Author Archives: ebourne

Blog Traffic: 5 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

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Blog Traffic

Blog traffic equals money if you have monetized your blog. There’s no use in mincing words about it. If you’re blogging to generate revenue, then getting more traffic and exposure for your blog should be your primary task.

Blogging is a great way to promote ‘Brand You’, and your products and services. It’s a great way to engage with your market and create a dynamic conversation between you and your prospective customers.

But when your blog is one out of millions of other blogs on the Internet, you’ve got to find some creative ways to stand out from the crowd so that your sparkling prose can actually be appreciated by the masses.

Here are five tips for getting more eyeballs on your page:

1. Write excellent content
Content is what blogging is all about, so make it worth reading.
Keep it clear and concise.
Write in short paragraphs.
Edit ruthlessly.

2. Make it easy to share your content
If a visitor really likes one of your posts, make it easy for them to share it with one click. Use a plug-in that allows them to post to several social media sites without any hassle.

3. Participate in social media
Create a profile and a Fan Page on Facebook and be active in groups on the topic of your blog. Join Networked Blogs on Facebook and visit, comment on and rate other blogs.

Create a profile on Twitter and link back to your site. Selectively follow people that have an interest in your blog’s topic or related topics. Share useful information and be a resource.

4. Be a guest blogger on other blogs
Find popular blogs on a similar topic to yours and develop a relationship with the author. Offer to do a guest post on their blog. You’ll get exposure from a new audience and if they like your post they’ll visit your blog.

5. Submit your blog to popular blogging directories

  • Technorati
  • Blogcatalog
  • Blogtoplist

The most important tip of all is to have fun with your blog. Don’t be shy about revealing your passion for your topic. Your genuine enthusiasm will radiate out and attract visitors in droves. Your authenticity is a magnet to those who share the same interest, so let it shine and you’ll see a steady flow of visitors to your blog.

You’re invited to subscribe to my email update list where you’ll get lots of free tips and resources in your mailbox.

What are your most effective ways of getting traffic to your blog? Speak your mind.

Taking Inspired Action: Doing vs. Being

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Inspired action

As a spiritually-minded home business woman I am aware that we create our own reality and that everything that we see in the material world had its genesis first in the mind as a thought. I understand that intellectually, but lately I have been going back and forth with a client of mine who is a spiritual teacher about getting things done. She is an intuitive who reads energy with startling accuracy. Her approach to life and business is that she only wants to do those things that are all ease, joy and glory for her.

Conversely, I come from a long line of nose-to-the-grindstone, hard working, high-achieving women. I have so many ideas, I’ve got a ton of energy and enthusiasm and I enjoy my work. Because I work at home, lately the lines between work and home life have become blurred and I admit to have been overdoing it a bit in the work department.

So she and I have been going back and forth essentially about doing verses being. She revels in being the space and channeling source energy and all of that ‘woo woo’ stuff, while I figure if I sit around all day in the lotus position being the space they will come and take my car and my furniture away!

But there is a happy medium, and it’s called taking inspired action. Inspired action flows from an open, receptive mind that is centered and grounded and tuned in to Source energy. Inspired action flows from a mind that is open to all of the infinite possibilities.

When you are taking inspired action you feel good–almost orgasmic and you get into ‘the zone’ or you feel like you’re in ‘the flow’ of life and your true greatness is really able to shine through.

Inspired action is not plowing ahead, to-do list in hand, with a furrowed brow and sleeves rolled up. It’s not doing what you think you should do, have to do, or need to do. Many of those things are simply things that we have been trained into believing that we should do in order to get results. Well, don’t ‘should’ on yourself any longer.

Working hard, plowing ahead and burning the midnight oil puts you in a place of stress and gives you a knot in the pit of your tummy. Success does not come at the price of ulcers and exhaustion.

Now I am learning to lighten up. I have discovered that taking time out to meditate in the middle of the day actually gives me more energy and brings clarity to my day. Being open and remaining in question about all of the infinite possibilities available to me on a given day helps to keep my perspective as broad as possible.

When I see what’s ahead with my ego-centered, finite eyes, my instinct is to attack the obstacles that stand between where I am and where I want to be with an axe. But when I take a moment and open myself up to the infinite possibilities, the Universe, which sees all, can guide me and inspire me to maybe make one phone call or respond to one email that will crumble those obstacles with minimal effort.

I am a control-freak perfectionist, so the thought of not marching forth to “git ‘er done,” each day makes me break out in hives, but I am learning now to slow it down, breathe and be open to the infinite possibilities. You should try it. Inspired action feels absolutely yummy, and you’ll accomplish far more almost effortlessly.

