I can’t tell you how many times I have told friends of mine about my blog here on CreateFinancialWealth.com and have received a weird response. I know what goes through some of their minds. For the most part, they usually don’t say much about it because they don’t know much about it. Most people probably think that blogs are for girls….mothers that are looking to put up family information for the grandparents to look at and get all emotional over. I’m sure that some think that blogging is for geeks or computer nerds who don’t hunt, fish or do much of anything else in the world besides hang out in their whitey tighties in their mommas basement.

People used to think that way…until they learned the kind of income I generate through this blog.

The truth is….if you are someone that knows much of anything about anything, you can create a significant presence online blogging about it. Big deal right? A presence. What the heck is that? For a business with a good idea, people just have to know you exist. That’s presence. But rather than putting up a billboard, you put up a blog.

WHAT? Did I just say a blog is a business?

The more you search the Net the more you will start to realize that most of the sites in the top of the search engines have a blog built into them or are primarily a blog. Search engines will love you if you know anything about anything and are able to turn that knowledge into a blog. So yes, a blog is a business….and it means $$$ dollar signs, if you know how to manage it.

Through this blog, I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you look around this site, there’s not a ton of ads everywhere. I’m not an e-commerce site like Ebay or Amazon. Google Adsense wasn’t my money maker. With the presence I have created with this blog, I can do anything. Literally anything….because I have the presence.

Now, the reason I am saying all of this is because I know the magnitude of where I am and where anyone could be. Including you! If you have a passion for something, think about starting a blog in your chosen niche and become the Guru that people find in the search engines. It’s A LOT easier than you think. Once you get the listings, the traffic and the presence, you’ll get the $$.

Still think blogging is for girls? Fill out the form on the contact us page to learn exactly how I did it.

As many of you know I am a home based business entrepreneur and have been working from home for the last 5 years. Every once in a while I have people who want to know why I chose to get involved in a home business instead of doing some kind of brick and mortar business. The answer is simple, it’s all about lifestyle for me. I wanted so much more than just the bi-weekly pay check with two weeks of paid vacation. That’s a life of misery. I wanted financial freedom and the time freedom to enjoy it. I wanted to be at home, to be my own boss and set my own schedule. That’s why I choose to stay right where I am. It’s lucrative, it has given me lifestyle and I am my own boss. What more could you ask for?

So as you all know, a business requires marketing. I do several things for my marketing but my major source of lead generation is through my self-hosted WordPress blog. I share tips on mindset, personal development and business opportunity and by doing so, people naturally become interested in what I do. For me, it generates some of the highest quality leads one can get. If they like my content, chances are, they will enjoy my business as well. The perfect lead! Qualified with a common interest.

With my WordPress blog, I have certain plugins I use to promote my content and extend its capabilities. If you have any good ideas for new plugins, I’d sure like to try them out. They are as follow:

• Platinum SEO Pack – Prepares your blog for Search Engine Optimization
• All in one Adsense – Enables the all popular ad serving network of Google to place relevant ads on your site. I also use it to place a contact form directly following each of my blog posts.
• Twitter Tools – Connects your blog with your Twitter account and updates your Twitter account every time you publish a post.
• WPing.fm – This plugin makes ‘Twitter Tools’ and ‘Wordbook’ nearly worthless. It uses a service called Ping.fm to automatically send a status update every time a blog post is published with a link back to your post.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This doesn’t necessarily assist in extending my blog but is a very convenient plugin. The name should be pretty self explanatory.
• Vipers Video Quicktags – This makes posting videos to your blog posts easy!
• Google XML Sitemaps – This will aid you in a few things. It helps you track the health of your blog by seeing how Google, Bing and Yahoo search bots view your site. It also gets your site indexed with the major search engines quickly.
• Add to Any -This is a social bookmarking plugin that allows your readers to quickly share your content on various social sites around the web.
• Stray Random Quotes – I love quotes and love to share them. This is a plugin that will easily allow you to add quotes to your blog in various locations. Have the quotes rotate, stay the same or change with each visit.
• Wordbook – Updates your facebook account with every published, edited or revised post and/or page.
• Yet Another Related Post Plugin – Enables your readers to get deeper into your archived posts. It shows posts with similar tags and topics below the post they are currently reading.

Feel free to look them up in the “plugins” section of your WordPress back office to see what they do. Each of them play a significant role in my marketing campaign.

Many of you know that I am part of many social networking sites on the net. Honestly, creating profiles on social sites has been a little addicting and before I knew it, I was part of several hundred social sites ranging from Home Based Business Communities to Personal Development Communities. Trying to stay somewhat active in all of them is quite frankly impossible.

One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to link all of these social sites with my blog so that when I published a blog post, it would show on my social profiles. Some social networks aren’t as advanced as others, so I wanted to pick several of the main ones I was active on. Some of the big ones are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. How could I update these places without having to do them all individually or without having to find a WordPress plugin for each individual social site?

Ping.fm

I discovered a site called Ping.fm that did exactly what I was looking for. It is a site that can send an update to all of these major social sites as well as many others simply by typing it on their website. All I had to do is configure my social sites on Ping.fm, enter an update and click “Ping It!” It keeps track of your character count for the character sensitive micro blogging sites such as Twitter. You can also choose what you want the service to do on any specific social site such as micro blog or status update.

So, the next task was to figure out how to update all of these social sites every time I post a blog entry with a link back to my blog post. Since I use WordPress software to power this blog, I found a plugin that works perfectly called WPing.fm. You can configure this plugin to update Ping.fm with the title and a link to your blog post. Very cool!

This one plugin has increased my readership to my blog and saved me so much time. I have made thousands of dollars from the readership I get from this service as well.

