How to Build Your Business Blogspot (Part 03) : My Preferred Blogspot Layout~

.: This is how your business blogspot should look like~ :-P

After deciding which way we want to do our business blogspot, now we come to the design part. This is my own personal preferred business layout. It is up to you to follow or not, but you can give it a try~ There is a strange psychological element embedded inside, heehee   ;-)

So, this is how we should design our business blogspot layout~~

Interchangeable business blogspot layout: lefty and righty~

Too striking? LOL~   X-D

The  red  box represents the Header part.  Yellow  colored box is for the Body, and the  green  one is the Footer part. All of this is the essence of a blog, and this layout makes up a great business blogspot. And, you need to choose one from these two. Why?

Haa.. before we go to that part, let's get to know all of these elements first~~

 Red  Header:

• This is where our eternal title should resides. Think about being unique, being different, think about branding ourselves.
• While it is recommended for us to have our keywords in our title, one might opt to use simple sound being spelled or use non-related title as their alternative.
• If, our title does not have any important keywords, so include them in the blog description. Not too much, but should grab our blogspot visitor attention at their first sight~ 
• The smaller red box shows our menu tabs. It is best to have to give our disclaimer, about page, FAQs, contact info, etc here. This menu too can serve as our sitelinks in our SERP~~

 Yellow  Body:

• This ultra important part should be our first priority. If you are a newbie in this business blogspot field, use the lefty layout. If you're pretty confident, or on a neutral ground, use the righty layout.
• The larger box is of course our blog content, and the 3 boxes is our "side content".
• The medium yellow box is the place for our most wanted products, and the other two small boxes is for our related products and contents~ 
• Do focus primarily on adding the sharing button (retweet, Facebook Like, Digg, etc) or related article widget.

 Green  Footer.

• This part here is best utilized to capture our blog visitor's attention again and again and again. Such as giving out related links, as reminder what is our business blogspot is all about, ask them to participate in our mini poll, chat box, or any sorts of attentive activity.
• Increase our visitor stats (and popularity) by inviting them to follow us via Google Friend Connect, Twitter, Facebook, etc~~ 
• Footer also serve as our last resort before our visitor navigate away from our site.

About choosing the lefty layout, or the righty one. Why we need to choose? Hmmm, basically, it is about which part loads first. If you noticed, (and if you're using a Firefox browser), each time a site loads, it will starts from the left side. It means that our most-wanted products will be shown first before our text content. This is  great for newbies and new affiliates because we "accidentally forcing" our visitor to take note about our product first before reading our articles. ;-)

The first loading parts is an important impression for our visitor. It can helps them visualize the whole concept of our business blogspot - what kind of items we're selling, which niche, secure or not, etc and thus can help increase our conversion => our visitor now becomes our customer~~   ;-)

So, that is how our business blogspot layout should look like. I agree that there is many business layout out there, and if it is really working, share with us your successful layout. And don't forget to share the links too~
:-)

InternetMarketingOnl9Class: "Still searching for the most awesome and converting blogspot layout~"
:-P
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How to Build Your Business Blogspot (Part 02) : 5 Way to Blog Your Online Business

.: 5 different ways to blog your online business~ (Not to be confused with different type of blogs).

Before we go further, let's go meet a blog and ask her name~ :-P

A blog a.k.a web log (Wiki)...

• is a site that can stands on it's own or be a part of a larger website
• entries (or blog posts) are shown in anti-clockwise order. It means the most recent entry is viewed first on the first page~ (You see her "now", not her "past" first)
• can become very social - support two way communications (by leaving or answering comments) or none at all, create her own fan, win awards or receive star ratings, etc~
• has her own array of makeups~ You can change the layout, theme, background, almost everything to beautify or personalize her
• can become a robot, or in this case - a cyborg girl. Why? We can do whatever we want with our blog, we can add more blog parts (widgets, more page elements, video, slideshow, etc), put external links, chat box, or add the best part of all, we can put advertisement or highlighted products/services and earn money~   ;-)

