I asked her to keep us posted here to let us know how it went along the way.

If you missed her other posts, you can catch up here:

• Beginning of Blog Tour Build Relationships via Your Own Blog Tour
• Update: Blog Tour Case Study

And, this is her final update, now that she's done.

Whew, it has been a very exciting Summer and beginning of Fall.

Now that the blog tour has been completed, I wanted to give you and update and share my results.

In a nutshell:

This was an incredible experience and some fantastic things have come about as a direct result of my participation in a blog tour. I could not have accomplished what I did, were it not for Nicole's incredible Blog World Tour Planner.

Nicole, thank you for the inspiration and for the opportunity to share with your readers. I'd like to list some of the incredible things that have come about as a result of my participation in this blog tour.

Since the launch of my blog tour in mid-June I have:

– Learned how to set up and participate in a blog tour as a guest blogger and a host of guest bloggers

– Teamed up with several of my participants for what will become a seasonal blog tour journey

– Interviewed each of my guest bloggers and featured them on my Web radio show

– Set up a site to feature each season, moving forward. My publisher has asked me to create a book series from this content! ConversationsAboutMarketing.com

– Received book reviews from several of my guest bloggers!

– Learned how to set up and monitor Google Analytics

– Discovered a formula for driving new traffic to my site and having that traffic and my subscribers increase significantly, each week

– Have had thousands of new visitors to my sites

– Have added over 150 new subscribers to my list

– Had a lot of fun, met some amazing people, grown my list and increased my income and my opportunities

Thank you SO much Nicole, for your encouragement as well as for putting together such a valuable guide to guest blogging!

With much appreciation,
D'vorah Lansky

Speaking of missing really cool things —
Be sure to sign up for my update list at EasyPLR.com so you don't miss any new PLR – it oftentimes sells out quickly. (If you don't know about PLR yet, it's one of the secrets that successful business owners use so they can work less and profit more.)

ok. Back to my guest blogger. My friend, D'vorah, bought my Blog World Tour Guide. While I recommend those who buy the guide start guest blogging on a small scale (if they're intimidated), she bit the bullet and decided to set out on her own Blog Tour. I asked her to keep us posted with guest blog posts here to let us know how it goes.

If you missed her first post, you can catch up here: Build Relationships and Become  Known via Your Own Blog Tour

She's now a third of the way into her own Blog Tour, so here's an update as she tracks her results…

Hi, it’s me, D’vorah Lansky from the Blog World Tour, back again with a third of the way through update on my nine-week blog tour. As you may recall, I am utilizing Nicole’s program, which she calls her Blog Tour Planner, as the foundation for my Blog Tour. This summer I am visiting nine blogs and those nine blog owners are going to be sharing their thoughts and articles with my readers on my blog.

OK, here’s the scoop. I built my blog in the middle of March and began promoting it in the middle of June. This week begins week four of the blog tour and here are my stats.

Number of unique visitors since my site launched in mid March:

(Stats derived from my awstats in my CPanel)

March 20 unique visitors
April 32 unique visitors
May 36 unique visitors
June 378 unique visitors
July 1^st – 3rd 86 unique visitors in the first 3 days of July

I activated Google Analytics on June 23^rd and from June 23^rd – July 4^th have had 158 unique visitors.

I’m not sure what this means, but I bet Nicole does… for the month of June, the awstats system reports: “54744 Hits (26.21 Hits/Visit)”. This is about 12 times the amount received in March.

Number of New Subscribers – Previously less than 1 per week – Now I am getting
4 a week on the Blog Tour site and 7 a week to my other lists.

Number of Subscribers since from March 23 – May 25 = 6 (60 days)
Number of Subscribers from June 4 – July 4 = 16 (30 days)

Number of Scribers to my other lists since June 1^st = 27
I have not actively promoted those other sites except via mention in blog tour posts!

Future Opportunities

I’ve been contacted by five more bloggers for potential guest blogging and/or JV partnership projects in the future.

What I’ve learned along the way is:

• Schedule time to write each week
• Link up my blog to the Networked Blogs application on Facebook
• Utilize the excel spreadsheet and guidelines outlined in Nicole’s Blog Tour Planner
• Select a specific hashtag for my blog tour and encourage people to tweet about the blog posts (I’m using #blogworldtour)
• Mention my commenting and tweeting contest several times a week, at the end of my blog posts
• Schedule in advance when to get and give content to/from my host and guest bloggers so that we can schedule the content to go live at a specific time and date

So, there you have three weeks worth of stats. It will be interesting to see what evolves over the next six weeks of the tour. Looking forward to sharing the details and another update at the end of the tour.

