So you have decided to drive traffic to your websites with Twitter but now you are are getting swamped with SPAM which makes Twitter useless (at least as far as following the updates of good Twitter accounts). Well, the following article is a common sense strategy to help tame the Twitter SPAM problem.

But first we need to review how we ended up with this problem in the first place. To market on Twitter you need to create Twitter accounts for your various websites and you also need to build these Twitter accounts up by getting lots of targeted followers that will be interested in what you have to say. To do this, you need to use a tool such as Tweetadder and follow people on Twitter that you want to follow you back. The problem is, that when you follow tons of folks on Twitter you will also end up following tons of Twitter spammers which makes your Twitter account pretty much useless since it will be filled with spam-ish style updates.

Does this look familiar…?

Does your Twitter account look like processed meat product?

You could always unfollow accounts that SPAM your Twitter timeline but trust me when you are following tens of thousands of accounts it will be no easy task. You could also make Twitter lists of the accounts that you DO like and then you could ignore the SPAM. The problem with that approach is it is very time consuming (picking and choosing good accounts) and it doesn’t help the fact that all these spammers will be filling up your direct message box, therefore we do not believe that is a viable strategy.

Avoiding Twitter SPAM is as simple as this:

Create a new Twitter account, an account that you will NOT be using for marketing purposes (lets call this account your “personal” or “hot list” Twitter account). With this personal account you will only follow the folks that you REALLY want to read what they have to say. You will not be trying to build up the following of this account, you could even set the account to “private” if you really want to keep it hidden from the spammers. Then you could use a great tool such as Tweetie and review this Twitter account daily looking for interesting content to retweet or get links from to retweet from your other marketing Twitter accounts.

Therefore what you are really doing is creating a master account to follow those that interest you and sacrificing all of your marketing Twitter accounts, building them up only to send out updates.

As an example, I have 12 Twitter accounts. 10 of these accounts are used for marketing purposes and driving traffic to various web properties that I own. With these 10 accounts I build them up daily with Tweetadder so that they gain a large targeted following. Yet by doing that those 10 accounts are filled with SPAM and reading any updates from within those accounts is essentially useless (thanks to the spammers). So I send out updates and links with those 10 accounts and drive traffic. I use the other two Twitter accounts as follows: one account is my “idea basket”, I send updates to that account with ideas and status updates that I might want to use in the future. The other account is my “master” account or “personal” or “hot list” account (whatever you want to call it) where I follow people that interest me and Twitter accounts that are useful for retweeting purposes etc. I do NOT follow any accounts that are not of special interest to me and therefore I avoid all Twitter SPAM with and it’s always the first account I read each morning which allows me to use Twitter in the way it was intended.

I realize this strategy seems like common sense but you would be surprised how many folks have asked us to help them with their Twitter SPAM problem and when we tell them about the way we handle our Twitter accounts they almost always say “why didn’t I think of that?”, so we decided to share it here and hope that some of you find this approach to Twitter SPAM helpful.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from Facebook users is the massive amount of Game status updates in a users Facebook home page. You’ve probably seen these types of updates sprinkled throughout your Facebook page.

Status updates such as…. “so and so found a Lonely Bull on their farm. Oh no!”. There are times when your entire Facebook home page can be filled up with such updates. And many folks find those types of updates highly distracting when trying to communicate with friends and family.

Turning off or “hiding” game updates is super easy! And here is a quick guide to show you how to do it. First scroll down in your Facebook home page to the first game status update you want to hide. (see image below)

To turn off Mafia Wars updates in your timeline hover your mouse over any Mafia Wars or other game updates. When you move your mouse over the update you will see a “hide” button pop-up in the upper right corner of that status update. (see below)

When you click the “hide” button you will be presented with three choices. (see below)

Now you have the choice to:

1. Hide the friend who made the update
2. Hide updates from that game in your Facebook page
3. Cancel

In this case we want to choose the 2nd option which will hide all Mafia Wars status updates in your timeline. When you click “Hide Mafia Wars” you will get a small alert message stating…

Yay!! No more Mafia Wars status updates in your Facebook home page. Repeat this same process for any other game or Facebook applications that you find distracting and wish to hide.

