Laurisa White Reyes Children's Book Author [ 24:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (55)

Laurisa White Reyes is a children’s book author and editor-in-chief of Middle Shelf magazine. She is also a mother of five, ages six to twenty, and active in her community. We met when her teenaged son was looking for book donations for his Eagle Scout project, and we soon realized we had much in common around reading, writing, and publishing books. I asked her to be a guest on my podcast so that we could get to know her better and to learn more about writing and publishing fiction through traditional publishing houses.

She shared with me that she had wanted to be a writer for as long as she could remember. Laurisa wrote a poem at age five that launched her as a writer, at least in the eyes of her family. After college, she spent thirteen years writing for various magazines and newspapers, working as a book editor, and teaching creative writing. But what Laurisa really wanted to do was write novels. So about six years ago she turned her attention to fiction. She reads to her five children at night before bed. One night her oldest son, the one who just became an Eagle Scout, asked her to make up a story instead. That story eventually became a fantasy entitled The Rock of Ivanore. She spent a year writing it, two years submitting it to publishers, and three years getting it from contract to publication. She says that it’s been a long process, but well worth the wait. Laurisa also has a second book out, The Last Enchanter, and both of these titles are a part of a series she calls The Celestine Chronicles.

We discussed the writing process, especially for those of us with busy schedules. Finding the time to write regularly is her biggest challenge right now. We also talked about the process of going through an agent and a traditional publisher. It’s a very different world from what entrepreneurs are able to do with self-publishing.

I know you will enjoy this interview with children’s book author Laurisa White Reyes. Her books are available on Amazon, if you have an interest in this fascinating genre.

You may have seen the movie Field of Dreams, where Kevin Costner builds a baseball field in the middle of the countryside and people come from far and near to visit. This concept of ‘if you build it they will come’ is a romantic one, but does not apply to your business. Probably the trickiest part for any online entrepreneur is getting targeted traffic to their sites.  This is more science than art and has spawned an industry all of its own.  Search engine optimization or SEO as it’s more affectionately referred to, is a major player in how you get targeted traffic to your sites or in this case, your blogs.

Driving Targeted Traffic To Your Blog

There are other promotional and marketing strategies that you can employ to get traffic, but it all starts with optimizing your blogs for SEO.  If you want your blog to be found, you have to optimize it for the search engines. Google and the other search engines will crawl you site to see what it’s about, and then send traffic (people) who are searching for those specific topics. It must be general enough to garner attention, yet specific enough to weed out those you are actually searching for very different information.

The level of optimization you can perform on your blog depends once again on whether you’re using a free platform or a hosted one.

A blogging platform like WordPress.org is the best way to go for SEO purposes.  There are no limits as to how you can customize your WordPress.org (hosted) blog.  But because most beginners tend to use the free blog platforms, we’ll explore SEO tactics that everyone can benefit from.

Split Your Blog’s Search Engine Optimization into Offsite And Onsite SEO

Offsite SEO can be summed up as just this – inbound links.  This means blogs other than your own, are linking to your blog and a wide variety of your content.  Inbound links are quite possibly the most important SEO tactic that could get your blogs highly ranked in the search engines.

So how do you get others to link to you?  Here are some ways to get you started:

Write Quality Content – Nothing gets you links faster than writing content that affects your readers.  If a little bit of controversy helps, throw that in.  As word gets around about your posts, bloggers will inevitably link to you.

Post Comments On Blogs You Read – Don’t hesitate to post worthwhile comments on other blogs, be it your competitors or not, but realize blog comments themselves don’t have impact on your SEO results. You may get a follow-up with a link pointing to your blog.  And if that happens to be from a competitor with a huge audience, you’ll be looking at some major traffic influx to your blog.

Submit Your Blog To Directories – You can submit your blogs to blog directories to generate more inbound links.  Apart from buying links, this is something many bloggers do to get more traffic.  Technorati.com and DayPop.com are amongst two of the more popular blog directories right now, but you can perform a Web search to find more.

Onsite SEO requires customization within your blog itself.  Here’s how to get started:

Optimize Your Content With Targeted Keywords  – This topic really requires intense study, as it is one of the more important subjects when discussing SEO.  But in a nutshell, your blog posts should contain the keywords or keyword phrases that your potential customers or readers would most likely type into the search engines to find what they are looking for.

This requires advanced research of keywords on your part so that you can place these targeted keywords within your blog content.  The result would be a highly optimized blog for the very information your potential customers are looking for.

Have each of your posts focused on one specific topic so that you can moderate the keywords going into your content.  Over-stuffing keywords can make for terrible reading which defeats the purpose of finding and keeping your customers.

Make your posts as original as possible and update your blog frequently, at least three times a week.

