Tag Archives: blog

Marketing

Time For Moving

Time
Time (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn (back soon, sorry for not commenting))

Since the creation of this blog, it has been hosted at BlueHost. Fairly inexpensive, it was a good place to start. As there was originally an idea of trying to make money with the blog, a more marketing directed feel was used and a commercial package purchased. The domain for my name, Bryon Lape, was purchased later and was always intended to replace “The Road To The Future”.

The admins at BlueHost never seemed able to change the answering domain for my blog, so originally bryonlape.com was given a permanent forward via Go Daddy. That worked for the most part, but wasn’t what was wanted. Also, the other two domains for the site became old and useless, but try as I might, I couldn’t get rid of them.

Despite the advertised price, the cost for hosting at BlueHost ran more than $400 a year. This was ridiculous for a WordPress site that generated no income. Time to move on.

A few searches revealed several competitors. Also, it was learned that WordPress would export the content for importing into a new site. Excellent.

The new hosting service chosen was HostGator. Like Blue, they also allow for reselling of their hosting services. I’ll look into that later, perhaps. Now it is setup, update DNS for the domain with Go Daddy, wait a day for it to propagate (where is TTL these days???), connect with the WordPress backend and install plugins, and then upload the old content.

During the import, there were a few errors, but the content looks to be there. There may be a couple of files that will require moving later, not sure. The first blog post “When Not To Be In Business” is there with the date of April 29, 2011. Wow, three years I’ve been at this and still no one reads it.

Time to move forward. The old site will get retired soon. The old account deactivated. They should have done what I asked.

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The Importance Of Your Niche

Niche in the wall
Niche in the wall (Photo credit: RahelSharon)

Back in my Pro U days, Gregg Davison was very keen of stating we needed to find our niche. This was more than finding an opening in a market. Your niche is defined by who you are and how you will express your voice. You must fit well into your niche as you need to own it fully. Choose a niche that doesn’t fit you and your customers will notice.

The idea of a niche was also repeated in training by Michael Force and Andrew Cass. It was a shared and correct idea. It again came to the foreground in workshops lead by Justin Woolf and Aaron Rashkin. Find your niche. Find your niche. Find your niche. Ok, I get it.

Recently I decided to return to trading. I had success before and the market seemed to have at least some direction. It was time to do homework and paper trade to understand trends and cycles. I had mostly failure, but this was the beginning. Time to get some guidance.

The other day I called Michael Parness to seek his knowledge. Previously I had been a member of the Orange belt options service and I was one of the first to sign up for the website www.parnesseducation.com. We talked for about half an hour and near the end I heard a familiar phrase, “You need to find your niche.” Again?

One may wonder why one would need a niche for trading stocks. It is quite simple. Your niche is your methods: the way you trade, why you trade, how you do plays and when you get out. It is about what you do in your trades. It is about you.

Your niche. What is it? Learn to find it. It is your voice. It is who you are. It is the way to your future.

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Random Musings

Good Content Makes For Good Conversation

Girl with smirk
Girl with smirk (Photo credit: BrainMuffin)

My marketing mentor Gregg Davison is found of many phrases. Many would be quick to recite his “It is always sunny when you are making money” quip. He is also keen on another important phrase when it comes to successful marketing “Content is King”.

There are many blogs out there on the Internet. Many of the are popular and do bring in some money for their creators. Many of them bring in no one and don’t make a penny. Why? Simple: bad content.

Creating good content is more than bringing up the Google adword tool and finding good keywords to use. Sure, if you want trying to sell a business opportunity about making money on the Internet, the usual advice is to look for those keywords and get them into your content. Gurus will tell you that your content should have somewhere between 3-5% of your “making money” keywords so that Google will like your content and rank it high. When it comes to a phrase like “Making money on the Internet,” how many websites could Google possibly place on the first page? Exactly.

Having a good blog that attracts readers is more than just good use of keywords in your content. The content itself needs to be good. You want to attract readers. You want them to return. You need to find you niche.

