The pitch was in the form of a blog post and the claim was that if I received less than 1000 visitors a day and 300 subscribers then I obviously needed help. One of the topics was “How to write posts that get comments.”

I had a closer look at the blog and I noticed that the very post that I was reading had only two comments.

So how could this be? If this person is using her own strategy she should be getting at least 1000 visits to her blog every day. If she is applying her own strategies for generating comments how could a post have only two comments? Shouldn’t this post have hundreds of comments? It doesn’t make sense, does it?

Well, yes it does. Because she was obviously bending the truth. The 1000 visitors a day was just another figment of the fertile imagination of a “successful” internet marketer.

That single article entirely changed my attitude to this blogger. She could no longer be trusted. She was just another exaggerating, truth-stretching internet marketer.

Rules 1 and 2 – Be Truthful

If you are considering creating a personal or corporate blog you should give some thought to developing your own “code of ethics”. I’m not big on strict formal rules, but there is definitely a place for knowing what ethical principles you think are important. Here’s a start:

Rule #1 – Always tell the truth

Rule #2 – Don’t exaggerate your product claims (See Rule #1).

These two rules are a great place to start. The fact is your blog will (or should) become your voice, your channel, and to a large degree the shaper of your identity. So it is important that you think about how you intend to conduct yourself.

As with all channels of communication your first commitment should be to honesty and sincerity. That means there is very little room for exaggeration and misrepresentation – no matter how badly you want to sell your products.

Rules 3 and 4 – Don’t Copy Material Without Permission

The third and fourth rules have to do with creating content and using material provided (or previously published) by others.

Rule #3 – Don’t Use Published Material Without Permission

Rule #4 – Give Credit to the Author when Re-Publishing Material

Generally speaking, content created by other authors should not be copied or reproduced unless it specifically says you can do so. That goes for newspaper or magazine articles, and posts from other blogs.

Two good examples where you do not have to ask for permission (because it is assumed) are the use of articles from article directories, and the embedding of videos from sites like Youtube.

In these cases the creators of this content are making it available for republishing because they want increased exposure. That means you must give them credit as the author (and not act as though you created it), you must not change the content, and you must leave embedded links in place as they were put there by the author.

Rule 5 – Spread the Links Around

When blogs first broke on the scene one of their primary purposes was for bloggers to share links to content they found interesting. That way bloggers could create a rich web of interlinked resources. So this leads us to,

Rule #5 – Link to External Sources

This practice not only honours your sources, but also is advantageous to you. When you link to other bloggers or websites, or when you link back to resources you refer to in your own posts, you are identifying yourself with a larger community of bloggers.

Not only does this help generate traffic (for the blogs you link to), but it helps to generate inbound links from other bloggers (who return the favor), and it improves your standing in Google because you become associated with the other blogs you are inter-linked with.

Copyright Linknet Promotions

I have been working for years on different systems to make blogging easier and more effective. BlogEasy is the easiest and best system I have seen for accomplishing this goal. We wrote this program from the ground up, and are now beta testing it.

If you are a Real Estate agent, blogging on a regular and consistent basis is one important way to keep yourself in front of your customers and prospects. But coming up with original, interesting and relevant content for your blog is difficult and time-consuming.

BlogEasy solves the content problem

Subscribing to BlogEasy gives you access to regular, original and unique content that you can post in your blog.

Yes, that’s right. BlogEasy gives you actual articles, reports, summaries and even videos that you can publish in your own blog on a regular basis.

Content problem solved!

How do we do it?

It’s pretty simple actually. Our staff do the research and writing for you. Every month we create a number of new articles on a variety of relevant Real Estate topics and then we make those articles available to our members for republishing. Something like a “newswire service”.

Articles are available on topics such as:

• Real Estate Advice
• Real Estate News
• Green Tips for Homeowners
• Renovation Tips
• Real Estate Trends

These are not just any old articles. They are professionally written and edited by our staff. They are informative, focused on real estate topics and optimized for the major search engines.

See sample blog posts that have been created by BlogEasy.

Wait…There’s More…
BlogEasy Makes Your Articles Unique

Each article is also specially programmed so each published version of each article is a unique version. How do we do that?

First, we build in what are commonly known as spin variables – different versions of words, phrases and sentences. The program randomly chooses a unique combination of these variations each time it generates a new version of the article.

Second, we include what we call location variables. We make sure your location is mentioned in the article a number of times. For example, if an article is about “Home renovations”, and you are in Seattle we include keyword phrases such as…

Seattle home renovations
Home renovations in Seattle
Seattle homeowners

You can use this feature to target any location you want. You can even enter as many as three different versions of the same location name – for example…

Toronto home renovations
Home renovations in the GTA
Greater Toronto homeowners

This is a completely unique feature of the BlogEasy system. The combination of these two programming techniques makes sure that every article you publish is both unique and localized.

And that’s not all…
Remote publishing using BlogEasy

BlogEasy not only provides you with great original content, but it can publish that content directly to your blog without you actually having to go to the blog. In fact, if you have more than one blog, BlogEasy can publish a unique version of each article to each of your blogs. All without you having to go to each blog, log in, and post the content.

Did you catch the significance of that last point? BlogEasy lets you post unique, original, localized articles to as many as five blogs…all from one control panel.

BlogEasy makes it incredibly easy to finally get serious about maintaining a top notch real estate blog optimized for your local business.

Green Tips for Homeowners

Green Tips for Homeowners is a series of short articles about “hot” green topics that agents can use for publishing in newsletters, blogs and other promotional materials.

New articles in this series are made available every month.

Subscribers to Green Tips for Homeowners will immediately receive 5 original articles at absolutely no cost.

Future monthly installments will also be sent to you free of charge as long as you remain a member of AgentMapIt.

The package also includes suggestions on using these articles in email promotions, reprinting them in your own blog, or incorporating them into your own promotional programs.

Sign up here – It’s Free!
Free sign up includes
Free AgentMapIt Silver Membership

We begin by creating a series of short articles or "posts" which emphasize the keywords that you want to promote. Each of these posts is between 150 and 250 words long, and each contains keywords you want to be identified with. At least one of  these keywords is linked back to your site.

So as you can see, each post includes a live link to your website. When you subscribe to our  monthly program, we give you a minimum of twenty posts every month – each in a different blog.

This is the fastest and least expensive way to build valuable inbound links to your site.

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Linknet New Power Links + KICKSTART

Kickstart gives you the Linknet New Power Links monthly program PLUS:

1. One original professionally written article promoting your site, distributed to more than 700 article websites.
2. One original professionally produced Quick Web Video distributed to 30+ video and audio sites, including Youtube, Google Video, Revver,
   Metacafe, and many others.

   See samples of Quick Web Videos

One time price of $229 (1st month), then $59/mo