All Entries in the "Jarrod's Entrepreneur World" Category
Staying True To Your Target Niche
Choosing a topic avenue and clinging to it can be a challenge in itself throughout the early stages of article writing. Often enough, as bloggers it’s really easy to slip away from our objective blog topic. When formulating your blog, fixate on a topic that will appeal to the type of audience you are seeking. If you do this right from the start it will benefit you in the long run.
You may want to choose a general theme, topic wise, for your blog so that you have room to level a more numerous audience and gain more connections to your blog but not such a general topic that you wind up forfeiting the very market that you shooting for.
For instance if you are writing about health, and you happen to be a fitness instructor who is writing an article about the importance of an aerobic benefit, you will want to choose something a little more specific. Comparatively, you may want to try health and fitness or fitness tips as a keyword. You can settle up on any keyword you want, the main focus here is to narrow it down to a specific keyword.
Just a side note
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Try using a free keywords word tracker by going to: It lists them in order from which keyword has the highest search rate to the least search rate. The higher the number under the searches column the higher number of search engine results you will find for that keyword.
Keep in mind it’s a good idea to choose a keyword that is somewhere down the middle. You don’t want to choose a keyword that is too competitive that you find it rather difficult to rank well with in the Search Engine Results Pages. However, you do want to choose a keyword that will benefit you with a high enough number of traffic to give you a sufficient amount of traffic coming to your article |
Staying Focused
After coming up with a keyword niche that you feel comfortable using as a theme for your blog, hone in on that keyword and center the topic of your whole blog around your keyword. This is why it’s important not to choose something to narrow as you will have more blogging room. You will want to optimize your article pages with those keywords including proper keyword density. Read my previous blog Search Engine Optimization for tips on optimizing your page in a way that search engines will easily pic up on your page.
Keep in mind that you must focus on writing good article content and not focusing too much on the traffic. Remember there are thousands and thousands of people keying your keywords as search terms into search engines looking for your information. All you have to do is focus on presenting them with the information they’re looking for and before long you will notice your audience growing.
Once readers come to your site and see good quality content, they will be enticed to come back for more articles. It is up to you to stay focused on the topic of your blog.
I chose to insert an excerpt of Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken" below as a prime example because I thought it is the perfect analogy to the journey we take in the beginning of designing a blog. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new and interesting ideas. You never know what works for you until you take a risk and branch out or should I say take "The road less traveled by."
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"…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost |
Much of starting a blog is all about experimentation. Before you settle on a topic you will find yourself varying from topic to topic until you find a topic that is comparable for you to settle on. Once you settle on a topic, cling to that topic and you will began to see a major growth in your audience.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
Why Should You Host Your Blog?
I have had a couple scares with my blog and I know the horrible feeling of loosing all of the blogs. Fortunately for me, the point at where I lost my blogs, I was within only the first month of starting my blog, so I didn’t loose much but the feeling was nonetheless very uneasy. The fault was none other than my own, due to an attempt to upgrade my blog site. I apparently tampered with some of the configurations in the control panel of my blog hosting site. In other words I’ve done something that I shouldn’t have done.
This blog is a spin off from a previous blog post of mine, "The Benefit of Backing Up Your Blog." In the risk of sounding redundant, I will skip the whole reprimand about how you should save a back-up copy of all your blog posts. Although it’s a good idea, I will not elaborate on that idea. I will allow you to take a look at that blog post to get an understanding on why you should back-up your blog and the benefit of doing so.
It was from this mistake that I learned to seek guidance next time I make an attempt to upgrade my blog. I realize that the learning process of developing a blog is in experimenting and trying things out. All of the changes that are done to my blog are done by me, I don’t have a webmaster.
That said, WordPress is a very safe and convenient resource for blogging. And hosting your WordPress blog is the best thing that you can do. If I can use an analogy to describe the importance of hosting your blog site, I would say that the difference between hosting your blog and using a non-hosted blog is the difference between owning an insured restaurant verses owning an un-insured restaurant.
If your restaurant burns down overnight the insurance will pay to have it rebuilt, however if you own an un-insured restaurant, which most restaurant owners are too smart not to have insurance, the cost of the rebuilding will be your out of pocket expense, thats if you decide to rebuild.
There are many people who own free, non-hosted, blog sites and there are some very successful non-hosted blogs with very worthwhile content on them. Blogger.com is free to sign up, however Blogger.com is an example of a non-hosted site. It doesn’t allow outside hosting capabilities. There are many stories of people who have had there content taken down by the Blogger.com due to unknown reasons. This is where the benefit of hosting your blog comes in hand.
