LinkMoney.org

Archive for May, 2009

We had a freak weather situation here yesterday.  I almost never have the TV on and for some reason I turned it on during a light slow drizzle of a nice rain storm.  All of a sudden TORNADO WARNINGS and we were exactly in the center of the path.  From 4 to 6 pm it got really weird around here with storm dark howling noises, driving winds and rain varying from a roar to extremely silent and then back to thunder boomers and howling again.

I know now what I hold most sacred because without thinking I gathered up my last 4 notebooks, my smallest laptop, did a quick backup of my main system on to my external hard drive, a digital camera, threw them all in a duffle bag to take with me, and made a nest in the smallest bedroom for me and the 3 dogs and cat.

It did howl like crazy nearby but we were untouched and I have not seen the news yet this morning but I bet it did hit nearby. We almost never have anything like that around here in this part of Upstate New York.  Once I was driving across country and was going from Nebraska up to Pierre, SD to visit people and the car radio was warning of tornado possibilities near Pierre, and I actually saw two different funnels ahead of me, one on the left and one on the right at the same time.  Very scary and they do a lot of damage.

It was funny after the fact what I decided were the most precious possessions and what was the most important to save.  There are lots of very valuable family heirloom antiques around here and I did not think about one of them.  What would you decide was the most precious things to take with you and are you ready?

Update: The tornado did hit just over the next mountain only a couple of miles away and destroyed a house and some barns and some horses were lost on a nearby Amish farm.  I knew I could hear it nearby but could not see it.  Our neighbors will pitch in and help them rebuild I am sure.  Be prepared!

Technorati Profile

In case you have just awaken from your Rip Van Winkle 20 year nap and have not heard of Twitter, you are missing out on one of the best social linking tools and traffic builders out there.

I have had a Twitter account for almost two years but until about two weeks ago I never tried to use it to its full advantage. When you sign up there are about 20 followers that you can get immediately just by clicking the accept button, and you can also let Twitter into your email address book to find others that are on Twitter, which I refuse to do, and then you start adding followers to your account by writing lots of good posts.

Hold on, you say. “Who will see my posts if I don’t have any followers?” Well you must eat your meat or you can’t have any pudding! Its the old chicken or the egg problem isn’t it?

Here is one way that I started to use recently to find birds of a feather.  At the bottom of the Twitter page is a “search” tab.  Use that to search for keywords that you want to use to find like minded Twitterers, Tweets, Tweeties, Twotes, Twats..  If you really want to zero in on some users that are “In the know,” use the hash tag symbol (otherwise known as the pound sign or “#”).  So lets say you want to find articles about “Make Money Online” or “MMO”.  The hash tag search would be #makemoneyonline or #mmo.  This will return all articles that use those specific hash tags.  These tweets will also be more apt to be from tweeters that are advanced and may have many followers themselves.

Then here is what I did to get followers.  When I find a tweet that I like, first I “follow” the writer, then I select, copy and paste the article into the “What are you doing” box and use the “retweet” feature with a reply notice to the writer.  To make a reply notification you include the @ sign in front of their name like @linkmoneydotorg.  Then you put the retweet symbol which is the two letters RT and then the copied message.  Now you have accomplished two things.  You have notified the writer that you are following him or her, and you also thought enough of one of their posts to retweet it.  Nothing gets attention better than retweets because that is what everyone is hoping for all the time and what helps to make certain messages go viral.  This person will no doubt follow you and they might even return the favor some time and retweet some of your posts.

Now here is an even better way to find high quality tweeters that are in your niche.  go to Alltop.com and select a category of interest.  Alltop calls themselves a magazine of the Internet but I look at them as one of the very best sources of Blogs that are in high standing.  Not everyone’s Blog is accepted into Alltop and if they are there then you have no fear of ever being scammed or spammed by any of them because Alltop actually vets every single applicant before they are approved.

Now for instance if you select Green, or mmo, or cars, or whatever, as your category of interest you will find dozens or hundreds or thousands of Blogs listed that are in your niche.  Click on some of them that interest you and read their Blog posts and if they are in your groove, then look for their Twitter name and go to Twitter and subscribe to their Twitter posts, then follow, then retweet, then rinse and repeat.

You will start building a very high quality list of followers that are in your niche.  By the way, take a look at the followers of your new found friends because they are probably interested in what you have to say also.

Don’t forget to add links to your own Blog posts or your website of interest or affiliate product landing page, or whatever you want to promote.  In the last two weeks I have added about 700 new followers using these methods and you can too.