This little cost saver is due to the way that Aweber, and many other services charge for use. They charge based on the number of subscribers you have – but they count both active, and inactive subscribers!

Here’s the current price plan for Aweber:

Notice that if you had for example 5025 subscribers, you would be playing $30 per month more than if you had 4095 subscribers – even if 100 ore more of them had unsubscribed!!!

If you’ve been building a list for any amount of time, I guarantee that you have hundreds, or maybe even thousands of unsubscribed users and by simply deleting them you could be saving $30, $80 or even more every single month, and the great news is that it only takes a few moments.

How To Delete Unsubscribes From Aweber

OK here’s the really easy part. Log in to Aweber, choose the list you want to work on, hover over the Subscribers button and click Search. Now select “Unsubscribed” from the dropdown, click Search and you’ll get a list of all the users who are no longer receiving your emails. Now you can simply delete them, and you’ll enjoy immediate savings!

Autoresponders

Not already using an autoresponder and building a list from your websites?  Then you’re leaving money on the table.  Aweber are the industry leaders, are simple to use and even offer a $1 months trial.

Do you (re)tweet?  There’s no denying the massive growth in popularity and power of Twitter in recent months, and as more and more people become Twitter-savvy they are starting to use the service in new and better ways.

One type of tweet which is definitely on the increase in the reTweet (RT) which is where a user likes your tweet so much that they send it out again, to all their followers!  This is not only a massive compliment, but it means extra exposure and often new followers.

Format of a retweet

The usual format for a retweet is to start with the word Retweet, or more commonly just RT, then @username (the person who you are retweeting), then the original tweet.

If the original tweet is short enough that you have a few characters to spare then you can add a comment before the RT:

Comment here RT: @username original tweet goes here

Why retweet?

Retweeting is good for you, your followers, and the person you retweet, here’s why…

When you retweet you’re taking a useful/interesting tweet that many of your followers won’t have read, and allowing them to see it.  Since you found is useful/interesting/funny/etc and your followers by definition are interested in similar subjects to you, chances are they will like it too!

So you’re helping your followers by giving them content, you’re helping the person you retweet by exposing them to your followers who will likely be interested in what they have to say.  This in turn helps you by increasing your own followers loyalty, and probably getting the attention (and probably a follow) from the person you reteweeded (is that a word??) A win, win, win situation!

Getting retweeted

Of course the most value when someone retweets is for the original tweeter, so how do you get more of your own content reteweeted?  Here are 4 top tips to get more retweets…

1. Firstly, post high value tweets which help people.  Usually tweets which link to useful articles, videos, blogs or software tend to get retweeted often – any links to free things tend to get retweeted!
2. Use keywords in your tweets.  The more targetted your keywords the more chance they will get picked up and retweeted by new followers.
3. Keep your tweet short.  With only 140 characters, if your tweet is too long there won’t be enough room to add RT @username at the beginning which means people will have to edit your tweet… and people are lazy!  make sure you use shortened URLs for links and leave at least enough characters for your username and four extra (for “RT @”)
4. Lastly – don’t be shy about retweeting other people.  If you retweet often you’ll probably find that other people retweet you back!

So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and start reTweeting!

This is a particular problem when using a system such as Wordpress as a CMS, since by default there are archives (date archive, author archive etc.) which can be seen as duplicate content by the search engines.

I’ve recently been installing a plugin on all my Wordpress sites which makes managing which pages are NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW nice and easy. The plugin is simply called Robots Meta and can be downloaded from the Wordpress.org plugin directory.

The plugin is simple to install and use, allowing you to set noindex and nofollow on a per page/post basis, and also for sections of your site such as specific archives. An essential tool in the arsenal of any Wordpress CMS webmaster!

While I was in bed yesterday I watched a free DVD I got from Russell Brunson which I’ve not watched in probably a year.  Even though I probably watched it three times when I first got it, there were still new ideas I picked up from it yesterday.  I checked the website, and amazingly Russell is still giving these away for free (you just pay postage) so go and grab a copy, and check back here tomorrow for the next part of my blogging series!

Since I totally trust Joe and the videos are so cheap I decided to take a look and all I can say is I’m impressed!  Now I’ll be honest, the video’s are not great quality – in fact it gets a little irritating sometimes when the audio skips but that doesn’t matter, it’s the content that is pure gold.  These videos cover a range of subjects, each one focussed on getting free traffic from various sources – Web 2.0 sites, MySpace, eBay, Squidoo, Articles, Spyfoo and many, many more.  Jo’s approach is to let you look right over his shoulder as he explains the various techniques and how to make the most of them.

I’ve only had time to watch a few of the videos so far, and although a lot of it is stuff I alreayd knew, I’ve already picked up a few gems – things that will help me drive fresh traffic over the next few weeks which I’ve never heard anyone else teaching.  In fact, just one of these little secrets I’ve already implemented and seen a fresh stream of traffic on my stats – in less than 24 hours!

