“Earlier, I Googled the local gyms in my town.

I found the place I wanted, and just before I made the phone call, I realized that Google had something that said “write a review.”

I did, and immediately after submitting it, there was suddenly a little review, with a “chrisbrogan.com” prominently displayed beside it.

When I clicked the link, it went to my Google Profile.

Whoa, I thought. Matrix “whoa.”

Because, hey, that’s like, free advertising. Non?”

Read the rest here.

Styletime have launched a blog contest fund raiser against poverty for BlogActionDay in which you can win some fantastic prizes, including:

All you have to do is write a blog about the competition and donate a minimum of $1 to charity through the donation page, and you’ll be entered into the draw.

I promised I’d help to promote it, so that’s my bit done Now it’s over to you lot – get blogging!

Nikki Pilkington

| Perfect Networker

We know from our overflowing inbox that lots of you have questions about Google Adwords.

It seems so easy – sign up, post some ads, get traffic, make money.

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This FREE e-book will help you through the process of setting up and making money from your Google Adwords account – download it now with our compliments

See below for a full chapter list:

• “Are You Prepared To Profit From Instant Web Traffic?”………………………….4
• “10 Minutes To Instant Web Traffic”…………………………………………………..10
• “Keyword Research Basics”……………………………………………………………..23
• “How to Write Ads that Attract Clicks”……………………………………………….33
• “Tracking Ads and Landing Pages”……………………………………………………45
• “Adwords Keyword Strategies”…………………………………………………………55
• Bonus Chapter – Finding Profitable Markets……………………………………….63
• Bonus Chapter – Finding High Paying Adsense Keywords……………………..72
• Bonus Chapter – Finding Profitable Keywords…………………………………….78

So what are you waiting for? It’s here, it’s fab and it’s FREE

For a long time I used Google Analytics to provide webstats for me and for my clients – and it worked. Great stats, pretty graphs, nice figures – everything I needed.The problem I had was that I couldn’t get real time stats – I had to wait until the next day, by which time in some cases it was too late to react to surges in traffic.

I needed something that showed me what my visitors were doing and where they were coming from NOW, not yesterday!

And then I found GetClicky.

As they say about themselves:

Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.

It’s the high level of detail, combined with the fact that I can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW that makes GetClicky the perfect stats tool for me.

So what do you get?

The Dashboard:

The dashboard is an overview of the traffic to your site – telling you how mny visitors you’ve had (and showing you trends in a nifty little graph), how many actions those vistors have taken (eg where have they gone in your site), where your visitors have come from, what search phrases they have used and which pages they have visited.As an overview of your traffic, it’s very useful, but it’s in the nitty gritty that getClicky excels, and that’s what’s more exciting to me.

Visitors

The Visitors tab gives you a list of all your recent visitors, and tells you where they came to your site from.You’ll know what time they visited, what their IP address is, how many actions they took on your site, and if the referrer was a search engine, what search phrases they used.

This can be filtered in a number of ways and is very useful information.

Actions

I love the Actions tab as it shows me what each and every visitor has doen on my sites. I can see that one visitor has come to the site from an article that was Stumbled on Stumbleupon, and has not only read that article, but has clicked on the links in it to go to external sites, returned to my site and read some more articles, and even whether they have clicked on an email link to email me. By the time I receive the email I probably already know who they are and what they’ve been looking at and can tailor my reply accordingly – how cool is THAT?

Content

The content tab shows me which pages of my site are being visited, which are the entrance pages, exit pages, which of my files are being downloaded (in my main site, www.nikkipilkington.com, I have PDF versions of my internet marketing articles – this view tells me how many downloads they get every day) and more.

Links

Like most other traffic stats, this tells me where my visitors are coming from. But unlike most other traffic stats, it also shows me which links a visitor is clicking on to LEAVE my site.

This is great – I know whether links in my articles are being visited, recommendations are being followed, links to other sites I own are being clicked – even down to whether someoneclicks on an email link. I can also track visitors that leave to read something I have recommended and then come back! This to me is vital information and one of my favourite GetClicky features.

Searches

The searches tab shows me the latest search phrases I am being fond for on search engines – it’s always interesting to see the searches that bring people to my various sites – intended and unintentional

Spy

This is my favourite GetClicky tab of all.

I can see, in REAL TIME, visitors on my site. I can see which pages they are clicking on, which files they are downloading, external links they are following, and more.

It allows me to react to visitors almost instantly – if I can see that lots of people are on Using Twitter for Business part one on my Business on twitter site, I can quickly amend the page to add a link to other more recent articles I may have written, in order to drive traffic there. If I see that lots of people are clicking on an external link to someone else’s blog, I can make sure I let the blog writer know, and investigate any synergy we may have to exploit the large amounts of traffic.

The spy tab has a multitude of uses – but I warn you, it’s very addictive

All in all I think GetClicky is as close to perfect as a real time web stats tool can get.

Pricing?

