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Trolling For Topics - On Autopilot
| Guest post by: Carma Spence-Pothitt |
Article Overview: How do you keep finding fresh topics to talk about on your blog, podcast or ezine? One good way to keep up with your favorite subject is by subscribing to RSS feeds and creating RSS feeds for the keywords you choose.
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Free Download - Creating Compelling Headlines For Your Home Page - 3 Tips By Carma Spence-Pothitt |
Trolling For Topics - On Autopilot
How do you keep finding fresh topics to talk about on your blog,
podcast or ezine? One good way to keep up with your favorite subject is
by subscribing to RSS feeds and creating RSS feeds for the keywords you
choose.
Who are the "big fish" in your market?
If you've niched your business correctly, you're probably "swimming" in a relatively small pond. Make it a priority to know who the big fish in this pond are. Find out if they have a blog, and subscribe to the RSS feed. This way, when they publish fresh content, you'll receive notification. If they don't have a blog, they may contribute material to an article directory like eZineArticles.com. Many of these directories let you subscribe to author-specific RSS feeds. Whenever a new article is posted, you'll received an email with a link to the new content.
Keep up with the news events of the day.
Numerous sites that feature press releases will allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed of their posted releases. This allows you keep up-to-date on the latest news in your chosen industry or niche topic.
Create your very own RSS feeds by using Google News.
This is my absolute favorite technique. Find the "News Alerts" link in the left navigation bar at news.google.com. Click on it and you'll be redirected to a page where you can create a "Google Alert" for any search terms you choose. Create one for each of your target keywords, and you'll receive an alert whenever Google finds something on the web posted using that keyword. You may choose to have it search only the news, blogs, web, groups or video, but I usually select "comprehensive". This allows for a broader range of alerts, and helps me keep track of what's going on with my keywords.
Follow these instructions and you'll never run short of ideas.
Related ArticlesWho are the "big fish" in your market?
If you've niched your business correctly, you're probably "swimming" in a relatively small pond. Make it a priority to know who the big fish in this pond are. Find out if they have a blog, and subscribe to the RSS feed. This way, when they publish fresh content, you'll receive notification. If they don't have a blog, they may contribute material to an article directory like eZineArticles.com. Many of these directories let you subscribe to author-specific RSS feeds. Whenever a new article is posted, you'll received an email with a link to the new content.
Keep up with the news events of the day.
Numerous sites that feature press releases will allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed of their posted releases. This allows you keep up-to-date on the latest news in your chosen industry or niche topic.
Create your very own RSS feeds by using Google News.
This is my absolute favorite technique. Find the "News Alerts" link in the left navigation bar at news.google.com. Click on it and you'll be redirected to a page where you can create a "Google Alert" for any search terms you choose. Create one for each of your target keywords, and you'll receive an alert whenever Google finds something on the web posted using that keyword. You may choose to have it search only the news, blogs, web, groups or video, but I usually select "comprehensive". This allows for a broader range of alerts, and helps me keep track of what's going on with my keywords.
Follow these instructions and you'll never run short of ideas.
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Article Tags: finding topics, ideas for content, what to write about
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About the Author: Carma Spence-Pothitt RSS for Carma's articles - Visit Carma's website Click here to visit Carma's website   Trolling For Topics On Autopilot Plan Your Blog for Success The First Step to TurboCharging Your Marketing Choosing the Right Business for You Uncover Your Passions and Skills To Build a Business You Love |
Related Forum Posts
Re: New Homepage Layout!
- Thanks for the feedback GT - I'm glad you enjoy the new layout!
Point taken on the Forums Hot Topics - we'll see how it develops. Right now it shows topics that have over 1,000 views on them and it's sorted by the most recent at the top.
Solopreneurs
- Hi terriz,
This is the main challenge - how to identify topics that are specific to solopreneurs that doesn't overlap with other areas as you mentioned - starting a business, marketing, growing, etc.
Many of the companies (non-solo) that I speak with or people who are wanting to build companies have issues about self-financing, developing a personal brand, and growing without having to hire more staff.
Perhaps you could put a topic or two in the Other Entrepreneur Topics and we can see the response!
Re: Website analysis
- [quote="Evan":fgxldfxj]Hi AnonymousMan
I am always looking for additional advice for my site - feel free to give some suggestions for EvanCarmichael.com!
Looking forward to it![/quote:fgxldfxj]
This website looks great, I wouldn't bother changing any of the colors or text as it currently reflects professionalism and business.
When I first visited the homepage there was a lot of content for me to decipher so I didn't know where to begin. However my eye was soon caught on some of the hot forum topics so I visited the forums and never looked back at visiting any of the other sections within the website.
In saying this I believe if you had more feature articles on the homepage it would most likely attract me to viewing other parts of the website. For example if you had a feature article called "Marketing Your Business: Top 5 Expert Tips" with a small relevant graphic and a small description of the benefits gained by good marketing contained within a paragraph or two, it would tempt me to click on the "read article" link and then continue to read the full article while visiting a different part of the website for a change.
In regards to the Entrepreneur Tools section such as the Press Release Builder you could just about delete this section as the product is repeated 5 times, which is a waste of important homepage real estate that could be used for more worthwhile content.
Homepage content could include content items such as the latest feature articles, competitions or electronic newsletter sign up box. You could also use a Free Report as a complimentary PDF file download for visitors who sign up to your electronic newsletter or forums.
