posting Password" – the credentials you created in step 4 and
following are entered here (e.g. coffeelover).
b. "Articles Per Day" – you have the option of between 1 and 10 articles per day to be
published to your blog. The recommendation for a new blog is 1 but absolutely no more
than 6. For a well-established blog you could go as high as 10 but for just starting out the
best recommendation is 1-2. The reason for this is because you simply don't want your
blog to be flooded with too much content too quickly. One article a day is plenty and
appears very realistic.
 c. "Alt Article Source" – we have partnered with the Article Feeder article database so that
if there are no articles available from SK, Article Feeder will step in as an alternative
source. This is an optional setting.
d. "Email Admin" – another optional setting, this will email you every time an article is
posted to your blog.
e. Click "Add Site". This will produce the "Step 3 ….." section.
13. In the "Step 3: Select Categories" section you will select the categories for the type of content
you want to receive from SK:
a. You must select from 1 to 10 categories.
b. Select category(s) that relate to your blog's topic. For example, if you have a blog about
coffee makers, a good category is the "Food and Drink" category. You could also select
"Product Reviews" and "House and Home".

NOTE: you are going to be able to specify the keywords for content that you will allow,
so having the categories and keywords combined helps filter out posts that don't relate to
your target.

c. Click "Add Categories". This will produce the "Step 4 …." section.
14. In the "Step 4: Map Categories" section you will be able to map the SK categories to your local
categories (categories you created for your blog). Click "Map Categories". This will produce
the "Step 5 …." section.
15. In the "Step 5: Set Category Keywords" section you'll be able to add keywords:
a. Enter the keyword(s) (comma delimited) you want and click "Update Counts". This will
give you the count of articles currently available on SK that match the criteria of the
category and keywords you've entered. This value is continuously updated and therefore
will change. Content is the SK network have a lifespan of only 30 days, after that they are
removed. Also our writers are adding thousands of new articles everyday.

NOTE: start your keyword selection top-level. Content being provided has to have these
keywords as primary keywords on the content so you already know that what you will get
is more than likely going to be what you want. Starting top-level allows you to see what
kind of content you'll be getting and, if not satisfied, simply delete the content and update
/ tune your keyword selection.

NOTE: you can use the delimiter keyword 'AND' in your keyword criteria, e.g. "coffee
AND maker". This means that both words have to be in the article, though not
necessarily in the order you entered them.

NOTE: SK is not the only article source you'll be setting up for your blog so don't worry
if the counts don't appear very high.

NOTE: you have the option of leaving these fields blank. This will result in a higher
number of articles being available but less filtered to your specified target which may be
okay, depending on how you want to go about it.

b. Click "Set Keywords". This will produce the "Step 6 …." section.
 16. In the "Step 6: Set Excluded Keywords and URL's" section you will optionally enter keywords
and URLs for articles that you want excluded from being posted to your blog:
a. Example: you have an health insurance blog that you want to restrict articles related to
animals from being posted. Enter keywords such as 'Pet', 'Pets', 'animals', 'dogs', etc.
b. Click "Save Lists". This completes part 1 of your ABB plugin setup.

NOTE: Once this is completed, it will go to our moderators. The moderators primarily are going to
check two things:

o The look of your blog – they will verify that your blog looks professional rather than just
thrown together and that it has some unique content rather than the default posts that
appear when first creating the blog.
o The blog is indexed with Google, meaning Google has visited the site and has it listed in
its search results.

If the criteria match, approval for your blog will be granted. This takes place within 24 hours of setting
up your blog to communicate with the SK network.

Part 2: Amazon Setup

Steps:

In Part 2 of setting up your ABB plugin, you will configure your Amazon Setup:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Amazon Setup".
3. In the "Step 1: Enter Your Amazon Information" section you will:
a. Enter your 'Amazon Associates ID', e.g. "sitename-20". If you don't already have one,
you can follow the link near the top of the section and follow the steps to getting one.
b. Enter your 'Access Key ID' and 'Secret Access Key'. Again, if you don't already have
one, follow the link above these fields and follow the steps to getting these keys.
c. Select the region you want to focus on.
d. Select either 'Broad Match' or 'Exact Match' for your Product Search Mode. We
recommend 'Broad Match'.
e. Click "Save Options".
4. In the "Step 2: Setup Listing Template" section you are able to monetize article submissions with
content from Amazon. By setting up the 'Integrated Template' you can have Amazon content
insert itself directly into published posts. This also helps make your posts even more unique.
Some things to consider:
a. You can configure the integrated template however you wish. Tokens that can be used
are shown above the template field.
b. We recommend checking "Title in Bold" and "Shorten Description to ~100 Words".
c. We recommend checking "Use Listing as full post if no article available".
d. The "Display Product Reviews as Comments" option was available at the time this
training was prepared and we recommend checking it. However, Amazon is changing
their API and therefore this option may no longer be available.
 e. Check "Add nofollow to attribute to hyperlinks". You want to do this because they are
all affiliate links.
f. Select your desired option for the link text of hyperlinks that will appear. An example of
a custom link text would be "Click Here to Check Out the {title}".
g. Click "Save Template".
5. In the "Step 3: Integrate Listings with SK Articles" section you have a couple of options on how
Amazon content is integrated with SK articles that get published to your blog:
a. "Listing Location" – there are a few options of where the listing will appear in your
article, e.g. At the top of the article or after the second paragraph. Select your desired
location.
b. "Integrate with SK" – this is a percentage value that dictates what percentage of SK
articles will qualify for Amazon integration. We recommend 100% but it's entirely up to
you.
c. "Amazon Department" – these are the categories you'd like to see integration come from.
d. Click "Save Options". This completes part 2 of your ABB plugin setup.

Part 3: eBay Setup

Description:

In Part 3 of setting up your ABB plugin, you will configure your eBay Setup. There are some important
points that need to be addressed before you go forward with this part of the setup.

Starting out, it's important to realize that eBay is very particular about who they allow to be an affiliate.
They want to avoid affiliates who are just starting out and therefore may not provide immediate value to
them. As a result, some of you may not qualify to be an affiliate of eBay.

Not to worry … there are a lot of other modules you can use in the meantime. In time, your blog will
mature to the level of qualification for eBay affiliation.

When we talk about maturity of your blog, we are talking about how long it has been around and
whether or not it is well-established with the search engines. If you already have an established site,
such as an article director, blog or storefront, we recommend you use that when applying for eBay
affiliation. Once you're affiliated, you are able to use those credentials with your less-established sites,
so this is just a good approach to acquiring the desired affiliation.

One of the things we also recommend is not to use a free email account when applying for affiliation.
Using one that is associated with an actual domain or online storefront makes it easier to acquire the
eBay affiliation.

Steps:

To complete the process of configuring your eBay Setup:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "eBay Setup".
 3. In the "Step 1: Enter your eBay Setup Information" section:
a. eBay Affiliate ID – from the view of eBay, this is not actually an affiliate ID but rather a
campaign ID. To acquire a campaign ID, you will have to log into your eBay affiliate
account and create a campaign. This will produce a campaign ID which you will then
enter in this field.
b. Select your country and language, then click "Save Options".
4. In the "Step 2: Setup Listing Template" section:
a. Integrated Template - Configure, if desired, how you want eBay listings integrated into
your posts. Note how, unlike Amazon, eBay does not provide for full post integration.
However, you are able to provide for listings integration into posts published to your blog
from SK or other sources.
b. Sort By – there's a number of available options for how listings get sorted, e.g. 'Best
Match', 'Price – High to Low' or 'Listing – New to Old'. Select the one you most desire.
c. Number of Listings – you are able to list from 1 to 5 list items from eBay. A good
number is 3.
d. Auto-update Listings – this embeds code into your site which will display the current
auction status of items displayed in the post every time the post is visited. This is an
optional setting but recommended for its monetizing value. NOTE: an exception to this
recommendation is if you are on a shared host as the use of auto-update will increase
bandwidth.
e. Nofollow Attribute – we recommend you check this.
f. Click "Save Template".
5. In the "Step 3: Integrate Listings with SK Articles" section:
a. Listing Location – similar to Amazon and completely up to you.
b. Integrate with SK – recommend setting to 100% but entirely up to you.
NOTE: This recommendation was applied to Amazon as well. How the system handles
this is that it randomizes which gets used. For example, one time it may use Amazon but
the next time it may use eBay. Also, if the one it attempts first has no material to offer, it
will revert to the other.
c. eBay Category – select the category(s) that are relevant to your topic.
d. Click "Save Options". This completes part 3 of your ABB plugin setup.

Part 4: 'Translate' Feature

Description:

An extra feature in ABB is the 'Translate' feature. This feature can be used to help make your content a
little more unique by translating published posts from English to another language and back again. This
published content includes integrated material that comes from Amazon, eBay, Datafeeds and PLR.

The reason this process is able to make your content more unique is that when you translate from
English to another language, the content is worded in such a way that translating back to English
actually produces different wording than the original.
When using this feature, our recommendation is that you use a different language to translate to on each
of your blogs. This will ensure that each blog is not mimicking the others, ensuring uniqueness between
them.

Another recommendation is to go ahead and apply the translations to all of the content sources, even if
you are not configured for a particular source. The reason for this is so that when you do configure for
those sources, you'll already have the translation feature prepared for them.

Steps:

In order to configure the 'Translate' feature:

1. Log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Translate".
3. For "Translate" field one select the language the English content will be translated to, e.g.
Norwegian.
4. For "Translate" field two enter the language the content will finally be, e.g. English. NOTE: You
may be a user who wishes all of your content to remain in a particular language, e.g. Italian. In
that case, simply select "Italian" for the first language field and leave the second one unselected.
5. For "Apply Translations to:" check each of the options and their sub-options even if you haven't
yet configured the option(s) for use.
6. Click "Save Options".

Part 5: Social Linker

Description:

An important factor in building your auto-blogging network is the ability to always promote new posts.
You always want new posts added to your blog to be getting backlinks and getting promoted out on the
Internet.

Using ABB, this can be accomplished through the use of 'Social Linker', a feature of the ABB plugin
that uses the Bit.ly service. We recommend the Bit.ly service because it generates 301 redirects, which
means it passes all credits through the links to your website. The 301 redirects are created using
shortened links, which are more serviceable, e.g. really long links appear cleaner and more manageable.

For those of you that are not Advanced or PRO members, you will only be able to enter one username
and password per account. Advanced and PRO members can enter multiple usernames and passwords
per account.

Steps:

To configure this feature:

1. Create a Bit.ly account. You can follow one of the steps below:
 a. Go to http://bit.ly and create your account.
b. Log into your wp-admin area. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Social Linker". At the top
of the screen, in section "Step 1: Enter your Bit.ly Link Shortener Options", click "Click
here". NOTE: be sure to use your top level email account we recommended you create
earlier in the training because you only need one Bit.ly account for use with a lot of
different services.
2. Log into your Bit.ly account and go to "Settings".
3. Scroll down to "Public Timeline" and uncheck "Make bit.ly History Public". You don't want
others to see your history as this is used by yourself only.
4. Scroll down and click "Change".
5. Log into your wp-admin area and go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Social Linker".
6. In section "Step 1: Enter your Bit.ly Link Shortener Options", enter the bit.ly username and API
key from your Bit.ly account.
7. Click "Validate" then "Save Options" if everything is okay.
8. In section "Step 2: Enter Your Social Sites", add any services you want new posts to be posted
to. Click "Test" to verify each entry then "Save" to keep it. Once completed, go to next section.
NOTE: if you are using ABB Lite, you are only able to have one account of each service. If you
are using ABB Pro, you are able to add multiple accounts of each service.
9. In section "Step 3: Enter Social Site Options", select the Posting Option you prefer to use then
click "Save Options". NOTE: The following further explains the use of the posting options:
a. "Post to a Random number of my Social Sites" – this option selects a random number of
services (sites) to post to. For example, if you have 10 services, posting will be done to a
random number of those 10. If one of those random services has multiple accounts, the
posting will go to each of those accounts.
b. "Post to all of my Social Sites" – this option will post to all of the services (sites) you
have listed. However, if a site has multiple accounts, it will post to only one account per
service.

