If you need help with WordPress, Paul Taubman is definitely the person to know. I’ve know Paul for almost three years now, and he has proven himself to be an expert in his field. Paul and I first met at a live event, and these days we are fellow instructors.

Paul shares how it was his father who first got him interested in computers and technology by signing him up for a computer class while Paul was still in junior high school. He took to it so well that he decided to follow that as a career path, even though his father was a composer and conductor and would have preferred that he follow his passion with music as a career (Paul played the trumpet). We discussed the connection between music, math, technology, and science, and Paul mentions a book on this subject matter called ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid‘.

He began learning HTML code a number of years ago, building sites from scratch and finally doing it for clients. This was in the late 90s, when most of us were just finding out about technology. The only browser available at that time was Netscape, and it had to be purchased as software for your computer. By 2005 or so the Internet and eCommerce came alive and went mainstream. He took an online WordPress course and finally put the pieces together. When he took the course for the second time he decided to follow the instructor’s teaching and changed his thinking on what was possible with this additional knowledge and strategy. Since then he has converted most of his clients over to the WordPress platform.

People who need help with WordPress have been learning from Paul for more than three years now, and he is an excellent teacher. You can get involved with his complimentary WordPress training here. I asked him if there are times when people should not set up their own sites, and he shares his insight on that issue. He discusses the concept of ‘core competency’ and the importance of considering this in your business plan.

Paul also has another site on gratitude, and this continues to be a passion of his. This was the first site he ever built and he loves helping others along their personal growth journey. He shares how something that he did for joy has exploded into a way of serving others around the world. Paul has an incredible gift for sharing his knowledge, interests, and passions with the world and I know you will enjoy this podcast.

If you are looking for small business training – free and low cost – it’s available online and in your own backyard. We all must make the time and effort to learn about different aspects of our business in order to stay competitive in the marketplace. Fortunately, we live in a time where access to the most up to date and relevant training is readily available, as long as you know where to find it. There are both local and online training programs available on a plethora of business topics.

In the two cities I call home, Santa Clarita and Santa Barbara, we have a variety of ongoing classes to choose from that are taught by professionals who wish to give back to others in our community. These Adult School programs are very good, and I’ve taken classes at two high schools, as well as through the City of Santa Clarita’s Seasons program and the Santa Barbara City programs to sharpen my skills, connect with others, and to learn more about topics that will help my business to grow and thrive.

These programs offer classes in basic accounting and using Quick Books, as well as classes in marketing, computer basics, digital photography, and social media. Additionally, they offer classes in home publishing, blogging, article writing, making money online, as well as training in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Both of these programs run all year long. Find out about the classes being offered in your city. If you aren’t taking advantage of this low cost education right in your backyard, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity.

The community college system -College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and Santa Barbara Community College – also offer a variety of business training classes through their Small Business Development Center and other specialized programs. Some of the classes they have offered during this past year include Trade Finance and Insurance, Quick Books Boot Camp, and Essential Steps for Writing a Business Plan.

Meetup groups are also an excellent way to get free small business training and help in an informal setting. There is an active Meetup group for online marketers in Santa Clarita. I attend these meetings periodically, depending on my schedule. I’ve also been the presenter there a few times. Find a group that meets your needs at by googling for the information.

If taking classes and connecting with others in person is not appealing to you, you’ll want to check out the online resources that are available. I started out this way when HP made classes available back in the 90s. I learned so many things that helped me to become an online entrepreneur. They changed their site a couple of years ago but now have it back again with even more free course offerings. You can ‘Google’ for the direct links to sign up.

I also belong to two groups that have made it possible for me to grow my business exponentially. Whether you have an offline service business or want to start working online, both of these sites are excellent for getting you started in the right direction with a network of people who are already and willing to help you move forward.

The first group is called NAMS (Novice to Advanced Marketing System) and you can read more about them at http://MyNAMSmembers.com. I’ve been a permanent faculty member since 2011 and hundreds of people have come through my trainings since that time. They also meet in person twice a year in Atlanta. The founder of this group is David Perdew.