How to Use Your Auto-Responder to Nurture a Relationship with Your Email List

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How to Use Your Auto-Responder to Nurture a Relationship with Your Email List
Your opt-in email list is the nerve center of your online business. Whether you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer or a freelance online content producer like me, you must build your own contact list of prospective customers if you have not already done so.

But it’s not enough to just gather up those emails and sit on them like they are going to hatch. Each one of those emails is your direct contact with a person who has visited your website, seen what you had to offer and liked it enough to give up their contact information. They have agreed to continue to receive emails from you, so go ahead and communicate with them.

Your list is only valuable to you when you foster a warm relationship with them. Take off your ‘sales’ hat and put on your, ‘getting to know you’ hat. If you want to be able to send promotional offers you must first create a mutually beneficial relationship with them by providing value.

This afternoon I joined a fabulous webinar put on by Janet Legere, who was talking about, How To Write Auto-Responder Letters. Here are a few tips that I learned from her on this content-rich webinar:

  • Write shorter emails
    (Don’t write a novel. Keep your emails short and sweet and to the point.)

  • Ask questions
  • Invite them to communicate with you
    (Provide links to your email and IM and phone number)

  • Share tips and strategies for what is working for you
  • Share don’t sell

    • Your goal is to get your opt-in members to begin to know, like and trust you more, so be real, be authentic and engaging with them.

    Janet and her husband Don do these free training webinars at noon on Saturdays, so I recommend that you scoot on over to her blog, http://janetlegere.com, right now and sign up for her email list so that you can get a link to sign up for her next webinar.

    Successful Online Marketing: It Really IS All About You

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    It'a All About You!
    An important key to successful online marketing is to keep in mind that, despite what your mother always told you, it really is all about you. In order to rise above the sheer volume, and the noise of the marketplace, you must find an effective way to communicate to the world–or at least to your target market–what valuable solution you provide.

    But in order for the world or your market to get how valuable and just plain awesome you are, you’ve got to believe it yourself. You’ve heard it said countless times that everything is energy. You radiate energy that vibrates at a particular level. If you are confident, secure and full of joy you are radiating at a higher level, and as that famous Law of Attraction states, you will attract others to you who are vibrating at a compatible level.

    Everything you do, and everyting you create and put out into the world is totally infused with your energy. Therefore, your clients and customers are either drawn to your energy or they are not drawn to it. This is important to keep in mind when you are doing Internet marketing online because if you are not getting the results you desire, you might take a step back and look at your energy and your vibration.

    Are you up and eager and excited, or are you feeling down, desperate and frustrated? You can have the most beautiful, visually appealing website with fabulous copy, but if you are not coming from a place of being confident in your value, your contribution and your unique gifts that energy will keep your ideal clients away.

    Remember that you are the sparkle that draws traffic, customers and clients to you. What are you doing to make your visitors enjoy their visit to your website or blog? How are you making it fun for your customers and clients to do business with you?

    Successful online marketing begins and ends with you. Be radiant. Be passionate, heck, be freaking awesome and take the necessary, consistent, bold action steps and watch your website begin to sizzle.

    Do You Tweet? Reflections on My Experiences Using Twitter.com

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    Twitter

    I have actually had an account at Twitter.com since August of 2006. I was in Ed Dale’s famous, 30 Day Challenge, and he was raving about the potential that Twitter held for engaging with our audience, building a following and sending traffic to our blogs. However, there was one small problem. There were not enough people on Twitter yet who ‘got it,’ so, I had about a dozen followers for about six months.

    Flash forward to today when I have almost 2,000 follower. I find Twitter to be a fabulous marketing tool. I get lots of traffic from it, I am able to spread the word about what I’m up to and I’ve developed a community of friends there where we chat and re-tweet each others posts.

    I do not use any of those apps that auto-tweets for me, although it would save me a lot of time. I don’t spend more than about 30 minutes all together over the course of a day on Twitter. I often send some tweets in the morning and then I sprinkle them in throughout the afternoon. I check my @replies and see if any of my peeps have anything that needs re-tweeting.

    In my estimation, I send about a dozen or so tweets a day, unless I am trying to get a lot of exposure for something like a webinar or teleseminar. Then I might send a few more.

    So, yes, I’m a Twitter fan. I try to keep it real, and yes I tweet about what I’m cooking, what I’m eating, what I’m writing, and when I find inspirational quotes. I tweet about what’s happening in my world–for instance right now I’m a bit snowed in as we’ve received about 24″ or so of snow this weekend and I haven’t got a shovel to dig my car out. . .

    My Twitter handle is: @evelynwrites. Follow me.

