My friend Leigh Kostiainen recently redesigned my Facebook, Twitter and YouTube themes all to match. You can see the before & after of each of those pages in this quick video:

Even if you already “like” my Facebook Page, you can view the Welcome page here that new visitors see when they arrive: ClickNewz Welcome Page on Facebook. You can also see Leigh’s work on my Twitter Profile and my YouTube Channel.

Leigh is now offering these services at Advanced Fan Page Solutions. As my friend (which she can tell when you go through that referral link) you’ll receive a discount. Just use the coupon code “49special” at checkout.

This will give you a $49 discount on the Premium Service.

Check out my pages at the links above, and notice the branding across those social media channels. If you are branding your online business (and you should be!), you’ll want to have custom designs on your social media profiles as well.

Leigh offers a great, affordable service – and she’s a pleasure to work with! I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted when we started, but she has a great eye for things – and a creative streak that really complements her technical skills.

You’ll notice that I have a custom Welcome Page on Facebook for new visitors, and a welcome video with a working opt-in box so that they can subscribe to ClicKNewz right there on Facebook. There are also new tabs that feature my latest tweets, YouTube videos, let people share the page with their friends, etc. It provides a lot more content and options for interaction.

These updates are all brand new, so I am now looking into ways that I can promote my social profiles more and grow those networks. I’ll be sharing tips and ideas with you along the way as I test things, of course. But it only made sense to get my branding in place before creating the marketing strategy.

If you’ve been searching for Facebook Fan Page Design, or help with your social media profile branding across the board, talk to Leigh. You’ll really enjoy working with her, and I think you’ll be very pleased with the results!

Visit Advanced Fan Page Solutions Use Coupon Code: 49special

Best,

“I am trying to figure out where to start with internet marketing. I just read your post about lifestyle and I know the kind I want for my family, I just don’t know where to start…”

-Lynn Woolums Smith
http://life-inbloom.blogspot.com

Hi Lynn! I actually hear this question a lot, so you’re not alone. In fact there are 161 searches every day for “how to make money online for beginners” and more than 700/day for “how to make money online”…

There are a number of ways to make money online. Options range from creating your own product to sell online, making money as a professional blogger, managing an online community, developing a content site on a hot topic – just to name a few.

All of these are just various ways to deliver content online. Your first step will be choosing a niche, which is the market or topic you are going to focus on.

Speaking of focus, with so many options to make money online – focus is key. You want to choose a niche and a business model, and work on that one project all the way from start to profit. Don’t let all the other options distract or derail you.

Once you decide on a topic or niche, you should sit down and map out a plan for your internet business model. What market are you targeting, and how can you best serve that market? This is the angle you want to work from, vs the more common: how can I make the most money from this market? (Most people get it backwards and then get frustrated when that doesn’t work out for them)

See: How to Become a Market Leader in Your Niche

So you choose a niche, create a blog or website, set up social media profiles to interact with your target market on the topic, and you create and share useful content that will build your reputation and readership in that niche.

I can hear what you’re saying…

“That all sounds great, but how do I make money from it?”

How to Make Money Online (For Beginners)

The absolute easiest way to make money online is with Affiliate Marketing. You don’t have to create a product, set up a shopping cart and merchant account, do customer service, work with clients, etc. It’s very much like a traditional commission-based sales job where you earn commission on any sales you refer.

The difference is that you’re doing it online, and you can do it from home without ever doing in-person or phone sales. You simply recommend products and/or refer people to specific merchants through the content on your website.

The method I prefer is creating SEO Content, or content that is optimized to rank well in the major search engines. People find it when they are searching for that, click through, and buy what they need or want. This works really well because you write the content once, and it continues to rank well and earn you money for years to come. As long as you maintain your search engine rankings.

“How can I make 3-4k a month or more? What steps will it take to get there?”

I know this is stating the obvious, but it should be said: It takes time, work, and being both persistent and consistent. An online business is the same as any other business in that it requires an investment on your part to get it up and running. The positive side of online business is that it takes a lot less time and money than most traditional offline business models.

I recommend that you do these steps, in this order, to start:

• Choose Your Niche
• Register a Domain Name
• Set up a Website or WordPress Blog
• Set up a Facebook Page and Twitter account
• Download and read SEO Fast Start (free)
• Create Optimized Content for your Site/Blog
• Sign up for Affiliate Programs in your niche
• Write Product Reviews for those products
• Get links pointing to your pages or posts
• Continue creating content, getting links & interacting via Social Media

Once you get all this set up and you’re making money as an Affiliate, you can look at other ways to monetize your site. You might create short reports on your topic to sell, test contextual advertising, or look into even more methods to make money.

Yes it’s work. And yes – it’s worth it!

If you do these steps, and continue to learn & tweak as you go, you’ll start earning money. You can increase your traffic (number of visitors) and your income as you continue to grow and market your website. It takes time to get to a consistent $3-5K per month in revenue, but you could easily do that within the first year.

Best,

p.s. Lynn was referring to my Lifestyle & Income of a Super Affiliate post. Give that a read if you haven’t already as it will give you a sneak peek into my life and success doing the exact things I outlined here. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment below.