Part 6 - Datafeeds:
Description:

Using Datafeeds helps you to really take advantage of a lot of affiliate services as well as help you
access data you can use to create unique content for your auto blogs. This section will describe the use
of Datafeeds as it relates to the ABB plugin – a more in-depth lesson will be given on Datafeeds at a
later time.

ABB's Datafeeds feature uses an import file – either 'txt' or 'csv'. This file contains template information
that can be imported into Datafeeds for use as an integrated template, full post template or both.

To import and configure the use of Datafeeds, perform the following steps:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Datafeeds".
3. In section "Step 1: Import Datafeed":
a. Select the 'Category' for your datafeed from the drop-down list.
 b. Click 'Browse' to locate the file on your computer that you wish to import then click
'Import File'.
NOTE: The file you created and are importing may contain an optional header row. This
is the top row of the file which contains tokens that refer to column headers. You want to
make sure that when you create this header row that each tag / token is separated by the
pipe symbol ( | ). If you have a header row, be sure to check "Header Row" before
importing the file.
4. In section "Step 2: Setup Listing Template":
a. Select your datafeed file from the drop-down list. When you do this, you will see the two
template fields (Integrated, Full Post) filled and, if the file contained a header row, a list
of available tokens. If there was no header row, you would just see a list of number
tokens.
b. Modify the templates however you want. Remember, if you enable full post publishing,
the 'Full Post Template' (which is optional) gets used when no article exists for
integration at the time of posting the datafeed content, otherwise the 'Integrated Template'
gets used. When modifying, Be sure to …
i. Add the BUYURL with target=_blank (to open in new window) and
rel="nofollow". This is where the affiliate link will appear.
ii. Add the IMAGEURL to display the image of the product. When done, you are
able to preview how it will appear by clicking the "Preview" button.
c. If desired, check "Use as Full Post" to enable full post publishing if an article does not
exist for integration at time of posting.
d. Select the token you want to use for "Full Post Title Field".
e. Select the token you want to use for "Full Post Tag Field".
f. Select the token(s) you want for "Translate Fields".
g. Click "Save Template".
5. In section "Step 3: Integrate Listings with SK Articles":
a. Select your "Listing Location" from the drop-down list. This can be different than the
listing location you configured in other settings.
b. Select, for each category, the percentage of integration you want from the "Integrate with
SK" drop-down lists (100% recommended).
c. Click "Save Options".
6. In the left-side navigation bar, go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "AutoBlogBuddy".
7. In the "Link Cloaking" section,
a. Check "Enable Link Cloaking" next to the "Cloak Affiliate ID's".
b. For "Domains to Cloak", click "Import from Datafeeds". This will look in the datafeeds
to determine where the affiliate links are and then add those values to this field.
c. Click "Update". This will now allow all of your affiliate links to be automatically
cloaked, having the appearance of internal links rather than long, messy-looking, external
ones.

Once these settings are complete, a review of a posting that has a datafeed included will reveal the
cloaked link appearing similar to: http://yourdomain.com/post/affiliatelink.
Now, even though you configured "rel=nofollow" in your html, in order to ensure the search engines
don't follow the link, you will want to update your robots.txt file, under the grouping "user-agent: *",
with the following: Disallow: /post/.

An example template you can modify with your tokens is…

<a href="{BUYURL}" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="alignleft" style="border: 0pt

none; margin: 5px;" src="{IMAGEURL}" border="0" height="150" width="150" alt="{TITLE}"
/></a><a href="{BUYURL}" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">{PRODUCTNAME}</a>.
{BRIEFDESC}

<a href="{BUYURL}" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Click Here to Get This Now for ONLY
{PRICE}</a>

Part 7 – PLR Import:

Description:

Another valuable source for content is short content articles known as Private Label Rights (PLR)
articles. These can be articles you've written or articles that were written for you. In its simplest form,
these files are simply text files (.txt) containing content you will get posted to your blog.

The structure of the PLR article is important. They must contain tokens, which are used by the PLR
Import feature of ABB.

These tokens are:

• [TITLE][/TITLE]
• [TAGS][TAGS]
• [BODY][BODY]

You are not required to use all of these tags. For example, if you're using a plugin like Simple Tags,
which will automatically assign tags to articles that don't already have them, then you will not be
required to put tags in your PLR articles.

In order to use ABB's PLR Import it is necessary to have one or more of these articles contained within a
zip file. Gather your article files into a single directory, verify that each of them contains the appropriate
tags then compress that folder into a zip file.

Once you've completed these steps, perform the following steps within Wordpress:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "PLR Import".
3. In section "Step 1: Import PLR File":
a. Select the category for the import from the "Category" drop-down list.
b. Click "Browse" to locate the zip file you will import.
 c. Click "Import File".
4. In section "Step 2: Setup Listing Template":
a. Select your imported file from the "PLR Filename" drop-down list. This will allow ABB
to treat it similar to a datafeed.
b. Modify your "Full Post Template". This usually means simply adding the tokens such as
{BODY} to the template field.
c. If so desired, click "Preview" to see how the PLR article will appear when posted. This
will take into account any spacing, etc. that was included in your PLR article. Also, PLR
articles are treated like any other content and therefore integration of such things as eBay
or Amazon items will take place with PLR articles when posted.
d. Check your desired "Full Post Title Field" option.
e. Check your desired "Translate Field" option(s).
f. Check "Posting Status" if you want the PLR zip file to be active for posting.
g. Click "Save Template".
5. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "AutoBlogBuddy".
6. Scroll down to the "Additional Settings" section.
7. Specify your desired "Post Order for Alternate Content". Notice that PLR is available in this
setting.

Part 8 – Internal Link Booster:

Description:

Internal linking provides powerful and influential criteria to be used by Google in ranking pages on your
site. For example, if you have a post already ranking with Google that has zero promotion and no
internal linking, simply linking internally to that post can dramatically boost its ranking in Google.

ABB's Internal Link Booster (ILB) is just the right tool to help the internal linking of your site to be
optimized for those specific pages and posts that are found in the search engines. One of the ways it
does this is by providing you with useful information:

• Exactly what terms Google is sending you

• Exactly which post it is sending to
• Current position of the post

The power in this provision of information, especially for a mature site, is that you'll be able to come
into ILB, say once a month, look at keywords and pages that are ranking really low (particularly those
with no promotion) and do some promotional activities such as a few article blasts, etc. to help get those
pages very easily on page 1 of Google.

And this doesn't even take into account what ILB actually does!!

Another component of ILB is the provision of a widget you can activate on your site. To do this:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "Appearance" >> "Widgets".
 3. Put the "Internal Link Booster" widget in your sidebar, calling it something like "Popular Posts".
This will add it to your site's sidebar and automatically internally link to posts. Beneficial is the
fact that it will do this using keywords that can add to the promotion of posts related to those
keywords, resulting in higher ranking and traffic.

In order to use ILB, perform the following:

1. If not already there, log into your wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Internal Link Booster".
3. In the "Exclude Search Terms" section, enter the search terms you don't want included. A good
example would be any that use your primary term(s).
4. In the "Exclude Page and Post Id's" section, enter the post and page IDs for your two primary
posts you put in earlier because you are already internally linking to these.
5. In the "Internal Link Booster Options" section:
a. Check "Enabled" for "Internal Link Booster".
b. Select from the drop-down lists the minimum and maximum values for "Position Range
to Boost". This is the position in Google that you're considering here.
c. Check "Enabled" for "Auto Tag Search Terms" to have a tag page created for that search
term.
d. Check "Enabled" for "Add Search Term to <title>" which will help optimize even more
by adding the keyword to the title.
e. Select from the drop-down list the number of keywords you want in the <title> tag.
f. Select the "Scan Delay" from the drop-down list. This is the number of minutes the
system waits before scanning for current position in Google. You don't want this to
happen too quickly so 5 is a good value but you can even increase the wait time to 20 if
you wanted.
6. Click "Save Options".

If you want to disable ILB either temporarily or more, simply uncheck "Enabled" for "Internal Link
Booster". As well, you can modify any of these settings to suit your particular needs.

Another good feature of ILB is the ability to export the latest information it has on Link Booster search
terms. To do this, simply enter a filename in the "Export File" field and click "Export File". This will
create a 'csv' file that provides good information, which you can use or send to your outsourcers as a
way to get them to build links to pages using the keywords showing in the file. This file gives you
information exactly used by Google and what you specifically need to know to help figure out your
internal linking optimization.

Another cool step you can take in using the information provided by ILB is to take a search term
matched to a specific post and add that to your list of SEO Smart Links. To do this:

1. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Internal Link Booster".

2. Copy the desired search term, open notepad (or equivalent) and paste the term.
3. Copy the URL of the post the search term relates to. This can be done in two ways:
a. Under the selected search term, click "View Post". Once there, copy and paste the URL
into the notepad file.
 b. Alternatively, right-click on "View Post" and select "Copy Link Location" then paste it
into the notepad file.
4. Go to "Settings" >> "SEO Smart Links".
5. Scroll down to "Prevent Duplicate links …." Copy and paste the contents of the notepad file into
the field.

NOTE: You may already have the URL in this field. If so, you can simply add the search term
to the front of it (separated by commas) and the system will select one of the terms to associate
with the URL.

6. Scroll down and click "Update Options".

Possibly you don't want to associate a search term with a URL, such as when multiple terms are
applicable. If you want to, you can exclude a term from being used. To do this:

1. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Internal Link Booster".

2. Under the term you wish to exclude, click "Exclude". You will now see this term in the
"Exclude Search Terms" list. NOTE: If the list has gotten too large, as it is likely to do so, you
can check "Delete Search Terms" to have those terms removed.
3. Click "Save List".

• Step 1: For each blog, setup your Auto Blog Buddy plugin.
• Step 2: Update your Blog Blueprint spreadsheet and update it to indicate which sites have been
updated with Auto Blog Buddy.

Summary:
In this module you learned …

• How to install and set up the Auto Blog Buddy plugin.

Module 5 "Optimization" >> Lesson 18 "DataFilter"

Data Filter
Purpose:

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce you to "Data Filter", a program you receive with your
membership that will help filter the mass of content received from datafeeds.
 Description:

Managing datafeeds with AutoBlogBuddy is quite easy. The challenge is getting the datafeeds and
filtering the content received from datafeeds.

Getting Datafeeds

One of the best places to find affiliate datafeeds is the site http://popshops.com/affiliate-programs. Here
you will find a list of the different affiliate networks you can use and the list of the merchants associated
with those networks that offer datafeeds. We do not recommend that you sign up for an account with
popshops.com but definitely use this free service to find datafeeds for your blogs.

Selecting an affiliate network, you can search the list of merchants for one(s) that appear to be
associated with your product. Then, by clicking on that merchant, you are provided a link to apply to
that merchant's affiliate program.

NOTE: You do not want to sign up for popshops.com but you do want to be sure to sign up for the
merchant's affiliate program. While you certainly can sign up for a popshops.com account, it is not
necessary and is not likely to provide you with much value. However, you do want to take advantage of
the excellent affiliate network information that is provided.

Using Data Filter

Once you have datafeeds, you will begin to receive a mass of content from the affiliate merchant(s)
you're receiving datafeeds from. However, much of that content may be completely unrelated to your
product and therefore is of no value to you.

To resolve this, you will use the data filtering program you receive with your membership: Data Filter.

To use Data Filter:

1. Install and run the program.

2. Go to 'File' then 'Open File..' This will open a small window entitled "Import Filter".
a. You have two filter types to choose from:
i. Rows Contains – this will produce only the rows that contain the value you enter
in "Filter Criteria".
ii. Rows Does not Contains – this will produce only the rows that do not contain the
value you enter in "Filter Criteria".
3. Select filter type.
4. Enter filter criteria.
5. Click "Add".
6. Click "OK".
7. Select the file you want to import. This is the one that contains your datafeed content.
8. A "View sample" window appears. You can use this to verify the column headers for that
datafeed. Click "Proceed to Next Step".
9. A "Data loading options" window appears:
 a. It's recommended you Check "Smart Selection". This will allow it to determine the
delimiter character automatically.
b. Check each of the square box options. The second one ("First row contains field names")
relates to whether or not header columns exist. You would have determined this in the
"View sample" window.
c. "Export options" can be left as default.
10. Click "Ok".

