The market is flooded with capital, and more investors are putting it into private companies. That’s just one reason you need to know the value of your business. Here’s how to find it.

I can sell my businesses for more money than I ever thought possible. But then who will I be?

What is Link Love?
Link Love is all about quality. In order to achieve Link Love you must establish authority and credibility. Link Love is all about being a reputable source, often recipients of link love are the first to post breaking news that is vetted and accurate. Bloggers, webmasters and publishers reward sources they genuinely enjoy with link love.
Link Bait is often considered the evil step sister of Link Love.

What is Link Bait?
Link Bait is a hook. It is unique or even controversial content. Common sources of Link Bait include humorous items, accusations, controversy, or even implications. Link Bait is similar to ’shock and awe’; people cannot help but link because they are so intrigued (for good or bad). Link Bait often walks the line between acceptable and unacceptable.
Both Link Bait and Link Love generally result in numerous deep links, as bloggers tend to link to directly to specific articles or issues that are raised.

Not all of us are feeling the Link Love and many are not gutsy enough to use link bait with jaw dropping headlines, so what are some simple ways to garner deep links?

Link Love vs Link Bait

This is the second part of a guest post to fill in the gap whilst Im on holiday. This article was written by Anita Campbell, Editor of the award-winning Small Business Trends blog, especially for Blogtrepreneur. Please see Part 1 for points 1 to 5.

(6) Develop multiple revenue streams — Google AdSense is easy, but I have limited luck with AdSense. I’ve never made more than US$150 a month from any single site. Maybe it’s because I am not willing to plaster a site with AdSense at every turn. However, according to my friend Jim Kukral, I don’t think my experience is unusual. AdSense should be part of your revenue mix because of its ease of getting started and the fact that it runs on autopilot, but the payouts are low so don’t rely on it exclusively.

Here are some other revenue sources that I have found particularly promising: Text link ads, which tend to be more lucrative than Google ads; a few carefully-selected affiliate programs; and anything of your own that you sell on your blog.

(7) Chose affiliate programs carefully – Affiliate programs can work well on a blog, but be sure to choose carefully and limit your choices to a few quality programs:

• In my opinion the best programs are ones where the merchant will build you an affiliate site of your own and keep it updated. Once that affiliate site gets indexed in the search engines, you will have a steady flow of traffic and sales. Make sure your merchant allows you to market your own affiliate site. Otherwise, if the merchant ties your hands and won’t allow you to maximize your income, in effect you are just giving away free advertising to them.
• Experiment. It takes trial and error to find affiliate programs that resonate with your audience. I generally have to try 10 affiliate programs just to find one that performs consistently.
• Find products or services that your audience will be thrilled to learn about. For instance, go with products or services that are free to your readers, or that pay them. Think I’m kidding? Nope. In the U.S., where I am located, Cell for Cash pays people who send in their old mobile phones, and the affiliate also gets paid a fee. Programs like this are not easy to find, but they are worth the hunt.

(8) Sell something of your own — Have something of your own to sell on your blog as soon as possible. For instance, write an ebook or create a paid webinar series. Don’t overlook services, either.

Even if you are a young entrepreneur, and feel you don’t have much to sell, you really do. You can sell programming services if you are technically inclined; graphic design services if you are handy with design tools; content creation services if you are a good writer; link building campaigns. Think about it — you have something you can sell. Create a page for the products or services you sell, and link it to your blog. (This is why I love WordPress software, because it makes it so easy to create static pages just for such purposes.)

If you are selling services, every so often write a blog post that describes the kind of services you perform. Write an informative piece that illustrates some project you have done. Don’t sound like a brochure – make it useful content. You want to give people a taste of what you are capable of, with good descriptive copy that will get indexed by the search engines.

Remember, it is harder today to draw an audience to a blog, than it was a year ago. A year from now it probably will be even harder. So, don’t wait to get started. And once you start, stick it out. You need to build for the long haul and if you are going to bail out in six months, then I’ve got a piece of advice: don’t bother getting started, because you will just be wasting your time. But if you look at this as a long-haul business endeavor, you may just be amazed in a year when you look back and see your progress.

Finally - Good luck!

Check it out: You can accept credit cards on your website or blog!

You’ve prepared your business for sale and you’re ready for the market, but what is your business really worth? Or more importantly, what can you get someone to pay and under what terms?

The NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a formal agreement to collaborate on projects ranging from studying scientific-data search technology to using Google Earth flyovers for the moon and Mars.