The Entrepreneur Topics are also very bland and boring to look at so I would recommend jazzing this section up or removing it altogether. You could replace this section with one of the famous entrepreneur articles and most likely increase the clickthrough rate to this section, as I am interested in these articles but always forget they are available. For example if one of Guy Kawasaki's latest articles was promoted on the homepage it would entice me to clickthrough and read the full article while visiting the homepage to get to the forums.
Do you feel these tips are helpful Evan?
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$3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
- $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
Content and Community Driven Pet Websites
________________________________________
Profile: Two Pet Related Websites
Price: $65,000 OBO
Age of sites: 2 years 4 months
Monthly revenue: $3300 (plus or minus a couple hundred)
Key details:
Growth Year over Year: 641%
Uniques: 200,000 per Month
Page Views: 1 mil + per Month
Referrers: 10,000+ Monthly
Search Engine Traffic: 61%
Members: 7500+/-
Articles: 318
Blog Posts: 189+
Forum Posts: 256,000+
Topics: 19,000+
Adsense Revenue: $1500-$1700 per month
Kontera Revenue: $900+ per month
Direct Advertisers: $90 - $300 per month
Monthly Server Costs: $100
Monthly Advertising Costs: $0
Total Profit Per Month $2500 - $3000
Organic Growth Month over Month: 10% +/- (Zero spent on advertising – all word of mouth and search engine)
Software Licenses: All Open source and thus free: Linux, Apache, MySQL, Zen Cart, PHPLIST, WordPress, SMF, and the rest Custom Programming.
Software Editions: All software running latest releases.
Uniques Last Month: 200,000
Page Views Last Month: *2,000,000+ per month
Referring Sources: 1,000 different referrers
Referring Keywords: 60,000 Search Terms
First Page Results: Thousands of keywords and keyword combinations
Indexed pages (Google): 65,000+
Indexed pages (Yahoo): 26,000+
Google page rank: 5-6 (Lots of 3’s and 4’s throughout the sites)
Pages of Content: 60,000+/-
Alexa site rank: 124,000 (way off the mark due to audience profile)
Compete Site Rank: Much closer but still off.. See image
Brand Value: All Original Creative and Content including Logo, Forum Template, Front-end, CSS, Code, Images etc. Extremely well made to render fast as well as accessible, to both humans and search engines. Search optimized throughout.
Description:
I actually posted this for sale almost 11 months ago but didn’t take any offers. Since then traffic has increased almost 650% and revenue has increase by almost as much, closer to 600%. Revenue comes from direct advertising ($150-$350 per mo) but primarily Google Adsense ($1500 - $1750 per mo) and Kontera Links ($700-$900 per mo).
Letting go as I’m working full time and just started Business School… I just don’t have the time. However, these sites are ripe for one to build a better business direction.
I started these sites as the pet industry happens to be exploding, exponentially and almost parabolically. Google “pet spending” to find a glimpse. Some articles you’ll find:
“The Growing Pet Industry Is One Trend You Can Bank On”
"In the past 10 years, pet spending has more than doubled to an estimated $38.4 billion for 2006."
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pet industry is now the seventh largest retail segment in the country."
“We have only begun to see the tip of the spending iceberg"
“Pet Spending at All Time High”
"Pet ownership is on the increase in the US, and the amount of money spent on pets is dramatically increasing too."
The two sites are content and community driven websites with 350+ health related articles on pets, a pet blog that discusses current issues, and a very active message board and community. They compliment each other perfectly and as such are being sold together as a package. The templates are completely custom designed and CSS powered. They would be XHTML Strict Compliant however we’ve included a couple of things that just wouldn’t let it pass. There are almost 8000 members between the two sites. Several hundred more between the blog subscribers and the email list subscribers. At one time we had a store (its all still there however it’s been shut off) and we had about 200 customers. The store lasted only about a month and a half as our careers just didn’t allow us to provide the customer service this site deserves. We also had a drop ship company that worked out really well, (and we still do if we want them). Much more work than our careers had time for. The logos are custom. I’ve got the logo in vector version for Signs and tee shirts. The Design is custom. All software front-ends are custom and running clean - open source applications. Runs extremely well.
The entire 2 sites run on a dedicated server that runs about $100 a month.. The sites run on a LAMP environment, meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of the software is open source and requires no fees. We run PHPLIST, Zen Cart, and SMF Simple Machines Forum. The blog is Word Press. The article system is completely custom however the back end panel is ran simple from phpMyAdmin – straight to the database.
I think there is enormous potential with the two sites as the brands have a very loyal following and is growing by leaps and bounds. It has been mentioned in 10 or so online and offline newspapers (that I am aware of) as well as a magazine – all of which will be provided. The site was featured as Yahoo’s Site of the Week. The site was forever (and perhaps still is) the number one pet site viewed on StumbleUpon.com. The blog also has 177 links from 56 sites according to Technorati.com and ranks 52,000. The database is huge. It’s full of fully owned content, images, customer data, subscriber data, members etc etc. The brand really sells when it comes to tee shirts and calendars. We have a drop shipper when needed that we buy tee’s at 4 dollars a shirt. Each shirt sold for $20 so there was a great margin.
The two sites have a solid existence and are trenched well into all the major search engines with perhaps thousands of first place results for keywords and keyword combinations. The majority of traffic is all organic from Google, Yahoo and MSN and it will stay that way forever. The site was built solidly by SEO pros with Search Engine Spiders in mind as every part of the site is search friendly. All pages have been correctly and lightly coded. The database powers the meta tags, title tags, h1’s, h2’s, image titles and bold tags. The site has tens of thousands of dollars put into the design and functionality.
petsite4sale@gmail.com
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