Missing Link, Inc.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Would you like to target easy markets and achieve faster results? Sure who wouldn’t right? The two most important assets in every online business is the domain name and the hosting account. This is why I came up with a simple quick procedure for picking the right web domain name registration.

Research keywords

I always start by doing some keyword research using Market Samurai. My goal is to achieve quick, easy profitable front page rankings in the search engines. And since I’m so impatient I don’t like waiting months to see my site on the first page. I want result in hours, days or a few weeks.

Expired Domain Names

Next I look for expired domain names using a new tool called Domain Samurai. This is a whole course in itself (which I plan on teaching in the near future) but I really want to give you some tips in this area that will help you decide if this is right for you. Buying expired domain names is the fastest way to get a big jump on your competition. It is a well know fact that the main criteria Google uses to rank pages is the age of the domain, the page rank and the number of backlinks to the site. If you really want to get more into it there are a number of “on page” and “off page” characteristics also. I like to use the keyword in the domain because not many people realize how important this is. Using these tools it is a snap to find the perfect domain for your new web site.

Buy Your Domain Name

This is a very important and often overlooked step. No, not that you forget to buy your domain name but the registrar you select. I have seen some horror stories from people buying domains from companies or their web designers and then they go out of business. Only to be left with no access to your domain name. My first tip in this area is to ALWAYS register your own domain name. Don’t let your web designer register it in his or her name. My best two recommendations are Godaddy and Namecheap (yes, I will get a very tiny commission if you click on these links). Why do I pick these companies? Because you can buy cheap domain names, they offer great customer service and you have full control over your name servers.

Hosting

Finally, you’re going to have your web site hosted somewhere, you might as well pick a hosting service that is reliable and has been around for awhile. I recently had a customer change their hosting over to a “free” service and it has been down more than it has been online. Don’t pick some local web designer who is hosting it out of his garage. I’ve been there done that. It is more trouble than you want. Besides hosting from a reputable company like Hostgator or Hostmonster is really the best way to host your domain registration names.

Take Care,

Last week I purchased Socrates WP Blog Theme from easyauthoritysite.com and I wanted to give you an update. I’ve been installing it on multiple affiliate sites some as old as three years. I had mentioned that I was concerned about lots of false promises made by similar companies with similar products.

Well I can now tell you that the support given by easyauthoritysite.com has been amazing. My first ticket was answered in less than two minutes. Now I suspect that isn’t going to happen every time. The second ticket was answered in less than an hour, maybe less I don’t really remember exactly.

I didn’t understand the Navigation system they used but Dan explained to me that Socrates doesn’t automatically populate the main navigation bar with the WP Blog Theme pages. At first I thought this was going to be a real inconvenience but now I understand how you can completely customize these links. This is a really cool feature because normally WP Blog Themes don’t give you that option.

The footer navigation was another area of concern. However now I realize after playing around with it that you can completely customize where you want those nasty legal pages like the privacy, terms of use and the anti-spam pages. You can left or right justify these links in the footer by clicking the radio button and inserting the links (see image). The other advantage of having the footer links like this is you don’t have use the Exclude Pages Plugin.

I liked to use the Google Analytic plugin to track my traffic to my sites. Socrates WP Blog Theme gives you the option to insert the Google analytic code right into the admin area so you don’t have to worry about uploading that plugin. I struggled with this for awhile until I realized that’s just one less plugin for me or my VA to upload or configure.

So overall I’m liking this theme more and more. They have even added some more header graphics.

I hope you have enjoyed this review and please leave comments below.
Take Care,

P.S. You won’t go wrong so head over and buy Socrates WordPress Theme right NOW!

I installed my first Socrates theme on an affiliate site my son is working on this morning. I watched the 20 min video showing how a compete WordPress site could be setup and monetized using this theme.

Would this be just another false promise? I thought if this theme worked as good as they said it does I could change many of my affiliate sites that have been sitting around collecting dust.

After I purchased and downloaded Socrates I watched the video that they made on their site at easyauthoritysite.com. It was a piece of cake to install. Just use your favorite FTP program or upload the zip file in the WordPress Admin area under Appearance > Add New Themes.

After activating the plugin I clicked on the link at the bottom of the left sidebar it took a minute to figure out where to go. I soon realized that you just need to click through each of the links in the sidebar. The first link was the Layout link. With 5 layouts to choose from it’s like building your own theme from scratch but without having to spend hours learning any programming languages.

Going down the page there is an area to add your Google Analytic ID. Since I use the Google analytic plugin I wasn’t sure if I should add it here or in the plugin admin. No instructions were given. The next areas are the monetization features. Is all you have to do is click on some buttons, copy and paste some code and now you have an advertising banner or Adsense bar.

Next you just add your social media links, Facebook, Twitter and your site’s RSS feed then save your work and your site is instantly monetized. This was as easy as I have seen. I tried the several others like Affiliate Theme and was never able to get the site looking quite right.

The next link is the Navigation area. Not sure if I understand their reasoning for this section because you have to manually input the Page urls for them to display properly. This also conflicted with a plugin I use called Exclude Pages plugin. I use this so that some of the pages I want displayed only in the footer won’t be used in the site’s main nav area. I hope they fix this area and make if a little more intuitive.

Then the next link called styling was a breeze. Just pick your color theme and your done.

The header section is one of the most powerful features in this plugin. There are a number of premade header graphics that you can customize slightly and in there members area on the blog I downloaded about 40 more that I could use for later niches. The biggest benefit I see is not having to wait for my graphics guy to make me a header for my affiliate site. I save time and money with this powerful feature. The site’s name and tag line are very customizable and worked like a charm.

Finally the last link is the background. I had picked out a nice looking background and was done in about 90 seconds. Would have been less but I was playing around with different looks.

Imagine having a text file with all of this information handy and you could have a complete blog setup and monetized in 10 minutes as Joel and Dan showed in the video presentation.

So here is their feature list:

Built in Header Generator
160+ Niche Header Designs (NOW OVER 200)
Custom Navigation Bars
Optional Built In Adsense and Clickbank Ad Bar
Social Media Slider
Choose from Dozens of Backgrounds On The Fly
Custom Styling and Color Options
Affiliate Program Integration
Custom HTML Rotator
Multiple Sidebar Layouts
Internet Marketing and WordPress Training
Monetize With Any Affiliate Program or Network

My conclusion is that this theme is worth every penny they are charging. In fact I can’t believe they aren’t charging twice or three times as much. It is really cool! I have hired my son to install this on multiple sites as I have purchased a multisite license. Make sure you go over to Joel and Dan’s site at http://easyauthoritysite.com.

Disclaimer:
I have not been paid to write this review and if you use my link I will get an affiliate commission. In my opinion this was the fasted way to customize a wordpress theme and you will save hours searching for broken or incompatible themes on the WordPress site.

Take Care,

P.S. You won’t go wrong so head over and buy Socrates WordPress Theme right NOW!

If you’ve been thinking about adding an iPhone app to your Internet marketing strategy you might want to rethink your strategy. Apple announced today that they have begun “rejecting App Store software with “minimum user functionality,” the iPhone maker has now set its sights on applications that employ a “cookie cutter” formula.” This was reported this morning by AppleInsider.com.

Apple is concerned that the quality of these applications are no more than glorified web sites. Their intent for the iPhone application is to provide the user with a superior browsing experience.

So what does this mean to you? Well if you are using a template system and submitting your application to Apple there is a good chance that it will be rejected unless you have the ability to make an upscaled version that will give the user valuable content. Think about providing the user with more than RSS feeds, About page or contact page. You can read more about the annoucement here from AppleInsider.com

Take Care,