The first collaboration between Google and NASA Ames will concern the availability of NASA information over the Internet. For example, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a statement that “soon” there will be Google Earth flyovers available for the surfaces of Mars and the moon. Additional data will include real-time weather forecasting and visualization, as well as tracking of the International Space Station and space shuttle activity.

Complete Article

The following is a guest post that I lined up to coincide with me going on Holiday! I’ve split the post into 2 sections for easier digesting. Anita Campbell is the Editor of the award-winning Small Business Trends blog. Her blog is central to her business.

People often seem surprised when I say matter-of-factly: yes, you can turn a blog into a business and make money from it.

Truth is, you can make money with just about any kind of website, and a blog is nothing more than a type of website. Of course, you have to make the right moves with your blog if you expect to make money from it. Here is my advice for any entrepreneur who wants to earn money from his or her blog:

(1) Update frequently — Update your blog several times a week, or even better, twice a day. Posting frequently gets traffic to your site, builds your audience, and gives you more pages to get indexed in the search engines. But don’t just take my word for it. According to the latest numbers from Dave Sifry at Technorati, there is a direct correlation between frequency of posting and Technorati rank. The highest ranked blogs average 53 posts a month, or nearly two a day.

(2) Be accessible - Make your email address very prominent. I’ve never understood Internet entrepreneurs who don’t want to be contacted. You are closing yourself out of potential opportunities. For instance, someone may want to hire you for a project. Or a journalist may want to interview you for a media story. They need to be able to contact you easily. Sure, you may have to deal with spam, but I figure that is part of doing business.

Put in place a good email spam filter and smile every time you see a spam message, because one day instead of spam you will see a promising opportunity arrive in your inbox.

(3) Be original – Regularly create original content, rather than always linking to news stories or other bloggers’ posts. When you create original content you give people more reason to visit your blog and link to it and talk about what you wrote. “Best of” lists, “top ten” lists, any compilation of hard-to-find resources, a tutorial or “how to” on a timely topic, product reviews – these are all good forms of original content.

For example, I regularly link to a post at Master New Media because it contains an exhaustive list of the top blog and RSS search engines, all in one place. If you have any data to share, that’s even better, because people love to get specific information they can cite.

(more…)

Check it out: You can accept credit cards on your website or blog!

A few weeks ago, my family and I felt completely drained. After a busy and hectic term at school, and a stressful pre-Christmas period at work for my Dad, we felt it was time to book our annual holiday abroad.

Tomorrow I leave for Egypt for 7 days. In that time we hope to see most of the stuff that I’ve studied at school - especially when I was younger, like the Valley of the Kings and various museums on mumification. On top of this, the weather is going to be a lot better than the freezing conditions we’re experiencing at the moment in the UK. Apparently it should be at around 24-25 degrees (which will probably be fairly cold for you Americans and Australians!).

Whilst Im away, Matt from MandLAdventures.com will be filling in and moderating and responding to comments that are left here. I’ve known Matt for quite some time now and it was in fact him who helped Blogtrepreneur get to the stage its at today. I’ve also got a 2 part guest post lined up to fill the void.

Please note however that if you Contact Me through the contact form, there won’t be a response until I get back - I’ll be leaving a note on the page anyway just to remind you.

I’ll be back on Christmas Day itself, but its alright because I don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. But, as I’ll probably be too tired to get on the net when I come back, I’ve already got a post lined up for the 25th so don’t forget to stop off after Christmas lunch!

Check it out: You can accept credit cards on your website or blog!

You may not know that I’m co-owner of an insurance agency with Jeff McElroy, president of JD McElroy Financial Advisors. Jeff and I have decided to start a free newsletter specifically for insurance professionals that will be separate and distinct from my regular NeverColdCall.com newsletter -

Insurance Selling Newsletter

If you’re reading this blog you may be wondering why the Adsense link units and skyscrapers are not appearing as usual. No, I havn’t been banned from the system - its just that I havn’t verified my contact details yet.

I requested a PIN to be sent to my address last August. I obviously didn’t receive it but then forgot to request a new one. A few days ago I was sent a letter by Adsense,

According to our records, you have not yet entered your Personal Identification Number (PIN) for your Google AdSense account. Please be aware that if you do not enter your PIN within the next 60 days, your account will be disabled and your unpaid earnings will be refunded to the appropriate advertisers.

Reading this got me quite scared - Im just about to reach the $100 payout for the first time so the idea of losing quite a few months work seemed awful. I’ve requested another PIN to be sent now, but in the mean time the following has appeared on my main accounts page:

This has taken immediate effect which is why there is no Adsense at the moment and just PSA. Im leaving them there for the moment because the problem should only take a few days to be rectified.

Check it out: You can accept credit cards on your website or blog!