So, if you want to get a whole load of free traffic to your site, blog, or promotion check out these videos and see what you think!

I’ve been doing a lot of PPC recently, in particular I’ve been using Adwords to drive traffic to my web design seminar signup page, and a separate affiliate promotion.  I’ve been consuming every morsel of information I can find on the subject from books (Perry Marhall’s Ultimate Guide is my favorite) to articles, ebooks, blog posts and videos in order to increase my CTR and keep my costs down.  Well, what I just found this morning is something I wish I had when I started because it’s one of the best resources I’ve come across on the subject of PPC and Adwords, and it’s really easy to get your head around…

Basically it’s a completely free 5 part series on using Adwords, and you can get your free copy here.

Now don’t let me hear you saying you never get anything good for free!

If you’re not sure whether you ought to be using PPC, just remember that it is without doubt the fastest way to drive traffic, and can literally have you in profit in hours (rather than in weeks or months from SEO).  Even if you’re concentrating on generating your own traffic by creating content (which is what we’ll be talking about in the blogging series) you should still learn PPC as it’s a great tool for testing new markets, promoting affiliate products, and getting an extra stream of traffic and income!

See you tomrrow for the start of the blogging mini series…

The content covers quite a range of niches, and although I’ve not gone through a lot of it yet, what I’ve seen so far looks pretty good.  There’s not an awful lot of PLR content on the free account (although you can upgrade to a paid account with a lot more) but there’s certainly enough that you’ll probably find something of interest, and there is a lot of resale rights content (well over 100 products) and quite a few banner and e-cover templates in PSD format.

If you’re after some freebies, or a little inspiration for your next article then check it out!

Until fairly recently, submitting to all of the different sites was very time consuming but no longer – enter TubeMogul!

TubeMogul is a free service which allows you to publish videos to all of the main video sharing websites from one central control panel, PLUS they throw in free tracking to boot! Currently the list of supported sites is:

• 5min
• AOL Video
• Blip.tv
• Break
• Brightcove
• Crackle
• Daily Motion
• Google Video
• Graspr
• Howcast
• Imeem
• Metacafe
• Myspace
• Revver
• Sclipo
• StupidVideos
• Viddler
• Vimeo
• Veoh
• Yahoo Video
• YouTube

Getting started is very easy, just head over to TubeMogul and register for a free account. You can then start publishing right away. You start a submission by uploading your video to TubeMogul, and then filling in some details (such as title and description etc.) while you’re waiting for the upload. You then select which sites to upload to, hit the submit button and you’re done.

Just like social bookmarking using the Social Marker tool, you’ll need an account at each of the individual video sites. That means the first time you use TubeMogul it will take some some, but from then on it’s a simple matter of uploading, filling out the form and bam – you can publish to a bunch of different sites in no time.

Once your video has been uploaded, you can start to view stats after 24 hours. A great feature is that you can track viewing stats for videos, even if you didn’t upload them through the service. For example, I use TubeMogul to upload to several sites, but I do my YouTube submissions manually (since Youtube are by far the market leader, it pays to give them special attention!) but I can still track my Youtube stats from within TubeMogul.

All in all it’s a great free tool. Without TubeMogul I probably wouldn’t bother submitting to any site except YouTube, but this tool makes it worth the time to submit. Since using TubeMogul, approximately 15% of my views have been on sites other than YouTube, and those are views I was missing out on before!

Until fairly recently, using video online required specialist and expensive tools and hosting, but with the techniques I’ll show you today, you can create and host your videos free of charge, and use them as a marketing tool to drive more traffic to your site!

Here’s the video, and below you’ll find the rest of this blog post if you’d rather read along than watch. (Plus you’ll also find all the links mentioned in the video below!)

Links

Download Camstudio: Camstudio (Windows only)

Download Copernicus: Copernicus (Mac)

Camstudio Tutorial – Recording and publishing video content

You already know how powerful video is. The problem is that many people are put off, with the misconception that producing video is difficult or requires skills they don’t have. Not true!

Download the Camstudio software above, and by the end of this tutorial you’ll be able to create awesome video tutorials, reviews and vlog (video blog) posts.

When you install and open Camstudio, the first thing you’ll notice is that the application is very small and quite simple. In fact, it’s so simple that if you click on the File menu you’ll notice that there isn’t even an Open or Save function! Don’t worry though, it’s not a limited demo version, when you record a new video you’ll be prompted to save automatically.

Setting up the software

Although it’s very simple software, we still need to set a few things up before we start. First go to the Region menu and you’ll notice that you can record full screen, or a region of the screen. If you’re producing video for the web (Youtube, blogs etc.) then I would suggest you don’t use full screen. The reason is that once your video is reduced down to the size you’ll publish at, it will look too small and squashed. I would suggest recoding a region of 640 by 480 pixels which is large enough for most applications, and is exactly twice the height and width of a YouTube video so your final video won’t look squashed.

