Month: November 2006

Traffic is the first key success factor to successful on line marketing. You cannot move a person from visitor to customer unless the person visit you in the first place. Blogging for Profits is all about using one of the tools in your toolkit for developing traffic to your site. There are a number of other tools that should also be used including, pay per click, direct mail, and other proven marketing resources that work. This issue of Blogging for Profits will show you the exact steps to reading your your traffic statistics.

One of my friends with a cosmetic products and services business is paranoid thinking her website and blog traffic is being diverted to a competitor’s site. Jessie these instructions are written for you dearheart so you and all my readers know how look at server logs and read the traffic trends and sources for that traffic.

The Exact Steps To Reading Website and Blog Server Logs For Visiter Trends and The Source of That Traffic

(These steps are for those who have a website or blog hosted on their own domain and the host provider’s systems offer Cpanel and Fantastico. My host provider is Host Gator which I highly recommend. I am announcing very soon a test program for 20 or so people interested in having their domain, website and blog completely set up for them with hands on instructions on how to update and maintain the website and blog. This test will be at a rediculously low price. Register for email updates at Steve Reports and don’t miss this announcement.)

Step 1. Log into your Cpanel screen by typing in your domain name along with /cpanel. Example www.mydomain.com/cpanel

Step 2 Enter your user name and password for your hosting account. When I set up a site and blog for any client I give them this information. If you registered your domain with a hosting service, they either emailed this information to you or you will need to contact them for this information.

Step 3 Once you have Cpanel access, look for the icon that says Web and FTP Stats. Click on it.

Step 4 Now you will see a list of programs to use to view your stats. Pick anyone you like. I use Awstats because of the graphics but there are many programs there – see what ones you like.

Step 5 Explore and see where your traffic is coming from. You will see a section called Who in Awstats and there a link to Hosts. Under that you will find IP addresses for sources of traffic. http://www.webyield.net/domainquery.html is a great site for resolving IP addresses meaning it will tell you the name of the site for the number listed. This service is free. From you stats you will be able to see that the search bots like Google are indexing your site. I was looking at my stats for Fast Airport Travel this morning noticing a lot of traffic comes from Feedburner. That is a service I use to promote all my blogs. In a separate post I will write more about Feedburner.

Start exploring your stats and you will learn allot about what is propular or not about your site. I have learned the search engine bots really love blogs which is why you should be reading all the information published in the Blogging for Profits series.

Be well and prosper,
Steve Pohlit
Business Development Consulting

Steve Pohlit has more than 20 years experience running very large and medium sized companies. Steve now consults personally with clients to design and implement processes that will deliver improved business performance for the long term. Most projects are self-funding within 90 days. The client then experiences a very high return on investment. Learn more about the process of Increasing Profits by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less by visiting http://www.stevepohlit.com or you can call 727-587-7871 and speak with Steve directly.

Blogging For Profits Issue No. 14: The Absolutely Single Most Important Step To Blogging For Profits

In the past couple of weeks I have activated blogs for three business development clients each serving different niche markets. Like others who have been through the process of activating blogs numerous time, I continue to be amazed at how easy it is to do. Consequently I naturally think everyone must know what a blog is and how to post to a blog.

The facts are that outside the marketing circles, few business people understand what a blog is yet alone it’s potential. That is the reason I started the Blogging for Profits series. Note most of the material in the Blogging For Profits series is for a blog using the WordPress platform and hosted under your own domain.

Today I am going one step further and realize what I am about to disclose has been disclosed before. It has even been presented on video. But here it is again because my clients want it and if I am going to write it for them, I am going to write it for my Blogging for Profits audience.

Are you ready for this? Here goes…you cannot possibly have a successful blog unless you know how to post new content to your blog. I advise posting to your blog three times a week minimum to start. Here are the steps for posting to your blog and I am going to use a live example for illustration purposes:

1. Go to your blog. For this example I am using www.harleydavidsonharrisburg.com
2. Scroll down the right sidebar until you see the words Login. Click on that.
3. Enter your user name and password.
4. Click on Write. You should be at the Write Post tab.
5. Enter the Title in the Title box
6. Enter the content in the post section
7. This last step is very important: scroll down and click Publish. Once you click on Publish your post is now visible for all the world.

Congratulations – you are done. Well almost.

Big Bonus Blog Posting Tips:

Editing Your Blog Post:

1. Login
2. Click on the Manage Tab
3. Select the post you want to edit. Click edit and edit your post.
4. This last step is very important. Scroll down and click Save.

Linking Your Blog Post To Your Web Site:

You will see an example of this in every most posts at www.harleydavidsonharrisburg.com A link is a colored word or phrase that when clicked takes the reader to another destination. So how do you activate a link in a blog?

Background: All the blogs have the Rich Text Editor feature deactivated. This simply means any link in a post needs to be activated. Here is how you do it.

1. Follow the steps above for posting to your blog. Let’s assume you want to activate the words Susquehanna Valley Harley Davidson to your main website
2. Left click you mouse and highlight the phrase you want to activate as a link.
3. Move up to the index bar of your blog post right under the word Post. The bar stars with a b then moves on. Look for the word link which probably is in blue. Click on that an a box will pop up asking you for the URL you want to link to.
4. Enter the URL and click OK
5. This last step is very important. Scroll down and click Save.
6. View your site and test the link. If there is a problem, repeat steps 1-5.

Adding A Picture To Your Blog

You can see an example of a picture we just added to Harley Davidson Harrisburg Here is how you do it:

1. Log in
2. If this is new post follow the steps above for posting or follow the steps for editing. When you have the post screen open (Write Post) scroll down until you see three tabs starting with Upload. Click on the browse button and locate the file of the picture you want to upload. (It is important the picture is stored on a file on your PC’s harddrive.) Click ok and you should now see the picture you have uploaded.
3. You are not done – pay close attention:
a. right click on the picture and then click on “Copy Image Location”
b. scroll up to the posting section and activate your curser at the point in your blog post you want to appear. Now scroll up and look for the letters “img” in your post navigation bar. Click on img and a box will pop up asking you for the URL of the picture. Right click and click paste. Click OK
4. You should now see the code for the location of your picture in the section of your blog post where your want the picture.
5. Now here is the very important step, scroll down an click Publish or Save depending on whether this is a new post or an edit.
6. View your blog make sure everything in your post is working properly.

I hope you enjoyed these tips. Let me know by posting your comments at Steve Reports

Steve Pohlit, Business Development Consultant
“Helping Companies Achieve a 30% Increase in Profits in 90 Days or Less.”

PS: Register for the complete Blogging for Profits series at Steve Reports The information in the series will help you tremendously in understanding the power of blogs and it will save you huge amounts of time. Bonus The Blogging for Profit series is still free.