Each year continues to throw up new challenges for those trying to make money online. However, there are still several ways of ‘doing things right’ that can improve your chances of success (or of continued success) this year, whatever line of business you are in.

So, what follows are essential tips to help you do just that. So let’s begin with an obvious tip, shall we.

Tip 1: Plan

Plan what work you’re going to do, and stick to the plan.

A plan could consist of a set of daily activities - reply to your emails, visit a forum or two, create more content for your site - or it could consist of a set of activities you want to complete in a given month.

Whatever techniques or strategies you use, make sure you plan what you’re going to do first. Then do it.

Tip 2: Try Not To Rely On One Income Source

A source of income could be generated via pay per click search engines such as Google Adwords, or via article marketing. As an affiliate marketer, you might only make money from one website. As a vendor you might only sell one particular product. As a service seller you might be too reliant on one particular client.

Whatever your situation, it is never wise to rely on just one source of income, and this is especially true online.

Make sure you put some alternative strategies in place, some alternative pillars of income, if you like. This could be product diversification, or seeking out new clients or developing new ways to generating traffic to your website.

Tip 3: Commit To Learning

Commit to continuing to learn on a regular basis.

You can do this via an online forum, via a free ebook or website, or you can buy a suitable internet marketing product/service from a source that you trust and respect.

Equally as important as committing to learn is committing to not trying to learn everything. Be selective. Develop skills that will help grow your business. Ignore the rest.

Tip 4: Your Attitude Is Everything

Your attitude to success (and failure) is all important.

There are plenty of ways to succeed online, as you may well know; ultimately, however, what you do is not as important as how you do it.

I’m talking about your attitude. A positive attitude, combined with persistence, and a willingness to keep on learning, will seriously improve your chances of success.

I think Henry Ford said it best when he said: “Whether you think you can or can’t you’re right!”

Tip 5: Words Still Matter On The Web

Despite the rapid growth of YouTube, words still matter. Words that can persuade, cajole and build trust are more important than ever. Learn to write copy that is both clear and helpful to your site visitor, written with your voice and that the search engines like. And if you don’t want to learn this skill, pay someone to write copy for your website.

Tip 6: Spend Time On Activities That Make You Money

Are you working effectively? Are you making best use of your time? Form a habit of only spending time on activities that earn you money. And if you don’t know what those activities are, then find out.

Tip 7: Backup Your Work

Backup your work on a regular basis.

This is a very easy thing to state, but a very difficult thing to implement. We all know that we should backup our files, our mailing lists, our databases, our websites, but how many of us do it!

So this tip applies to everyone, including me.

Again, backup your work.

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Okay, that’s enough.

It’s now over to you to integrate these successful tips and strategies into your business life.

Keep learning, keep using the right tools, and keep persevering, and you will succeed online.

Wishing you your most profitable year, yet.

Steve M Nash is owner of several sites including http://www.textmefree.com - a directory of free sms text messaging sites, and guide to bulk sms marketing. He promotes them all using the basic principles and tips detailed in his free website promotion guide, http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com

WordPress is a great blogging tool. It makes blogging easy and has plenty of powerful features as well. But before you can jump in, you need to pick the right theme; you need to decide how your blog will look. This is a critical decision because the look of your blog will play a big part in its success.

A WordPress theme is what determines the look of your blog, like a website design. And it’s not easy to pick! There are hundreds and hundreds of them…and some are definitely much better than others.

The theme you pick is essential to your blog’s success. First impressions are key, and a visitor’s first impression to your blog will be largely dictated by the theme.

Here are 4 things you should think about to help guide you through the process of picking the best WordPress theme for you:

1. Your blog’s subject matter is key.
What’s it about? Really, the content of your blog should strongly influence the look of your blog. For example, it would make sense for a corporate/business blog to look similar to your existing website. A blog about partying should be colorful and exciting, while a blog about yoga or meditation would have a completely different feel.

2. Do you want to make money with the blog?
Google AdSense is the most common way of doing this, you see these ads everywhere. And, some themes are better suited for using Google AdSense than others. Of course, there are other ways of making money from your blog - affiliate marketing, selling text links, Amazon, etc.

Not everyone wants to make money from their blog, but if you do, here’s some tips:

* 3-column themes (particularly with 2 columns on the left or right side) are becoming more popular. Part of the reason is that they provide a lot of space for advertising above the fold (above where a user has to scroll to see content.)
* Ads that are above the fold typically do better. So pick a theme with plenty of space at the top to include advertisements/sponsored links.
* While ultra-simple themes might be quite vogue they often lack the space needed for proper advertising.

3. Your technical know-how is important.
Most WordPress themes are quite easy to use right “out of the box” but there are some themes definitely geared to beginners and others aimed at experts. Your skills in HTML and even in coding with PHP may play a factor in your successful use of a given theme.