Having completed these steps, you will see the content of your datafeed displayed in rows and columns.
In order to process this data better, you may wish to change how it appears:

1. Go to 'Tools' then 'Column Editor'. A column editor window appears.

2. Uncheck all the columns you don't wish to see in the data list.
3. Click "Ok".

Applying these filter and appearance settings to your data makes it so much easier to process. However,
you may wish to filter the data even further. It is possible to filter on any column but let's say, for
example, you wanted to filter based on the description. Sometimes the descriptions are too short and
offer no value so you may wish to include only those rows that contain value-added descriptions (e.g.
have long enough descriptions). In order to do this:

1. Click in any field in the description (e.g. LongDesc) column.

2. Right-click on the column header and select "Filter Column". This opens a "Filter String
Values" window.
3. Select "At Least N Words" from the 'Filter Types' drop-down list.
4. Enter a number in the "Filter Criteria" field (e.g. 25). This represents the number of words
needing to appear in the description for that record to appear in your list.
5. Click "Add" then "Filter Now".

What you see now are only those rows where the description column contains the number of words you
specified.

It is also possible to change data in a column. For example, not all datafeeds come with the affiliate link
in them. To correct this, you can search for patterns in the provided link and have it replaced with your
affiliate ID value. To accomplish this:

1. Click in any field in the column.

2. Right-click on the column header and select "Replace Text in this column".
3. Enter a value in "Find Text" field that you want to see replaced in the data.
4. Enter your affiliate ID in the "Replace with" field.
5. Click "Find Next". If it finds one, click "Replace All".

Saving the Data

Now that you've finished filtering and editing the data, you want to save the data. To do this you first
need to verify the delimiter to be used:
 1. Click 'File' then 'Set Export delimiter'.
2. This opens a window. Make sure either "Pipe" or "Tab" is selected. This is necessary as
AutoBlogBuddy uses these instead of commas to delimit the data. Commas are not used because
commas appear in fields such as descriptions and therefore can cause confusion as to whether the
comma is a delimiter or part of a string value.
3. Click "Save & Close".

Now that you've verified the delimiter, go ahead and save the data:

1. Click 'File' then 'Export File..'

2. A window appears. Optionally check "Includes the header line". It is highly recommended that
you do so as AutoBlogBuddy will use it to make tokens.
3. Click "Ok".
4. Give it whatever filename you wish then click "Save".

Important Note:

Remember the main point of the datafeeds is for content for your blog, if the datafeed content that is
posted eventually gets outdated that is fine, it still is solid content and you will add new datafeeds
overtime. You can look at the datafeeds as content first and affiliate commissions second. The idea is
that you want the monetization on the blog that surrounds the datafeeds to be the main items of interest,
not necessarily the datafeeds themselves.

Also, datafeed items are only used once, so if a datafeed item is posted as a full post it will not also be
used as an integrated item in another post or if it was integrated it will not be used as a full post.

Now you have a well-defined, well-filtered datafeed for your blog.

Module 6 "Long Term Success" >> Lesson 19 "Initial Promotion"

Initial Promotion
Purpose:

The purpose of this lesson is to discuss the issue of initial promotion and to give you a brief overview of
a sample strategy you can follow for the initial promotion of your blog.

Preliminary:
When considering promotion of your blog, you do NOT want to invest in promoting too heavily at first.
Until your blog is established in Google and starting to get traffic, heavy promotion is counter-
productive. Give Google time to discover and index all of your pages and for your blog to see some
traffic, then look to how you can increase your promotion.
When you do begin to increase your promotion, we recommend that you mix in different sites as well as
take advantage of the resources we've listed below.

As you go through the material, it's very important to realize that this strategy is just a guideline and
therefore is not set in stone. This is YOUR blog – make any strategy, including this one, your own!

Initial Promotion Steps:

Step 1: Ping FM

Ping.fm (http://ping.fm/) is a service that enables you to post to multiple networks simultaneously. In
fact, you are able to create a post directly within the ping.fm interface which will then be posted to the
list of networks you've added to your ping.fm account.

Examples of networks found in the ever-expanding list of networks are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,
Tumblr, etc.

An example of a post may be one where you announce the creation of your new blog:

Check out my new blog at http://mynewblog.org.

Of notable interest is the fact that Ping.fm uses its own internal link shortener. So, for example, the
above link (http://mynewblog.org) will be changed to something like http://ping.fm/Ty5Kj.

In order to use Ping.fm as part of your initial promotion, complete the following steps:

1. Go to http://ping.fm and create an account. Each blog will have its own account so in the
registration use the email address linked to your blog.
2. From your Ping.fm dashboard, click on "Add More Networks". From the available list,
determine which networks you want to add. For each one:
a. If you have not already done so, create an account for that network by visiting that
network's site (click on the hyperlink).
b. Click "Add Network" to add it to your ping.fm account.
3. Post to your Ping.fm account about your blog. Ping.fm will then take care of posting that to all
of your selected networks.

Step 2: Auto Podcasting

This step will enable RSS feeds from your blog to be converted into speech. Both services we
recommend will also create unique pages that you can then submit to podcasting sites.

The two services we recommend are Odiogo and iSpeech. Both of these services will create unique
pages specific to your blog. These pages will have a link back to your blog as well as to an RSS feed.
The RSS feed, which can then be submitted to different podcast sites, will also have a link back to your
blog and a link to a playable/downloadable audio file that was created from your blog.
To take promotional advantage of these services:

1. Create accounts at Odiogo (http://odiogo.com) and iSpeech (http://ispeech.org). Add your blog
to these services.
2. Add the ping URL to your blog's update services. iSpeech already has this implemented but
Odiogo's ping URL will need to be added. To do this:
a. Log into your blog's wp-admin area.
b. Go to "Settings" >> "Writing".
c. Add the Odiogo ping URL (http://rpc.odiogo.com/ping/) in the "Update Services" field.
d. Click "Save Changes".
3. Copy the HTML and RSS feed links that both of these services created for your blog. They will
be used in a later step.

Step 3: Announce Your Podcasts

In this step, you will announce the podcasts that were created using the Odiogo and iSpeech services.
To do this:

1. Post about your Odiogo and iSpeech pages using your Ping.fm account. You can create a simple
post that looks like the following:

"Podcast at http://odiogo.com/mypage"

Remember that Ping.fm will shorten that link so the actual post that is sent via Ping.fm will look
similar to the following:

"Podcast at http://ping.fm/A8vb0"

Submitting your post gets it out to all the services, producing backlinks to your blog that can get
picked up by the search engines. This starts the process of getting your site and its pages found
and fully indexed by the search engines. The end result is being recognized by and well
established in the search engines.

2. Ping your HTML and RSS pages at Ping-O-Matic (http://pingomatic.com):

a. Blog Name – enter your blog's main keyword phrase here.
b. Blog Home Page – that's the Odiogo or iSpeech page URL you copied earlier.
c. RSS URL (optional) – that's the Odiogo or iSpeech RSS URL you copied earlier.
d. Services to Ping – click "Check All" next to "Common Services".
e. Specialized Services – check any that you wish to use. Audio.Weblogs is a good one.
f. Click "Send Pings". This will automatically ping all the selected services to update them
about the pages that you created.
g. Repeat for your second service, e.g. if you did steps 'a' through 'f' for Odiogo, now do it
for iSpeech.
3. Submit your podcast. Our recommendation is that you only submit for one of the podcasting
services, preferably iSpeech. When you submit to these podcast repositories, each will create a
 unique page for you that links back to your site as well as hold your podcast. The two
repositories where you can submit your podcast are:
a. EveryPodcast (http://everypodcast.com)
b. Podcast Pup (http://podcastpup.com)

Step 4: Blast Out Your RSS Feed

To further your initial promotion, you now want to create accounts at the following sites. These sites
enable you to submit your blog's RSS feed so that a static page which the search engines are able to find
and contains backlinks to your blog can be created.

The recommended sites are:

1. Feedbite (http://www.feedbite.com)
2. FeedAgg (http://www.feedagg.com)

Remember – these steps are recommended but not set in stone. A list of sites and services is provided
at the end of this lesson. The recommendation is to mix up the sites you use for each blog (in other
words, don't always use the same ones). This will help establish uniqueness between the blogs.

Step 5: Article Submission

In earlier lessons you were instructed to create content for your blog. One of those pieces of content was
a promotion article. In this step you will submit that article to the following article directories:

1. Article Feeder (http://www.articlefeeder.com/)

2. Articles Base (http://www.articlesbase.com/)
3. Article Snatch (http://www.articlesnatch.com/)

Articles submitted to these sites are usually approved very quickly, appear in the search engines very
quickly and produce a backlink to your blog very quickly.

Step 6: Enabling Pinging

This is the final step in the initial promotion process. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you don't skip or
cheat this step as it helps to establish trust with Google.

The first thing you want to establish is whether or not your site has yet been indexed as a result of the
promotion you've been doing. To do this, simply go to Google and in the search field type site:
yourblogname.com. This should produce search results showing all the pages of your blog. If it does,
then it is a good time to add pinging to your blog now that Google has already found all the pages on
your site through third party links and some trust has been established.

To configure pinging for your blog:

1. Log into your wp-admin area.

 2. Go to "Settings" >> "cbnet Ping Optimizer".
3. Check "Enable pinging". Above it you should see a list of services (if you used the autoblog
installer). If not, see below for a list you can copy and paste.
4. Check "Limit excessive pinging in short time". This is very important. Set your values as:
a. Ping at most – 1
b. time(s) within … minute(s) – 15
5. Click "Save Settings".

List of Sites / Services

Below you will find provision for a number of sites/services that we recommend for use in the initial
promotion of your blog.

Pinging Services

http://rpc.odiogo.com/ping/
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

RSS, Article and Podcast

>> Click Here << for a list of additional RSS, Article and Podcast Directories that you should rotate
through when doing the initial promotion for your autoblogs.

• Step 1: Complete the steps for the intial promotion for each of your Auto-Blogs.
• Step 2: Updated your BlogBlueprint spreadsheet to indicate which blogs have compelted this
step.

Summary:
In this module you have learned how to perform the inital promotion for your auto-blog.
Module 6 "Long Term Success" >> Lesson 20 "Easy Monetization"

Easy Monetization
Purpose:
In this lesson we're going to help you to understand when it is the "RIGHT" time to start monetizing
your blog. Along with this, we'll review different strategies for "Easy Monetization" of your blogs and
how to go about implementing those strategies.

Introduction Video to "Easy Monetization"

When Is The "RIGHT" Time?
Monetizing your blog before it is ready can actually have negative effects on the long term success of
your blogs. It has been proven over and over again that it usually causes poor results if you build a brand
new blog then AdSense the heck out of it or put a large number of banners, etc. on it before the site has
been initially promoted.

Think about it. Back in 2004/2005 there were a lot of "Traffic Equalizer" and "Directory Generator"
sites flooding the internet and focused on AdSense. The search engines, especially Google, are now
really cautious about new blogs that appear to be stuffed full of advertisements and affiliate links, which
is why we mask our affiliate links. In fact, Google went on the defensive by putting a lot of things in
place that will prevent sites from doing this again. There are ways around this but we're not focused on
that - we're focused on quality.

Another example of potentially negative results comes from the reaction of link directories that you'll be
submitting your blogs to. Link directories, like Google, are also cautious of accepting sites that appear
stuffed full of advertisements. When you submit to these directories, oftentimes they will review your
site manually and if they come to your site and see that it is new yet full of ads, they may not approve
your submission.

The best way to handle this is take your time and focus on getting traffic. Once the traffic is coming,
then you can start to implement and test different monetization strategies. If you're not getting traffic,
you're not going to be making money on ads anyway and from the perspective of Google, which you
should be paying strict attention to, your site simply comes off as a spam site when loaded with
monetization apart from the benefit of initial promotion.

So then to answer the important question of when to monetize your blog, it is recommended that you
don't until your blog has been indexed in Google for at least 3 weeks. That is, except for that which is
implemented with Auto Blog Buddy and the automatic link cloaking (masking). This ensures that
Google sees your blog as a resource and not just an attempt to make money by advertising.

