This week I took a challenge from online friend, Dani, on her Dani Nir-McGrath | Home Business Success Tips & Motivation, FB page to make a live video recording and post it to her page. Some participants did a business video (business as usual), some did a tour of their site as an introduction, and I chose to talk (vlog) about how we can avoid doing video by coming up with excuses – most of which are just insecurities and quite honestly unfounded and petty.

So that got me wondering … how many of you actually use video online? Is it live video or more of a screen capture video? Do you have your own insecurities that keep you from creating videos more often (or even EVER)? I for one know that if I’m looking to learn from someone online who’s “been there done that” and is even willing to take the time to record how to do something … I’m not terribly concerned about whether or not they’re having a “bad hair day” or if they’ve taken the time and energy to put on some makeup. What about you? Would that ruin your viewing experience or are you just happy to have the video to watch?

I’d love to hear your thoughts are on doing live video so please participate by posting a comment below … have you done them? Do you enjoy it? Do you feel insecure? If so, about what? Please, please, please … let us hear from you on this one ok? *SmiLes* Suzanne

P.S. And if you haven’t joined us over on my Facebook Page …. please do so (and invite me to your page too) http://www.facebook.com/suzannefrancodotcom

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A huge “Thank You” to all of your who took the time to participate in the poll and to comment. Here’s what we found:

Thanks again and I hope to have some great tutorials on the blog for you very soon! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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Do you have an eye-catching subscribe button on your blog? Here’s what you need to look at …

When you start any new site and you start to invite others to visit your site you will want to decide what you want them to do when they get there. You probably want them to do several things while they’re there so you’ll need to write those out and number them.

If you have a product for sale then you probably want to invite them to a sales page where you have sales copy for your product and their options are either buy or leave.

If you want them to read your posts and find your content valuable then you want to make reading your posts your main focus.

If you are trying to grow a mailing list or RSS subscriber base … then you want those to be the dominant feature.

For my Bikini After 40 site I want my main focus to be on gaining RSS subscribers. Eventually I will offer some nice freebies to grow my mailing list but that will come down the road.

So if my main focus is gaining RSS subscribers I want to (a) put my opt in box in a “prime real estate” area of my blog, (b) draw some attention to it, and (c) ask readers to subscribe.

I put the opt in box in the area that’s called “above the fold.” That means the part of your page that you can see when the page loads without having to scroll down the page. Then depending on where your side bar is located you would want to put it at either the top left or the top right side. Research shows that our eye scans a page in a “z” pattern … starting at the top left side … moving straight across to the top right side … then down and left … and then back across to the right so you’ll want to keep that in mind when choosing the opt in location.

To draw some attention I like to use something animated in the opt in area. I hired Chrissy Jensen to design the opt in area for the site and I think she did a great job. I told her to use the one here on suzannefranco.com as a guide and to make it match the look and feel of the bikini site.

In the box I ask readers to subscribe. Seems obvious but sometimes I just see icons and a field to fill in … and I like to make it a little more apparent that I want them to subscribe. I’m still coming up ideas for something to dangle and a call to action but I’ll get it there eventually.

Here’s the screen capture video I made for you:

So what do you think of my opt in on the bikini site? Do you have some ideas for me? I’d like to entice visitors to subscribe … do I need a good freebie? What info do you think my readership would most appreciate?

Do you know what your number one priority is for your site? Have you focused your efforts and energy there? Is it obvious to your visitors/readers? Do you have any questions I can answer? Let us hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

P.S. If  you’ve enjoyed the post and video would you please take a quick second and share it with your friends on Twitter or Facebook (or your favorite social site) … I’d really appreciate it!

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I want to wish all moms a Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you’re doing something wonderful today … whether it’s exciting or relaxing … I hope you get to see or talk to your favorite people today.

I want to share my most favorite YouTube video with you … it’s my dedication to my own mom (love you mom!) and to all mom’s in the world today. *huGs* Suzanne

P.S. She sings very fast so I chose the version with the lyrics included … Hope you get a great laugh … and it puts a smile on your face

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Well … we’ve planned our next trip to Mexico and I’m soooo stoked! In early June we’ll be taking kids down to the resort where we took our honeymoon, Dreams Puerto Aventuras, in the Riviera Maya area about 45 minutes from Cancun. It’s an all-inclusive resort and we’ll be totally spoiled. LOL We’ll also be in our bathing suits much of the time … so that means the race is on for me to lose some weight and tone up.