I’d be very interested in hearing from Nicole’s readers regarding their experiences being or hosting guest bloggers. Share your tips and ideas so that we can all benefit.

Thanks again Nicole, this is a blast!

—————

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
D’vorah Lansky

She'll be here this week, talking about Link Building (specifically for Beginners).

You may be wondering “Who the heck is she to teach link building?”

Well, let me tell you…

She has gotten over 50,000 incoming links to one of her sites in under 2.5 years.

(that's no typo)

What does that mean, exactly? And, why are links important?

1. Having links on other websites to yours get people to click through to your websites.If you've got links to your website all over the net, people will run into those and click through them. That's a gooooood thing. (People have wallets to spend money on your stuff.)

2. Having lots of links TO your website tells the search engines that your website is important. That way Google, MSN, Yahoo, and all the rest know you're a “real” site with “real” value.

However, I won't steal Susanne's thunder. I'll hand the stage to her.

What's the Buzz about Link Building?

By Guest Blogger Susanne Myers

I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot about link building lately. Every six months or so it suddenly becomes the “hot” topic of the week usually at the same time some new course or piece of software is released by one of the big internet gurus. But here’s the thing…  link building is something you should be doing consistently throughout the year.

Nicole was nice enough to invite me to talk to you about link building for the next couple of days. We’ll talk about what link building is and why it is important today. The next post will be about what you need to have in place before you ever start to build links to your site and then we’ll chat a bit about effective link building and how you can fit it into your busy schedule.

What Is Link Building

Definition for Beginners: Link building is the process where you go out to other websites across the internet and through various methods (many of them are free) and get them to link to one of the pages on your website. This can be done in a variety of ways.

Here are just a few examples:

Link Exchanges – These used to be all the rage and worked very well a few years ago. You would simply ask a website owner to link to your website and would offer to do the same for them.

Article Marketing – Every time you write and submit an article to an article directory or another website, you are including an author resource box with a link back to your site. That’s a link building strategy – a really good one in fact and one I am dedicated two lessons to in my 13 week link building class.

Guest Blogging – Do you remember when Nicole went on her guest blogging tour last summer? She gained a lot of exposure and traffic, but also a lot of powerful links to various pages on her site. Guest blogging is another great link building strategy.

Link To Me Page – Something as simple as setting up a page on your blog or website that tells people how they can link back to you can be effective over time. You’ll be surprised how many fans of your site would love to help spread the word for you but don’t realize that they can link to you.

Those are just a few link building strategies.

If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to take my beginner link building class were we’ll cover those strategies and more in great detail.

Why Is Link Building Important

But why do you need to worry about building links in the first place? Let me answer that question with another question. Could you use some more traffic, more people to your website and thus more subscribers and more customers? I’m sure you could, I know I can.

Link building is how both visitors and search engines find you in the first place. Think back on a time (maybe even today) when you were surfing the web, going from page to page, clicking on links and coming across some really neat stuff. You wouldn’t have found those sites if other websites didn’t link to those.

More importantly though, incoming links will help you rise in the search engine rankings. Let’s say you sell an ebook on underwater basket weaving. Just imagine how much traffic and how many buyers you could get to your website if you were the first page to come up in Google anytime someone types in “underwater basket weaving”.

Link building is one of those things that should always be on your mind and more importantly something you should do on a regular basis. Let me share with you how I go about building links and how I was able to accumulate well over 70,000 links pointing to just one of my niche websites.

Sign up today at How to Get Links: A Course for Beginners

Thanks, Susanne, for stopping by. I look forward to more posts from you this week.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. I'm an SEO geeky type person. But, when I have a question about SEO, I go straight to Susanne. So, if you're ready to rise up through the Search Engines, be sure to check out her course.

If you're new, you can catch up here:  Cross-blog conversation with Trish Lindemood.

In the opening discussion, I mentioned that Trish is a very talented writer and I was immediately impressed with her. Well, I continue to be impressed with her as I get to know her better. Her reply to my question was very much in line with my opinion – so she MUST be smart!