Place Your Keywords Here Too – Within the URL of the page, page and post titles, heading tags such as H1, image alt tags and meta tags.  Bold your keywords where you can too.

Create A Good Linking Structure Within Your Blog – Create links that link from a certain post in your blog to another relevant post which you had written previously.  This interlinking makes it very easy for search engines to re-index your blog, allowing for more of your pages to be indexed.  Categorize your information and place them on your blog’s sidebar.  Create a sitemap once your blog starts growing larger in size.

But one thing to remember is not to over-optimize your blog. Write naturally and don’t overdo it with keywords. Use descriptive wording and use synonyms rather than repeating the same keyword phrases over and over. Following these strategies will increase the amount of targeted traffic you receive to your blog, and will ultimately increase your bottom line as well.

When you become a local celebrity and the world can be your oyster. Recently I had a special dinner with a friend at an Italian place in Santa Barbara called Ca’Dario. The owner is an overnight sensation thirty years in the making, who followed his passion when he came to America to learn the restaurant business. I think many of us can relate to this in that everything we achieve during our lives is the result of many years of hard work and preparation. Knowing exactly what you want at a young age can certainly be helpful, but this does not ensure that it will take less time or effort.

When I met the restaurant’s owner I complimented him on the food and the restaurant and then asked how he had learned to market his business so well. His answer surprised me; he said that he told a few ‘key’ people what he was doing as he went along. He knew they would spread the word, helping to make his restaurant a success.

This is brilliant, and you can do this for your own business as well. It’s not the same as word-of-mouth advertising; it’s more of a focused way of letting people know who you

are and what you have to offer them. Especially in a small town like Santa Barbara, this type of face to face interaction can catapult you to the top of your field very quickly.

Have you identified some key people or groups in your city that would be interested in knowing more about what you are doing in your online business? Take the time to make a list, and then seek them out to share your thoughts and ideas. I’ve done this with some of the charities I am involved with and have found the people to be quite open to spreading the word about my business.

Some examples of this are that I now write a monthly column for a local print magazine that is owned by someone in my Rotary Club; I’ve been interviewed on the radio as a result of connecting with the owners of the station; and I was given an award by my city’s Arts Council when I connected with someone on the City Council.

Make the effort to become a local celebrity and your business may grow exponentially.

Sue Guiher - Coaching and Transformation [ 23:05 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (344)

Sue Guiher is a powerhouse when it comes to coaching and marketing, and that’s why I wanted to interview her for my podcast series. After spending more than twenty years in Corporate America working in marketing and sales, Sue decided to step away from that world in favor of a life as an coach and entrepreneur where she would have more time with her family. She also teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

We discussed how she came to leave the corporate world and become an entrepreneur. After working from a laptop in the hospital as she awaited an emergency C-Section for the birth of her son in July of 1999 she realized that she had become a ‘corporate-aholic’. While on maternity leave she had an epiphany around the life she wanted to create for herself and her family. With a passion for teaching and helping others to reach their full potential, Sue sought out mentors who could help guide her path. She began working with Michael Port and now trains his coaches on how to serves their clients with high level business coaching.

She is an expert in taking people’s information and knowledge and turning it into programs by ‘modulizing’ it into a system that works so that everyone benefits. She does this for a variety of industries, including Internet marketing and online training. She teaches about ‘Core Essence’ and how that should show up in what you offer others. Sue feels that my Core Essences are around security, connection, and service in helping people to earn income through an online business and I agree completely with that assessment of what we discussed. Hers are teaching, transformation, and thriving. This is fascinating information that we can use to change our lives through our work. As long as you’re moving forward you can thrive and prosper.

Sue takes people through a transformative process to see where their strengths are and how they can best use these to serve others. Her clients have experienced huge shifts simply by working with her to find out more about their core values and exploring what type of business would best serve their needs.

Sue also takes us through an exercise during this interview to help us leave perfectionism behind and move into the space of creating the business we desire as quickly as possible. This will shift your thinking and attitude immediately and get you into positive, inspired action.

She has set up a special page where you can go through the Core Essences Exercise to gain better insight into what you are doing as an entrepreneur. I’ve done that and I encourage you to do it now while you are thinking about it.

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Are you releasing your inner entrepreneur as you build your online business? Entrepreneurship is different from most anything else you will ever go after in your life. There are no rules, no bosses, no schedule, and no direction. You must find your way intuitively and forge ahead using everything you have.

The ‘up’ side to finding and nurturing your inner entrepreneur is that you will be free forever; free from a life that includes confinement, structure, and consistency. This can also be the downside of this lifestyle, yet truly engaged entrepreneurs will tell you that they wouldn’t have it any other way.