Hiding friends that you don’t want to “unfriend” yet would prefer to NOT read their status updates works the exact same way, just hide them!

What if you want to “unhide” something that you have hidden in Facebook? It’s easy to unhide friends or application status updates that you have hidden. All you do is click “Top News” in your Facebook home page, then scroll to the very bottom and find the link that says “Edit Options”, click it. You will then get a pop-up screen that allows to unhide friends or applications that you have hidden. Find the application you want to unhide and click “Add to New Feed”. That’s it!

In a recent article the folks at Mashable did a great job of rounding up stats from analytics company called Net Applications on browser usage on the internet. The good news is that quality browsers such as Chrome and Safari are growing in usage, yet the bad news is the worst browser of all-time Internet Explorer 6 is still the 2nd most popular browser with 20.07% market share.

From the article…

5.20% of the market is actually impressive for a browser as new as Chrome, but Internet Explorer still dominates. IE8 takes up 22.31% of the market and IE7 carries 14.58%, but it’s upsetting to see that IE6 on its own is still the second most popular browser version (behind IE8) at 20.07%.

At Mashable, we’ve made it clear that we believe IE6 must die. It has stifled innovation and left its users vulnerable to security threats for too long, and compared to modern browsers it’s a hassle to use.

Google agrees, and so do many other companies; that’s why it’s phasing out support for the browser, hoping that in doing so it can convince users to either upgrade to a newer version or switch to a competing browser like Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

The good news is that this seems to be working, albeit very, very slowly. IE6 has been declining gradually for months. It just can’t happen quickly enough.

Read the entire Mashable article here.

Choosing the right domain name is vital

Choosing the right domain name for your website can be one of the most important things you can do to get good, free, organic traffic. If you are not a huge corporation with millions of dollars to spend on branding your website you will need to pick a domain name that is search engine friendly and adds to your overall SEO strategy. And that my friends is the focus of this article, i.e., picking the right domain name that doesn’t require massive marketing dollars for branding.

When you are ready to start your domain name search you can use the built-in tools that GoDaddy provides or you can use fun tools such as Domjax which makes searching for a domain name kinda fun.

The five most important things to consider when picking a domain name:

#5. Keep the domain name 5 words or less

Big companies who use traditional marketing will want to keep their domain names to no more than one or two words, but us little guys who are shooting for SEO traffic can pick domain names that are much longer. There is nothing wrong with a domain name that has 3, 4, or even 5 words in it. Remember, we aren’t going to be creating TV ads or print ads so we don’t really care (within reason) how long our domain name is. Longer domain names are of course much more likely to be available.

#4. Don’t use a trademarked brand names in your domain name

If you include ipod, iphone, zune, ebay, toyota, or any other brand name in your domain you will most likely be asked by a lawyer to cease and desist, and all the work you would have put into your site will be a complete waste of time. No matter how good the domain name sounds, and no matter how compelled you are to buy chevypartsforsalecheap.com DON’T DO IT!!! Trust me on this one. Find other names that get across the same idea that don’t infringe on copyrights.

#3. Don’t listen to those that say avoid hyphens

Many SEO experts will tell you to avoid hyphens in your domain name such as electric-socks.com, and if we were branding our website through traditional means such as television commercials or print advertising I would agree with those experts. But our goal as the “little guy” is to get organic traffic via the search engines and therefore hyphens are not such a bad thing. I have created several websites that do great in the search engines and they have hyphens in their domain name. That being said, if I have the option to pick an unhyphenated domain name I would pick that over the hyphenated name. Said in short… unhyphenated domain names are the best but hyphenated domain names are not a “deal killer”.

#2. Pick a “dot com” domain name

Avoid the .info’s, .tv’s, .us’s, .me’s, and all the other wacky types of domain names. Yes it’s true you might be able to grab that perfect .bz domain name but typically these types of domain names do not perform very good from an SEO perspective. The only possible exception is .net which isn’t a deal killer but I would still stick with the .com’s if at all possible.