The other group is called Earn 1K a Day and was founded by Dennis Becker in 2006. It consists of a forum and membership site, as well as a live event held in Las Vegas every July. I’ll be speaking there again this year and would love to see you there. The details of this are at http://SuperSummerGetaway.com.

Whether you meet with people locally, travel to live events in other parts of the country, or take online courses, building your business will go more smoothly when you get the training you need.

One of my students, let’s call her ‘Jane’, wrote to me yesterday. She has not created a new product in several months, and sales of affiliate products are slow. Jane has set herself up with an online service business to pay her bills, but now yearns for more than the ‘trading time for money’ life brings in.

Jane asked me what I thought about her creating a course on writing and publishing a book and more specifically, self-publishing for Kindle and Create Space. The course would include getting ideas for a topic, writing strategies, editing, publishing, formatting, and promoting the book as a marketer. She would explore Kindle, Create Space, and other self-publishing options. Her idea was to do this as a live training over four to six weeks at a price point of ninety-seven dollars.

My first thought was ‘Why didn’t Jane do this a year ago?‘

Being the first, or at least one of the first to market an idea is crucial to success on the Internet. Self-publishing for Kindle and Create Space has been a popular topic since 2011 or so. If you sit on your knowledge for months or years you miss out on becoming known in that niche as one of the ‘go to’ people who is willing to teach you everything you need in order to get started.

Over the past three years Jane has jumped around with her niche, creating several products in different areas, writing a few books, and mostly relying on providing service to others and affiliate marketing to earn income. We must all take a stand for what we believe in so that our prospects are never confused about who we are, what we do, and how we may best serve them. Being wishy-washy will not take you to the next level in your business. Jane is still figuring out what she wants to be known for as an online entrepreneur.

I then recommended that Jane take a look at what the leaders in this niche are teaching. This includes Teresa Miller, Rachel Rofé, Jim Edwards, and Geoff Shaw, all of whom have excellent trainings on writing, publishing, and marketing your writing. I have purchased most, if not all of these people’s products so that I can learn as much as possible on the topic as I continue to write and sell my own books on the Internet in both digital and physical format. I have also interviewed all of these people, except for Geoff Shaw (need to connect with him!) for my podcast series.

So what can Jane do to differentiate herself and become well known in this niche? At this point she must find a unique way to build both credibility and visibility, using her own writing experiences and success as a personal Case Study. There’s always a new angle, and finding it may be right under her nose. She must make every effort to find a way to enter the marketplace with her perspective and help others to achieve success.

I’m still waiting to hear back from Jane, but my guess is that she has moved on to something else, at least for the next week or so. My mentoring tends to make people think about what they are doing, but few are willing to step up to the challenge of making things happen right away. Never, never, never give up, and know that true entrepreneurs will always find a way to have their voice heard.

Daniel Hall, Real Fast Book creator and founder, is my guest for this week’s podcast. He shared a story he seldom tells, of how he earned a degree in nursing before going on to become an attorney and practice law. He did that for seven years before making the decision to come online. Daniel had also become an expert in how to speak on cruises, and his first book, Speakers Cruise Free: The Opportunity to Trade Your Talents for Free Luxury Cruises, was published in 2007.

I’ve been following Daniel for years, and now we are both on the faculty at the NAMS (Novice to Advanced Marketing) live event held twice a year in Atlanta. He always has a presentation that reminds me of just how smart and knowledgeable he is when it comes to helping others build profitable online businesses.

During this podcast interview Daniel opens up about the right way to choose a topic for our book, create an outline, get it written, and then move on to the all important task of marketing our books online and off. I know you will enjoy getting to know him and learning more about what it takes to write ‘real fast books’ to build your credibility and visibility on the Internet. His step by step process goes at just the right pace for you to accomplish your goal of writing and publishing your own book very quickly.

I can highly recommend Daniel’s training program from my own personal experience, and if you sign up for the program I am happy to provide you with an ISBN number from my own publishing company. Are you ready to write your book and take your life and your business to the next level?