As for me, I have never been so fulfilled in all my life. Each day I wake up alive with ideas on what I will be doing to grow my business. It’s as though I am seeing the world and everything in it with fresh, new eyes and that’s a dream come true. I’m excited, happy, and productive and the outcome is extremely profitable. I truly believe it’s because I’m passionate about what I do. Successful entrepreneurs are always passionate about what they do and how they serve others. And here’s why that matters…

When you’re passionate about something you will do it well no matter what that might be. When you do something well you become successful at it far more easily. When you’re successful at something, you enjoy it even more and that enjoyment makes you even more passionate.

And so the circle continues because the passion for what you’re doing grows and grows and grows. And you grow too.

Your life changes. New things are more important and you become more passionate about stuff that you might never have had the time to think about before you found your first passion.

I get emails from people who say they’re unsure of which niche to choose, are having difficulty coming up with ideas for products, and have very little confidence when it comes to reaching out to other entrepreneurs. It is because they are not passionate about what they are doing.

Find your passion by finding your inner entrepreneur and the success and income will find you.

Carol Amato Online Marketing [ 20:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (321)

Carol Amato is one of the most interesting people I’ve connected with during 2013. She is relatively new to online business and marketing, yet has already become someone others turn to for help with setting up their own businesses. We first became acquainted through the site ‘Just Retweet‘, where she was kind enough to retweet my Twitter posts and join my list. Soon we were emailing and that’s when I decided that I must introduce you to her by having her as a guest on my podcast series.

Something I learned about Carol is that she speaks fluent Carinise, a Sicilian dialect, and speaks it like a native according to the people she knows in Sicily. She and her entire family are self-proclaimed foodies and enjoy everything about delicious food. She and her husband live in northeastern Pennsylvania and they have three adult children.

During this interview Carol shares how and why she came online in 2011, what it’s like to have an online business, and how she helps others to get started. We share a deep respect and affection for Dennis Becker, and speak about that as well. I love how we connect with someone and then end up connecting with many other people as well, all as a result of having an online business as an entrepreneur.

Carol is an example of someone who saw the opportunity available to those working online, jumped in to learn as much as could, and took immediate action to build her business quickly. I hope you are doing the same thing as you get closer to having an online business you can run from home or from wherever in the world you happen to be.

I know you will enjoy my conversation with Carol. Be sure to visit her site and join her list if it is of interest to you. I believe you will learn much by connecting with Carol there and on social media.

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Blogging For Business: Tips on Marketing With Your Blog

There are so many different types of blogs, and some of them are for a variety of uses besides marketing for your business. Even my first blog, started in 2005 while I was still a classroom teacher, was not for business in any way. I had started a Blogger site on Google’s Blogspot platform in order to better serve my students with information and technology.

On May 2, 2005 Business Week magazine published a cover story entitled ‘Blog Will Change Your Business’ and the world took notice. While I was not even aware of that story until much later, I know that my simple little blog had a huge impact in the way I communicated with my students, other teachers, and parents.

When it comes to blogging for your business, think of this as opening the doors to awareness and participation. Awareness of who you are, what you’re doing, who you serve, and what you know about your niche topic. Participation in the form of involvement, maintaining a conversation with your readers, and encouraging feedback with comments and guest posts. At no other time in our history have businesses enjoyed such a rich culture of instant interaction and masterminding on a site accessible by people around the world. And instead of your prospects and clients talking amongst themselves, they have the opportunity to talk directly with you, and you with them in a manner that encourages openness and an exchange of ideas leading to improved products, services, and customer relations.

The blogospehere ( a term coined to refer collectively to all blogs and their interactions) has become a vast field of thoughts, dreams, and ideas, yet most blogs are abandoned soon after being set up. With an estimated two hundred million blogs online during 2013, that’s a lot of lonely electrons out there in cyberspace. I have to admit that a dozen or so of that number were mine; forgotten when I changed my mind about writing on a certain topic.

Once you get into the habit of blogging a couple of time each week you will find your voice and understand the true value of blogging for business. I run a seven figure business from my blogs and many other entrepreneurs do the same.

So when it comes to blogging for your business, tips for marketing include creating fresh and relevant content to drive targeted traffic, adding an optin box with a free giveaway to build your list, and inviting comments to increase visibility and credibility. Your blog is your ‘home on the Internet’, so make it a warm and inviting place to receive readers, prospects, and clients.

How To Find Great Content For Your Business

We need fresh, relevant content on a regular basis for our online businesses. I do much of my own writing, but I certainly cannot create enough great content to satisfy the needs of my readers. The question then becomes one of where to find the best content from alternate sources.

Newspapers and magazines still tend to produce some of the most unique and well-researched content in the world. As a rule of thumb, content that’s printed in a newspaper is usually more carefully checked than content found on the internet.