There is a free service, which doesn’t include the Spy tab, and if you sign up now you’ll get a free 21 day trial of the Premium service, which is what I use. It’s only $60 for the year and you can pay monthly – it’s well worth the investment to have your traffic stats NOW instead of tomorrow.

So, why not given it a go? Sign up now at Get Clicky and let me know how you get on!

FREE STEPS TO HEAVEN

Leading Internet Marketing expert Nikki Pilkington releases acclaimed E-Book FREE for one day only!

Author and Internet Marketing Legend Nikki Pilkington reveals the secrets to website success in her acclaimed E-Book ‘299 Steps to Website Heaven’, available for FREE download for one day only – August 1^st 2008.

You may have the most innovative, extraordinary product on the market, but isn’t it frustrating that no one ever visits your website? You may as well hand it to the competition, along with the profits!

These days, web presence and Search Engine rankings are vital to the success of your business.   If you’re clueless about web presence, stuck down in the rankings, baffled by keywords and dumbfounded by density, you need this FREE E-Book. Without this crucial inside-information, you’re leaving a critical element of your Internet Marketing to chance.

But there’s so much conflicting advice from experts, it’s easy to be confused and it’s hard to know the truth. Search Engine Optimizers employ a wide variety of tricks and techniques to provide demonstrable results to their clients.  These SEO experts are more than happy to charge you an arm and a leg for it too!   If your business can afford the monthly expense of SEO support from an expert, that’s great!  But for the rest of us, there’s Nikki Pilkington’s 299 Steps to Website Heaven.

Imagine the time and money you could save by doing it for yourself!  And you can, because Nikki Pilkington’s 299 Steps to Website Heaven gives you concise, clearly written tips for optimizing your own website.

Following Nikki’s expert advice, you will learn to:

• Understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization
• Choose and employ Killer Keywords in just the right density
• Utilize your new knowledge to gain Higher Search Engine Listings
• Communicate effectively with SEO Professionals

With these valuable secrets in your own hands, you’ll benefit from the measurable differences in just a few weeks.   You’ll spend less time looking for customers, as increased traffic brings them directly to you!

This strictly limited offer E-Book is yours absolutely free to download on 1^st August 2008 (GMT).

If you’d like to take advantage of this exclusive offer to download 299 Steps to Website Heaven completely FREE, click here to sign up –  or contact Nikki directly at Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com

Thanks Neil!

I seem to recall I once attended a ‘virtual’ Ecademy meeting in Second Life too – I’ll say nothing about how queasy that made me feel

However, it caught on and people loved it – people are doing business on there and selling virtual and real things, and all power to ‘em I say!

News comes out today though that Google are launching what might be a serious contender to the Second Life throne – Lively. I’ll be sure to put it on my list of things to try, but I’d love to here from those of you that decide to use it

A New Morning blog says:

Google just launched “Google Lively“ which is a free, browser-based virtual environment with tight integration to social networks like MySpace, Facebook and OpenSocial, as well as Google gadgets like Picassa and YouTube. You can create an avatar and chat with your friends in rooms you design with Google Lively.

 More here

She says:

When users come to your site for the first time they immediately want verification that you are delivering what they are looking for – this happens within the first 10 seconds of landing on your site.  In those 10 seconds you must impress, validate and earn their confidence that you are truly offering what they are searching for.

 

So what can we do to make sure your visitors are staying on your site once they have arrived?  You can break it down into 4 segments and address each one of them on your own site to make sure you are making a great first impression and not creating more “back button syndrome.”

 

To begin with it is not always about the design of your site but encompasses many factors like SEO, Marketing, Design and Research.

 

Read more here –>

Tagverts

We’ve already gained a couple of customers because of our no cost tagvert, so that’s good enough for us to recommend it to you

It’s easy to sign up, costs nothing and although it doesn’t attract millions of visitors, it’s starting to make waves and now is a good time to get in there!

They’re also offering a FOC front page banner. so if you have a banner that you use elsewhere, you may as well take them up on it.

www.tagverts.co.uk

OK, we get a lot of visits to this page. We also get a lot of phone calls to our office, and comments left below, the majority of which I remove for being abusive. So I’m afraid I’m going to shout: WE’RE NOT GOOGLE! All we’ve done is provide a customer support phone number for them – in the post, below. Please stop calling us and asking poor Leigh: “Are you Google?” or we’ll consider setting up a premium number…. thanks!

When you’re spending money with Google, it’s nice to know you can get hold of them, right?

Well they don’t make it easy, but there is a number that connects to their very helpful customer support department in Ireland. Make sure you know your Customer ID number (in the top right hand corner of your Adwords account), then give them a call on 0845 358 0038 – you have to press 2 and then enter your ID number once connected.

They’re very good at calling back when they say they will, and can sort most problems very quickly.

[Edited to add 14/08/09 - an email in today tells us: "Your Google phone number has been very good but they have changed the option 2 to enter your ID and then give a recorded message to got to the web help menu. "]