Archive for the ‘website design’ Category
When you visit a non-existent URL on a website, you’ll often come face to face with an error similar to the following:
“Oops! We couldn’t find what you were looking for.”
or…
“Page not found.”
What you’re actually seeing when you come across this error is the “404 Page”, which is a page that your browser goes to when the page you were looking for was – well – not found.
Common reasons for landing on a 404 page include:
- A misplaced letter or misspelled word in the URL when typing manually into the browser’s address bar.
- A misplaced letter or misspelled word in an existing link.
- The link or URL is typed correctly, but the page just no longer exists (aka. broken link)
- A redirection error.
Whatever the path may be, when people land on your 404 Page they will most likely exit your site.
It’s sad, but true. People are spoiled, especially when it comes to searching and surfing online, so when they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for – it’s on to the next thing like there’s no tomorrow.
However, there are things we can do as website owners, bloggers and internet entrepreneurs to decrease the chances of people leaving our sites when they do reach a 404 Page, which I’ll outline for you below.
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Blogging = survival of the fittest.
It’s seriously a jungle out there, and for newly hatched blogs, it’s even harder to survive.
But, there are a number of things you can do right away as a “hatchling” to immediately gain ground “in the wild” and transform yourself from a newbie, to what may seem like a seasoned pro.
Below is a list of things (big and small) that you can do as a newbie, so you don’t stand out as a newbie.
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Content is King.
You’ve probably heard this statement before. If not, Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia) illustrates the idea of “Content is King” as:
“…without original and desirable content…any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors.”
You can have the best-designed, coolest, most functional website around, but without good content, your website (or eBook, course, podcast, video production, etc.) is pretty much useless.
However, please don’t misunderstand the idea here. Design, or presentation is still absolutely necessary.
Design without content is useless, but content without design is dumb.
In other words: design matters.
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At the beginning of the year, I started a newsletter here on SPI and used an eBook I wrote, eBooks the $mart Way, as a free gift to help generate more leads. Three months later, I now have over 2,250 people signed up for the newsletter and it averages about 30 new subscribers a day.
I have no previous email list to compare these numbers with, so I can’t say for sure whether those are stellar numbers, or just average – but either way I’m very happy with the results and would love to share with you how it’s all done, especially for you beginners out there who have been emailing me non-stop about it. I apologize I’ve waited this long to write this post.
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A screenshot is a snapshot of something you see on your computer screen. If you’re doing any kind of online business or blog, more than likely you’re going to want to use a screenshot for some reason.
I use screenshots a lot. You can see a number of them in my last post, where I took screenshots of my statistics from Google Analytics to support the information in my post. Whenever someone emails me and asks me how to do something, I often take a screenshot of the process and drag that into the email itself.
If you have a virtual assistant, and you want to make sure they do whatever it is you want them to do correctly, there’s no better way than to have them visually see a step by step snapshot of exactly where they are supposed to go and what their supposed to click.
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Well – it’s finally here! The *NEW* Smart Passive Income Blog!
I’m happy to begin the new year with a fresh and clean look to the blog. Less clutter, more room in the main content area, and a touched up logo, along with some new features that I’ll quickly point out for you:
- New Archive: Before, the archive was basically a huge list of every single post I’ve done, and that’s it. Now, it’s more organized and divided into dates, categories and tags, so you can easily navigate through my older but still useful content.
- New Podcasts Section: Here, you’ll get a list of all of the podcasts episodes I’ve recorded. There aren’t any there yet, but I do have a few recorded already. I’d like to get a few more done before I go live on iTunes. I can’t wait!
- New “How-To Videos”: This is an awesome gallery (thanks to the TubePress plugin), that compiles all of the YouTube how-to videos I’ve done. Now, you don’t need to go to YouTube to watch the videos that you need to get stuff done.
- The “Did You Know” Bar: If you look below the navigation menu, there’s a little “Did You Know” section where I’ll just put in a small little fact about me (or whatever) every couple of days. Just thought this might add a little bit of fun to the blog
- Smaller Subscriber Area: If you watched my video that explained what I was going to change in the new redesign, I pointed out how my old subscriber area was taking up way too much space. I think I was taking up a 300×400 pixel chunk of real estate for what I can do in that little bar you see at the top.
- Tabbed Area: On the right hand side, below the Opt-In Box for the eBook (which I’ll talk more about in a sec), I’ve organized the hottest posts (the posts that have had the most views in the last week), the most popular posts (the posts with the most comments), and the top commenters (names and links to those who have commented the most each month). Before, all of this information was crowding the left hand side of my blog, but now, it’s compact and neatly organized.
There are a few other improvements that I made that aren’t as significant as the ones I mentioned above, so I’ll leave you to come across them as you look around.
My New eBook Guide!
As most of you know, I’ve been working on my eBook guide for the last couple of months. I’m proud to say that it’s finished, and it rocks! I’ve actually never spent so much time on any eBook I’ve ever written, so I’m really happy that I can give you this hardcore, quality eBook for free. I’ve already gotten some really nice comments about it already, since it actually went up yesterday. I look forward to hearing what you think too.
Trying to find a name for it gave me a major headache, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come up with something that I think fits perfectly with this blog. It’s called eBooks the $mart Way – A Complete Guide to Publishing, Marketing, and Automating a Killer eBook. You can see a 3D representation of it here.