Isn't she pretty? Heehee   :-D

Currently, we have 5 ways to build our business blogspot. From normal text, to graphical posts, videos posts, audio posts or we blog less, the way we blogs seems to evolve from one media to another. Maybe the next way of business blogging will be moblog, mobile blogging with smartphones as the primary platform, who knows whats coming up next, right? ;-) Each blogs comes with it's own identity, and can be integrated with each other. Here is our 5 Way to blog our online business:

1. common contextual blog (consists mainly of text only)
2. photoblog (gallery blog)
3. vlog (video blog)
4. podcast (broadcast blog)
5. microblog (mini blog)

Common blogs.

This way of blogging is the most popular one. Write some unique article, put links within a text and then we have our working contextual business blog. This kind of blog is best for product or service reviews, discussions, their latest news, because it depends primarily on it's contents to drive sales. Some pictures or video here and there is common but text is likely to be seen more.

Photoblog (Wiki).

This one (as you can guess) uses pictures as it's primary content. Less test or written article, but brief description about the uploaded pictures is available. Best to showcase wedding dresses/ gowns, stock photos, artwork, or jeweleries. Blogger use Picasa web album to host our uploaded pictures, but we can use other photo hosting sites and link the embed HTML inside our business blogspot. (Note: photoblog use larger storing space than normal blog because image use more space than text.)

Vlog (Wiki).

Photoblog in a new level: Videoblog. Videoblog, a.k.a. video blogging or vidlogging is a blog with most of it's entry is in form of videos about the author, or the author as the main character. In our online business case, what we can vlog is videos about how to use certain products, promote a working services, or as a soft-sell video for affiliate products. Vlog in YouTube is also great to earn from Google Adsense like these YouTube stars~

Podcast (broadcast blog).

Hurmm, this one is new to me. It's like you're making a pause-and-play blog entries. It can be an audio post, or a video post. Our post can be downloaded or streamed online. Or in other explanation, it is like a recorded radio or tv program, but in form of a blog. How to put this kind of blog into business? Products news will be good, or recorded interviews with experts in our chosen niche?

Microblog.

Twitter is my best word to describe microblog. A blog so mini that you need to restrain yourself in a few words (140 chars, like you do your texting), use shortened URL just to spread the words, re-publish re-viral someone else post again, get social with our fans, and edit your background picture to fit a portion of space on the left and the right side~ X-D Great way to tell the world about our online business, because here linkbaiting posts is just soooooo good~  ;-)

Link bait (linkbaiting) : The act of making or publishing certain contents or features in order to get traffic and reactions. Sometimes used in creating hyped post titles in blogs, videos or online news~

Well, that is our 5 way to blog our online business blogspot. Choose one that suitable with your niche nature  or incorporate everything to make the very best of your business blog. In case you're wondering what does some terms or blogging words mean, check it out here : Wiki's list of blogging terms.

• image credit: andyp uk on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.

InternetMarketingOnl9Class: "Try blogging the common way first, use microblog and vlog to give exposure and later attract more traffic~"
:-)
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#9: How to Build Your Business Blogspot (Part 01) : Two Eye for An Eye

.: Lesson #9: Build an online business space that works for your customer, not for your eye.

:-P

Yes, that's right. Our online business is created solely for our customer, not for us to fancy about. It is not about how awesome our flashy animations, or how tech savvy or how contextual our content are, but it is how they think and understands what our online business can give to them. It is all about their perceived v.a.l.u.e~   ;-)

Okay, before we continue to build our business blogspot (because we are using Blogger in Draft), this is one thing about the eye that I want you to understand.

"If you can understand your customer eye, you can do much much better conversion (or sales) than other lousy business blogspot out there."

mamdohkun, August 24th, 2K10.