    Get Your Business Straight! I’ve Been Published

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    Get Your Business Straight

    I’ve been a member of a fabulous network of business women, created by LaShanda Henry, for a couple of years now. It’s called, Black Business Women Online, and this is an incredible group of powerful, driven, female entrepreneurs who are making things happen.

    Earlier this week LaShanda put out a request for articles to be published in a new, free eBook called, “Get Your Business Straight: Black Business Advice from Black Business Women.” I jumped right on it and wrote up an article and submitted it. I got word today that my article was accepted, and it’s been included in the ‘sneak peek’ edition that was just released today.

    So, I invite you to download a FREE copy and read my article and the other articles inside. If you are a business woman, I invite you to join BBWO where you will meet a great group of professional, driven women who also happen to be a lot of fun to hang out with.

    How to Make 2010 the Year You Actually Achieve Your Goals

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    happy girl

    Many of us go through an annual ritual of setting personal goals, or setting business goals at the beginning of the year. We call then New Year’s resolutions and we have every intention of realizing these goals, but somehow they end up falling off the radar screen and before you know it you’re back to your old, familiar habits.

    This is nothing new, but as we begin this New Year and new decade maybe you want to try something new. Maybe this year you would actually like to achieve your goals.

    The great painter, Pablo Picasso once said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and
    upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”

    With that being said, let’s look at some tips and strategies for taking those goals off of the paper and into your life where you can vigorously act upon them.

    You can find goal setting workshops in most personal development programs; you can find free goal setting software and websites online. It does not really matter what kind of goal setting strategy you use. Once you have compiled a list of personal, spiritual and financial goals, your next step is going to be writing out why it is crucial that you achieve those goals within the specified time frame.

    If you don’t convince yourself of why you must achieve those goals you will not have enough of an emotional investment in accomplishing them. Simply making a list on paper is easy to do and also easy to discard when things get challenging.

    Now we are going to bring those goals into your daily life by breaking them up into small chunks and adding them to your daily to-do list or task list.

    Take one of your goals that you would like to accomplish within the next six months. Let’s say you’d like to lose that last ten pounds. You will now backwards engineer your goal and break it up into tasks that you can add to your daily calendar. Here are some of the things that you might want to do in order to lose weight:

    • Clear the junk foods out of your house

    • Choose a weight loss program that fits your lifestyle

    • Hire a weight loss coach or counselor

    • Buy a weight loss journal

    • Re-new your gym membership

    You would make a list such as this for each of your goals and then take the time to add them to your calendar. If you’ve got an iphone or another smart phone you can download apps that will support your setting and achieving your goals. At the end of each day you will be able to tick off the things you completed and move forward those things that you were unable to complete. Keep track of your victories and celebrate when you achieve them. This will cause you to want to continue to strive towards your goals even more.

    • Keep your goals where you can see them every day.

    • Create a vision board

    • Create a slideshow video using images that represent the achievement of your goals

    • Build in rewards for when you achieve minor and major milestones.

    • Be accountable to someone for your goals.

    • Listen to motivational and educational programs that will encourage you to achieve your goals.

    • Believe in yourself and your ability to get from where you are to where you’d like to be.

    • Encourage someone else who is struggling.

    So, now you have some ideas for taking your goals and putting legs on them. Pick one of these ideas and implement it right now. Interact with your goals every day until you achieve them. Focus your laser-targeted attention on your goals and they will become a reality.

    Have You Created Your 2010 Action Plan Yet?

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    Goal Setting

    2009 was a fantastic year for me in my business. As I end this year I am taking the time to create a deliberate intention for how I plan to move my business forward in 2010. I have been using a variety of tools to accomplish this task including one of Tony Robbins’ goal setting workshops to set some global goals that cover all aspects of my life, I am using Khama Anku’s DVD program, How to Build Your Business from the Ground Up, to put the finishing touches on my new business plan, and I am using La Shanda Henry’s, Create Your 2010 Action Plan to reflect on how my business went last year and how I would like to see it grow and move to the next level in the year to come.

    It’s been fascinating to look at the numbers and really see where my business saw growth and where things could use some help. I’m also updating my marketing plan to include more of the marketing strategies that worked for me and some new ideas that I’d like to try in an effort to expand my reach and my visibility online.

    If you have not yet created your 2010 action plan there’s still time. You can visit, to download your free copy of Create Your 2010 Action Plan. Because I have an affiliate relationship with La Shanda Henry, if you follow this link I’ve provided and you purchase any of the other excellent products that she has available, I will receive a commission. This is just one of the ways that I generate revenue in my business.

    I believe that if you want to achieve a goal, the first step is to create a plan for how you will achieve it. I applaud you on taking the first step. So, here’s to an even more exciting 2010!