The next thing to set is your audio input. Just like with Audacity yesterday, you need to select which input your microphone is plugged into and you do that from Options > Audio Options > Audio Options For Microphone. And finally it’s a good idea to set some keyboard shortcuts for Record and Stop in Options > Keyboard Shortcuts.

OK so we’re finally ready to click the record button. When you do (or hit your keyboard shortcut) you’ll see a bounding box at the size you specified earlier. Drag it to the correct position on the screen and click to start recording. When you’re done, click Stop or press the key you set as your shortcut and you’ll be prompted to save.

Branding your videos

Since Camstudio is so simple and doesn’t have any editing capabilities, here’s what I suggest you do in order to get the most from it. First of all, plan your recording before you start. Since you’re recording an area of the screen, rather than a single application, you can start your video with a splash screen. Using GIMP or OpenOffice create a screen with some title text, and your branding (i.e. the name of your site, business or product and the URL of your site). Now position that on screen so that it will show at the beginning of your video.

Branding showing below the application you’re demonstrating

If you create your splash carefully, and you have enough screen real estate in the video, you can have your branding showing all the way through your video.

Publishing and Promoting

Now here’s the key to getting the most benefit from your videos, while getting free hosting thrown in! Head over to YouTube and sign up for a free account. You can then upload your video and go to the video page. On the right side of the screen you’ll see an EMBED box with some HTML text beneath it. Copy and paste that into your blog, or web page, and you get your video on your own site while Youtube handles the hosting for you!

Here’s the video, and below you’ll find the rest of this blog post if you’d rather read along than watch. (Plus you’ll also find all the links mentioned in the video below!)

Links

Download Audacity: Audacity

Download LAME MP3 encoder: LAME

Audacity Tutorial – Recording and editing audio content

Audacity is actually a very simple tool to use. First of all you’ll need a microphone, and I suggest a headset. The reasons being that they tend not to pick up as much background noise, like mouse clicks and key presses, as a desk mounted mic, and they give you more freedom to move your head without affecting the volume.

Once you have your mic plugged in, fire up Audacity and you should see a screen like this:

The main, grey, area of the screen is where the audio tracks will be, and at the top of the screen are the transport controls, meters and editing icons. Before we can start recording we need to adjust the settings so go Edit > Preferences and then click on Audio I/O in the preferences dialog. Select the recording device (whichever input you have plugged your microphone into) and select 1 (mono) channel since we are only recording with a single mic. Then select the File Formats tab and make sure that Make a copy of the file before editing is selected. That will prevent any accidents when working on imported files being unrecoverable.

Now we’re ready to record. Click the big red RECORD button on the transport bar and start talking. You should see the red bar on the microphone meter move, and a waveform start to appear on a new track. After a few seconds, click stop and you should see a new track like this:

The larger the waveform, the louder the recording so you can see in this example that there is a short period of near silence before I started talking, and it tapers off towards the end. This is quite typical and you can remove the silence by highlighting the section with the mouse, and hitting delete.

Fades in and out are quick and easy, again select a section with the mouse and then go to the Effect menu, selecting Fade In or Fade Out accordingly. When you’re ready to save, go File > Export As MP3. Choose a location and filename, and at this point you will be asked for the location of the LAME encoder (if this is the first time using the software).

Congratulations, you just created some audio content!

Tips for creating quality recordings

If you’re not used to speaking into a microphone, you’ll probably stutter and slip up a little. You’ll be tempted to stop and start again but try to fight the urge. As Russell Brunson says, Ready, Fire, Aim! You can easily edit out the mistakes, the coughs, and the dog barking when you’re done recording.

To make the mistakes easy to find, just click stop, then record again from where you left off. Audacity will put this new recording on a new track so you know every time you see a new track, the mistake is just before that on the previous track. Simply listen to hear exactly when the mistake appears, select with the mouse and hit delete. You can then copy and paste to fill in any gaps.

You can also use the same technique of using multiple tracks to add music and intros/outros to your recordings. Simply drag your new audio into the project and Audacity will automatically put it on a new track. Adjust the levels, fade in/out as necessary and export as MP3 when you’re happy.

Noise reduction

You’ll probably find that your recording has quite a lot of hiss and background noise, especially if you’re using a cheap microphone and the soundcard that came with your computer. Don’t worry, we can clean that up. Just make sure that you have a couple of seconds of recording where you aren’t speaking.

Select this section of ’silence’ with the mouse and go Effect > Noise Removal and then click on the Get Noise Profile button. Then select the entire track you want to clean up and go Effect > Noise Removal and this time click Remove Noise. You may want to experiment with where to position the slider for optimum performance, but the result should be a much ‘cleaner’ audio track.

Noise removal helps to get rid of unwanted hisses and buzzes

See – I told you creating audio was easy! In my next audio tutorial we’ll look at another method of creating audio products really easily over the phone, and in the next tutorial in this series I’ll show you how to create video content, just like the the video in these tutorials!

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