Thank you all for your eBook title suggestions. I would especially like to thank Ms. Freeman for her idea to use “$mart”, which matches my logo and has become sort of the image of my “brand”, so that works perfectly. I’d also like to thank Dominique Goh, for her suggestion of the word “Killer”, which I really liked. And lastly, I’d like to thank Henri for helping me realize that I had most of the tagline figured out already. The three people that I just mentioned will receive a free copy of the new 4-Hour Work Week. I will email you within the next day or two to get your info.
If you’d like to get your free copy of my ebook guide, and also get exclusive online business and blogging tips in my weekly newsletter (with stuff you can’t find on the blog), please fill out the form in the sidebar at the top of this site or directly below.
Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy! Here’s to an awesome year!
Here are 51 blogging and internet marketing tips that you can use as inspiration for the upcoming year.
Mindset
1. Revisit your goals. Take a moment and rewrite your goals. You may find that they may have changed since the last time you really took a good look at them. If you don’t have any goals, than what are you working towards?
2. Remember where you were. Where was your online business or blog at one year ago? Are you seeing any improvements? If yes, be proud of how far you’ve come along and the fact that you haven’t given up. If you haven’t seen any improvements, why do you think that is?
3. You can always do a little bit more. If you’re up to it, try this 2-step exercise:
- Raise your hand as high as you can.
- Raise your hand even higher.
If you do this exercise, you’ll notice that you can always stretch your hand a little higher, even though you were told to put it as high as you can at first. When I did this exercise as a teenager, it changed how I thought about everything I did after that moment. It made me realize that I can always do a little bit more. Apply this to what you do online.
4. Take action. As I mentioned in my first law of business and success, every business in a state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. With that in mind, you can read and get inspired all you want, but nothing will happen unless you take action. Become the external force that is required to get your blog, business and life to exactly where you want it to be.
5. Flaunt your unique. In other words, know what makes you stand out from the crowd, and milk it. In order to succeed, especially online, you can’t blend in and just be another blog or website that talks about X. Your site can still be about X, but you should be one of the only ones that does Y, or Z.
6. No fear. Fear kills progress, and it kills business. When you’re reluctant to take an action or do something new, take a minute and think to yourself, “what’s the worst that can really happen?”. The worst usually isn’t as bad as you might think.
7. Failing is okay. We all want to succeed, but we shouldn’t ever be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process and teaches us valuable lessons along the way. Learn from your mistakes, and improve on your next attempt.
8. Don’t work more, work smarter. When we think of putting in the extra mile to get things done, we often think that means just putting in more hours of work. Instead, think of ways that you can work smarter, which will accomplish the same (or even more), in a considerably less amount of time. It may take a small investment of time in the beginning to figure out how to work smarter, but you’ll make up for that time (and stress) soon enough.
9. Give back. I truly believe in “online karma”. The more you help others and the more you give back, the more success you will find. If your primary motivation is just to make as much money as you can and do things just for yourself, you’re only going to see a limited amount of success, if any.
10. Just freakin’ enjoy what you’re doing! If you enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t become work anymore. You’ll accomplish more, and be happier. If you’re not doing something you enjoy, why not?
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Using a custom blog theme or website design is not necessary to succeed online.
In fact, when I started doing business online, I used a free wordpress theme and was still able to generate a great income from both Adsense and selling information products. So, if you’re worried about how much money it takes to get something started online, don’t – because it doesn’t cost much at all. Find a niche, get a domain and a host, and start creating content and building authority for yourself.
Free themes are great, but there two major drawbacks:
- Their features can be very limited.
- They are not unique.
Everyone has access to them, so it’s not very uncommon to come across a website that uses the same free themes, even in the same niche. Although content is what really matters, I have to be honest and say that if I came across two websites that had the exact same design, it would bother me. Maybe it’s just me.
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Today, I’m going to outline a plan to rank higher in Google for a certain keyword phrase. Before I tell you exactly what I’m going to do, we must first understand how things work.
In my experience, there are three primary ways that search engines (namely, Google), will determine the rank of your website relevant to certain keywords:
1. The number of backlinks to your website. We all know that one of the biggest things search engines look at is not the quality and quantity of websites that we link to, but the quality and quantity of websites that link back to us. It’s no wonder then why there are tools dedicated just for finding backlinks and showing you exactly which websites are linking back to you.
2. How active your website is. Have you ever heard anyone say that “Google loves blogs?” Well, it’s true – Google and other search engines love blogs and will often rank them higher than static websites on the same topics. This is because they know that blogs are more active and there is an actual discussion about the topic on the website itself. I’ve also noticed that some of my posts will get a little “bump” in keyword position soon after a new comment on that post was made.
The cool thing is, the more active your website is, the higher you will rank. The higher you rank, the more active your website will be. It’s a nice little perpetual cycle once it gets going.
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I’ve been doing a lot this past week as far as expanding the Smart Passive Income brand. I created a Facebook Fan Page, which has nearly 100 fans already. Today, I setup a YouTube Channel and decided to post my first video, which I’ve embedded here on the blog for you below.
Part of branding is staying consistent with how you present yourself and your products/blogs/business/whatever. So, in an effort to do this, I’ve tried to create some continuity in the web addresses where people can connect with me. Here are some examples below:
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No, I'm not a millionaire, but I am living off of passive income made online. I'm here to show 
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