#1. Use your targeted keyword phrase in your domain name

This of course is the most important factor of them all to consider. If you are shooting for the keyword phrase “electric socks” make sure that the words “electric socks” are in your domain name. If electricsocks.com is available buy it! If not, buy electric-socks.com or electricsocksforsale.com. Plural domain names are a good choice because you cover two keyword phrases with one shot, for instance electricsocks.com covers the search electric sock as well as the search phrase electric socks, whereas the domain electricsock.com might not be as effective for both searches. If your domain name does not contain your targeted keyword phrase it will be much more difficult to get a page one listing in Google.

Other helpful things to consider when picking a domain name

I recommend buying your domain name for at least 5 years. My research indicates that Google rewards domain names that will be around for awhile. From Google’s perspective they probably figure that domain names that are only purchased for a year might be less valuable because the owner is just “testing the waters”. The longer your domain name has been registered to you the better it will do in search results, so it only stands to reason that if you buy it for a longer term contract from the “get go” the search engines may reward you with better results sooner.

Be very careful when buying existing domain names from other people. You have NO IDEA what that domain name has been through prior to you acquiring it. I have had colleagues get kicked out of affiliate programs or been blackballed by search engines because of the shenanigans that the former domain name owner was involved in. If you don’t know for certain that the domain name is squeaky clean avoid it! Even though mature domain names perform better it’s much safer to buy a new domain name.

Picking the right domain name for your website is the cornerstone to your overall SEO strategy. Don’t rush it, take your time, do your research, and pick a domain name that will help you acquire the organic traffic that in turn will help you make money online!

Please add your own comments below about what you think are helpful tips when buying domain names.

Create content that people are searching for.

So you have started your blog and started your social networking campaign and you are ready to start adding content to your blog, if you have a tight niche the topics you choose will obviously need to be relevant to your niche. But if your blog is more general (maybe it’s an opinion based blog) and you are considering what type of content to add, you should create and add content that people are looking for. It’s the major search engines job to discover content that fills a gap. People are searching for information, and the search engines guide them to that information. Therefore if you are creating content that people are looking for it’s likely the search engines will reward you with sending traffic your way.

So how do you find out what people are searching for? BOOKMARK THIS PAGE!

You can visit this page daily and we will keep you up to date on the most popular Google searches.

Most popular searches (give each chart a moment to calculate)

Check back here daily and do your best to stay on top of the trending topics that people are interested in. The more you provide content that is in demand, the more the search engine will reward you, the more the search engines reward you, the more traffic your website will receive, and of course the more traffic your website gets the more money you can make online!

Simple to follow, easy to read, SEO cheat sheet.

The single most important thing to get visitors to your website is the basic structure of your website. There are certain things you can do to make certain that your website is “search engine friendly”. If you ignore these basic rules you can just about guarantee that your website will fail. At InternetPoop.com we have created a super simple, easy to read, search engine optimization (SEO) cheat sheet for you. Download it, print it out, make 15 thousand copies of it and wallpaper your office.

Our free SEO cheat sheet will help you get the foundation of your website set so that all the other traffic building strategies you choose to employ will not be a waste of time. After all, what could be worse than building an entire website and marketing strategy around a website that will never show up correctly (if at all)  in the search engines?

Download our free SEO cheat sheet and get started! Oh, and don’t forget to go back to websites and pages you have created in the past and fix the mistakes you might have made before you knew better.

5 Tips for Getting Internet Traffic

Once you have created your first website (or blog) you will need to get people to visit your website otherwise you will have ZERO chance of being able to monetize your website (i.e., make money from your website) . Keep in mind there are literally billions of websites on the internet so how can you get people to visit yours? The answer to this question is not exactly simple and if you ask 10 different internet experts you might get 10 different answers. But there are some universal strategies to follow that will help you get traffic to your website. You can also get web visitors by spending money on internet banners and text ads (Google AdSense is an example) but the tips below are free options that I believe every website should start with.

5 Easy tips for getting traffic for your website…

1. Choose a niche for your website that people are searching for on the internet. If you pick a niche for your website that only interests you, then only you will will likely ever visit your website. Yet that being said, if you pick a topic that is too broad (such as: news of the day) it will be very difficult for you to compete with the millions of similar websites on the net. Pick a topic (niche) that is narrow enough for you to be able to compete yet not so narrow that there is no interest in the topic. There are a couple free tools that can help you find what people are searching for on the internet: SEOBook Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Tool.