Actually, I'm talking abut eye-tracking, the study on how our customer "view" (and perceive) our online business. It is a very interesting human behavior study which help us to look like how our customer look upon us. Read about eye-tracking here, and study carefully how certain study samples can lose the "heat" they wanted so badly...

• But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 1)
• But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 2) 
• But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 3) 
• But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 4) 
• But What Does It All Mean? Understanding Eye-Tracking Results (Part 5)

The rational?
When we want to sell them something, or we intend to give something, how can our customer receive it if they cannot see it in the first place? That's why we need to plan or adjust our business blogspot page element placements so that they can get their solution (our products or services) fast. Please avoid over-extravaganza design just to please our own eye...

So, before we move on to how to build your business blogspot, please keep in mind that, we need to create our online space for our customer, not for our eye ;-)


InternetMarketingOnl9Class: "Our sales lies in the eyes of the beholder (our customer)."
:-P
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Recap: The Simplest, Free Online Business Plan.

.: #Lessons revision: A recap of our previous lessons~   :-)

Seriously free, but comes with hard and smart work to make sure our business (and profits) runs indefinitely.

• Zero start-up cost
• Free tools
• Very profitable

What we should do? This is our simplest and free online business plan.

• Create an online ID
• Build our business space
• Find our market
• Prepare our products/services
• Attract our customers

The simplest and free online business plan.

Create an online ID.
To use all free tools available on the Net, we need to have our own ID. With minimum of two IDs, your online business registration now is much much easier. What I meant with online ID is your e-mail account. It would be nice for you to have one Yahoo! ID and one Google ID. We'll use these IDs a lot later~

• A list of free email account services
• How to create your Gmail
• How to create your Y!mail
• Understands and use all Y!mail and Gmail services~

Build our business space.
This blog (our internet marketing online class) prefers doing online business and e-marketing without the need to use a lot of money, or I rather say it that I love to use free reliable tools out there. Not all free tools are great (and secured), and it would be advisable for you to opt for paid services if you had more money to spent. For starters, we'll use free blog services and then the earnings later we can migrate to self-host our own blogs or sites~  ;-)

• 6 free and great blog services (I still prefer Blogger in Draft though, haha) ;-P 

Find our market.
The most important thing about selling online is how can our online business become visible to our customers/prospects? Internet is a very big big world, it might be *impossible* for them to notice us. Luckily, we have internet giants who voluntarily helping us to show our business to them. But with a little trick and strict T&C. Better say it as 'hard work done the smart way'.

• Rational why (new) online business is hardly visible
• Internet giants who help us for free...
• if, Our business sells what our customer wants!
• How to really find our targeted market?

Prepare our products/services.
After finish building our business space, prepared with our chosen niche, it's time to think what we're gonna sell for our business? Are we selling products or selling our expertise? What about if we do not have anything to offer?

• Examples of products and services we can offer
• Alternate solution for not having anything (any own products) to offer

Attract our customers.
Now everything is ready, we need to go all out to reach our customer. Again, this is the most delicate and the most important part to ensure our business become a success. We need to attract our customer ethically, give them what they wanted so much - help to provide their problems with the best solution, consistently interacts with them, and leave them impressions about our online business.

• Internet marketing sisters?
• Brief explanation about internet marketing

There you go, that is our simplest and free online business plan. You should get the overall idea how we gonna do it, and please start taking actions now! The sooner the better~   ;-)


InternetMarketingOnl9Class: "No pain no gain, because we reap what we sow~~"
;-)
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#3: Build Your Online Business On Your Own

.: Lesson #3: Learn building your online business from scratch, you will understand better~

In real world, you need to rent or purchase a land to build your the one and only brick-and-mortar business. But in online world (the internet), you can either get your business space for free or by paying a smaller sum of money, plus you can create your business as many as you want. Yup, online business is much cheaper when we talk about cost.

Not all the best thing in life is free, but everyone love free things, rite? So we will mainly use free tools and free space in our online business class. Until we get a steady recurring income, we can settle with the paid internet marketing version~   ;-)