I’m regularly asked why a lawyer client’s Technorati blog rank is dropping and what can be done to improve their blog’s Technorati ranking.

My typical response is don’t worry about. I just emailed a client tonight:

I would not worry about Technorati. I don’t watch my Technorati ranking at all and advise clients to do the same. It would be a vanity contest - assuming that Technorat’s servers and systems were even up to indexing all blog content and the incoming links to blogs. With the failures of their systems their rankings mean little, if anything.

What is a “Technorati Ranking?” (per Technorati site)

A Technorati Ranking relates to the number of sources that point to a particular weblog relative to other weblogs. The more sources referencing a weblog, the higher the Technorati ranking. The Technorati Ranking for a blog is displaying in URL Search results, Blog search results, and is displayed in the account profile.

To me that says nothing more than we’ve created a vanity contest that will cause vain people (many bloggers) to return to Technorati as they try in vain to increase their blog ranking. Maybe we can even get people to post their ranking with our Technorati logo as a badge on their blog. Sounds like Web 2.0.

Having an obligation to clients to find out if I’m right, I looked at what others were saying about Technorati rankings.
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Identifying potential customers, so you can market or remarket to them later is a valuable tool for building future business.

7 slam-dunk tactics for building your email database:

Newsletters
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly - delivering information relevant to your customer results in increased loyalty and future purchases. Position yourself and company as an expert with timely and relevant advice to your email database. Content is king here. If you’re delivering useful information, and on terms that your prospects request (timing, length, etc), your prospects are going to LOVE you for your efforts. This simple technique is a powerful positioning tool and will positively distinguish your company from the competitors.

Sweepstakes
The chance to win valuable prizes can be a highly effective lead generation tool. It can also be a great incentive for motivating people to share valuable market information such as intent to purchase timing and product preference. Just make sure you get permission for your future emails – let them know the value they will receive for subscribing (special rates, product updates, educational content, etc).
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List building for money. How do you do it? In my opinion, the only reason that most people build lists online is to develop a revenue stream from the opt in e-mail subscribers on those lists. Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you might build a list of like-minded individuals, for example people who like to visit movies in your part of town, and you build friends that way. However, what I am talking about here is building a list of like-minded individuals who are interested in learning more information about the topic about which you have specialized knowledge, and are willing to buy from you.

So basically what you do is build a list of individuals who have like-minded desires as you do, and know less about some niche topic than you do, and who are willing to purchase some of that information from you at a price.

The most important thing for you to remember when you are list building for money is that you are in this for the money. You are not building a list for fun. You are not building a list to say that you have the biggest list. You are building a list so that you can sell things to that list. Call it what it is. Do not pretend to be a giver of free gifts, if your end result is that you want money. Make money.
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By Ola Edvardsson

The $60,000 question: What makes some affiliates earn thousands when other people struggle to earn hundreds?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making $100 to $300 a month extra on the side. But wouldn’t it be better to make 10 to 20 times that amount?

Before we start, let me tell you the way it is:

• Everybody can’t make $5,000 to $10,000 a month doing affiliate marketing. There is too much competition.

• There is no easy money that will fall into your lap without you doing anything. (And in case there was any easy money I would keep that
  information to myself and not write it in an article read by thousands of people.)

• You will find the best working affiliate opportunities only by finding them yourself, either through testing and research or networking and business development.

With all this said, let me give you the three high-level keys to making money with affiliate programs on the Internet.

1. Google and Overture rock!

The days of free traffic are not completely over, but certainly fading away at a rapid pace.

Sure, you can work hard to create pages that score high in the search engines and build sweat equity into a site.

But by paying for clicks and focusing on Google and Overture you will have the top three positions on all search engines that really count on the
Internet.

If you want to generate traffic from Yahoo, you need to be on top of Google, it’s as simple as that.

Overture and especially Google are the best key drivers of qualified traffic on the Internet.

• Pay-per-click search engines let you quickly test different affiliate offers and new landing pages on your site.

• When it works, you can scale

• Stay away from top competitive keywords for $1 to $2 per click. Niche marketing on Overture and Google works.

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