Some themes come better equipped with instructions; so take a look after downloading a theme to see if there’s any advice or information in the files that you’ve download.

If you’re a beginner look for contact information and/or an active community around the theme (like a website or forum.)

Quick Note: Make sure your theme supports the version of WordPress that you’re running. Some themes might only work with a later version of WordPress (2.0+) but you might still be on an older version of the blog software.

4. Don’t forget to test the theme thoroughly!
Once you’ve found a theme you like, at least do the following:

* Write a few sample posts. Vary their length and style to see how each looks. Try including some images as well. On occasion when you start experimenting with the positioning of images you might see it actually breaks the theme.
* Submit some comments. Comments are important to blogging so try this out and make sure you like how they’re formatted.
* Make sure you click on a few posts to look at them individually. Click on the category names that you’ve setup as well to see what those pages look like. Generally speaking, try and click throughout the blog because when you first setup a theme or see one you like online it’s not going to be showing you everything.
* In the WordPress Admin go to the Theme Editor and look at a few of the files listed there. The idea is to just get a feeling for what the code looks like - how well written it looks - because once you start editing that code you’ll want it to be as neat as possible.

Remember, you can always change the theme on your blog, but you want to get it right the first time, if you can. Do some research, look around, find examples of themes you like in use and always test as much as you can.

Once you’ve found a great theme and started editing it you won’t want to get away from it; and that first impression for visitors to your blog is going to help guarantee your success!

Visit Ben Yoskovitz’s blog at Instigator Blog (http://www.instigatorblog.com)

Ben Yoskovitz is a veteran entrepreneur specializing in turning your ideas into a thriving business. He helps people shape their passions into profitable, successful companies. He’s been in business for over 10 years and works extensively in the technology industry, including web design, software development, blogging and podcasting.

1. Determine your target audience

This step is pretty much straight forward. Understand your Website’s content and who you want to visit your site. If you are a small business and handle mostly local accounts then make sure you target your keywords around the local community.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Who will benefit from visiting my Website?
Who do I want to visit my Website?
Why will they visit my Website?

2. Think like your customer/client(s)

This is where you have to step away from your expertise and think like an average person. Just because you know the professional term for your service does not mean your customers will. You have to think what keywords the common person would use to find your service or product.

Example:

Your profession might be an “Optometrist”, but the average person refers to you as an “Eye Doctor”. So when they conduct a search, most likely they will use the key phrase “Eye Doctor” not “Optometrist”.

3. Rank the importance of each keyword/phrase(s)

This step relates closely to step 2. You may determine that people will search for you using many different keywords. You should then list the keywords in order of importance, to determine which ones should be used mostly during optimization.

Example:

Eye Doctor
Optometrist
Eye Exam
Glasses
Contacts
Prescription
Floaters

4. Research keywords popularity

There are many FREE tools online that will help you determine the popularity of keywords. This can help you during the keyword ranking process.

5. Don’t be generic

This stage is very important. If you are too generic with your keywords most likely you will not receive the search results you intended. Use a keyword popularity tool to learn what words people use to search with and then add additional keywords that target more to your website.

Examples:
Keywords Strength (1-10)
Doctor 2
Eye Doctor 4
Georgia Eye Doctor 7
Atlanta Eye Doctor 10

Keywords Strength (1-10)
Glasses 3
Prescription Glasses 6
Atlanta Prescription Glasses 8
Atlanta Prescription Sunglasses 10

Keywords Strength (1-10)
Restaurant 2
Italian Restaurant 5
Atlanta Italian Restaurant 10

This is why it is important to know your target audience. What good would it do if someone from New York visited your Atlanta base Eye Doctor Website?

6. Make sure keywords are relevant to the page’s content

Search engines look at more than just keywords when determining search results. They also look at the pages content as well as the alt tags. You could have picked the perfect keywords but if it is not relevant to your page’s content, you will not receive good search results. Even if someone finds your page from those keywords, they are going to leave right away because it has nothing to do with what they are looking for.

7. Target each page with their own set of keywords

This is where the relevance comes in hand. You only want to drive positive traffic to your site that can benefit your company. By targeting a different set of keywords for each page you can stretch the amount of keywords used throughout your website and target a larger audience. You have a better chance of returning higher rankings by focusing a particular page to a particular set of keywords. That way the keywords are not as broad and more relevant to the page’s content, search engines love that.

Example:

If you have a page talking about different eye examinations you conduct, do not use prescription glasses as keywords. You should use “eye examinations” and other types of eye examinations you conduct as the keywords.

Conclusion:

Picking the correct keywords is a hard task. There is no correct way to do it, but there are a lot of wrong practices. This is the strategy that I use and have learned to be the most effective. I hope this helps.

Mike Creati is the owner of Lunico Design LLC. He has his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and is member of Tau Alpha Pi.