They are continually adding new social sites to their list so check back to Ping.fm frequently.

For me, I give it 5 stars out of 5.

If there is a better service out there, I would like to hear about it. Because as of right now, Ping.fm is it!

A few posts back I listed 7 tools I use to strengthen my marketing campaign and promised you a more in-depth explanation on each one. So here we go!

Number one on the list was Twitter. For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, it is a micro blogging platform. You know, to be honest, the first time I heard micro blogging, it was like a foreign language to me. What the heck is micro blogging?

Well, the easiest way to describe it: You know what blogging is. Blogging is writing posts like this one, and are kind of lengthy. Micro blogging is the same thing but with shorter posts of a just a few lines. Twitter, allows you to enter 140 characters packed full of useful information, links, etc. Okay, so how the heck is this information useful?

For me, I use twitter in two ways, to Give and to Get. The give is when I send out a tweet, or a micro post, that offers resources and links for my followers. The get is the exact reverse of giving useful information, instead you get useful information. Part of giving information is promoting your product, service, blog, business, etc. If what you offer is of value, you will benefit as will as your followers.

Here are some tools associated with Twitter that you can check out:

1. TwitterFox – A Firefox plugin that allows you to tweet and receive tweets as you browse.
2. Twitter grader – Used to find new people to follow, grades your account authority, and provides stats and useful info about your account.
3. Tweetdeck – A free software that is very useful in organizing your followers and who you are following. You can also type in keywords you may be looking for and have a list of tweets and tweeters who are tweeting those keywords. Very cool!
4. Tweetlater – Useful for sending automated and delayed tweets to your followers.

Twitter is a very addicting and powerful promoting and learning tool. I have found many uses for it and know you will too. Feel free to connect with me on twitter by clicking on the icon in the top right corner of this post. Also, for more information on how to use Twitter, you may also want to visit Twitip.com.

These are just a few of the tools I use and some of the reasons I enjoy twitter. I’d like to hear from you. What are some tools you use with Twitter and some ways you use twitter to promote, learn, or benefit from it?

Can you generate a significant amount of leads with blogging?

The answer to that questions is a definite YES! Blogging is one of the best ways to generate the most targeted traffic that in turn will produce the highest quality of leads you will ever have.

I built this website to educate Entrepreneurs through Personal Development and to find those who are looking for a Business Opportunity to teach them how to become successful. I have my static pages that provide general information about the opportunity but have a blog as well.

So how do you connect your blog to your opportunity and what do you blog about?

Your blog is the GIVE. Your static pages and lead capture forms are the TAKE! So in your blog posts give your thoughts, your advice, your expertise, what you have learned, strategies, results, polls, etc. In order to be effective at blogging for leads you must have great content. Content that brings value to your readers yet enticing them to want to learn more. For example: I wrote a blog post called Top 3 Ways How I Make Money. In that post I speak of ways that someone looking to generate an income doing something similar to what I am doing can gain from my content. So I offer free advice. There is no reason to hide my knowledge from anyone. Chances are, if they read the post and want to know what I do, they will contact me. Bingo, there’s a lead. It seems as the more open I am with my results and my expertise as an Entrepreneur, the more traffic I get and the more leads come in. Give and Get!

Also, if I have a blog post that I feel is good article content, I will submit it to article submission sites such as Ezine Articles and Article Base. Most article submission sites allow you to add links into your text that point back to your site. Find the appropriate keywords that fit your blog post and link it back to that post or a post with similar content on your blog. They will visit your blog and chances are, will get curious and look around your site a bit. If you have a contact form or lead capture form that is visible and user friendly, they just might fill that sucker out. Also, you have your author bio and your authors box just below your articles with links pointing back to your site.

So where do I put my contact forms and lead capture forms you ask? I have a contact form directly under each individual blog post, right before my Adsense ads. How simple have I made it for my readers to fill out the form? I also have forms in the sidebar of almost every static page I have. Also, I have a “Contact Us” page with a link for that page in my header. If someones interest is spiked, they feel they would like to learn more, it is very simple for them to request more info.

The easier your blog is to navigate, the more user friendly it is, the more leads you will get. Some visitors get overwhelmed with content and will leave the site within seconds. So make your blog content visible, legible, free of errors, and with value and after some time and consistency your blog will be a lead generating fool!

Search Engine Optimization is a great way to market your blog. Now I know you can do a search on SEO and get a huge variety of information on what is most important. There is definitely not a shortage of information out there. It’s just doing it that is so tasking. Remember, to have the results you desire or to have something you have never had, like search engine rankings, you must do something you have never done! Search Engine Optimization is fairly simple, just time intensive.

Once your site is optimized, I feel that powerful content and link building are the most powerful tools in SEO. The better your content, and the more of it, the better your chances are of getting listed in the search engines. When I speak of link building, I am referring to the number of sites that link back to you site or blog. One of the best ways to get links on other high ranking websites is to create a profile on that site. So I have compiled a list of 10 blog directories to submit your blog to. Create a profile, add a link back to your website where ever possible. Most sites that allow you to create a profile will have a designated place for you site. So here they are:

1. http://www.blogtopsites.com
2. http://www.blogtoplist.com
3. http://www.topblogarea.com
4. http://www.blogratedirectory.com
5. http://topofblogs.com
6. http://www.bloglines.com
7. http://www.mynewblog.net
8. http://technorati.com
9. http://www.blogarama.com
10. http://www.globeofblogs.com

There you have it. This will give you a head start on getting your blog out there and getting some links coming back to your site. Make sure you place your blog in the appropriate category and also have some quality content on your blog.

I know there are many more blog sumbission sites out there on the net. I have provided just a handful. What other submission sites would you recommend?