Every single day I wake up and take daily action towards my goals. I rarely ever achieve anything monumental in a single day. And on the days that I do, it’s a result of all the steps and tasks I’ve completed on all of the days leading up to that one.

Sometimes I get that nagging feeling that I should be further along on a project than I am. That there are entirely too many itty bitty mundane tasks to achieve. There are days it feels like I’ve been working on it forever, and wonder if I will ever get it to the point of completion. And then I do…

I’m working on multiple projects at the moment. If that sounds like a contradiction to my “start to profit” teaching, keep in mind that I am already in profit.

When you get to a point of securing a passive base income in your online business, you’ll have the free time and resources to work on new projects. I also outsource a heckuva lot. Another perk to having achieved that “start to profit” model.

It’s 9am on a Saturday morning as I write this. Already today I have:

• set up a new ClickBank account for one of my products
• created and customized the Aweber mailing list for a new site I’m launching
• sent off a blog interview request
• outsourced a task to someone who is better at it than I am
• secured affiliate links & graphics for 3 new products I want to review
• added a new backlink to a page I want to rank well

… and of course I’ve answered blog comments, questions on my discussion forum, answered a dozen or so emails, updated my social media profiles, wrote a blog post, had a quick meeting with my programmer – and did a load of laundry.

So now I’m off to a fun lunch and a nice break with @GinaParris, after which I’ll probably enjoy a long afternoon nap, and then I’ll get back to work.

Daily action. That’s what it’s all about. No matter how small the tasks seem, they still have to be done. Every task is one step closer to the goal. Then one day you look up and realize just how far you’ve come.

I’m amazed at what I’ve accomplished in the last week, just getting up and going through one step after the other every morning… Even more so when I look back over my 13 years in business. Makes me want to light up a Virginia Slim!

What have you accomplished today?

Best,

p.s. Sometimes the tasks come with a learning curve, sometimes you’re not even sure what tasks you should be doing to achieve your specific goals. Anytime you have a question – technical or otherwise – just stop by my discussion forum. We’ll help you out!

When I say “Vanity URL” you automatically associate that with Facebook’s recent land grab where they allowed users to display their preferred username in the profile URL.

Example: www.facebook.com/lynnterry

But what I’m actually referring to is a true Vanity URL, which is a domain name that you register and then point to your social media profile. Example: LynnTerryonFacebook.com

A vanity URL is a domain name, created to point to something to which it is related and indicated in the name of the URL. In many cases this is done by a company to point to a specific product or advertising campaign microsite. In theory, vanity URLs are creatively linked to something making them easier to remember than a more random link. source: wikipedia

I understand the reasoning, or I believe I do. I use domain redirects for affiliate promotions all the time. The perk is “owning the property” so you are at liberty to redirect that link elsewhere at any time…

My question is: why put so much stock and energy into a social media profile? If that particular social media site disappears in the future, what’s the big deal?

I recommend you put your time & energy into your own properties. Use the social media sites as they are meant to be used for sure – but for the most part you should focus on building your content and your brand on your own web pages.

I see a lot of people creating URLs like this, such as lynnonfacebook.com or lynnontwitter.com – meaning you buy domain names and redirect them to your profile pages – but honestly… it seems pretty much pointless.

I use “lynnterry” consistently as my username, so you’ll easily find me at:

http://www.facebook.com/lynnterry
http://www.youtube.com/lynnterry
http://www.myspace.com/lynnterry
http://www.twitter.com/lynnterry

Not only is my username consistent, so I can easily say “I’m /lynnterry on any of the major social sites – let’s connect!” but it also keeps the continuity with the social URLs as well. People that use twitter or facebook know the typical URL to find a user, so a domain name is just another point of potential confusion – or an unnecessary thing for them to remember.

Agree or disagree?

If you create vanity URLs for your social media profiles, I’d love to hear your reasoning on it.

Best,

Questions are frequently asked with regards to how social media and search engine rankings can be used together. In fact, I wrote an article on this subject a while back, in which I asked a few search engine marketing experts their thoughts about where social media fits into the SEO equation.

The general consensus seemed to be that social media is a good channel for people to discover your content and link to it on their blogs and sites. But what about just getting your Twitter page ranked on Google? Some think that social media profiles could take the place of corporate websites. If this is the case, you would certainly want your profile to rank well.

An article from Source Square looks specifically at SEO for the Twitter page. The author of this article details the five steps outlined here:

1. Use search engine-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.

2. Use reader-friendly keywords in your Twitter name.

3. Use keywords in your "more info" URL

4. Flood your one line bio with keywords (while maintaining natural readability)

5. Tweet quality contents, and build lots of links

In a recent interview with WebProNews, Dana Todd of Newsforce, who is a board member of SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), talked about how social media frequently accounts for up to half of the top ten search results on Google for any given query. Perhaps more attention should be paid to the optimization of social media profiles.

More WebProNews Videos

It stands to reason that similar tactics to those listed above could be applied to Facebook pages as well (or other social networks). It’s all basically just good old fashioned SEO practice. Keywords, quality content, and links. You probably think about this for your website, but it is often overlooked on social media profiles.