If you need help with WordPress, here are some tips that you can use today to improve your site.

• Strengthen Your Footer. Make the best possible use of the space at the bottom of your theme to include important links, a short bio or other important information about your site. If there is a link back to the theme’s creator, I recommend deleting it unless you have made a previous agreement with them to retain it.
• Update Your Theme. Are your traffic numbers flat or falling? When’s the last time you updated your WordPress theme? The answers might be related. If your theme no longer reflects the current branding of your company, then update or switch to a new theme.
• Start Video Blogging. The current version of WordPress makes it extremely easy to post video content. I still use my Flip camera to record two or three minute videos.
• Improve Your Permalinks. By changing the URLs for the articles on your WordPress website to include fewer (but higher value) keywords, you may be able to improve the ranking of those articles on the search engines. I’ve had great success with this strategy for several years now.
• Leverage Your Images. Each time you upload an image, make sure to tag it with appropriate “title” and “alternate text” tags to assist your search engine rank. For example, this post uses the keyword phrase ‘need help with wordpress’. The “title” is also what appears when someone tries to “pin” your image to Pinterest.
• Enable Avatars. In order to make your commenting environment more personal, you can enable avatars in the >> Settings>>Discussion area of your dashboard
• Check Your Site as a Visitor. If you’re only viewing your site through your admin dashboard, you may be missing out if something weird happens to the display. Logout of WordPress then reload your site to verify.
• Clean Up Your Comments. While plugins like Akismet do a good job of filtering out blatant comment spam, there are also other plugins to help you get rid of commenters who spam through their author URLs and comment links.

Knowing something about WordPress will make a huge difference in your business. These are just a few tips to help you get started. To learn more about using WordPress for your business, download this Special Report from WordPress expert Paul Taubman, “7 Essential Plugins for WordPress“. Paul is also hosting a webinar training on Saturday, June 15 at 10 am EST. Sign up here for this complimentary training.

In this tenth episode of the Online Marketing Tips Podcast With Connie Ragen Green, my newest podcast series, I continue the discussion on how to use PLR – private label rights – content to build your online business. This is content you purchase from a reputable source to repurpose into many different formats. It’s just not possible to create as much content as you need to build a successful and profitable online business without having access to great content like this. Having high-quality PLR at your disposal will grow your business exponentially.

During the call I am joined my many of my students whom I challenged to use PLR to create a blog post and/or a special report to use as a free giveaway to build their list. You will want to hear them describe exactly what they did and how they did it when it comes to using private label rights content in their online businesses.

These online marketing tips are intended to teach you how you can take your business to the next level and as a way for me to share my very best tips, secrets, and advice on how to create a profitable online business with multiple income streams.

Also, you can now pick up my training on winning affiliate contests and other online marketing tips for only seven dollars at Affiliate Contest Secrets. Use the discount code CONTEST to bring the price down to $7. This training has been updated for 2013 with the latest information, strategies, and Case Studies for you to use in your own business.

Be sure to download your Study Guide to follow along with the podcast. I always create these to give you a frame of reference as to what I am discussing during that episode, as well as to share valuable resources and online marketing tips with you.

Be sure to subscribe to this new podcast series over at iTunes

Gauging Your Guest Blogging Outcome

Once you’ve started to learn the ins and outs of guest blogging and are doing it regularly, you need to gauge your results. This is an essential piece of the puzzle. It can be easy to get the approval to be a guest blogger but you have to pay attention to the outcome to decide if it was a good or bad decision for your business.

Let’s Measure the Results

One reason it’s important to track your results is because it reveals a lot of things:

• How many subscribers you get from guest blogging posts
• How many conversions you get from guest blogging posts
• How effective the links are in your guest blogging posts
• Where your focus needs to be targeted
• What works and what doesn’t

If you’re looking at unique visitors, conversion rates, landing page performance and sales performance you’ll be able to look at your dashboard and find out things that are trending and if there have been any improvements since your guest blogging appearance. To know for sure that a spike in visits or sales was due to guest blogging, a bit of fine tuning is required.

