Get Traffic to Your Site with Sweeva

Over the last few days I've been using a unique traffic exchange called Sweeva. Sweeva is free to join and works in a completely different way to most traffic exchanges.

Here are the main differences:

1) Everyone views your site at the same time - you use credits to bid for a particular time of day and when that time arrives, if you have bid enough credits, everyone who is logged on to Sweeva at that time can view your site and nobody elses.

2) Get Live Feedback on your Website - People can vote Yes, No or Unsure when they view your website and they can leave comments. A lot of people seem to leave completely useless comments, but the Yes and No voting will give you an idea of how well your page is received.

3) Unique Features - you can accumulate points and credits and unlock features by particpating. Participating means viewing other peoples' pages, leaving comments, tweeting, promoting your splash page, referring other people, using the toolbar and more. The benefit in this is that everyone has to participate to get value, which means more people to view your pages.

I've only been using Sweeva for a few days, so it is too early to write a full review, but it seems more responsive than most traffic exchanges and it's also fun to unlock features and climb the different levels :-) You can also watch people commenting on and rating your site live!

Sweeva, like other traffic exchange style sites works best when you advertise a short splash page or lead capture page rather than a long sales page or your home page.

Upgrading in Sweeva will give you credits every month, double credits for viewing sites and various other benefits, but you can also join Sweeva for Free.

New and Improved Lead Capture Page

I've just released a new and improved Lead Capture Page Service. I'm also offering a 30% discount on this service until Thursday 1st July. Click here for the discount page.

This service is for anyone who has a home business or internet marketing related website (like the Plug-In Profit Site) and wants to get more subscribers to their Getresponse list.

This service includes:

- 6 new high quality EBooks with Giveaway rights
- A splash page integrated with your Getresponse account
- Lots of conversion boosting features
-A thankyou page
- A download page
- Upload of everything to your website

I'll also send you some instructions on where you can advertise this page for free to receive more signups.

Review of GDI (Global Domains International)

GDI - Global Domains International, also known as Website.ws has been a Plug-In Profit site program for over a year now, so I thought it was about time that I reviewed it!

Read my review of GDI below to find out: what is GDI, how much does it cost?, is GDI a scam? what do you get for your money? how much commission can you make? and what are the advantages and disadvantages?

What is GDI?
GDI is a business opportunity and a domain registration/hosting service.


What do you receive as a GDI member?
You receive a domain name with the .ws extension and a hosting account for that domain name. You also have access to a basic website builder. The hosting account provides up to 100Mb of disk space and 10Gb of traffic.


How much does it cost?
GDI offers a 1 week free trial and after 1 week the cost is $10 per month.


What does the Compensation Plan Offer?
The basic residual compensation is $1 per month per person that you sign up to GDI. This is only a 10% residual commission so it doesn't seem like, much, but you also get $1 for every person that everyone in your downline signs up. This makes it more powerful as it is easier to build up a good residual commission. I don't do much promotion for GDI and it is not my main business opportunity, but my residual commission is usually around the $150-200 per month mark

The big money is in the GDI bonuses. If you sign up 5 people in one week you receive a $100 bonus. If you sign up 10 people, this becomes a $200 bonus. This continues and you get $100 for every 5 people that you signup within 1 week.


How do I get paid?
GDI can either pay you by US $ check or by Paypal.

The bonuses can only be paid by Paypal.


How do you promote GDI?
You can promote GDI in all the usual ways, e.g. on your website, using classifieds, pay per click advertising, writing reviews, distributing articles etc. In addition to this you can also use their videos and DVDs, their tell a friend system or purchase leads from them.

If you are a member of the Plug-In Profit site, you can promote this opportunity passively by promoting the Plug-In Profit Site sales page.


What is their customer support like?
GDI has a customer support email address and an online FAQ. To request support you must login to your account and click on the "Request Support" button. I've used their support service a few times over the last few years and always received a satisfactory response within 1-2 business days.


What are the disadvantages / cons of GDI?
One annoying thing is that you have to jump through a few hoops before you can get paid bonuses. You need to sign and fax or mail in various affiliate agreements, purchase 10 DVDs (which you can use for promotion), provide a photo and testimonial and setup a .ws email address in Paypal. This is all very annoying, but you only have to do it once and this is only for bonus payments, not regular commissions.

GDI is an MLM (multi level marketing program). This basically means that you can earn commissions on multiple levels (e.g. sales that your affiliates make as well as your own sales). Some people are against MLM programs, so this is why I mention it here.

The website builder is pretty limited and there is also a limit of 10 pages. If you want to build a decent website you would be better downloading a free website builder program such as NVU.


What are the advantages / pros of GDI?
The main advantages of GDI in my opinion are:

• Low entry cost and monthly cost
  
• Easy to cover your monthly fee (10 signups)
  
• Free trial and videos makes this opportunity easy to sell
• Good bonus compensation plan
• Above average retention rate
• Basic website, domain name and hosting included, which is easy for newbies to setup.
  

I hope you found this review of GDI useful. If you need to know more, you can sign up for GDI for a free 1 week trial and try it out for yourself.

New version of my Plug-In Profit Site SEO Guide

I've just published a new and updated version of my Search Engine Optimization for the Plug-In Profit Site.