WordPress is free to use as well and it allows you to sign up for free. However, the great thing about WordPress is that it allows external hosting capabilities. By personally hosting your blog through an external hosting site, you have total control over your blog. Where as with blogger for instance, the company has the option of removing your blogs at their discretion. When you host your own WordPress blog, you have total control of your blogs, WordPress can’t remove content from an external hosted blog.
I will say this in Blogger’s defense, there have been many successful blogs that have come about through Blogger. Many blogs have been in existence for many years now through Blogger. Blogger won’t remove your blog for no reason, they have terms and conditions that they have to abide by. If you breach the terms and conditions they will remove your blog site. If you own a blog through Blogger, make sure you read the terms and conditions and make sure you are abiding by them.
I would encourage you that if you are into serious blogging, it is a good idea to host your blog site. It gives you the assurance and total control of the existence of your blogs. I personally use Hostgator to host my blog and I pay about $7.98 per month and it is well worth it. I simply view it as as added insurance for my blog. To find a list of web hosting sites go to webhostingfever.com.
To Your Success,
Jarrod Clark
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization
Written by: Jarrod Clark
There are many search engine optimization techniques that one can use in website optimization. The best seo advise I can give to developing webmasters is to focus on offpage search engine optimization techniques such as incoming links.
Focusing on getting incoming links to a website from other authority sites such as PR 6 and 7 sites that contain relative content is the best search engine optimization, or best seo otimization technique that any webmaster can practice. Most businesses, when starting up a website look into spending money for search engine optimization services so that they can get recognized by the major search engines such as Google, MSN or Yahoo.
There are other factors that a webmaster can take into consideration when performing website optimization and that is search engine advertising. Paid Per Click advertising is more of an indirect form of search engine optimization marketing and is one of the quickest ways to get traffic to your site.
Another great tool in search engine optimization is onpage website optimization such as placing your keyword in the title tags of your site and evenly distributing it throughout the body of the content of your site. Another tool is adding images to your site and titling them around the main keyword in which your are optimizing your site for.
The above techniques are professional search engine optimization techniques and are very useful when attempting to get yoursite ranked for your keyword.
Click here for your free copy of SEO Made Easy by Brad Callen!
To your success,
Jarrod
411 on personality types
I have come across many helpful tools that have helped me in business building. One of the many tools that have changed my life is when I came across Mentoring For Free. Mentoring For Free, or MFF, is an organization founded by Michael Dlouhy, that helps entrepreneurs to be successful. In MFF we teach people how to think not what to think and that they are perfect just as they are, they do not have to change who they are to be successful. I have learned a lot about myself and dealing with other people from this program. One of the things that I have learned is that everyone fits in 1 of 4 category personality types. In M.F.F we have a color system that we use to easily identify these personality types. If you are familiar with the 4 personality types, you may recognize them as Phlegmatic, Sanguine, Melancholy and Choleric. In MFF, we use a system of colors to relate to the 4 personality types. Our system is as follows:
- Phlegmatic = Yellow
- Sanguine = Blue
- Melancholy = Green
- Choleric = Red
Every person is described as being either open and indirect (yellow), open and direct (blue), self-contained and indirect (green), or self-contained and direct (red).
Yellows
Open and indirect means that you are open with discussing your feelings with others but you don’t find it easy telling others exactly what you want from them. When you ask a yellow a question they will answer it openly and indirectly. For instance, if you ask a yellow how was your day? A yellow might enthusiastically say something simple like, “My day was pretty good!” Their answers are usually short and they answer the question straight and to the point. They usually do not disclose more information than what is needed. We describe this type personality as the yellow or phlegmatic type personality and they make up 35% of the population. The yellows are the nurturers in our society. They are usually the teachers, nurses and counselors. They are giving and caring. They give more time for others then they do themselves. They are the best listeners and the best friends. When dealing with a yellow as a client, ask them about their family. They will love it if you tell them how your child played soccer from the age he was 5 all the way until they were in college.You may want to mention such things as team work and team building with a yellow, they love to discuss topics about working together as a team. Don’t talk to them about money, not at first, because a yellow doesn’t want to be sold, instead just focus on building a great relationship with the yellow.