IMPORTANT
Get out of your mind that you're missing out if you don't monetize right away. For example, you notice
you got 30 visitors today and you have in mind that you could have made some money. Well, remember
that the click-through rate of ads is not some astronomical number. The conversion rate is not likely to
be very high anyway, being around 2 - 10%, and if you're only making a couple of pennies then 30
visitors is not a significant benefit. To truly benefit, especially for long term success, it's probably best
to just hold off until the blog is fully indexed in Google. Doing it this way will prove more profitable in
the end than if you tried to jump on those couple of pennies right off the start.

So once you're indexed in Google, you can start to really monetize your blog. The easiest systems to
start with are ...

• Auto Blog Buddy (with Amazon, eBay, Datafeeds)

• AdSense (or AdSense alternatives)
• Affiliate Banners
• Affiliate Links

What About Other Methods?

There are many more advanced strategies that are recommended for Auto-Blogging but this lesson is
only focused on "Easy" methods.

Easy methods are perfectly suited for new blogs that are not well established and not getting lots of
traffic yet. Once your blogs are truly established and getting solid traffic, then we certainly recommend
that you start to implement more advanced strategies.

In the lesson on "Advanced Monetization", we go into much more detail on things such as ...

• Selling Ad Space
• Email Marketing
• Flipping (Selling) Your Blogs

If you're getting confused here between our instruction to "wait for easy methods" then "wait for
advanced methods", remember that easy monetization is just that - something you can do really quick.

The idea with auto-blogging is that you want to get all your blogs monetized. However, the advanced
methods, such as flipping, can't really be done for some time because you want to wait until they've been
established, are getting traffic and are making you some money before you can sell them.

Selling ad space is pointless until you've established good traffic because how much advertising money
you can make is based upon the traffic statistics.

Email marketing is great but if you aren't getting the traffic then you're not getting the opt-ins anyway so
why bother setting that all up on a brand new blog?

Wait until the blog is established then you can go back in, verify which sites are showing good traffic,
and begin implementing the advanced methods.
It's Not Just About Throwing Ads Up!
Once you understand that it's time to start with easy monetization, it's not just a matter of randomly
throwing up ads.

The secret is ... DO NOT just randomly place advertisements.

You NEED to THINK!

The following will review 4 important things that are recommended you do when monetizing your
blogs. We will talk about:

1. Understanding the Easy AdSense plugin - this plugin has a lot of features in it that make it easy
to implement monetization strategies into your blog. This plugin doesn't need to use AdSense but
since AdSense is so popular that is probably why the creator named it as he did.
2. Taking advantage of the "What Would Seth Gordon Do" (WWSGD) plugin - this is a powerful
plugin that allows you to implement an even more advanced strategy into your blog but is so
easy to use its recommended you use it right away.
3. Exploiting SEO Links - this is a 'very easy money' approach.
4. Getting your reader to notice the Ads or Links - Like d'uh!! It's something so simple but
something we often forget. You have to understand that it's not just about randomly assuming the
reader will click on that link. We want the reader to notice the link and to have the link stand out
for them. We'll use arrows and that sort of thing to point stuff out.

• In the following videos, each of the four strategies just mentioned will be reviewed. Your action
item is to review and implement each of the strategies as best as you can!

Implementing Ads with the Easy Adsense Plugin

One of the easiest ways to start monetizing your blog is through a system such as AdSense.
AdSense is one of several available systems, such as Clicksor, Bidvertiser, Prosperent and even Amazon
which allow you to put code on your site that will show appropriate advertisements based on the topic of
your site page.

It doesn't matter which of these services you use as long as you test the services over time to determine
which ones are most profitable for you. Also, you want to make sure they integrate with your content as
smooth as possible, such as placing an ad unobtrusively near the top of your content or somewhere along
the bottom. Using a plugin like Easy AdSense enables you to do this.

In order to configure this plugin you have to log into your blog's wp-admin area and make sure the Easy
AdSense plugin is activated. Once activated, go to "Settings" then "Easy AdSense" to configure.
You will notice there are several options and settings available for you to configure. The following is an
example of how it can be used but remember, this is your blog so how you configure is entirely up to
you.

A key section to configure is the "Ad Blocks in Your Posts" section. This enables you to configure such
settings as the location of the ad and when it should appear. You'll want to change these around for
different blogs but basic setup can use the following example configuration:

1. Select from the 3 possible ad blocks: "Lead-in ...", "Mid-Post ..." and "Post Lead-out ...". You
can have any or all 3.
2. Under each block are settings for when and how the ads appear in that block. You can tell where
the ad will be positioned (e.g. beginning of post / Align Right), how text is wrapped around it
and by what margin (e.g. 12 pixels) and, by fusing "Min. Word Count", how many words your
post must contain before an ad will appear in it (e.g. 50 words). You are even able to suppress
ads from appearing in a specific block (.e.g. Mid-Post).

NOTE: "Min. Word Count" doesn't appear to work all the time. However, there is another
setting that can be used to help with this.
3. Select an option for "Option on Google Policy". Google policy allows no more than 3 ad blocks
and 3 link units per page. In our video example you will see we are only using 2 ad blocks so that
would be the option we would select but again, this is entirely up to you how you want to
configure this.
4. Optionally provide a percentage of shared slots for the creator of the plugin via the option
"Support Easy AdSense by Donating Ad Space". The default is 5% but in our video example we
set it to 1%.
5. Optionally check "Pages (Ads only on Posts)" for "Suppress AdSense Ad Blocks on:"
6. Click "Save Changes" to make sure your settings are saved.

On the right side of the settings page you will see options for Ad blocks (widgets) for your sidebars.
These are optional and open-ended as to how you want to configure these.

One widget that is good to use is the Google Search Widget. In our video example we did not configure
this but once your site is fully indexed in Google, it's a good idea to use this widget.

"Other Options" can be left as default though "Show no links to my blog anywhere (Are you sure?!)" is
checked under "Link-backs to Unreal Blog..."

If you have made any changes to these settings, be sure to click "Save Changes".

Configuring 'noadsense'

While ads such as Adsense have value, there are instances when you do not want these ads to appear.
For example, your primary content (money-making) pages and your home page are intended to help sell
your blog's focus product, so therefore you don't want to include AdSense ads there as this would
conflict with this main goal.
Another example of where you wouldn't want to use ads is 'full post' content coming from external
sources such as Amazon, eBay and other datafeeds. Since these posts tend to be small in content and
already monetized, including ads such as AdSense will only make it look spammy so you want to
prevent these ads from appearing in the content of these posts.

In order to prevent ads from appearing, you need to perform the following:

1. Log into your blog's wp-admin area.

2. Go to "Posts" then locate the posts you added for the very first blog posts.
3. At the very beginning of the post's code add <!--noadsense--> (no spaces, include the angle
brackets) and save changes.
4. If using AutoBlogBuddy, go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Amazon Setup".
5. At the top of "Full Post Template" (Integrated Template does not require this), add <!--
noadsense--> (no spaces, include the angle brackets) and save changes.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for eBay Setup and Datafeeds.

Using the WWSGD Plugin To Get More Conversions

What would Seth Godin do? This is not just a question but actually the name of another fantastic
plugin you can use to monetize your blog.

Let's say you want to get subscribers to your blog. Your blog may already be established with an opt-in
mailing list that you want to take advantage of. Using this plugin will enable you to have your blog
behave in a user-friendly fashion toward returning visitors. It does this by preventing the display of the
opt-in box, recognizing that the reader has been there before and already knows about the opt-in option
or may have already opted in and so doesn't need to see that box anymore.

To configure the plugin for this, complete the following steps:

1. Log into your blog's wp-admin area.

2. Be sure WWSGD is activated. To do so, go to "Plugins". You should find the plugin located
somewhere near the bottom of the list (they are listed alphabetically). You will see it by its full
name "What Would Seth Godin Do".
3. Once activated, go to "Settings" >> "WWSGD".
4. In the "Message to New Visitors" box, insert the code that displays your opt-in box.
5. Enter a value for the "Repetition" setting. The value you enter here tells the system how many
times to display your "Message to New Visitors" (e.g. opt-in box) before it no longer displays it.
A blank or 0 value will have the message displayed every time.
6. Using the "Location of Message" setting, choose a location for where the message should be
displayed on the page.
7. Click "Save Settings".

Another cool feature is the ability to have monetization show like a row of ads on the page, e.g. Amazon
ads. This takes advantage of the very effective AdSense block known as "wide 728". This row can be
located wherever you think it is best displayed, e.g. along the top of the page just below the header or
along the bottom of the page just below the main content. There are several options available.
Yet another strategy that uses the same feature just mentioned is to insert code that not only displays the
best-selling products on Amazon but enhances the display with visual cues such as arrows or highlighted
text such as "Wow ... Save over 50%" or "CLICK HERE to Check Out These Top Products Now!" This is
accomplished by creating an image combining the Amazon ads with the visual cues.

Configuration for either of these options is a little more complex than the first one, especially depending
on whether you're using the Frugal theme or not. The steps for doing so are as follows:

1. If not already done so, log into your blog's wp-admin area.
2. Go to "Settings" >> "WWSGD".
3. In the "Message to New Visitors" box, enter the Amazon code for displaying "wide 728".
Alternatively, enter the code for the image containing the visual cues mentioned previously.
Optionally, but recommended, surround the code with the <center> HTML tag.
4. For the "Location of Message" setting, click "Only where I use <?php wwsgd_the_message(); ?>
template tag".
5. If using the Frugal theme, go to "Frugal Theme" >> "Feature Options". If not, see the next set of
steps for configuring non-Frugal theme blogs.
6. Scroll down to "Custom Function ..."
7. Enter the php code into the box.
8. Select "Yes" in the "Execute PHP In This Code" drop-down list.
9. Choose an option for "Hook your new function into a location", e.g. frugal_hook_after_header.
10. Scroll back to top and click "SAVE".

If you aren't using the Frugal theme, you can still configure your blog to take advantage of WWSGD. To
do so, follow these steps:

1. Complete steps 1 thru 4 in the Frugal theme setup list.

2. Go to your blog and view its page source. Do this by right-clicking and selecting "View Page
Source".
3. Look for the code related to your page's navigation, e.g. the navigation menu that appears just
under your page's header. This is necessary to give you an idea of where you will insert the php
code from WWSGD as typically you want it to appear directly underneath the navigation/header.
4. In your wp-admin area, go to "Appearance" >> "Editor".
5. Under the "Templates" list, select "Header".
6. View the code to determine where best to place the WWSGD php code. You should find code
that matches with what you saw on the "View Page Source" page you viewed in steps 2-3.
7. Click "Update File" then refresh and review your blog to see if the changes occurred how and
where you wanted. If not, keep experimenting until you are satisfied with the result.

Regardless of what Seth Godin would do, it's entirely up to you how you use this fantastic plugin but as
you can see, by following a few steps you are able to richly monetize your blog.

As a final word on the subject, it is possible to bypass the WWSGD plugin for a lot of different
functions if you are using the Frugal theme. This is possible because of the custom functions options
made available with the theme. All that is needed there is to take the code you entered in the "Message
to New Visitors" box of the plugin and insert it directly into one of the custom functions boxes.
One such advantage of bypassing this plugin is that it makes available the option to use the 'alt' tag in the
custom function. This will give the alt text of your images the title of your page (or whatever you may
choose to give it) which is a good thing to have.

Monetize Your Content Effectively with the SEO Smart Links

Plugin
A very simple way to add more monetization to your blog is to take advantage of the SEO Smart
Links plugin. You may remember that this plugin will automatically add links into your posts. In this
lesson we show you how to configure it so your affiliate links can be connected to corresponding text
contained within your posts.

In order to add smart links:

1. Log into your blog's wp-admin area.

2. Go to "Settings" >> "SEO Smart Links".
3. Add your list of smart links in the "Custom Keywords" box. You can add them directly or copy
and paste them from a predefined text file. An example of how to create this list is given below.
4. Optionally, in the "External Links" section, check "Add nofollow attribute" and "Open in new
window" options. This only works on external links and since we are cloaking those links
(affiliate links are external), these attributes don't get added. Only check these options if you are
using uncloaked external links.
5. Click "Update options".