Since I was journaling my food and exercise and taking before and after pictures I decided to put up a blog and share my tips and ideas with others who would also like to look great in their swimsuit http://www.bikiniafter40.com. Why am I sharing that with you? Well, I am building this blog from the ground up so I thought some of you might want want to follow along and see what I do to set it up, to drive traffic, build backlinks, do the SEO, monetize, etc.

If you’d be interested in watching me I’ll be posting every so often here on the blog at suzannefranco.com and I’d love to hear any questions you have about what I’m doing with the site. I’d also love to have your feedback on the blog itself. What do you think of the concept? Of the look and feel? Of the content? All thoughts are welcome of course!

Here’s a video message:

Please leave me your comments and let me know what you’d like to learn about my new site and I’ll address it here on the blog. *SmiLes* Suzanne

P.S. If you’re looking to lose weight and/or tone up … or interested in health and fitness in general I hope you’ll join me over on the new site so we can support and encourage each other

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I’ve received a lot of emails asking me how my new business is going (blog post here: http://www.suzannefranco.com/im-starting-a-new-online-business-wanna-join-me/) so I wanted to give you an update. I purchased the Traffic Geyser “business-in-a-box” training and it included their video submission service for a year (and a bunch more quite honestly) and it was a great decision. It was $2,000 so it wasn’t for everyone but I’m at a point in my career where I was ready for it so it was well worth the investment.

I have spent a ton of time watching the tutorials (as I mention often – I’m very detailed and over analyse everything so I’m “slow” LOL) and I’ve learned a lot about how to start this business. I have also done some testing using my own businesses and so far everything is working really well. For those who aren’t familiar, the Traffic Geyser system is focused on using video submission to get page one Google results. This “business” is using that method to get local search results for offline businesses.

I can’t wait to try this for someone else’s business and so I’ll be doing some barter here soon to get my feet wet.

Did anyone here reading also start this business? If so, how’s it going? I’d love to hear from you … questions … comments? *SmiLes* Suzanne

Mardi Gras:

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So I took some time off from the blog during the holidays (still had to run my other businesses) and when I was ready to return … tragedy struck. My 12 year-old son, Nathan, crashed his dirt bike doing about 30 mph and broke his collar bone and both of his wrists (poor little guy). I already love working from home but when this happened it reconfirmed just how lucky I am to be able to truly be there for my family and to not have a boss to deal with.

If you are working a job and would like to work from home why don’t you make 2010 the year? What I’d suggest you do is to figure out exactly how much you need to make to replace your job. List out all of the expenses of working at your job (clothing, lunches, gas, etc.) and subtract that from your take home pay and see what you need to come up with. That way you’ll have a true picture of what that will take for you.

You can start out by supplementing your income and see what it will take to replace the job all together.

I took the plunge by purchasing an existing business (on eBay LOL) and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve had several people ask me what I’d charge to help them set up an online business from scratch and it’s got me thinking about doing some site flipping – which is where you set up an online business and then sell it (usually auction style) so stay tuned for any news related to that. If you’d be interested please leave a comment below and/or shoot me an email telling me what type of business you’d be interested in and let me know your budget … we’ll see what I can come up with OK?

Hope everyone is well and I’m glad to be back to work here on the blog. *SmiLes* Suzanne

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I’ve had a crazy busy week! In a good way. LOL. I’ve been trying to organize all of my sites (there are a ton of them *sigh*) and I’m evaluating each site, prioritizing them, figuring out what each site needs, looking for sites that I many need to drop (or handle differently), and just plain trying to get organized with my work. I have so much going on that sometimes I’m overwhelmed and I know I get less accomplished because of the disorganization.

So new news on my business partnership with Anthony too. We decided to get Anthony set up on his own blog (http://www.anthonyaugugliaro.com) and it’s been a great decision that we’re both really excited about. It gives him a chance to find his “voice” and niche without having to “tag along” on my site. LOL. Go check it out!

Meanwhile, we decided we’d team up on a niche site and we’re both super stoked to see what we can do with the site. It will be wine related (still deciding on the exact niche) and we’ll announce how we conquer the site as a team as soon as we get all of the details ironed out. This lead to me prompting Anthony to get his feet wet with his own niche store/site and this really got F-U-N! Anthony has been putting off starting his own site since we met (like a year and a half?!) so as any good friend would do … I started to push and get bossy! LOL. Well, he started his keyword research and he promised to follow some steps and do some “homework” by a certain time and he didn’t follow through (completely – and I’m a stickler) so he lost the bet he made with me. You can see how he made good in the video below.