Finding your niche is about your story. Who are you? What are your interests? Forget about the awesome Internet money making opportunity you have and tell the readers more of you. They want to believe they know you, so tell them. Don’t let every article be on some new marketing technique you learned on the previous night’s call with Jay Kubassek.

Here’s a great for instance. A classmate of mine from college has her own blog. Always wanting to keep a few extra pounds off, she embraced her struggles and shares her story. The result? She attracts like minded individuals who are looking to achieve results. Her readers like that she is not trying to use the blog to hawk particular products, so they see her openness and candor as refreshing. They also celebrate each others victories. That is what blogging is about! Take hold and triumph!

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Welcome to everyone

What a week this has been! More people registered with the blog this past week than ever

Pedaling Through the Past
Pedaling Through the Past (Photo credit: brizzle born and bred)

before. It would seem people are finding their way here and it is so much fun! Welcome to all the new people!

When I started this blog, the whole intent was to publish who I am so people could know and understand my story. This was going to be a means to making money. Marketing after all, is all about making relationships. How little did I know.

The journey over the last year plus has been an incredible one. I’ve started and closed an LLC. I’ve joined other programs. I’ve made many videos. I’ve learned much.

I’ve learned SEO is more an art than science. I’ve learned Premier Mentoring is a total scam. I’ve learned Marketing and getting results is hard. I’ve learned I love it all.

Normally, the postings on this blog have no I statements. Today this is being broken to show that behind this blog is a real person. A person with dreams and ideas and goals and wants and needs. A person with flesh and blood and a heartbeat. That is what makes this blog personal. That is the power.

Upcoming will be discussions on mobile marketing and getting your website ready for the mobile wave. Expecting users to pinch and expand to view your website is the past. More forward or get left behind.

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Keywords, they suck

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. That’s all I hear from various network marketers. They say to go to Google and use the adword tool. Find keywords. Use them. Work them into your content. Why?

Keywords are like bait. No, not the negative bait and switch. Rather a positive lure to pull an audience to your content. Keywords are how people are searching on content related to yours. Keywords is how search engines like Google and Bing determine what to do with your content. Keywords are what build the path to you.

Doing search for keywords is a good exercise. It let’s you determine your topic and how you style your content. They are how you organize your articles and blogs. Keywords will either lay a path to your content or leave you out in the woods.

Keywords should be specific, yet general enough to pull in more people. Get too specific, too narrow and no one will find you. Get too general, too wide and the noise will overwhelm you. Channel in between and you will pull the right amount with the right mindset. That’s the key.

Keywords are a tool. They are a tool you can use to bring the right audience to your content, whatever that may be. Know your audience. Understand what they use to search. Pull them in and grow your influence.

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Like, have fun dude!

Over and over, the same mistakes get made when marketing. It matters little if it is a video or a blog post or a capture page. All have the same mistake, the same theme. They are all too serious.

The video

In the video, the person pitching the latest and greatest whatever is well dressed and groomed. Other than their mouth, they hardly move. After all, they have a serious business to offer. They want to be taken seriously. Therefore, they are serious, so they present serious. Is there any other way?

Write to me

Blog posts that fall into the too serious category are long and boring. They ramble on and on, use eloquent and awkward speech, and seem as though their authors have swallowed a Thesaurus. The grammar is near perfect, punctuation correct and don’t have contractions. Readers leave nearly as quickly as the arrive.

Combining all of the worst

The long landing pages combine all of the bad aspects of videos and blog posts. They go on and on. The never-ending text is only interrupted by bad videos. The text is laid to use all the colors of the rainbow, multiple font sizes, bold and underline. The content is bad enough, so the author assaults the reader every which way. Oh good grief.

Have fun

Why all the seriousness? Lighten up a bit. Don’t be sophomoric. Be entertaining! Be Lively! Get your point across clearly in a relaxed manner. Don’t worry about perfection, worry about value. Introduce a comma, splice to see if anyone is paying attention. Sure, get the spell and grammar correct (at least mostly), but not to the point of awkward absurdity. After all, this is a post to get attention and make a connection. It is not a term paper or a doctoral thesis.