2. Optimize your website for the niche you are shooting for. Lets assume your niche/topic is: knitting for teenagers – make sure to include this phrase in your websites title tag, meta description, meta keywords, H1 title, and within the body of your text and don’t forget to bold, underline, the phrase occasionally. Optimizing your website for your target audience is how you will let Google, Yahoo, and Bing know that your website is about knitting for teenagers! Yet as I say on every tip… don’t over do it. Your website needs to be sensible, it shouldn’t be composed of your keyword phrase typed over and over again (that get’s flagged as spam).

3. Create a social networking strategy for your website. Start a Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube account just for this specific blog/website. Start following folks and befriending people who have similar interests. Even if your site has no content yet start collecting friends, this process can take time so get started now. When you are just getting started make friendly posts and don’t try to sell them anything, just create connections that will be valuable later. Once you start adding content to your website/blog you can start to give your friends and followers links to your website (and specifically your newly posted articles). If your friends and followers like you because you haven’t abused your relationship with spam they will start spreading your links around to their network of friends, and that is viral marketing! Remember never abuse your connections by constantly sending them links to your site, the only thing that will accomplish is losing connections. Use common sense… if you don’t like getting bombarded with the sales pitch, neither will your connections. (in this case the sales pitch is driving traffic to your new blog post)

4. Get backlinks on other websites that are relevant to your website/blog. (a backlink is a link to your site from another site) Search the internet for blogs and community forums that feature similar topics to your blog. You could send the webmaster an email and ask to swap links, many times fellow webmasters are more than willing to do this because it helps them as well. Or, you can comment on their blog posts, forum, or guestbook, with a friendly supportive comment and leave your link in the comment (there is usually a spot for your link in the comment form – see our comment form below as an example). DO NOT SPAM! Avoid the urge to merely spam your link on blogs without also leaving a comment that appears to be written by a human who actually read the article in question. Webmasters are smart, they can spot “copy and paste” spamming when they see it. In fact you will eventually become good at spotting spam yourself. Webmasters also don’t like folks who drop links on their site that are not relevant to the content on their site (that’s another spamming red flag).

A note about internet forums. I have been in the internet forum business since the very beginning and I can tell you that if you drop a link to your website in your first post or two you will likely be banned right off the bat which will be a waste of your time. When posting on internet forums get into the flow of the conversation and add valuable info to the topics, then as time passes you will find un-spammy ways to add your links (possibly in your forum signature).

5. Keep your content fresh. Google, Yahoo, and Bing (the major search engines) will reward your site if the content changes on a regular basis. If your site doesn’t change month after month you will drop in the SERPs (SERP = Search Engine Results Page). A blog post will often get its best search engine placement the first couple weeks after it has been posted. Therefore, if your site isn’t being updated your site will be dropping in the results pages. Lets assume you have 15 pre-written blog posts for your website, it would be a bad idea to post them all on the first day you opened your blog. Instead, it would be better to post one post per week for 15 weeks. This strategy would tell the search engines that your blog is being regularly updated and your site is not a ghost site.

Keep in mind there are many other tips and tricks for getting traffic to come to your website but this article represents the basics i.e., the foundation of a successful website. I would love to get your comments below regarding other tips and tricks that you feel are successful for gaining internet traffic.

Starting a internet business can be frustrating

Starting a business on the internet can be a daunting task, especially if you are not a developer and have never created a website. Some folks often get frustrated when trying to start a business online because most of the instructions , guides, and demonstrations, are geared towards people who already have a grasp on creating websites and therefore beginners cry out…

“hey wait… I don’t get it, your talking about terms and practices that I am not familiar with. FTP what? HTML who? Publish, permalink, keyword, niche, huh?? HELP!!”

So where do you start? How can you get the experience you need and get your feet wet on the internet? It’s a catch 22, you want to get started on the internet but you need to have internet skills to get started! You could always take a course at the local community college or buy a few books to read but if you are like me you don’t want to wait. You want to start right now! Well, this article is for folks who want to get started right now, today, tonight, as soon as you are done with this article! (heck, you don’t even need to finish the article if you don’t want to).