Online, a lot of websites tend to have similar information. Often time’s content writers do most of their research from other sources online. Yet newspapers and magazines work completely differently. They’re consistently able to produce highly unique content every single month that’s unlike anything that’s ever been published. How do they do that?

Here are some of the ways that newspapers and magazines find great content.

Interviewing Real Experts

Instead of looking through medical websites, journalists will actually call up well-known doctors to ask for their opinions. If they’re doing an article on a particular car, they might call up the car manufacturer or a plant manager to talk about how the car was built.

As a smaller publisher, you might not be able to command the same respect as a New York Times reporter, but you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to give free advice if you just ask.

Using Books and Offline Publications

Another common source of information is written books and other publications, especially academic papers, research papers or official studies.

By looking up studies and books written by experts in the field, you can get a much more in-depth look into subjects that you just wouldn’t get from browsing internet websites.

There are several academic paper search engines out there you can use to find detailed source material for research.

The Public at Large

You might be surprised at how much information can be gleaned from the public at large. Granted, this doesn’t work for skill-intensive subjects like medicine or law, but for many subjects the public at large can be a great resource for content. For example, if you run a financial blog and you want to write a post about how rent control affects the economy, where might you go?

Yes, you can research academic theories about rent control. You can Google “rent control” and see what else is written online about the subject. But one fascinating place you could look is everyday people who actually live in rent-controlled places. Talking to just a handful of these people can give you more insight into how rent control really affects things than reading a dozen articles online.

As you can tell, newspaper and magazine writers tend to get their information from different sources than most online writers. Granted, these methods of researching content take a lot more time and effort. However, if you’re willing to put in that time and effort, you’ll be able to create content that will blow your competition out of the water.

Outsourcing saved my sanity and has helped me to quintuple my online income over the past few years. I know this is a powerful statement, and it’s completely true. Allow me to share some details with you.

When I started my business in 2006 I thought I had to do everything myself. My excuse at that time was that I was not yet earning any money and could not possibly afford to pay others to help me. Within a couple of months I realized that my tech skills were lacking and that I would need to get some help to set up my sites. WordPress was much more technical at that time and writing HTML code was not something I wanted to learn.

I had met a woman through a course I was taking who was a web designer and we agreed to barter our services. She would set up some sites for me and in return I would write some articles for her and help her with marketing. If was a perfect solution to both of our problems and this continued for a couple of years before we both went off in other directions.

By this time I was becoming better known, speaking at and hosting my own live events, and doing lots of writing in the form of articles, short reports, eBooks, and online courses. I soon found myself spending hours each day with clerical tasks, such as submitting articles to the directories and spending time with social media setup. I had come to a crossroads in my business and had to make a choice; was I going to try to do it all and risk burning myself out or was I willing to pay someone else to help me with the tasks that were eating up so much of my time?

Finding someone to submit articles for me was easier than I thought. I found someone who had lost his job and needed to earn some money quickly to pay his bills and feed his family. We agreed that I would pay him two dollars for each article, and to do no more than ten each week. Twenty dollars a week was definitely in my budget and I could easily check to see that he was doing it the way I would do it. That’s always an issue when you begin to outsource, and rest assured that many people accomplish these tasks in a way that is superior to the way you would do it. I love it when others make me look better by implementing tactics that work so well. This man did so well that I quickly recommended him to my students and others.

This discussion reminds me of a story you may have heard:

A boy and his father were out in the woods. When they came across a very large tree branch the boy asked, “Do you think I could move that branch?”

His father answered, “If you use all your strength, I’m sure you can.”

So the boy tried mightily to lift, pull and push the branch but he couldn’t move it. Discouraged he said, “Dad, you were wrong. I can’t do it.”

His dad said, “Try again.” This time, as the boy struggled with the branch his father joined him and together they pushed the branch aside.

“Son,” the father said, “the first time you didn’t use all your strength. You didn’t ask me to help.”

Asking for help was very difficult for me, as it might be for you. It’s also an issue of giving up control. I would encourage you to start out slowly and see what happens.

Just like when there are dishes in the sink or clothes in the hamper, it’s difficult to concentrate on your business when you have lots of little issues pending. Why not hire someone to tie up all of your loose ends so that you’ll be freed up to do what you do best.

Once I stopped wearing all the hats in my online business my income began to soar. By not having to think about the little things, I was immediately able to focus on the bigger things that earned me income. I began to create more products, write books, host my own live events, speaking at other people’s events, creating content for membership sites, and working privately with high-level students. After eighteen months of outsourcing I was earning five times as much as I did before I began having help!

This is an outsourcing guide that will get you started in the right direction. I highly recommend Dennis Becker and his training, especially in this area.