Networking is a must if you plan to run any type of successful business online. Even if your goal isn’t to “make money” you still need resources that help you locate like-minded individuals. (more…)

This may seem like the most obvious to some, but other Entrecard users might be “surprised” at this twist to visiting other people’s blogs and dropping cards.

Log into your own Entrecard account.

Using either the cards shown across the top or even starting with a current advertiser, right click on the card and open that site’s information in a new window (you could even just visit your own blog and start there, but logging into Entrecard is fastest).

Then (remember you are in a “new window” at this point), click on the link out to that particular blog. Find the Entrecard widget and drop your card.

NOTE: LEAVE THAT CURRENT BLOG OPEN IN YOUR BROWSER! Later you can revisit it to comment, but at a minimum you will allow the window to be open long enough to help NOT penalize the blog owner (read up on “bounce rates” to learn what I mean). Be kind

Leave the window OPEN and RIGHT click on the current advertiser who’s card is showing on that widget.

(Highly suggested: Use Firefox and make sure your newly visited sites will open in a new TABBED window or use the RIGHT CLICK method above.)

Drop your card on this next site and click on the advertiser doing his or her thing on this new widget.

Once you get a rhythm going, it’s easy to go from blog to blog to blog. If you “get stuck” (and you will every now and then), just start the process over with a new choice from your dashboard or under CAMPAIGN.

This way you don’t keep visiting the same ones over and over (unless you really want to), and get to add numerous visits quickly and easily.

Here’s another suggestion that really is well worth your time and (no) trouble:

As you close the Tabbed Windows one by one, take a look around and see if there isn’t something you’d like to put your two cents in about… in other words leave a comment!

It’s sort of amazing how few people are really using Entrecard to its greatest advantage. A quick, simple, super easy way to FIND WAYS TO COMMENT on other people’s blogs. You won’t always get a “follow” link, but you’ll be doing yourself and your blog/website a huge favor in terms of word of mouth advertising about YOU.

So let’s recap:

1. Drop Entrecards efficiently
2. Comment for personal name branding
3. Comment for backlinking

Do this each day for 5-10 minutes and you’ll have 100s if not 1000s of backlinks for yourself in a very, very short amount of time!

Enjoy!

Simply put, WhamX is a Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking news and article site that allows you to vote on your favorites. (That is a direct quote from their website.)

WhamX.com would like to become (don’t they all) bigger and better than Digg over time. It can be done, if you make enough people aware that you exist.

So how do you use WhamX?

First, you create your account. Update your profile with whatever information you would like others to see, including an Avatar for yourself or use theirs.

Then you click on the Submitted button and at the bottom of the page (still in the white text area), you will see the bookmarklet to grab. Either store it in your favorites, or if you are using Firefox, draw it up to the Bookmarks level and let go.

The other thing to remember is with this and just about every other service like this, in order to submit something (or vote or do anything) you have to be LOGGED IN beforehand.

Our suggestion is to pick the ones you want to be active with on any given day. Say you want to be able to hop in and out of BlogCatalog, Digg, WhamX, and Entrecard (just a few or you’ll drive yourself crazy). First thing in the morning (or after logging on and getting ready to start working), go to each of these sites and log yourself in. Then stay logged in. Usually that means leaving the browser window open down (at least) on your start bar or using the Tabs in IE 7 or Firefox to leave the web sites open.

Then as you go about your day posting your own stuff and reading and commenting and creating back links to others about theirs, you’ll already be logged into your chosen few and good to go

Below you’ll see a screenshot of the WhamX social bookmarking site, and it is good to note that (according to my Firefox browser with its plugin for checking this sort of thing), WhamX is prepared to give you full credit and full backlinks for your time and effort.

Enjoy!

A recent post on the Nichebot Keyword Research blog makes the assumption that too many people rely strictly on keyword research to begin figuring out what niche they would like to develop to make money online.

We agree with the overall presentation that one should not use keywords as the starting point to building an online business. Instead, your keyword research is conducted to further enhance search-ability for that particular segment or niche after you’ve determined your market. While keyword research is a mainstay for developing tags, metas, titles, and content on your website, as stated, it is a tool used to uncover what people are searching for.

On the other hand, to reveal what people are buying online, you need to use “market research” tools. The article goes on to give you some solid starting points which include:

To Uncover Hot Selling Products

Head to eBay and click on their BUY tab. You’ll know in a flash what people are purchasing. The “Popular Products” is another link resource to ferret out even more information.

Amazon is, of course, another place to go to see who’s buying what. The idea, keep in mind, is you are trying to figure out what niche you could likely corner based on what people are physically buying.

Where to Find Popular Digital Products

A good solid source for information about popular digital products is Clickbank’s Marketplace. You’ll be able to set specific criteria and pull up what’s popular based on criteria you set.

In fact, Clickbank suggests the following:

“How do I identify the most successful products to promote?”

“Some affiliates prefer to promote very popular products that attract lots of affiliates (high affiliate gravity), while others prefer to promote products with less advertising exposure (lower affiliate gravity). The Marketplace can be sorted, within each category and sub-category, by item gravity. Either way, your best bet is to promote products that are well presented and likely to appeal to the people who visit your website, or view your advertisements.”

Competition

The final section of their post discusses the dreaded word “competition!” Many people fear competition and so never make a choice of what to plunge into online. If you read the article, you will discover that:

“There is NO reason to feel that way. In fact, you should get excited when there is a lot of competition. Here’s why…

“If there is no competition whatsoever in a marketplace, there may be no marketplace (or people to market to) at all. You should actually be worried if you don’t find any competitors for a market you wish to enter.

“The more competition there is in a marketplace, the more commerce is being moved. The more commerce that is being moved, you’ll have a chance at grabbing a bigger piece of the pie.”

We give this informational article a thumbs up for clarifying a business builder’s first steps, and again we have only presented an outline of the full post.

You can read it for yourself here:

“Market Research (or finding a profitable niche market) has Nothing to do with Keyword Research”

Enjoy!