This EBook is free and explains in a step by step manner how to optimize your site and get lots of traffic from Google and other search engines.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PIPS SEO GUIDE

Changes in this version include instructions for making a backup and uploading your files to Hostgator + general updates to SEO advice and resources.

Please let me know what you think!

30 Day Trial of the PIPS Power Group for $1

Just a quick post to say that we are currently running a Warrior Special Offer which will allow you to try the PIPS Power Group for a full 30 days for just $1.

This will give you access to the Affiliate Power Group site which includes Plug-In Profit training and a Plug-in Profit coaching forum + access to our general affiliate marketing training and coaching including our 12 week traffic plan, our video learning center, over 150 downloads including PLR and MRR EBooks + batches of PLR articles, 70% discount on our niche websites, directory submission software and much more.

You can read about the PIPS Power Group here.

BUT, if you wish to take advantage of the 30 day trial you should use this link:

Affiliate Power Group Warrior Special Offer

The cost of membership after the initial 30 days is either $39.95 per month or $109.95 per 3 months. If you decide that it is not for you, you can cancel at any time (including before the end of your trial) by submitting a ticket at our helpdesk.

Alternatives to Blogger FTP

If you use Blogger and you currently publish your blog to your own website (e.g yourwebsite.com/blog) using FTP, then you probably already know that Blogger are planning to stop supporting this method from May 1st 2010. A lot of people have been asking me what they can do about this, so in this post I intend to outline the different options available to you.

My first piece of advice is Don't Panic! Your blog is not going to disappear on May 1st. It will always be there on your website and people can still visit it and read your blog posts. On May 1st you will no longer be able to make new posts to your blog or edit your blog.

If you want to continue to blog then you have a few different options available to you. Here they are, along with the advantages and disadvantages of them.

OPTION 1 - Move your blog to blogspot hosting

This option will involve moving your blog so that it is hosted on Blogger's free blog hosting Platform, known as blogspot. Instead of publishing to yourwebsite.com/blog you would publish to yourblogname.blogspot.com.

The advantage of this is that it is easy to do. Simply login to blogger and follow the instructions, by clicking on the "Start migration" now link at the top of your dashboard. You will backup your blog, then choose your blogspot URL to publish to, then redirect the old blog to the new one. It is easy to do and you won't lose any traffic as it will be redirected to the new location.

The disadvantage of this is that you are no longer publishing to your own domain. Publishing to your own domain is more professional, it adds regular content to your site and you are in complete control.


OPTION 2 - Move your Blog to a Sub Domain

If your blog is currently on yourwebsite.com/blog, moving it to a sub domain means that your blog will publish to blog.yourwebsite.com instead.

As an example of this, I had a blog on my Wedding in Edinburgh website. The blog was originally at the address http://www.WeddingInEdinburgh.com/wedding-planning and after I did the migration the blog moved to http://wedding-planning.WeddingInEdinburgh.com . If you visit the old blog URL you will see a notice that says the blog has moved. The page will then automatically redirect to the new page within 30 seconds.

The main advantage of this method is that you are still publishing your blog to your own website, which looks more professional.

The disadvantage of this method is that it is a little more complicated to setup than the previous option. You will need to login to your cpanel and create a sub domain, then create a CNAME record that maps to ghs.google.com. You can however get your web host to do these things for you. Just raise a support ticket and ask them to create a sub domain and a CNAME record for that sub domain.


OPTION 3 - Switch to a WordPress Blog

WordPress is a much more flexible blogging Platform with more features and thousands of free themes (templates) and plugins available. It is free to use and allows you to publish to your own website.

This option would involve leaving your blogger blog alone (people can still visit it and read it, but you can't publish new posts to it) and then creating a brand new WordPress blog.

If you host on Hostgator, WordPress is very easy to install and you can install it by logging into your cpanel, clicking on Fantastico and following the instructions. I recommend creating a new directory on your site to install the blog into.

If you don't want to do this yourself, we offer a free WordPress blog installation for members of the PIPS Power Group. You can join the PPG for $1 for a 10 day trial and we provide the free blog install for you if you stay beyond the trial period.

The advantage of this method is that you are able to continue to blog on your own domain and have the power of WordPress.

The disadvantage is that some technical skills are required to install a WordPress blog and get it up and running.

If you currently host on Host4Profit unfortunately there is no automatic way to install WordPress. I would recommend moving your website to Hostgator as described in my Hostgator replaces Host4Profit blog post.


CONCLUSION:

I recommend that you choose one of the above options as soon as possible. I recommend either option 2 or option 3. I have a few blogs and I'm using option 2 for some of them and option 3 for others. I may consider providing a service for option 2 on my Plug-In Profit Update Services website, if there is a demand for this. If you are interested in this please post a comment below or email me.

You may find this video helpful - it explains how to do options 1 & 2.

New Host Transfer Service

So many people have asked me to help them move from Host4Profit to Hostgator that I have created a new Host Transfer Service.

If you are paying $24.95 per month for Host4Profit hosting at the moment you can save at least $15 per month by moving to Hostgator.

Hostgator also allows you to host unlimited domains at no additional hosting cost, so if you ever decide that you want a second website, you don't need to pay more for hosting.

You can read more of the background about the move from Hostgator to Host4profit here.

Find out more about my Host Transfer Service here and feel free to contact me or post a comment if you have a question.