If you missed her second post in our cross blog conversation, here it is:  Cross Blog Conversation Continues

Here's my response to Trish's second set of questions:

Hi Trish,

Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I LOVE your response to my question about why you, a highly skilled copywriter, would support the use of PLR articles when it's looked down upon by so many others in your profession.

You made an excellent distinction between your own online business and the work that you do for clients.  Very nicely stated. And, yes, I certainly never would encourage a copywriter or ghostwriter to pass off PLR content as their own writing on a job for a client, ever.

In your response to me, you asked this:

I’ve been looking at your Blog World Tour program for a while now and am planning to buy it after the 90-Day Content Marketing Challenge concludes. In fact, I’m thinking about “packing my bags and heading out” on such a tour after NAMS 3 in January – but was wondering if this approach would work better for someone who already has an information product to promote?

As the creator of this very cool concept, do you feel  this plan would be beneficial to someone who doesn’t have their own info products to promote?

I've got a few thoughts that I'd like to share regarding your question.

First of all, Guest Blogging can be done by anyone in online business, at any time.

Becoming a Guest Expert on a related blog is ALWAYS a good thing to do. Anytime you can get your message in front of potential customers and get exposure and attention as an authority – do it. So, yes.

I know your business has a few different areas so I'll see if I can hit them all.

From what I've seen so far, you are a –

• Copywriter.
• SEO Expert.
• Affiliate Marketer.
• Blogger.
• Newsletter Publisher.

And, I'm sure I'm missing a few areas of your business.

Every single one of those areas can benefit from Guest Blogging, which is what the Blog Tour Guide is *really* about. Yes, having an affiliate program can give you an extra “in” with the blog owner, but just offering valuable content can also get you in the door with many very popular sites that are looking for regular columnists.

So, my answer is “YES” – find a few blogs and get the word out about your business. (Of course, my Blog Tour Guide will help!)

I'd like to ask you another question if that's ok.

I've been participating in a discussion about ethics on another site (which I'll post about in a few days) but one major takeaway for me is that it is not only my goal, but it's my duty to help Online Business Owners to invest their money wisely – especially now when money is tight for so many.

I know that you're a member of online at Lynn Terry’s Elite Mastermind Group. (Since I chat with you in there.)

And, you've mentioned that you'll be attending the NAMS Conference in Atlanta in January – which is awesome, too.

So, tell me. What made you choose to invest in those things? And, do you feel they've benefited you? In what ways?

Looking forward to your reply.

Warmly,
Nicole

PS. Be sure to check Trish's blog: Web Copy Results for her response.

The concessioners were smart, though. They didn't just sit in the concessions booth and hope that I'd come find them. They came to where the people were already gathered. The Booster Club moms and dads grabbed trays of popcorn and cotton candy and started hiking through the stands, and making lots of sales.

They came to where the hungry people were already gathered.

Smart. Very smart.

I bought. And, bought some more.

There is a huge lesson in this for your business.

You have a blog, squeeze page, or sales page and you are desperate to get people to it. You're the concession stand. You may have the BEST stuff there in the world – the tastiest nachos or the biggest assortment of candy, but the people won't come unless you bring them there – or unless you go and find them.

You may also be adding tons of interesting content to your websites and blogs, or you may have the world's best product, but it's just not enough to attract the amount of web traffic that you're looking for.

So, what's a smart marketer to do?

Take the show on the road. Go to where the traffic is and intercept it.

“Steal” it, if you will.

But, how do you do it? The traditional way has been with article marketing. Now, I'm not knocking article marketing and I'm not going to tell you that it's dead, but I will ask you a question.

How do you stand out?

Right now, at EzineArticles.com their site says they have 210,706 Expert Authors. Wow. That's a whole lot of competition.

Have you ever thought of cutting out the middle man and getting directly in front of your target audience? That's what I'd like to suggest. I did it and it worked like a charm.

Here's the story:

This past summer I hosted a Blog World Tour. You may have heard of Guest Blogging and that's basically what this is, except I found a few tricks to make it even more powerful and effective.

At the end of the summer, these were the results…

• I had been featured in 15 different ezines.
• I had endorsements and links on 15 highly relevant blogs.
• I had gotten 15 active JV partners.

And, I now have a WAITING list of people who want me to ‘steal' their traffic, too.

Want to know how I did it?

I revealed my entire system in my new report: Click here to check it out.

Be sure to send me your results after you put the plan into motion. I can't wait to cheer you on!

Warmly,
Nicole