Blues
Open and direct means that you are comfortable discussing your feelings with others and you have no problem telling other people exactly what you want from them. A blue displays these character traits.When a question is asked to a blue, “How was your day?” a blue might say something like, “Oh yeah, it was great! I went shopping and I took my children out to the play ground. Oh and by the way my nephew is getting married next month …” and on and on and on. A blue answers the question openly and keeps going on and on, divulging more information than what was asked, henceforth they are very direct. With a blue you usually have to stop them to ask another question. The blues make up 15% of the population. They are the salesman, they love to sale. They love to have fun. If it’s not fun, then the blue is not there. They are the risk takers.They are the bun gee jumpers, the race car drivers and they are always on the go. When talking to a blue about your business talk about how much fun it would be to make money with you. Describe how fun your product is. Anything that is fun grabs the blues attention. Don’t discuss too much money with a blue, rather stick with such topics of fun and excitement as it relates to your business. If you do discuss money with a blue, give a brief synopsis of your compensation plan but keep it simple. When talking to a blue talk fast and loud. Talk faster than they are talking, they will love it!
Greens
Self-Contained and indirect means that you have a hard time expressing your feelings with others and you don’t usually tell others what you want from them. These characteristics are that of a green type personality. When a green is asked the same question as the yellow and the blue, the may say something in a somewhat mellow, blunt manner tone such as: “It was cool, didn’t do nothing much.” Meanwhile they will sit there and analyze in their mind why are you asking them how their day was. They may wonder what are you really getting at. Greens are analytical, they are very organized and they love data, data, data….and then some more data. They are perfectionists and they think they are smart in a sense of they think they know the answer to every question. The greens are our professors, our arithmeticians and our scientist. They make up 35% of the population. When talking to a green lower your voice tone and talk slower. If you come to a green talking fast and loud as if they were a blue, the green will shut you out and immediately think that you are trying to sell them something. Greens do not like to be sold, they like to analyze the data and figure it out for themselves. When talking to a green it would be good to send them a few web sites as overview. Tell them that this is preliminary data for what they need to know to be in business with you. Discuss the entire compensation plan with the green. Talk money, money, and more money until the green is blue in the face. They love numbers and data.
Reds
Self-Contained and direct means that you don’t usually express your feelings and you have no problems telling others what you want. The reds exemplify these character traits. When asking a red the same question above, the red will not tell you at all how their day went. If they do tell you it will be a short, to the point answer and immediately the red will, in return, take control of the conversation. The red will have the guts to ask you “Why do you need to know how my day went, that has nothing to do with what we are discussing.” The red will want to get right down to the business. They do not like chit chat. The reds make up 15% of the population. The reds are our leaders, our attorneys and our managers. They do the hiring and the firing. They are demanding and they love to be in control. When doing business with a red do not think that you are going to advise them of anything. The red’s motto is, It’s My Way or The Highway. When talking to a red let them do the business their way. Talk about money with the red just as you would with the green except, only talk big amounts of money with the red and keep it simple. When talking to a red do not give them more information then they need to know, they don’t like it.
It is possible to determine what type personality the person has within just a few seconds of talking to them. The key is to listen to the person when they are talking. Knowing the information contained in this blog helps us to effectively determine what the person needs and wants. It’s important to note that red is the only one of the 4 colors that actually likes to be sold. Statistics show that 92% of the population does not like to be sold. So when talking to your prospects keep in mind what you’re listening for when conversing with them. You want to determine if they are open or self-contained. Once you determine that, you will then want to determine whether they are direct or indirect. For more in depth information on the colors go to JarrodClark.SuccessIn10Steps.com and download the free Ebook, “Success In 10 Steps.”
God bless,
Jarrod
MySpace Entrepreneurs Growing Their Friends List
As an entrepreneur, I see the value in marketing on MySpace. MySpace is a great resource for networking with others and building relationships. I use MySpace to do a great deal of marketing and I used to use the old traditional way of adding friends by going and individually clicking on individual profiles and placing my add requests. As you well know, this can take an extremely long time especially when you’re trying to reach the masses and grow your friends list to an outstanding number.
I have come across a great software program called FriendBlasterPro. Personally I was fascinated when it was demonstrated to me. It is free to download. The way it works is that you log onto MySpace, through the FriendBlaster Pro software, and once you’re on you can immediately begin adding friends by clicking on browse, just as you would the traditional way. Once you get to the browse screen you can edit and change your criteria to match the type of profiles you want to add, location, gender etc, and click send. FriendBlasterPro will then automatically begin gathering the IDs of all of the profiles in the browse window of MySpace. You can click start and it will automatically add all of the gathered IDs.This is an amazing software program as it will save you time and allow you to add more friends to your friends lists.
