"Dang, yet another social networking tool to get addicted too!" That was my first thought when I started hearing about Pinterest. If you haven't heard by now, Pinterest is a visually stunning, cool image repository where you can create boards and "pin" images to your wall. It's fun and, dare I say, addicting!  Well, nowadays, with a small business, we have to use all tools necessary and available to us to grow and Pinterest is one of them. At first, I held out on joining because I thought: who has time for another tool? Aren't Facebook and Twitter enough? Well, it depends on your business and who your audience is. However, I'll venture to say that even if you don't think it's best for you yet, go ahead and get invited (if you need an invite, let me know!) and at ...

One day I was wondering where all of my blog traffic come from. Well, I didn't have to wonder long since I have Google Analytics installed (and you should too if you don't already! It's free and easy to install - https://www.google.com/analytics).  So I logged in and went to Traffic Sources >> Sources >> and clicked on Referrals. And voila! After Google and some of the social media sites I promote my posts on like Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon, I found that there were several sites that sent me good traffic! See the images below regarding what I found in my Referrals section.   (Here is how you access Referrals in Google Analytics)    (CLICK ON THE IMAGES BELOW FOR FULL SIZE)     ...

Building backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) for two reasons. The first reason is that it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is very important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly. The second reason is that it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice. The more backlinks you have, the better. Period. However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming, boring process. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money OR you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee! SocialMonkee is an instant backlink builder allowing you to build 25 unique backlinks, every day, FREE! All links are on unique C-Class IP addresses ...

Today, there is no shortage (no pun intended!) of URL shorteners. As a matter of fact, there are hundreds. Why? Well, there are several reasons people use URL shorteners including prettying up links, fixing links, and link tracking. In addition, the introduction of micro-blogging sites, like Twitter, created the demand for URL shorteners because, as I'm sure you've noticed, URLs take up a lot of space and we only have 140 characters! The most popular choices I see most often include bit.ly, owl.ly, ht.ly, budurl, and tinyurl (my old favorite when I first learned about URL shorteners years ago!). But because I see the use of Hootsuite's URL shortener - ht.ly - increasing, I want to warn people that ht.ly isn't your friend! Hy.ly doesn't pass you any link juice (meaning it does not do a 301 permanent redirect to your website) and we're in this ...

Ever wonder why it feels you're spinning your wheels? Not moving as fast as you wanted? Not where you want to be in your business by now? Well, never fear because I will show you the 5 fatal mistakes service professionals make so you won't have to (or stop making them if you've already fell into the trap)! I like stats so let me show you a few... In an interview of approximately 1,400 self employed professionals in a nationwide survey to discover the characteristics of the top earners, here's what was  found:*

• 73% of all self employed professionals earn less than $10,000 their first year
• Only 11% of them make more than $50,000 by their 2nd year
• Less than 60% have 10 paying clients
• And only 9% ultimately earn more than $100,000 a year