The best way to start an internet business is to start a blog. The word blog is short for web-log (this website is an example of a blog). A blog can be about anything: news, special interests, satire, politics, opinion, or merely personal experience (like a diary). Picking your topic is very important and I will talk more about that later. The reason why starting a blog is such a great way to get started on the internet is there are several free tools that are extremely easy to use, the best two are WordPress and Blogger. With tools like WordPress and Blogger you can create a free account and be bogging within minutes!

For those of you who are still reading this article and haven’t left to start their own blog, there is still some important information you need to know.

Starting a blog is a great way to learn about creating and maintaining websites

Creating a blog helps you to learn about picking a good niche (a niche is another way of saying… subject). Any successful website fills a gap on the internet that folks might be looking for. Therefore it’s important to pick a overall subject for your blog that is limited to one area of interest. The smaller and more narrow the subject/niche the more likely the blog will be able to get organic traffic to your website. (organic traffic is traffic that comes from people searching for topics in Google, Yahoo and Bing). For instance, if you pick the topic: digital cameras your competition on the internet will be massive, your competitors will be huge companies such as Best Buy, Amazon, eBay, etc. Yet if you pick a topic such as: digital camera tips and tricks you might have a much better chance of ranking higher in the search engines (although I recommend even tighter niches but you get the point). Your niche is the overall topic of your blog, all of the articles within your blog should be relevant to your niche. It’s also important to pick a topic that people are actually interested in and are searching for. There are great tools to find out what information people are searching for but that’s beyond the scope of this article (we will touch on those topics in future posts). For now, just pick a subject or niche that you are interested in and have some knowledge about. If you are a golfer, start a blog about golfing. If you are a bowler, start a blog about bowling! If you like to sew, start a blog about sewing! It’s not that important that your first blog is a huge success, because all you are doing at this point is getting a feel for web publishing.

Creating a blog helps you to learn about publishing, editing, adding pictures, links etc. (most blogging tools have excellent built in tools to help you create and edit your content). Create a story, use your own words don’t steal them from another website, just pick a topic within your niche and start typing! Your stories don’t need to be long, just whip up a few short paragraphs and publish it! Don’t add more than one story per day yet don’t let your blog go too long without adding new content (search engines like to see sites that are being updated regularly). Play with all the tools that the blogging software has to offer, don’t be afraid… you can’t break it.

Once you start your first blog you are officially a web publisher and you will learn a ton about the web business just from fooling around with your free blog. Don’t worry too much about the quality of your content or your websites traffic. At this point you are just getting your feet wet, and heck it’s free… so have fun with it!

Once you become more familiar with web publishing you can move on to better more effective tools and web strategies that we will cover in future articles. Now you have joined the ranks of “web publisher”. In fact, at your next family party you can brag to your uncle that you have your own internet business, uncle Bill doesn’t need to know that your blog doesn’t make money yet. The bottom line is… you need experience on the web, and the fastest way to get that experience is by starting a blog.

Once  you start your blog leave a comment below (with your link) and tell us a bit about your blog. Not only does that encourage us that our words are useful to you but it will also represent a nice backlink to your site with might help your site rank higher with search engines. Welcome to the internet business!

So, the other day I’m over at my mom and dads house (who are now in their 70’s) and my mom is asking me about a website that she heard about on TV. I asked her… “what is the domain name?” And she didn’t know how to respond. Even though she is a frequent web user she didn’t know what a domain name was.  So I thought I would create a post that explains what some of the most common internet terms mean. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of internet terms but I am only going to explain the 10 most common internet terms. That way, this article will not represent “information overload”, if just one person, learns just one thing from this blog post I will have done my job.

1. Blog.
A shortened version of the word “weblog”. A blog is essentially a internet version of a newspaper editorial. Although a blog can also be very personal, similar to diary. This website is an example of a blog. Blogs are usually categorized by daily or weekly entries. Blogs have become a very popular way to spread breaking news on the internet.

2. Browser
A browser is the software you use to view websites. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera are common examples.

3. Cache
To avoid re-downloading every aspect of your favorite website each time you visit it, your computer stores parts of it on your computer. This allows you to more quickly load websites when you visit them a second time. These files are called cache.

4. Domain Name
Every website has a unique address. And it would be difficult to remember the address of a website if it were just made of number and dots. A domain name is a way to give websites an address that is memorable and relevant to the content of the website. An example of a domain name is FedEx.com, Gatorade.com,  Google.com or Yahoo.com.

5. Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Internet service providers are companies that provide access to the internet through their equipment. A ISP is similar to a phone company in that phone companies provide access to telecommunications for folks who wish to have a telephone. Common ISP’s are Comcast, BellSouth, Qwest, America Online, etc. If you wish to have access to the internet you will need to pay an ISP so you can access the internet through their service.

6. IP Address
An IP address is a numerical identifying code that every computer which connects to the internet is assigned. Your computer that you are using right now has an IP address. Want to know what your IP address is? Find out here… what is my IP address?

7. QuickTime
QuickTime is a type of video file that was developed by apple computer. QuickTime video is one of the most popular video formats on the internet.

8. Router
A router is a piece of hardware that connects one network to another. A router can be wired or wireless. A router essentially “routes” traffic from one network to another. Routers can also be software and not hardware but those are generally referred to as gateways. A common use of a router is as follows: your cable or DSL modem is a router, and it routes your computers connection to the internet through your ISP.

9. Search Engine
A search engine is nothing more than a website that helps you find what you are looking for on the internet. Popular search engines are google.com, Yahoo.com, and Bing.com

10. Webmaster
A webmaster is a person who is in charge of taking care of a website. Do you have a website? Do you take care of it? If so, you are a webmaster!

OK mom… I hope that this article was helpful to you in some way.

Yes you can make money online!

When deciding what strategy to take to make money online we must start at the very beginning. We must first ask ourselves… is it really possible to make money online or is this just a gimmick to get me to spend money finding out how to do it? Which is a fair question. The short answer is “yes”, you really can make make money online. Trust me, I make a decent living with the money I make from my stable of websites. No, I am no millionaire and no, getting to where I am now wasn’t easy but it’s certainly possible.

When I started my first real effort into making money online I can remember doing back flips in my living room when I made my first $0.48, my wife that I had lost my mind. It wasn’t the amount I was exited about, instead it was the realization that it was indeed possible to make money online, all I needed to do was replicate and build on my work

There are several ways to make money online:

• Sell a product that you make or have access to resell
• Sell another companies products for them on your own website (affiliate marketing)
• Sell advertising space on your website (such as Google adsense)
• Sell a service to other websites (creating graphics, making web pages, or helping with SEO, social networking, etc.)

All of these methods can be effective revenue generators, but for sake of focus on this website I will primarily be discussing tools related to affiliate marketing, advertising, and services such as social networking tools.

What types of skills might be helpful for new folks that wish to enter the internet business marketplace?

All or some of the following skills will come in handy for internet entrepreneurs:

• Computer skills (email, text editing, graphics editing, etc.)
• Understanding the internet and internet browsers
• Basic html knowledge
• Basic understanding of different file formats (jpeg, gif, png, etc.)
• Basic understanding of uploading files to the internet (i.e. ftp software)

It is beyond the scope of this website to explain the above concepts therefore we will be proceeding in the discussion in this post and future posts with the assumption that the readers have these basic skills or is willing to look into these items elsewhere (the information is voluminous on the internet).

In summary…

Yes, you might actually be able to quit your day job or at very least pickup some awesome side income – it really is possible! Making money online is a legitimate goal for anyone who has basic computer skills. And there are literally hundreds of thousands of options and strategies that one might take to attain their goal of having a online business, and that’s why it’s so important to follow a website such as this, avoid the common pitfalls, adopt successful strategies, learn from folks who have been there and done that.

Final thoughts…

There is no free money. Making money online isn’t easy and it takes a ton of work and patience. Yet if done right online businesses can be very rewarding because once you get a successful website going it takes much less effort to maintain and that gives you time start the next project. With each established website your income is compounded. I like to think of my websites as if they were little robots that work all day and night for me regardless of what I am doing. I occasionally tune-up the robot and add to his daily chores but for the most part these little robots work tirelessly with little direction from me. That’s why it’s so important to set your robot (errrr… website) off in the right direction from the start. InternetPoop.com is dedicated to helping you create websites and online strategies that will work for you.

This of course is just the beginning, I will be reviewing tools and outlining possible strategies in future posts. Let the fun begin!