A landing page can serve many purposes. It is often used in Affiliate marketing and PayPerClick campaigns when trying to get visitors to go to your affiliate campaigns.

It can also be used for Split testing different marketing campaigns for an ebook, or online product.

For instance you can create a special link for a friend to blog about where everyone who visits that person’s specialized landing page and orders gives your friend a referral fee.

You can also setup different landing pages to see which ads get people to act.

First step in setting up a landing page in wordpress is designing the template for your landing page.

The easy way if you know your way around php and wordpress themes is just to make a duplicate of your ‘Page’ template and rename it to ‘landing page 1′ or something similar. Then edit that to look the way you want it. For instance it’s a good idea to remove the sidebar on landing pages.

On a landing page you want the focus of attention to be whatever your point is. The point of landing pages is to get a quick action from an internet user with a short attention span.

Get them to fill out your CPA form, or visit whatever program you want them to purchase from, or even just get them to subsribe to your newsletter.

Don’t give them distractions.

If you don’t feel comfortable editing your theme files, then you can try the AffiliateTheme which already comes with built in Landing pages that you can use.

Second Step (Optional)

If your landing page is for a special offer, or for a discount then you don’t want the whole internet finding your landing page. (Some landing pages you do want the whole world knowing about, some you don’t)

In this case I recommend using the Advanced Category Excluder plugin.

This plugin lets you create a special category that the plugin will ‘exclude’ from your website. It will make it so the page will not show in search engines, or anywhere else. The only way to find the page will be to know the exact link, so only those who receive the link will be able to use it.

(Special thanks to Slyvisions.com for the heads up on the Advanced Category Excluder Plugin and it’s use in Landing Pages)

Can you think of any other ways to create and optimize landing pages on Wordpress?

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In times past this blog has been a blog about blogging. I’ve also blogged about marketing, and pretty much anything that mattered to me at the time. I’m finding now isn’t the best time in the world to be starting a blog to make money.

Sure I’m still making some money – not nearly as much as I used to, especially being banned by google because somebody clicked on too many links from my page – none of my fault.

I’ve made a new plan or goal in life – first off I am spending 6 -8 hours working out 3 days a week, and changing my diet. I’ve lost 75 pounds since January 12th, 2009. (Yes that’s under a month but I have a lot of weight to lose – I started weighing 660 lbs, and now weigh 577).

This is my primary goal right now – my wife works in Private duty home health, I am currently between jobs – other than my blog, which I have neglected a bit as of late. These days just about everyone is either between jobs or knows somebody else who is.

Why – being between jobs isn’t such a bad thing – for me I have always had excuses for why I couldn’t lose weight, or workout. My main excuse – was I have a lot of work, not enough energy, and not enough time.

Well – my wife took that excuse away agreeing to work, while I workout – for every hour she works I spend an hour in the gym – for the most part anyways. We are also changing our diets together and eating healthier. I have no excuses now to losing weight and it’s working like a charm – almost as good as if I were accepted on the Biggest Loser, which I’ve always dreamed of being on.

This year I’ve decided I can wait until I get accepted on the Biggest Loser – and maybe die in the process or I can be my own biggest loser. I spend 6-8 hours x 3 days per week using water weights while swimming, water walking, and water kickboxing.

I’m also drinking 1 gallon+ water per day, and cut out 90% of soda – I’ll have a coke zero every now and again but mostly drink water.

My other focus – I’m going back to school to get a degree in Sustainability(that’s green technology, green science, green business, basically anything green or eco related.) With my desire to go into green technologies as a career – I’ve decided to change my blog’s theme a bit. From now on this blog will feature a lot more information on going green and being an eco-friendly blogger.

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Image by six steps ? via Flickr

Don’t count out MSN for a large traffic surge!

Everyone is trying to get more traffic. Anyone would love to have their website rank #1 on google.

Google can surely send a typhoon of free traffic, and it is highly targeted traffic, and can greatly improve any business.

The problem though with google is that everybody and their sister is trying to rank for google – and only google. This is to your benefit though, if you leave google aside and aim for MSN live search instead.

Face it – on google it takes extreme effort to get on the first page of search results, and most likely if you’re not in the first 50 results you’re not going to get any traffic.

Another scary thing about google is that even if you do make it to the first page of the google search results, you may not remain there. All it takes is one update to their algorithm, and you’re back at square one.

The fact is: Only the largest – most established authority sites will ever see consistent traffic from google, and even their traffic will fluctuate frequently.

It’s nearly impossible for the little guy to get ahead via google.

Getting ranked in google requires a major promotional budget, an extreme amount of free time on your hands, not to mention you need to wait at least a year or so till your domain is ‘trusted’ google by default trusts older domains over newer domains.

Search marketing has become a game where only big business can compete anymore.

That’s the state of Google, so I say – Forget Google!

Google is not the little guy’s friend. MSN Live Search, on the other hand is easier to rank for the little guy. In fact with MSN Live search it’s easy to get a one or two page website rapidly ranked in the top 5 spots for basically any keyword.

Is this for real? You bet it is!

Don’t count on this working for Google though, but with MSN you can still get a ton of traffic. Did I mention that MSN traffic converts better too?