Creating Your Smart Links List

The first thing you want to do is to create a list of words that you know will regularly appear in posts on
your blog. The list can be as big and as wide as you want. To create this list, you can create it yourself
or:

• Go to Google, type in a top term and look at the Google wheel or alternative phrases.
• Go to Amazon or similar storefront sites, search top level for terms and look at what other top
level words are shown.

When creating our sample list, the following criteria was used:

• Only two word phrases were used, e.g. coffee bean.

• Single word versions were used, e.g. coffeebean.
• Plural versions were used, e.g. coffee beans, coffeebeans.
• Each terms list was on a separate line.
• A redirect for the affiliate link was used in place of the actual affiliate link. This is actually the
last item in that terms list, e.g. coffee bean,coffeebean,coffee
beans,coffeebeans,http://myblog.com/redirect.
 • No spaces appear immediately before or after the commas separating the different terms. This
helps links appear cleaner in your post, e.g. "coffee beans" instead of " coffee beans " (minus the
quotes).

Once you've finished creating your list, simply copy and paste it into the "Custom Keywords" box as
indicated in the steps above.

Getting Better Results with Affiliate Banners

It's possible and even recommended to use affiliate banners on your blog. Configured properly,
this can help monetize your blog without coming across as spammy to the reader.

To avoid being spammy, select banners that have images related to your blog's topic and even its color
scheme. Also, banners that mix in text links can appear spammy so select those banners that are image
only.

When you first put your blog together, you were instructed to use an image in your sidebar that gave
your blog a personal touch. For example, a woman drinking a cup of coffee was used to personalize the
coffee grinders blog we've been using as an example blog throughout the training. In this section, we'll
replace that image with an affiliate banner.

As you set up your affiliate banner(s), one important recommendation is to make sure you cloak the
affiliate link given with the banner. Using the redirect plugin, exchange the given link with your blog's
cloaking link.

To configure this:

1. Log in to your blog's wp-admin area.

2. Go to "Appearance" >> "Widgets".
3. If you put an image up on your blog, you'll replace this by changing the code for the 'Text'
widget with the code from the affiliate network. Remember to change the affiliate link with your
redirect link. As well, remember to add target="_blank" rel="nofollow" to the link code to have
it open in a new window and to prevent unwarranted influence on the search engines.
4. Click "Save changes".

When putting affiliate banners on, remember to ...

• relate them directly to the topic of your blog.

• make sure they fit with your color scheme, etc.
• select ones that look like they are converting well according to the analytics your affiliate
network gives you.
• make sure to cloak the links used so that it appears as an internal link on your site and that you're
not promoting an affiliate product.
Getting Your Links Noticed by Buyers!
An important element in creating your auto-blog is not to assume your readers are going to know
what to do when they arrive on your site. You may have done a great job in setting up the blog but some
readers may still have trouble knowing where to go or what to do. This can impact your conversion rate
dramatically so the following will show you how to effectively address this issue.

The best way to help direct your readers is by making sure you draw their attention to key components
on your blog. For example, you want to draw their attention to particular links or an ad. A great way to
do this is to add things like arrows, stop signs or highlight borders. Combining these with highlight text
is a great way to draw attention to important sections of your blog posts.

All of these are very easy to add and as a Blog Blueprint member, you get access to a large number of
these types of images (see links at bottom of this lesson). Of course, you could make your own but we
provide you with some you can use.

To be able to use them, you simply add the images or modify the default styles. For example, to modify
how Amazon ads appear:

1. Log in to your blog's wp-admin area.

2. Go to "AutoBlogBuddy" >> "Amazon Setup".
3. In the template sections (e.g. Integrated Template), modify the code in the box. For example, to
change the border so it is more highlighted, you can modify the default div style using the
following code:
<div style=" border: medium dashed #060; padding: 10px; margin: 10px;">

This will cause the Amazon ad to have a green dashed border with 10 pixels of spacing around it.

Then, below this, you can add the code for an attention-drawing image that always appears with
the ad. For example, in the video you see an image that contains a stop sign icon with highlighted
text "Check Out This Great Deal..." and another image that contains arrows with the highlighted
text "Click The Above Link To Check This Product Out!".

4. Be sure to save your settings.

You should know that Amazon gives you limited control on configuring the links so all you're really
able to do is add the images that draw attention to the links. However, with Datafeeds, you have a lot
more control. You can hyperlink the image with an affiliate link which is yet another great way of
directing readers and increasing conversion rates.

So go ahead and play with these template settings in whichever way suits you best. Remember, you
really want to draw the person's eyes away from distractions and to where the "make money" points are.
This is especially true when you have other people's content getting put onto your blog, where you can
still monetize for the post but also provide highlighted, directing elements for your readers to follow.
The whole idea here is to think outside the box. Get your reader's attention, provide them with value and
think like a web surfer - what works for you to draw your attention is likely to work for visitors to your
blog. So go ahead - easily apply those things to your own blog by modifying the template settings found
in the various sections of the AutoBlogBuddy plugin.

Bonus Graphic Links:

• Blog Blueprint Custom Graphics (Coming Soon)
• Free Hand Graphics Pack
• Super Graphics Pack

Module 6 "Long Term Success" >> Lesson 21 "Advanced Traffic"

Advanced Traffic
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to talk about advanced traffic. The objective is to review the criteria for a
successful advanced traffic campaign and then walk you through an example strategy you can follow.
The intent here is for you to do one round of promotion to get the blog fully established in the search
engines. Once done, you will not do any more heavy promotion until you start to identify which blogs
are your money makers, which is covered in the next lesson.

Introduction Video to "Advanced Traffic"

Criteria for a Successful Campaign
To achieve the goal of a successful campaign, you need solid criteria that you understand and are able to
follow. Here are the criteria we advise you to follow:

1. One Bite at a Time: You want to focus on one primary keyword for the first 3 weeks for each
page you promote. We also recommend you initially only focus on one page at a time. This is
valid because:
a. It tells Google initially exactly what the page is about.
b. There will automatically be “variations” added and after 3 weeks you will start to add lots
of variations.
2. Look at Your Competition: Don't be discouraged when you don't see some rankings in the top
2 or 3 that you can beat. Look at the competition that is on page 1 or the top of page 2 that looks
most beatable. Then you want to figure out the amount of links you will need to surpass them
and increase that by 2x. Keep in mind:
a. Google will not count all your backlinks, so you need to ensure you have more than the
competition is showing. For example, if the competition is showing 50 backlinks, you
want to have 100 backlinks to ensure Google sees at least more than 50.
 b. If there is nothing that appears beatable in the top 5 but there is in the top 10 to 15, then
go for it. Once you beat them you can work your way to top position.
c. You do not want to just match your competitors, you want to BEAT them.
3. Variations Are Important: Eventually you are going to want to use variations. After three
weeks or once you are ranking on page 1, you will need to start adding variations in the anchor
text links.
a. DO NOT force Google’s hand here. Instead, allow Google to tell you what to use. Use
Google Keyword Suggestion Tool – type in your blog's URL and look at what keywords
Google tells you the page is about, then start mixing in some of those terms.
b. Then only use the primary keyword about 40% of the time and make sure to also mix in
terms such as the domain and “click here” to make it appear more “natural”.

The fact is Google wants to see variations in your terms and will actually penalize you eventually
if it appears that you are too optimized from a linking point of view. That makes the use of
variations an important component to campaign success.

4. Limit Interlinking: Try not to interlink blogs and sites you are using to link to your blog. When
creating your link network (aka link wheel), it is best to not promote more than two auto-blogs
per network and it is ALWAYS best to promote just one blog per network, though that does
mean a lot more work.

In a moment you're going to see an example of a network you can create. It's possible that if you
have two blogs that are really close than you could use two networks to promote those blogs but
it's recommended you don't do this very often.

As well, once a blog really starts to make you some money, make sure to keep it independent.
Build links only to that site and don't interlink to any other site whatsoever.

5. Split It Up: Make sure that you split the links to your index page and deep links to about a 50/50
split.

This does not have to be exact, but the routine we follow is to try to always promote a deep link
when you promote the index page and if you are promoting a deep link, you will also promote
the index page.

This means that no matter what is being done, the index page is involved: either promotion on
the index page is being done directly and deep links to other pages are added OR promotion of a
deep link page is being done and a link to the index page is specifically included.

6. Consistency: Once you are ranking on the top of page 1, try to maintain an average of at least
one new link a day. This is to ensure you are maintaining link-building growth. Remember to
make sure that 40% of those links being the main term and the rest variations.
7. Variety is Key: Make sure to use a variety of link sources and every month you want to change
it up a bit. You want to ...
 a. Make sure the page rank is all over the board. You want this to appear natural so don't
just focus on links from high page rank sites. Make sure the site you are linking is
indexed but even if it is page rank 0, you still want to use it if you can get a link from it.
b. Make sure some of the links are nofollow. What this means is that some websites will
add the following code rel="nofollow" to the HTML code of your link. This instructs the
search engines not to count the link. Ideally you would want all of your links to not have
nofollow added but that would not be natural and so having a few that do have this helps
the links appear to be "natural".
c. Do not use the exact same sites every month. It's not that you can't use some of the same
sites but you want to make sure to add in new ones. The point is to always try to
randomize it.
8. Promote Your Promotions: This list of criteria is not exhaustive but we consider them highly
important, especially 'Promote Your Promotions'. No matter what you do, you want to make
sure you promote your promotions.

The key point is you want to ensure the search engines find each backlink you get and therefore
you want to ensure you promote sites that link to you. This can be easily done by bookmarking
with services such as Ping.FM.

For example, if you post an article to an article directory, once it is published you want to go
back and promote that article because you want to make sure Google finds it and credits you
with that backlink.

Walk Through Example

The following strategy is one simple example of a plan that you can use. It is important that you make
this your plan and modify it in the way that works best for you.

This plan is simply an overview and therefore does not go into great details on creating content or using
the different services. The process you will be shown is a manual process but there are tools that you can
use to make this process much faster. We HIGHLY recommend:

• SyndicateKahuna - a huge network of blogs you can post to (Blog Blueprint Platinum members
get access to this)
• Web2Mayhem - the most powerful traffic system available and includes access to
SyndicateKahuna, all the BlogBlueprint and so much more!

If interested in using these services, check out the home page in your members' area for more
information.

Link Wheel Example

Known as a Link Network or Link Wheel, the image below shows how you set up your link network. The
structure is defined in this way:

• Your blog: it is in the center of the wheel.

 • Ping.FM: this is an important link so we'll be making sure to create an account with Ping.FM in
order to use it and all its services.
• Ping: this has already been set up that you are pinging your blog using the update services.
• RSS: some RSS feeds have already been initially submitted but some more are going to be done.
A large list of sites will be provided that you can submit your RSS feeds to.
• Link Directories: you want to submit to these directories as they will provide a link back to your
site. Some will tell you that link directories are dead but this is simply untrue. You may only get
a 50% or lower effective rate (e.g. 100 submissions may only yield 50 links) but it's enough to
make it still worth doing.
• Video: You may have videos you can submit to such sites as YouTube or Metacafe.
• Article Directories: submit articles that link back to your blog.
• Social Networks: used in places like Gather, HubPages, Squidoo and various sites like these.
• Press Releases: used as a way to announce your blog posts with a link pointing to your site.

All of these items are crucial as they will provide you backlinks from sites that, from Google's
perspective, carry high authority.

You'll also notice that each item is pointed to by Ping and Ping.FM. What this indicates is the step where
you'll help your promotions get indexed in Google. For example, once you've uploaded a video, you can
ping it and bookmark it in your Ping.FM service which will cause that video to be indexed quickly in
Google.

What we've shown you here is something that can be accomplished manually. However, if you were to
use a tool like Web2Mayhem, getting this put together would be very easy to do.

More details on each of these items will be provided later on in the training.
 • Once you blog is fully indexed in Google, map out your “link network” and start promoting your
blogs.
• You want to do one round of promotion to get your blog fully established in the search engines.
• REMINDER: Once done with this "traffic campaign" you will not do anymore heavy promotion
until you start to identify which blogs are your money makers, which is covered in the next
lesson.