You can also set it to automatically send everyone in your friends list a comment and it will do that automatically as well. The only thing I dislike and this is more of a MySpace security policy, is many profiles have the captcha code that MySpace requires. However, you have the option of modifying the settings to skip the profiles that have the captcha code required setting. I really like this software and it has really worked for me. I was able to boost my profile friends list from zero to about 500-600 within just a few days of creating my profile on MySpace which I found to be impressive. This is a helpful tool for many entrepreneurs who are using MySpace as a means to market themselves and their business.
FriendBlasterPro has an unregistered demo which will allow you to download and use it for free. The only thing about the unregistered demo is that you can only add 50 people a day. I wound up upgrading from the unregistered demo, which was free to use, to the registered version which I made a one time purchase of $29.95. This version will allow you to add up to 400 profiles per day with only 1 account, or you can get the unlimited version which is $59.95. This version will allow you to add as many account as you would like and add 400 profiles per day, per account, which is very helpful for those serious entrepreneurs who would like the added benefit of adding 400 profiles per day for multiple accounts.
To learn more about FriendBlasterPro Click on on the banner below.
5 Steps for better business development
In the hustle and bustle of the everyday business ventures, sometimes it’s easy to loose focus and get disorganized. You may find yourself getting wrapped up in one particular task and loose focus of time. Proper time management is one of the key essentials to business success.
Setting a set time or a time limit for your everyday tasks is effective time management practice. Proper time management cuts down on the stress of everyday business tasks. The following are steps to help cut down on the stress of business operation.
Give yourself a specific time to do your daily tasks.
One of the pros of being an entrepreneur is having the free time to be able to do what you want when you want to do it. However, one of the important things of being an entrepreneur and working for yourself is being able to manage yourself. When you were, or if you are still working a day job, you would wake up in the morning in an effort to get to work on time.
Why?
Because being on time indicates that you value your job. The same thing applies when you’re working for yourself and managing your own business. You have to be able to manage your time effectively. As you wake up to start you business day, make a list of the tasks that you have ahead of you for the day and the times to start those tasks and the ending times for those tasks.
Organization is key.
There is nothing worse than coming to a disorganized work space and trying to progress to the next level. The way you start your business sets the tone for the way the business will fair out. If you start out disorganized then chances are it will be a complete mess and turn out to be a very stressful venture. Organize your work space in a way to where everything you need is easily accessible. Disorganization can be an indication of lack of self discipline so make a point organize your workspace and your time better.
Do not procrastinate.
Procrastination ties in heavily with step 1. Sometimes meeting deadlines can be a stressful thing. Much of the stress that comes with meeting a deadline is procrastination. I must say once more, one of the many perks of owning your own business is the time freedom you get. I’m reminded of many times when I was younger, if I was given a particular homework assignment. Many times, if it was a big assignment, we were given ample time to complete that assignment. After weeks have gone by I would always say to myself, “I’ll get on it tomorrow or next week…” then tomorrow became the next day and next week became the week after next and… next thing I knew… the assignment was due in a couple days! I would try to make all the last minute stops to do the homework assignment.
Many times it wasn’t that the assignment was hard it was just that I tried to cram a few days worth of work down to a 1 or 2 day time frame and it was very stressful. As I got older I’ve overcome my procrastination and I’ve come to realize that spreading out my tasks evenly over the time that I’m given to complete them is so much easier. Make an effort to apply a small amount of time to your tasks daily and you will see a world of difference in the stress level of your business.
Rest, Rest, Rest!
It is often said that the body requires 8-9 hours of sleep a night to be up to full operation. It’s very easy to get caught up in taking advantage of as many hours a day as possible. Over a period of time getting a lack of sleep can take a toll on the human body. You may find yourself feeling groggy and restless during the day and you will not be able to function at your fullest potential. Make a choice every night to get to bed at a good time so that you will wake up refreshed and ready to start a new business day full of excitement.
Make good habits.
I heard a saying that everything that you do on a daily basis is centered around the habits that you make. Evaluate your habits and make a choice to become better at everything that you do, whether it’s your personal life or business life take the time out to do everything to make your life less stressful, more ethical and more fulfilling.
Take time out for yourself and evaluate what you do on a daily basis. Continue to keep a positive mind set and have a “CAN DO” mentality. By applying these steps you will not only see a difference in the way you function but you will see much improvement in your business. Remember to keep the big picture in mind and always strive to do your best.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