Sure MSN doesn’t have the reach that google does, but live search receives millions of searches daily, after all it is the default home page for Internet Explorer users, and 85% of people use internet explorer.

Just to put things in perspective, Which scenario would drive more traffic:

1. Ranking #2 for your best keyword phrase on MSN
2  Ranking #46 on google on page 5 of Google’s results?

Did you know it will take three times as much time, money, and effort to get to #47 on google, as it will to get to #1 on msn?

Now imagine instead of having 1 website in the top 50 of google for your keyword and having 3 ranked #1 on microsoft live search.

How does it work?

Watch this video to find out more: Microsoft Live Search Loophole Explained

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6 Techniques to get more RSS Subscribers to your Blog!

1. Comment on someone’s blog who has as many or nearly as many subscribers as you do – Tell them you’ve subscribed to their blog. They may reciprocate – a lot will.

2. Ask your Readers to subscribe. Make it easy and blatant. If people see links asking to subscribe all over the place then they’re more likely to subscribe.

3. Write Guest Posts for other Bloggers. This is a great way to get new subscribers – instead of puting your link in your bio, put a link to your feed url.

4. Bribes are always welcome. Offer something nice to your readers if they subscribe to your blog. This is always a good method to get new RSS readers.

5. Build your network, and then ask your network periodically to subscribe to your rss feed.

6. Start Podcasting. Podcasts are great ways to get more traffic, and get the word out about your blog. It’s also a great way to get new rss subscribers.

These are just a few methods – what’s your favorite method of bringing in new subscribers?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

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Are you Using Social Bookmarks like a Pro?

When you add a social bookmark link, whether it’s one of your own or not, you are helping other people sort the web, so to speak.

By tagging each link that you submit, others looking for the same material are able to find only the best information on a given topic.

By building a network of friends, and working to expand your network as far as you can, you can in turn build your brand recognition, and your website’s traffic as well.

If you have really good content to share, or really targeted content, it will get shared between many different users. Don’t ever discount Social Bookmarking – it does work.

Now that you know what social bookmark links are – are you using them?

You should have a script or program setup where every page that you want traffic to is easily bookmarkable.

The best way to do this is add a script or plugin (if you’re using wordpress or another such blog platform). You can use third-party widgets two good ones are: AddThis and Sharethis

You could lose out on a huge amount of traffic and clicks to your website if you’re not using bookmark icons on every important page. Here’s a good video overview to make social bookmarking even more clear:

Social Bookmarking in Plain English:

Social Bookmark Strategy: Diversify.

When you do decide to add social bookmarking links to your blog or website, you absolutely must go big – add at least 10-20 of the most popular sites. The major ones include digg, stumbleupon, reddit, mixx, delicious.

You absolutely must build networks of contacts on these social bookmarking and news networks, the more the merrier because they will be able to see the links that you bookmark, and they will share them and it will make for something pretty darn exciting – if a web page goes viral on a social bookmark site it can bring as many as 50,000 hits over a 1 week period.

Read On For a Marketing twist that could mean a huge flux of link-backs.

But first the Meme: What is your dream business if you could own any company or build your own business idea – what would it be?

Mine: As I mentioned in an earlier post to own a business alone is a dream, but I’ve always been pulled towards owning a Pizza Chain, I guess it comes from working as a Delivery Driver for 5 years, of course I have some really unorthodox idea for my pizza chain that could make it hugely successful, only time will tell. Check out my blog post on this subject.

NOW for the Marketing Experiment.:

This is a cool Meme, with a marketing twist, that could bring hundred of links to your blog, if not thousands.

First off list the last 5 blogs that this came from like so.

1. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
2. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
3. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
4. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
5. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com

Let’s call this the viral Marketing MEME.

Now the way this works – Put your address in the 1st space, then delete #5.

This will move you down to the next line.

This way not only will you move down but your link will be spread across many future blogs, AND the reader gets to read the answer from multiple bloggers till the Meme ends or repeats itself whichever comes first.

My advice is once you’ve created your post- then try as hard as you can to get your friends to do the same, and before long you’ll have 400,000 links to your blog and a technorati rank of 10, or something like that but in any case give it a shot and see where it takes you – but if you do give it a try then please comment about it on here – This is a Marketing Experiment – so test results and comments are greatly appreciated.

Here’s an example of what your blog could look like, when copying this….

Meme: What is your dream business if you could own any company or build your own business idea – what would it be?

Mine: “Insert your blog post here”

Previous Bloggers: As I mentioned in an earlier post to own a business alone is a dream, but I’ve always been pulled towards owning a Pizza Chain, I guess it comes from working as a Delivery Driver for 5 years, of course I have some really unorthodox idea for my pizza chain that could make it hugely successful, only time will tell. Check out my blog post on this subject.

1. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
2. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
3. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
4. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com
5. http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com

Get a Viral Boost by Adding to this MEME today!

Again I appreciate comments, and perhaps this has been done before, I’m not sure, I reason though that it will be a fun experience nonetheless. I’ll call it: TurboMEME. or maybe ViralMEME. Take your pick.