Step 1: SyndicateKahuna
If you are not a Platinum member, then you can skip this step as it reviews submitting content to the
insanely powerful SyndicateKahuna network.

SyndicateKahuna will allow you to submit content to 1000's of niche specific blogs, getting you tightly
related backlinks and HUGE exposure. We recommend you submit one article to the SK network with a
link to your blogs index page and one to each of your other primary posts. As for instructions, those are
not going to be added here as that would be redundant since there is detailed training located inside your
SyndicateKahuna section. If you are a Platinum member, go to "Tools" >> "SyndicateKahuna" and
BLAST AWAY!!!

NOTE: We moderate SK content VERY closely so make sure you create a worthwhile piece of content
or it will not get approved.

• Submit an article to the SyndicateKahuna network that links to your index page and other initial
primary content.

Step 2: Ping.FM
As mentioned in a previous lesson, Ping.FM is a free online service that allows you to post to multiple
bookmarketing and micro-blogging services at once. We recommend that you have at least one Ping.FM
account per auto blog but preferably two.

Ping.FM has a few different ways you can have your blog communicate with them. One is by using the
API key that they provide you, which is basically a password to allow you to communicate with
Ping.FM's backend system. The second is by using Ping.FM's "add your RSS feed" feature.
With the API option, you can use different applications and plugins to allow your blog to automatically
post to Ping.FM. One such plugin we recommend is called "Shorten2Ping". This is a reliable plugin that
also allows you to use different shortening services, such as http://Bit.ly.

The RSS option is pretty straight forward. It simply uses your blog's RSS feed to post to your Ping.FM
account.

The strategy we recommend is in two parts. The first is:

1. Ping.FM Account #1: This would be the original account you set up in the previous lesson on
initial promotion and you will use the "Shorten2Ping" plugin.
2. First, you will need to get your Ping.fm API key. To do so, you need to log into your Ping.FM
account and in your "dashboard" under "Tools/Services", click on "Application Keys".
3. Once you have your API key, you will now need to go into your Wordpress blog's 'admin area
and install and activate the "Shorten2ing" plugin. The plugin can be downloaded from
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shorten2ping/.
4. Once activated, go to "Settings" >> "Shorten2Ping" and do the following:
a. Under the "General" tab, select the shortener you what to use (we recommend Bit.ly),
ensure that you have "Ping.FM" selected in the "Send Notifications To:" and click "Save
Settings".
b. Under the "Notifications" tab, enter your Ping.FM API Key and click "Save Settings".
c. Under the "Shorteners" tab, enter the information for the shortening service you use and
click "Save Settings".

Now when a new post is made to your blog, it will also send a snippet to your Ping.FM account.

• Add the "Shorten2Ping" plugin to your blog and activate it.

• Add the Ping.FM API key to activate the plugins functionality.

The second part of this strategy is:

1. Ping.FM Account #2: This is your new account and you will be using the RSS Feed option with
it. However, instead of using the RSS Feed from your blog, you will create an account at the
service http://feedbite.com and then use the RSS feed from your feedbite page to post to your
Ping.FM account. The reason for this is FeedBite is a service that will create a static HTML page
out of your RSS feeds and you can submit multiple RSS Feeds to this service. As you go through
this lesson, in the following steps you will create accounts at different services (e.g. video
directories and article directories) that will provide you with a custom RSS feed that links to your
submissions. You will then add some of these RSS feeds to your FeedBite page and as a result
you will have created one RSS Feed that links to your different promotions. As the Feed updates,
it will get posted to Ping.FM each time... which is VERY powerful!
 2. If you have not already created an account at Feedbite (in Lesson 19) then go to
http://feedbite.com and create a new account.
3. Once your account is created and confirmed, log into your account and click on "RSS Projects".
You will need to create a new project and then under "Actions" click the link that says "Feeds".
You will add the RSS feed from your blog here and later on you will want to add RSS feeds from
some different services. This will be referred back to a little later.
4. Once your feed is added you wil have a public page at
http://www.feedbite.com/user/YOURUSERNAME. You will see an RSS icon in the browser
address bar that you can click to get your page's RSS feed. The RSS feed should simply be
http://www.feedbite.com/rss_pages/YOURUSERNAME.xml.
5. Log into your second Ping.FM account. In the "Dashboard" area under "Services / Tools", click
on "RSS Feeds" and add your Feedbite RSS feed.

Now when your Feedbite RSS feed updates, it will automatically post these updates to your PING.FM
services too.

• Create an account at Feedbite (if not already created).

• Create a second Ping.FM account.
• Add your Feedbite RSS feed to your Ping.FM account.

Step 3: RSS Feeds

Submitting your RSS feed is a very simple way to get some automatic links back to your blog. There are
generally two types of sites that you will submit your RSS feed to:

• Aggregators: These are sites like Feedbite.com that will take your RSS feed and display it as a
readable page.
• Directories: Similar to link directories, these sites simply categorize your site and provide a link
to your blog's RSS feed.

One of the most powerful aspects of submitting your RSS feed is that it helps ensure your autoblog gets
deep links, which means links to posts, not just the index page of the blog. We have created a list of
recommended RSS Feed directories that you can submit to and you can CLICK HERE to access the list.

You do not have to create all the accounts at one time. If you have to create these accounts manually
then we recommend you create about 5 a day... this way you are not overwhelmed with this task.
 • Create accounts at the list of recommended RSS Directories/Aggregators. CLICK HERE to
access the list.
• Submit your autoblog's RSS feed to the list.

Step 4: Link Directories

Link directories are one of the oldest forms of link building strategies around. Back in the late 90's and
early 2000's, this strategy was extremly powerful but today, though it is still somewhat effective, it is not
nearly what it once was. Google and the other search engines have filtered out and disregarded 90% of
the link directories that were once used due to the fact that they were unmoderated and basically just
long lists of link spam. Today the only directories that are really worth submitting to are ones that are
human moderated.

When it comes to promoting your blog with Link Directories, our recommendation is that unless you
have a tool to be able to do it cost effectively, then skip this step until your blog starts generating some
revenue. By personal experience it's been found that only about 40% of submissions to directories get
approved within the first few weeks and overall it is only about 50% on average. Then you have to wait
for the links to be found and so out of 100 links, you are lucky to get 25 to 30 that actually count
towards you.

That being said, link directories are a great way to get some solid links but if you have to manually
submit to them for now, skip this step. Then once your blog starts turning a profit you will want to invest
in either having someone else submit your link or use a tool such as Web2Mayhem.

Step 5: Video Directories

Video sites are among the highest trafficked sites on the Internet and a lot of them carry a huge amount
of authority with the major search engines. The challenge with video marketing is creating an actual
video that will get ranked in the search engines and watched.

The search engines absolutely love videos and getting almost instant rankings in Google for long tail
terms is very easy with sites like YouTube. You simple create a video; make sure the keyword is in the
title, description and tags… then unless there are already a couple videos ranking for the term, you will
see your video show up pretty quick.

The difference with video marketing compared to something like article marketing (other than the
obvious) is that video marketing does not help your site rank better for specific terms. While you can
point a backlink to your site in the description area and your profile on the video site, the idea of video
marketing is to complement your website. What is meant by that is the video will get viewers from
within the site it is submitted to (for example people searching YouTube) and from the rankings it gets
in the search engines. Your focus needs to NOT be on the link that you get but on converting the viewer
of the video into a viewer of your website. This is done mainly by three ways…

1. Creating good content: If the video content is good, they will want more from you
 2. Providing a call to action: In the video, tell them to click the link in the description area, what
site to visit and why.
3. Placing URL in the description: Putting the URL of your site in the description makes it easy
for viewers to get to your site. For example, if your video is focused on “lose weight fast” you
can have description like "Want to lose weight fast? Go to http://www.yoursite.com for super
easy steps that will help you shed up to 15 pounds in the next 30 days."

As for creating an actual video, this does not need to be overcomplicated and there are great tools and
services available that make it easier than ever.

Two very inexpensive and powerful tools that a recommend you try out are…

• http://www.techsmith.com/jing/ - This is only $15 a year and is a great screen capture and video
creation tool. It allows you to record from both your webcam and does screen recording so you
can create excellent how-to videos or reviews.
• http://blogblueprint.com/animoto - This is a great service that allows you to create excellent
videos and provides access to images and music. There is a free option, a $30 option and then a
$297 option. Personally, we think the $30 option will work for most people, especially if they are
only creating how-to videos, but if you want to create actual commercials, then you will need the
pro version, which offers a lot extra.

A simple way to get started in making a quick video is to create a quick 30 second video using a screen
capture software such as http://www.techsmith.com/jing/ (only $15 a year) combined with a program
like Powerpoint, Keynote or the free Open Office Impress. You can create a quick video from an article
and simple record the screen as you read through the article. The following video walks you through
how to do this using Powerpoint.

Once your video is created, you will want to create accounts at a few of the top video directories.
CLICK HERE to access the list.

Here are a few tips to help get the most out of your submission...

1. Change the title and description a little so that each submission is unique.
2. Ensure that in the description of the video you include the full URL of your blog.
3. Include the primary keyword in the title description and tags.
4. Do not put the name of the site or the URL in the title.

• Create accounts at the recommended Video Directories. CLICK HERE to access the list.
• Make a quick 30 to 60 second video.
• Submit the video to the recommended directories.
• Submit the link to your approved video to your Ping.Fm accounts.
Step 6: Article Directories
Article directory submissions are still very effective for building backlinks and even getting traffic. The
challenge here is that you need to ensure you do not submit the exact same article to a bunch of different
directories. Google will only end up showing one or two of these in their results since they do not want
duplicate content flooding the users experience when searching. It has personally been found much more
effective to submit 5 "semi" unique articles to 5 solid directories then to submit the same article to 20.

For this step, we recommend you create a 400+ word article that contains a 2 sentence resource box that
links to your index page and a deep link. Make sure the article is not hyped up salescopy. Instead, make
sure it is just useful information and let the resource box do the selling. Next, use the Content Spinner
tool (located in the downloads area) to make a spin ready version and then submit a unique variation to
each directory you submit to.

Included is a list of article directories to submit to. You do not have to submit to all these directories at
the same time ... you can break it up over a few days.

• Create a 400+ spin ready article with resource box.

• Create an account at the recommended article directories. CLICK HERE to access the list.
• Submit your article to the directories.
• Submit the link to 2 or 3 of your approved articles to your Ping.Fm accounts.

Step 7: Press Releases

An online press release is a popular way of letting the media learn more about your website, product,
service or business. It is a very low cost and effective method of getting your website out to the public
and in the major search engines.

What Should You Write About?

Press releases are very popular and as such, everyday thousands of people are submitting them, trying to
get noticed. The problem is a press release really should not be used whenever you just want to send out
some general information. There are better avenues for that such as article directories.

Press releases are an effective marketing tool that really should only be used when you have something
truly worthy to share, so focus on topics that are newsworthy. The purpose of a press release is to inform
the world of your news item. Do not use your press release to try and make a sale.

Examples of newsworthy stories are…

1. Official announcement that has a major impact on your business

 a. Grand Opening
b. New Product or Service
c. New Website
d. Joint Ventures
e. Mergers
2. 2. A special event such as...
a. Giving a Charitable Donations per sale
b. A Temporary Free Service

Follow a Standard Press Release Format...

Make sure your press release looks like a press release. The following can be used as a template for your
press release.

Headline:

Headline Is in Title Case and Short, Ideally Not More Than 170 Characters; This Headline Is 138
Characters Long and Does Not Take a Period

Summary:

While the headline uses title case, capitalizing every word except for prepositions and articles of three
words or less, the summary paragraph is a little longer synopsis in regular sentence form. It doesn’t
merely repeat the lead. It just tells the story in a different way.

Body (with HTML for link):

The lead sentence contains the most important information in 25 words or less. Grab your reader’s
attention here. And don’t assume that your reader has read your headline or summary paragraph; the
lead should stand on its own. A news release, like a news story, keeps sentences and paragraphs short,
about three or four lines per paragraph.

