I have made my fair share of spelling mistakes in my own marketing campaigns. So, it is somewhat heart warming to see large corporations make similar mistakes. I found this gem in an email newsletter I received, which boasts of a readership of 78,000. The true irony though, is that this is an ad from an institution promoting “Higher Education.” What a hard lesson to learn in proof reading your ads before launching them. ~Paul W

From one of my first posts on this blog I received the below comment:

“…Before I buy a choose domain name and host it, how do I determine a good name for the website? Does that play a big role in how much traffic I can bring my way? Is it beneficial to stick with the product name, or would it be better to have it similar to the keywords and content? Or does that not matter either?”

These are really good questions, particularly when getting started. Yet, each question needs to have a detailed answer in order to be any help to you. So, I have broken these questions into three post:
Question 1: How do I determine a good name for the website?
Question 2: Does my website name play a big role in how much traffic I can?
Question 3: Is it beneficial to stick with the product name, or would it be better to have it similar to the keywords and content? Or does that not matter either?

My good friend emailed me the below excerpt a while ago:

I was woken up about 6:30 with a banging on my door (my neighbour) telling me that my car had been broken into and so was hers and the cops were on their way. I panicked at first thinking of my golf clubs in the trunk.. However when I got down there aside from a car full of glass from the broken window, and a massive rock (I mean like a boulder) in my front seat nothing was stolen.. Not even my ipod sitting on the front seat. Stupid junkies looking for cash it had to be.. They did not take anything at all.. even my neighbours camera was sitting on the front seat and they did not take that.. It was more than super annoying..

This real-life story is a great analogy to modern day web marketing. It is not a far stretch to liken us marketers to a thief taking using a large rock to smash through our users realities. Yet, how often do we leave behind the most valuable objects. We are so focused on our own agenda that we miss the obvious. As with my friend, in the end we only annoy our users because we are not taking what they expect us to take.

WordPress is an amazing software but who ever built their search function on their dot org should be fired! You cannot find anything you are really looking for. I actually complained to Matt Mullenweg about it at WordCamp. It’s so bad that people like Joost de Valk at Yoast.com built his own google search engine for wordpress plugins. He says he is going to build a wordpress theme search engine for us, but until he does I have compiled a brief list of free wp themes you can use. If you know any other theme directories let me know. Cheers! ~Paul W.

WordPress Theme Directory List
fresheezy.com
ithemes.org
themeboss.com
themes.iwebnet.org
themesjunction.com
themes-wp.com
web2feel.com
webfrap.com
welovewp.com
widgetreadythemes.com
wordpress.mu
wordpressgallery.com
wordpressthemebase.com
wp-layout.com
wpskins.org wpsnap.com
wptemplates.org
wptheme.net
wpthemes.us
wpthemesarchive.com
wpthemesfree.com

Last year I was I asked to speak on business blogging for a Northern Utah chamber of commerce. I was later interviewed by their local newspaper and they did an article on the presentation.

It is interesting reading the article a year later. My thoughts have not changed on how important blogging is to businesses. I feel like I am on a mission to change people’s perspectives of blogging. Most people believe that blogging is online journaling. Over the last several years I have seen how blogging (particularly WordPress) has transformed the internet.

Today on Twitter I came across my friend Ash Buckle’s new blog called: Reason To Blog. The purpose of his blog is to show how blogging can be used successfully to create, brand, and increase website traffic. I tip my hat to Ash for creating an insightful blog. I am always on the hunt for great examples to show people how blogging can be a powerful business tool.

Recently I was asked by a friend: “What do you think is the greatest way to become well known on the web?” I thought this was a post worthy question, and something I have recently given great thought to.

Obviously, using SEO with a lot of my websites I would advise becoming number one in Google. However, this really isn’t the right answer to the question; nor, is it a good answer. It isn’t difficult to rank high in the search engines, but just because you are able to rank doesn’t mean people will remember you. I personally can think of several of my own sites that rank number one but are far from rememable!

To me the real answer to this question is—originality and foresight. It sounds like an easy answer, but it seems a lot of people struggle coming to a similar conclusion. The Internet is littered with unoriginal spammy sales pages that will do anything to get your credit card and email, in order to bother you for eternity (check out: BuyMyStupideBook.com to see a great parody on this aspect of the web). This being the case, the web is starving for originality/foresight.

Note: With the Internet Money series I will be focusing on a particular area in web marketing that has proven to generate strong daily revenues for my friends and me. There are a lot of ways to make money online and what I will cover is only one of thousands. However, most of the marketing suggestions offered here can cross over and apply  to whatever you’re working on.

A common mistake when starting your money making web idea is to jump in without doing your homework. I know I am guilty of this mistake, even now. However, if you want to do really well with SEO on the internet you need to know how hard it is to rank.

One of my favorite web marketing blogs is CourtneyTuttle.com. I have actually had the pleasure of having lunch with Court (he lives 30 minutes south from me), and he amazes me with his understanding on SEO. One of his greatest ideas, in my opinion, is his Keyword Sniping philosophy. If you go to his blog now, though, you will see that he is recanting this ideology. I believe this is mainly due to Google really slapping his rankings for his belief. Why? Because his ideas really works.

A lot of people have been clamoring for me to write the Internet Money series. The genesis for this idea comes from my good friend whom we will call Daniel. Daniel and I have been working closely for the last year on several web marketing projects. Due to Daniel’s success with the Internet a lot of my friends have asked that I focus some of MyMarketer’s efforts on his success.

I do want to make a side note before beginning. I want it crystal clear that the success which Daniel has seen has come from his own efforts. I have given him a little (and I emphasize on little) guidance, but from there he took off and created his own path of success. Daniel’s story truly is a tale of the student becoming the teacher and the teacher becoming the student.

When Daniel and I started on web marketing he was installing air conditioning units in the blistering heat of Las Vegas. However, every morning as he drove to work he would call me and we would discuss marketing at length. Daniel, though, was different than most of my friends who talked to me about marketing—he actually implemented our ideas. In the evening he would put into practice our morning conversations into his different projects. Another thing that made him different from the rest was his passionate, driven desire to find anything and everything on the subject. Daniel is a copious reader and would send me daily emails with the new knowledge he had applied the day before to his websites.