As for my niche stores, I can’t believe it! After I just did my update post telling you how my income was cut fairly drastically with eBay/EPN and how I was looking for ways to diversify and drive less traffic to eBay … I’m on track to have my best month ever with them! Geez … I just don’t get at all how they are calculating my clicks or my income. I guess I need to take the time to go to their blog and forum and read up on this new payout. *sigh* So … I’ll keep you posted as the month progresses (let’s say that through the 9^th of December I’m already over my November total).

I hope you’re having a great month. Please share any questions you have either in the comments section or via my Contact page and I’ll help in any way I can. *SmiLes* Suzanne

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As you may or may not have heard, EPN (eBay’s affiliate program) has recently changed the way they pay their affiliates and most people I know have not been too happy about the changes. Although some affiliates are making more money on this new payout the vast majority are not. Not only that, people are concerned that they can’t seem to pinpoint exactly how we’re paid so that’s a bit of a concern.

My earnings from September were $528.06 and my earnings for October were a mere $298.38.

I’ve finally set out to do some maintenance on my niche stores. I’ve been slacking and I’m ready to get back into the niche store “game” and I’m willing to put in the time and energy to get the stores performing and possibly add some more stores.

I’ve written out each store I have now (there are five) and I’m in the process of evaluating their status: what I need to update/fix, what promoting would work best, and I’m trying to get an overall feeling for how each store is performing and what I could do to each to make it perform better.

I’m looking to make sure all software is updated and running the latest version (including BANS, WP, WP plugins, etc.) and I’m adding some plugins to each as well (there are various plugins designed for adding affiliate products to a WP blog). For instance, on my first three BANS stores (Build a Niche Store) I used a free theme designed for BANS stores but these stores don’t have blogs on them. I don’t want to redo the entire stores and lose my search engine positioning and/or backlinks so I’ve decided to add WordPress blogs to the “backend” of them (installed in a subfolder). The other two stores were built on a theme that was designed specifically for BANS but it’s a WP theme that integrates the BANS store on the blog. I’m upgrading everything and I’m also planning on updating the “look and feel” of some of them too. It’s also a good idea to go through each store page and make sure everything is in working order. If eBay changes a category number it can destroy your site and if you’re not monitoring the sites and/or stats you won’t know about it.

Once I have these five stores under control and performing smoothly I’ll be adding a handful of stores. I’m still deciding if I’ll be using a BANS format or if I’ll use a WordPress blog with some of the various plugins available for pulling affiliate products into the site.

My favorites are: phpBay and ReviewAzon ( and you can even integrate the two by using ReviewAzon) and I’m also beta testing two more affiliate plugins so I’ll have more information on those too.

So, although my store earnings are down with the new payment methods I still plan on working hard on my sites and hope to up my income by remaining flexible and adding some other affiliate product sources too. I’ve written before about how important it is to diversify! I’ll be looking at some other options (besides eBay) and I’ll keep you posted here on the blog as to what I find, what I try and how it works out.

Do you have any niche sites? What tools do you use and which are your favorites? Have you wanted to get started with some niche sites but don’t know where to start? Let us hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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I honestly feel that keyword research is one of the most important skills you can have as an online business owner.

I decided to use a video from my Blogging for Bucks BootCamp and I think you’ll enjoy it. If you did not make it into BootCamp you can click HERE and see if I’m still accepting new attendees.

Since the video will “show” you what I do and why I won’t go into a ton of detail here in the post.

I use a combination of tools and I honestly feel  you can get most all of the information you need by using Google’s free tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

I start with a very broad term and then use the results from the tool to drill down until I find a keyword phrase that will work for my needs. I use keyword phrases for the main title of a blog, my domain names, my file extensions, for each individual post, for anchor text, for tags and keywords … for any aspect of telling the search engines (and readers) what my site, page, or information is about.

After I find some potential keyword phrases I move on to checking out the competition. I need to know how many other pages I’ll be competing for if I use that phrase.  You want to find that “sweet spot” … enough searches to bring visitors vs. the least amount of competition for that particular term. Make sense?

So … I’ll share some of the ways I look at the competition in an upcoming lesson.

Was this video helpful? Do you have any questions? Do you have any ideas or tips that I’ve missed? Do you need help? Share your thoughts and ask your questions below and if you’d like some one-on-one attention please see my services page. Let us hear from you below and please Retweet this post if you’ve enjoyed it. Thanks! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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