The first couple of paragraphs should cover the who, what, when, where, why and how questions. The
rest of the news release expounds on the information provided in the lead paragraph. It should include
quotes from staff, customers or subject matter experts. It contains more details about the news you have
to tell, which can be about something unique or controversial or about a prominent person, place or
thing.

“The final paragraph of a traditional news release contains the least newsworthy material,” said Mario
Bonilla, customer service representative for PR Web™ . “But for an online release, it’s typical to restate
and summarize the key points with a paragraph like the next one.”

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release (or for a sample, copy or demo),
contact Mary Smith or visit http://www.yoursite.com.

You can also include details on product availability, trademark acknowledgment, etc. here.
Tags:

At minimum include the primary keyword phrase, top- level broad keyword phrase and then separate
the primary keyword phrase into individual words (primary, keyword, phrase).

Image:

Add an image that relates directly to the topic of your release. This can be a screenshot of your site or
just a related image. Ensure you have rights to use the image. Keep it no bigger then 250px by 250px.

• Create a 300+ word Press Release (recommend the first one just be announcing your blog).
• Create an account at the recommended PR directories. CLICK HERE to access the list.
• Submit your PR to the directories.
• Submit the URLs of two or three of your approved PR's to your Ping.Fm accounts.

More Traffic Tips?

There are loads more traffic generating tips and strategies that could be shared here, but it is important to
understand that you are not at the point with your blogs to invest too much time. You need to invest
some time to ensure they have a good chance of success but at the same time you need to balance that
with ensuring you are not wasting valuable time and resources promoting something that has not had a
chance to even prove to you if it is going to be profitable or not.

Remember, your goal is to have each blog generating $30 to $40 a month (which is very easy) but the
fact is some will not be able to while others will far exceed that. You do not want to skip the promotion
step because then you will never give your blog a true chance. If you decide to sell (flip) the blog, it will
be pretty much useless if it has not backlinks or traffic.

The next lesson will cover the topic of "Maintenance" where we will go through how to identify the
winners from the losers and then what to do with each.

Module 6 "Long Term Success" >> Lesson 22 "Maintenance"

Maintenance
Purpose:
The purpose of this training lesson is to review the steps needed to effectively maintain and grow your
autoblog business. There is no magic formula for this; it comes down to:
 • Content + Links = Traffic
• Traffic + Testing = Profits

What this means is you set up your blog to get content and links, then you will test different monetizing
strategies to find the most profitable :)

We recommend you don't start maintenance on your autoblogs until after 4 weeks of being indexed in
Google. You also want to wait at least 1 full week since you completed the previous lesson on
promotion. This is to ensure the promotion has had time to take effect.

Maintenance - The Ugly Step Child of Auto Blogging

This is also one of the most forgotten about steps as well, hence the "Ugly Step Child" reference :)

The steps you are about to read are simply a guideline to follow and a minimum one at that. The amount
of time and effort you put into this should depend on the ROI (return on investment). What that means is
if your blog is ranking for keywords that should get traffic and you just can't get traffic or you just can't
generate revenue, then it is better to move on and spend your time on creating new blogs and
maintaining the profitable ones.

People often love the initial creation and building but when it comes to the maintaining… well that gets
swept aside. It's recommended you follow a simple process before you give up completely on a blog.
This process will also let you know within 3 months whether you need to focus more time on it as well.

The idea is that each month you check your statistics, find the keywords you need to focus on, set up
your content and promotion plan, implement your plan and then repeat the process the next month. Each
month you will also want to compare the previous month’s stats to ensure you are not spinning your
wheels. For example, if you are focusing on a keyword that is showing up on page 4 of Google and is
sending you some traffic and you do a full campaign on it 2 months in a row and your rankings for that
term have not dramatically changed… then chances are you will want to focus on a different term.

Site Maintenance Checklist:

This checklist is designed to be used once per month on your autoblogs.

Part 1 - Keeping it Clean

The first thing that you need to do when doing maintenance on your blog is some general maintenance
that keeps it running smoothly. The items you will check here are:

1. Plugins: Ensure all plugins are up to date:

a. Log into your wp-admin and go to "Plugins" >> "Plugin Central" and ensure all of your
plugins are up to date.
b. Go to "Auto Blog Buddy" and at the top of the page check to see if there is an update
available.
 2. Links: Ensure there are no broken links:
a. Log into your wp-admin and go to "Tools" >> "Broken Links".
b. In the upper right hand corner of the page, you wil see two square icons. Click the one
furthest to the right, this will show more details on the page.
c. If the link has been broken for more than 2 days and was checked in the past 24 hours,
then you will want to remove it. If less than that, it is recommended you click the
checkbox beside the link and in the drop down menu select "Recheck". The purpose of
this is to ensure the broken link is not just a temporary thing caused by something like a
server issue. It may take a couple minutes for the system to recheck. After about a
minute, click refresh on the page, if it is still broken then we recommend you remove it.
d. To remove the broken link, simply hover your cursor over the URL then click on the
"UNLINK" link that appears. This will automatically remove the link from the page.
3. Images: Ensure there are no broken images: We recommend that you take a quick tour of your
blog and ensure that any images or banners that you have added are showing up properly.
4. Affiliate Products: Ensure your main products are still active (on your primary content pages):
Click on the various affiliate links you have on your blog and ensure that they are redirecting
properly and the page you expect to show up is actually showing up. Sometimes products are
removed or links change and suddenly you find that you are sending your traffic to an error page.
If you find that the links are not working, check to see if there is a similar product you can link
to.
5. Content: Ensure content is still being added and if using PLR or Datafeeds, you want to ensure
there is enough lined up for the next 4 to 5 weeks. If you have access to AutoBlogBuddy PRO,
then you will want to go to the main plugin window and under posts, you will be able to see the
number of remaining posts.
6. Social Sharer: Ensure that all accounts are posting properly.
a. In your wp-admin, go to "Auto Blog Buddy" >> "Social Sharer" and check that you
accounts are posting properly.
b. For accounts that are not, try to manually log into your account. If the login does not
work, create a new account and add the info. If you can log in, then double check that
your username and password are entered in the Social Sharer properly. If it is then submit
a ticket to support explaining the issue.

Part 2 - Easy Traffic Increase with Low Hanging Fruit

The intent of Part 2 is to help you identify the keywords that have the best chance of helping improve
traffic to your autoblogs.

Step 1 of this checklist will review two similar strategies for checking analytics. The first is for Gold and
Platinum members that have access to "AutoBlogBuddy PRO" and the "Internal Link Booster", the
second will be for those of you that do not have access to these tools.

Step 1 for Gold & Platinum Members: Identify Low Hanging Fruit

1. Login to your blog's wp-admin area and go to "AutoBlogBuddy >> Internal Link Booster".
 2. In the top navigation, click on "Have Positions". This will ensure that the keywords that show are
only keywords that are currently ranking in Google.

3. Now click on the "Hits" column header to sort in descending order of the amount of hits a
keyword has provided. The data is now sorted in a way that will prove extremely powerful in
helping you determine where to focus your promotion efforts. What you will look for here are
keywords that are providing "some" traffic and are below position 5. In personal experience, the
amount of traffic you get from position 6 to 4 is quite substantial and the higher the better. You
want to find the keywords that have the best combination of "traffic + lowest position". The
reason is if a keyword has given you 15 hits and is in position 6 but another has given you 9 hits
and is in position 19, the chances are that the keyword in position 19 will give you WAY more
traffic when moved to position 1 than the postion 6 keyword would when moved to position
1(hope that makes sense).
4. You want to create a list of 5 keywords and also the URLs on your blog that they link to. If you
do not have 10 keywords, then just use as many as you have available. Make sure to sort the
keywords in order of priority (the top word being the one that will get you the most return on
investment).

• (For Gold and Platinum Members Only) Using the "Internal Link Booster" component of "Auto
Blog Buddy PRO", create a list of 5 terms and URLs.

Step 1 for Non Gold & Platinum Members: Identify Low Hanging Fruit

1. Login to your blog's wp-admin section and go to "StatPress" >> "Export".

2. Enter in the data for the past 4 weeks and export the results to your desktop. You will need to
rename the file and save it as a ".csv", then you can open it in a program such as Excel.
3. Sort your CSV file by "searchengine" and you will be able to identify a list of keywords from
Google and the other search engines and the pages similar to...

4. You are now going to want to use the free tool provided by SeoBook.com called "SEO Rank
Checker". This is a 100% free-to-use FireFox browser addon that helps save a lot of time. You
 can download the tool from http://www.blogblueprint.com/rankchecker. You will want to enter
the keywords you exported and add them to the RankChecker tool, then identify about 10
keywords and URLs that you will want to focus on. You want to identify keywords that are
ranking low in Google but are sending you some traffic.
5. You want to create a list of 5 keywords and also the URLs on your blog that they link to. If you
do not have 10 keywords, then just use as many as you have available. Make sure to sort the
keywords in order of priority (the top word being the one that will get you the most return on
investment).

• (For non Gold and Platinum Members) Using the "StatsPress" plugin and the free SEO Rank
Checker tool, create a list of 5 terms and URLs.

Step 2 - Grabbing That Low Hanging Fruit and Enjoying It :)

1. In your wp-admin area, go to "Settings" >> "SEO Smart Links" and add the list of keywords and
URLs to the "Custom Keywords" section. This will help increase the internal linking to those
posts and will also improve their rankings.
2. Now you are going to want to do a promotion push that promotes the "BEST" keyword from
your list. You will find that, since this keyword is already ranking in Google, it will only take a
little promotion to dramatically improve its rankings. If this is the first round of maintenance for
your autoblog, then you do not want to invest too much into promoting it until you see if it will
be profitable or not. Once a blog is identified as profitable, you can invest more into the
promotion but initially we recommend that you...
a. Submit an article to at least 10 article directories with a link to both your blog's index
page with the index page's primary keyword and the keyword and url you identified from
Part 1.
b. Submit a video to at least 3 video directories with a link back in the description to the url
you identified from Part 1.
c. For Platinum members, submit a blast to the SK network with a link to both your blog's
index page with the index page's primary keyword and the keyword and url you
identified from Part 1.

• Add your list of keywords and URLs to the "SEO Smart Links" plugin.
• Do a promotion campaign with the best looking keyword and URL.

Part 3 - Tracking Profits

Now that you have taken care of the general maintenance items, it is time to start looking at what really
counts.

In this part, we are going to be using the "Blog Manager" spreadsheet from
http://www.blogblueprint.com/blogmanager.

If this is a brand new blog that you are checking, then the chances are you have not started making much
in the way of revenue with it. Your first month is really more about getting them established in the
search engines and getting traffic. You still want to check on revenue but do not get discouraged if at
first only a few of your blogs are starting to make money... by the second month they should start to get
on track :)

Using the spreadsheet...

1. Make sure to fill out all the data fields.

2. Make sure there is at least a one month difference in the "Built Date" compared to the "Today's
Date". If there isn't, then adjust the "Built Date" further back. This is not a critical factor (the
exact built date), as long as it is within a week or two. This is needed so the formulas on the
spreadsheet work properly.
3. Enter values in the "Leads" and "Revenue" fields. You want to enter in the total amount. The
speadsheet will then give you a monthly average.

The purpose of this tracking sheet is to help you identify the blogs that are making you the most amount
of money. This does not mean we are going to trash the ones that are not, but it will help us understand
which ones we should invest more resources in. For example, if by the third month I have one blog
making $10 a month and another making $200, I would not want to invest the same amount of time and
energy into both blogs. Instead, I would just do my regular maintenance items but would do the
minimum needed. With the $200 blog, however, I would do more, such as getting a couple of unique
posts written and doing some heavier link building and promotion.

There really in no complicated formula here. If a blog is making money and the traffic is increasing,
then invest in expanding the blog by adding more content and backlinks. You will also want to look at
building other related blogs to that niche, since you know it is a good one.

The beautiful thing about autoblogging is these blogs pay for themselves very quickly and then it is all
profit. In fact, I keep all of my blogs and have only sold a few for the purpose of testing the process. The
reason is, you will get much more revenue from an autoblog over time then you would for simply selling
it. The process of "flipping" blogs is about creating an actual blog-creating business and will be covered
in a bonus lesson.