Try Google analytics. This is a great tool that can offer real time reporting, custom variables, custom reports and more. If you’re going to use it to measure your guest blogging stats, it’s a good idea to create custom variables so it tracks certain demographic information about your visitors that might provide insight later on down the road.

After you’ve done this, you should create some advanced segments that will allow you to be able to track traffic that comes from different avenues such as social media, article marketing and guest blogging.

Then you’ll be able to specifically look at the traffic that has come in from links created in your guest posts.

How does the program know where the traffic came from? When you set up advanced segments, you can set the dimensions. If it is from guest blogging, enter the domain name where the traffic will be coming from. You should also add any keywords you are using in your guest blog post that could be used to search and find that post.

You can go even more advanced and narrow things down even more by entering a referral path if you know your post will be on a specific page of the website.  If you have guest blogged in different places, add a new statement (listing where to pull information from) for each website under the same advanced segment for guest blog posts.

The reason you need to take the time to set these things up so that you can gauge the results is because if it’s not working, then you don’t want to invest any more time doing it (or at least not on the site you’re not getting good results from). Guest blogging can be a great way to build your credibility and your business if done right. And doing it right also means that you take the time to gauge the results to make sure it is working.

Lou Bortone, video marketing expert, was my guest for this podcast. I first met Lou several years ago at a live event, and realized right away how talented he was when it came to creating videos and implementing video marketing as a business strategy. We are now both on the faculty of NAMS so I’m able to connect with him twice a year in person.

Lou has spent the last twenty years as a marketing and branding executive with national brands like Fox, Fox Kids, E! Entertainment Television, The Family Channel and NBC.  More recently, he has taken his marketing and branding experience online, where he works with coaches and entrepreneurs to build breakthrough brands on the Internet. He currently lives in Boston, and grew up in the business because his father was involved in this area. The business changed significantly once everything came online, and Lou has been right there through it all.

We discussed how he creates some gorgeous videos that share a message and a story. He approaches this from a marketing, rather technical perspective, giving each video a beginning, a middle, and an end in most cases.

I shared that I still use a Flip camera for my videos, using a variety of methods to record my messages within the video format. We also discussed how Skype video is being used by shows such as Oprah and some sports channels. Lou feels like this is good news for online entrepreneurs, as we do not have to have professional equipment in order to add video marketing to your mix. Even a cell phone can be used to record our videos. He agrees that they should be short, no longer than about three minutes. He recommends using a couple of free sites, such as Animoto, to get your video message out to the world. His advice is that ‘done is better than perfect’ in most cases and that people will not judge us by the quality of our videos. Just get it out there and share your message.

Lou also has a ‘done for you’ service where he can edit your raw video clips and create a professional video montage that will get your name and face out to the world in a way you will be proud to share.

Take your 10 question quiz to learn what your ‘video persona’ is and to learn more from Lou Bortone, video marketing expert and brilliant marketer. You may also download an eBook on how to get started with video by going here.

In this ninth episode of Online Marketing Tips Podcast With Connie Ragen Green, my newest podcast series, I discuss how to use PLR – private label rights – content to build your online business. This is content you purchase from a reputable source to repurpose into many different formats, including but not limited to blog posts, short reports, audios, videos, podcasts, eBooks, eCourses, and autoresponder messages. I have done this successfully for about six years now. my students are also building their businesses much more quickly using PLR, and this continues to be one of the monetization strategies that work well for online entrepreneurs.

I also answer questions on a variety of topics related to entrepreneurship, setting up your hosted WordPress site, passive versus residual income, affiliate marketing and online business success, identifying your target market, how to become my affiliate to promote my products and courses for lifetime commission, saving and backing up your files, launching your information products, and much more.

Also, you can now pick up my training on winning affiliate contests for only seven dollars at Affiliate Contest Secrets.

Be sure to download your Study Guide to follow along with the podcast. I always create these to give you a frame of reference as to what I am discussing during that episode, as well as to share valuable resources and online marketing tips with you.

Be sure to subscribe to this new podcast series over at iTunes