Empty Streets Special: Hubspot

I have gotten a lot of emails from readers that are interested in starting their own blog so they can earn extra income on the side. I normally say that all it takes are the following:

• Self evaluation of interests (necessary if targeting your own niche)
  
• Perseverance and Passion
• Patience
• Creativity
  
• Constant Study
• Mentorship (finding mentors in this industry is an absolute must)
• Love of writing and sharing (this is the basis of why blogs were made in the first place)
• Constant Monitoring of Traffic and Readers
  

Fortunately the first couple of bullets are easy to obtain with a little help from family and friends. But what happens after you have done everything and things are still a little bit in the runt? Then expert help is the best way to go. One such expert that I would like to commend is Hubspot. Hubspot has in more ways than one allowed me to see where my blogs stand in the market and even allows me to view what my competitors have that I need to work on. They have proven to be very helpful in providing marketing tips and tricks that has allowed me to increase my traffic and maintain a constant readership.

Here is more about them based on their website:

HubSpot^® is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers for maximum marketing ROI.

HubSpot inbound marketing software helps your company get found by the qualified prospects that are looking for the products or services that you sell in search engines, blogs and the blogosphere, and social media. Once these qualified visitors are on your website, HubSpot helps you convert more of them into leads and paying customers through landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics.

HubSpot is web-based, does not require any IT staff, and is designed to be used by a marketing person, not a techie. Our company, our blog and our products have been featured in the Wall Street Journal Online, MarketingSherpa, PC Magazine, AdAge, and MarketingProfs.

Now Hubspot does not only focus on websites. They have acknowledged and even demonstrated how blogs such as this one and millions of others are reshaping the Marketing Industry. They have even come up with blogging tips that is free for all and is an eye opener for both tenured and newbies alike. Check it out: Hubspot Blogging Kit

With all that said, I guess it is time for you to try it out and start blogging. Over all simply follow what you feel you like to share and talk about. Eventually, the shape of your blog and the people that read it shall follow.

New layout new Advertising Grade: C/O Website Grader

With a new image comes a new grade and with our revamp of our template to further enhance our look and feel apparently has also enhanced our advertising rate according to website grader :) Before our upgrade our grade was an alarming 77% out of a 100% but now with a major overhaul and reformatting of our site we finally got a whopping 92% out of 100% which is majorly awesome. So for those that are seeking to adversitise with us and those that already are on our permalink am sure you will all be happy as much as we ourselves are. With that note am sure a lot of you may be wondering what Websitegrader is and just to help you get started check out their site here

Website Grader

I strongly recommend them as they not only provide your grade as a publisher of ads but it also teaches you how to maximize it. So go on and give it a try, wont hurt at all and fun part about it is it is all free.

Marketing Tips: Hubspot's 5 Tips to Make Your Site a Marketing Machine and Much More.

This Is a video made by Hubspot that talks about the 5 tips on how to turn your website into a marketing Machine.

After going through the video myself I have come to understand the different methodologies and principles that not only apply to website marketing itself but to how people buy stuff in general. This video has simplified the way one looks at the modern marketing industry and shows off how we bloggers have played and can continue to play an important role in the way a business is made and to be more specific marketed.

To help guide you as you start watching the video, here is the summary of the 5 basic steps into making your website a marketing machine:

1. On Page SEO - give search engines the right clues to help them understand what your website is about and what types of people should find your website

2. Off Page SEO - Each link into your site is a “vote” that tells the search engine that your site is important.

3. Blogs - Blogging is a great way to get more traffic from the right audience

4. Convert Visitors to Leads with Forms - you need to capture more of this traffic through lead capture forms

5. Analyze - Marketing is all about measurement and optimizing your activities based on the previous results

Another helpful tool that has helped me out in marketing my website (Empty Streets is now number 2 in organic clicks if one types in "Empty Streets" :) ) is the site called Websitegrader which grades and rates your site based on how effective it is in terms of product and article marketing and it even provides you with a very useful and free analysis of your site. A more detailed analysis of course though would entail a price but with what they can dish out for your site first hand is good enough to start with.

I have also been asked by some readers and fellow bloggers what site would best provide for the constant monitoring and analysis of traffic and site performance without having to shell out serious cash and my answer to them is - Statcounter - a site that tracks traffic activity and much more. What I love about this site is that it contains so many reports that you can use to analyze your site's performance from traffic to what Browser your readers are using. It also allows one to download an excel sheet format of the results which is handy for those that get serious about tracking site performance on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and even yearly basis. All this is provided for by Statcounter for free and installation is as easy as putting a widget on your site.

With all this being mentioned I do hope it has been helpful... Till the next time - xoxo

webbizideas: Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

I have been scouring the web looking for tutorial to help new website builder and bloggers about SEO. This is vital especially in gaining readership and increasing ROI in the time and money one spends in marketing a website and it's content. When I first started it was like a blind person trying to walk around a place filled with so many people telling me where to go so with the introduction of this tutorial By Webbizideas has been a blessing in disguise. It has taught me a lot and given me a lot of those aha moment and oooh so that is how it is done :) So if you are serious about your site and moneytizing or even just want to increase your site's popularity simply watch and enjoy the clip prepared by Webbizideas:



I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial as much as we have. Till the next time. xoxo

Blog Application that wont slow your site down

There are a lot of widgets and applications out there in the market but none can compare to the fun interactive widgets that wont slow your site down and more importantly add spice to your site and make it look pretty.

You probably have noticed it the first time you opened my page. That flash of featured articles and on the side an animated recent article list and a fully animated tag cloud that links up to articles without having the reader leave the page to see what is to see allowing them freedom to choose if that is truly what they want to read or not. And of course my soon to be highly useful suggestion box that allows the readers to suggest an article to write about to help fight that writer's block that creeps up unsuspectingly every so often.

These two application providers are:

http://www.wowzio.com/
and
skribit.com


Wowzio provides that pretty slide show you see and the sidebar plugins that are dependent on your rss feed.

Skribit.com is responsible for the suggestion box.

All these applications are so easy to use and better yet absolutely free. On a personal note as you have read earlier it also doesn't slow your site down in anyway. Which is something I desperately need since my site is over 200k in size just on this page alone so hopefully as I go along and learn how to further streamline Empty Streets for your viewing pleasure be guaranteed that I will be posting it here.

Also Please pay a visit to the links collections that we have here as it is a sure help for those with a particular interest or need. Each of the links have been categorized and we constantly check them daily for quality and if they are of course still exist.

Hope this has been a big help for all of you new site builders and old alike till the next time. xoxo