Instead of "Flipping" your blog, what we recommend instead is...

1. Check your traffic:

a. If your blog is not ranking well, do a bit more promotion on it to try and boost its
ranking.
 b. If your blog is ranking well but the traffic is poor, then you may want to try a new
primary post or two on some other "potentially profitable" keywords. The fact is not all
keywords will get the traffic that the different tools predict, so as a result sometimes you
need to try a couple of different terms.
c. If your blog is three months old and is still getting low traffic, then we recommend you
leave it alone. Sometimes it takes time for a blog to get established and ranked. It's been
seen many times where a blog suddenly starts earning revenue 6 months after it was
considered hopeless. The more aged a blog is the better... just make sure it is getting
updated with new content and links.
2. Check your conversions:
a. This will be talked about in the next section but basically if you have good traffic but no
revenue, you will want to test different monetization strategies.
b. If you are not getting traffic, do not bother testing different monetization strategies until
you do.

In summary, we personally reocmmend that you really do nothing except the "Part 1 and 2" of the
maintenance plan for the first two months. This will allow your blogs to really get established and start
tracking data. Then by the third month you will start to be able to make educated decisions about what
needs to be focused on with each blog.

• Record and track your autoblogs revenue using the "Blog Manager" spreadsheet. Click here to
download.
• Identify profitable blogs that you will want to invest more time and money into.

Part 4 - Testing Monetization

This is probably one of the most "not used" strategies when it comes to making money online. Loads of
people (customers) have cried the blues about a website that is not doing well and EVERY one of them,
when asked what different things they have tested, have answered the same way, "Uhmmm... nothing, i
just gave up on that site".

Testing monetization is not just starting with some affiliate offers and then adding AdSense. That is
NOT testing... all you did was change something WITHOUT actually testing anything.

Testing monetization is primarily made up of two parts.

1. Location: This is where the monetization is located on your page and how you are getting your
readers to see it.
2. Offer: What type of offer are you using. You may find that even though two offers look virtually
identical, when it comes to conversions there may be a HUGE difference. For example, one
 product might have a better follow up process and as a result after 30 days convert two to three
times better than the other offer. The point is you want to test different offers.

Here are some basic steps you can follow to help improve the profitablility of your blogs:

1. Before you make any change, make sure you record the date of the change. This way you can
change things back if they do not work. Also, DO NOT make too many changes at once. Change
ONE or TWO things and let it be for a couple weeks. This will then give your "test" time to
actually be tested.
2. Ensure that your main "call to action"s are viewable as soon as your blog opens. You do not
want to have it so the user has to scroll to see a call to action.
3. Make sure that you are using a blue text with an underline for your main affiliate links. People
are used to seeing links as blue text that is underlined, so do not make them try to figure out
something new.
4. Check that all your "call to action"s (text links and banners) have a "Good" call to action. That
means that they tell the reader to "Click Here" and that you use arrows and images to draw the
readers attention to the links.
5. Test different ad block sizes. For example, 468X60 banner sizes seem to have lost a lot of their
effectiveness due to banner blindness. What that means is since this size is so common, our eyes
immediately recognize those size images as advertisements and cause us to be "blind" to them.
The challenge, however, is this is not always true... which is why you MUST test. What works
on one blog does not always work on another one.
6. Test completely different offers. This may mean you will have to update your content a little but
you definitely want to test different related offers.

The above list is not an exhaustive list of ideas but is a solid enough list to get you started. Like many
things, you need to ensure you balance your time and resources so that you are getting the best return on
investment. A personal recommendation is that after the three month period, if the traffic is good, test
different monetization strategies. Understand, though, that some markets are just not buyer markets.
Also, do NOT bother testing different monetization strategies on blogs that are getting little to no traffic.
You are simply wasting your time and money.

• Test different monetization strategies on your blogs.

Congratulations... you have reached the end of the Blog

Blueprint Training System!
Yes, there are other lessons, but they are bonus training material that go above and beyond the scope of
the intial training. With the training and tools you have recieved up to this point, you have everything
you need to create your profitable business.
Bonus Module 7 "Advanced Strategies" >> Lesson 23 "Email Marketing"

Email Marketing - THIS LESSON IS IN

PROGRESS - PLEASE COME BACK
SHORTLY
Purpose:
The purpose of this bonus lesson is to talk about Email Marketing. The objective is to:

• review why you should use email marketing

• discuss what services are recommended
• present a bonus that will help you
• learn how to configure your blog to collect emails "Blog Blueprint Style"

Why Email Marketing? Because It Works!

There are several reasons why you should use email marketing. Aside from simply mentioning that it
works, we'll look at two of those reasons:

1. Rule of Multiplication: an effective email marketing approach enables you to show your offer
multiple times PLUS provide multiple offers to a targeted audience.
2. Rule of Repetition: effective use of email marketing provides an easy way to get repeat traffic.

Multiple Times
Depending on whom you talk to or which survey results you read, it generally takes about 7 reminders
before the average customer converts to revenue. Whether this number is less, more, or exact, the point
is that it takes multiple times to convert a customer. Email responders make the task of reminding quite
easy.

Another issue is the reality that not every offer will be of interest. Using an email list allows you the
opportunity to advertise multiple different offers quite easily. Doing a different offer every few days
will show which offers convert.

More Repeat Traffic

Nobody argues the value of repeat traffic. Using autoresponder / email services, you now have the
ability to email your readers when your blog's RSS feed is updated. That means when you have a new
post on your blog it will automatically get emailed to your readers. This ability has been provided by a
few services for years but now nearly all of them do so.
A very cool and powerful option now available with these services is the ability to have category-
specific RSS feeds. Completely optional, you are able to create an RSS feed that is specific to a
category so that content posted to that category is automatically broadcast for that category's feed. You
could even go in and occasionally create an email for that blog which, once posted to that category,
would have it automatically sent out to that specific audience.

What Services?
There are a lot of email services out there but the one we recommend the most is Aweber (we also use a
rebrand of Aweber called Prosender). The reasons for choosing Aweber are:

• it is cost effective
• it has lots of features
• it has excellent delivery rate

You can check out this very reliable service at http://www.blogblueprint.com/aweber. It's a great
service for those just starting out and, at the time of creating this lesson, Aweber's first month offering
was just $1.00.

A couple other good services are...

• http://www.blogblueprint.com/icontact
• http://www.getresponse.com/getresponse

There are many other services out there, and if you are currently using one that is not included here and
are happy with it, then just keep using it :)

What About Free Services?

There are options for services which are free and these free autoresponder services come in two forms:

• Self Hosted: such a service requires you to run a script, ensure your IP does not get blacklisted,
and a bunch of other time consuming things. PLUS, your delivery rates WILL SUCK!
• Third Party Hosted: a good starting point if finances are tight but they do add their own ads
into your emails and their features tend to be limited.

Clearly we are not selling you on the first option and, while a consideration, even the second option is
somewhat discouraged. As a matter of personal opinion, if you're going to get into email marketing,
you'd be better off spending the money to let someone else manage this system. At $20/month to start,
you get a good system that frees your time up to focus on building blogs and traffic!

How To?
In the following steps, we'll show you the steps we use for incorporating email marketing into our
blogs. While we have suggestions for what tools to use, feel free to use your own since the main point is
how to go about getting your email list, not the tools you use to get it.

Now, one of the tools we use is the very powerful plugin called "PopUp Domination". For those of you
that have access to the Auto Blog Installer, you already have access to this tool as it is installed with
your blog. Aas part of our developer's license agreement, we are able to offer it free for every blog
installation done using Autoblog Installer.

If you do not have access to the Blog Installer then ypu may want to check out "PopUp Domination" for
yourself here http://blogblueprint.com/popupdomination.

As an added bonus, regardless of which popup software you use, we have some great opt-in graphics
that everyone gets access to, you cn download them from http://blogblueprint.com/optingraphic

Incorporating Email Marketing "Blog Blueprint" Style!

Step 1: Ask yourself, "Is my blog ready?"

Using Auto Blogs to focus on lead capture is EXTREMELY powerful... especially if you own a
business that knows how to follow up with those leads.

In the start of this training series, I mentioned how collecting emails as a core focus is effective for long
term results. The main challenge with email marketing hwoever, is you need a lot of combined traffic to
get enough leads, and it can take a few months for your blogs to get enough traffic. The other issue is
effectively following up with your email leads. Its great to want to capture leads, but if you are not going
to follwo up with them and sell to them, well then you may as well not do it.

If your core focus is NOT email capture then before you consider getting started with email marketing,
you need to ask yourself:

1. Are my blogs getting enough traffic to justify adding email capture? The percentage of
visitors to yoru blog that actually sign up for your email lsit can be small, sometimes only 1% to
2% and that means to get even one lead a day you need 100 visitors. Now if you have a network
of related blogs, you can of course have tehm work together, since the combined traffic should
be good. The chice is up to you, but I personally shoot for a 1% at one a day. That means i want
my blog gettign 100 visitors a day before i will focus on using email capture. That is just my
opinion... but it is how i do it.
2. Am I willing to invest time in following up with my leads? If you are not sure if you will
dedicate time to setting up offers, and emailing them... then why waste your time up front. Do
not think that you can build a list up and then in a year email them... they will have no idea who
you are and your conversion rates will be brutal. You need to contact them as soon as they opt-in
and stay in contact with them until they buy something or unsuscribe. That may sound harsh but
you are in this to make money, not free email subscribers.
NOTE: Not every blog market is good for email marketing. If you have a product that doesn't have a
recurring passionate audience, getting them to opt in can be a challenge, even when offering backend
offers such as a free product-related e-book. Also, there may not be a lot of offers you can send them on
the backend.

Step 2 Create a "bribe":

In simple terms, find a site-related offering you can offer visitors as a "bribe" to opt in. Using the site
we've been showing throughout our training (grindbrewcoffeemaker.org) as an example, we might offer
a free e-book on coffee recipes. The visitor would see this offer and enter (opt in) their name and email
address in the provided fields.

1. NOTE: you want to make sure that what you are offering is actually free. You can search on
"master resale rights" to find some products but make sure you are allowed to give the offering
away for free. We do provide you with some links to free offerings below.

Also, be sure to strategically place your offering for maximum impact. For example, include it
in the popup opt-in box as well as in the sidebar.

2. Set up a "Back End" offer (up sell) on your "Thank You" page - when the person has opted
in for the free offer, create some content and provide access to a second offer (up sell). You
don't want to just give something away and not make some effort to capitalize on the fact that the
person is now likely in the right mood for other things. Provide good content with multiple ways
to link to it (e.g. hyperlinks, an image, etc.) and you should prove successful at selling your
"back end" offer while giving away your initial offer, thus increasing your profit.
3. Set up your "Auto-responder" - if, for example, you are using Aweber, go to your account
and, following their steps, configure it so your customers immediately get an email.

For safety reasons, always double opt-in. What this means is that when they give you their email
address, a confirmation email is sent to them asking them to confirm their opt-in. Once that is
done, another email is sent to them containing the download link for the free offer as well as
containing an up sell offer.

4. Set up your follow-up messages - for example, configure the auto-responder to continuously
send new offers or to send notice of new posts on the blog.
5. Add the opt-in form to your blog.

If you take a look at our example site (grindbrewcoffeemaker.org), you will notice a popup opt-in box
appearing on the index page of the site. This has been configured to show again only after 7 days of the
person first visiting there.

You should also notice the free e-book offer presented in the popup opt-in box. This is the "bribe" to get
the visitor to opt in by filling in the name and email address fields. When this is done, the visitor is
taken to the download page which, incidentally, is also the 'Thank You' page. Notice the "Back End"
offer included on the page with a variety of means to access the offer (hyperlinks, etc.).
If you return to the index page, you will notice the opt-in box does not appear. However, going to other
pages (e.g. blog page), you see an opt-in box, including the initial free offer, in the sidebar. This makes
opt-in available in multiple, easy-to-access places and in easy-to-see locations.

• Step 1: Sign up for an email service

• Step 2: Find offerings
• Step 3: Configure your blog to use opt-in
• Step 4: Configure your auto-responder
• Step 5: Add an opt-in form to your blog