Are you one of those people that panicked post-Panda? I think most of the blogging world had at least a few anxiety pangs about their content and how it would stack up in Google’s eyes. One of the biggest groups that got worried was users of private label rights content (PLR).

Bloggers have been relying on this source of ready-made content for years. It’s cheap. It’s fast. It’s almost effortless. But today the emphasis is on unique, quality content, rather than an article that might appear in multiple places on the web.

The good news is that PLR, just by the nature of its name, gives you the right to do pretty much anything you want to it. That means you can spice it up, chop it up, combine it with other PLR ingredients, or even mince it into tiny snippets – all depending on your individual taste and needs. Hope this isn’t making you too hungry!

Sticking with the food analogy, I’ve outlined 5 different levels of editing you can use to modify your PLR for your blog.

Level 1: Mild

Change keywords, titles and headers. This is the absolute minimum you should do with any PLR you buy. It’s particularly useful if you’re in a huge rush and just need some content on your blog. Maybe you’ve just started or you have a last minute vacation planned. It’s also great for a niche blog that you want to get off the ground fast, and which you may be using an alias for.

Level 2: Medium

Sectional rewrites. The next level of editing involves adding your own introduction and conclusion paragraphs. In addition, look at rewriting the topic sentences of some, if not all, of the paragraphs. If there are no subheaders in the PLR you purchased, then add them yourself.

Level 3: Hot

Add your own content. Where things start heating up is when you add examples from your own experience and industry. Add additional points and delete ones that you don’t like or feel are irrelevant to your market.

For example, a PLR article isn’t going to talk about the time that the writer’s son had to deal with a bullying incident at school. However, you can add your own personal anecdotes to illustrate your points. That truly makes your content unique.

Level 4: Extra Spicy

Work from an outline. Outlines are the bread and butter of all good writers. They dramatically increase the speed at which you can write any piece of content.

Create a brief outline of an article based on the points in the PLR that you bought. Then, all you have to do is write, or maybe do a little more research to add additional points. Don’t forget to add examples as well

Level 5: On Fire!

Total transformation. To really crank up the heat, completely transform the PLR to a different media format. Use the article, either as is or revised, and record yourself reading through it. Better yet, make it into slides with key points. Then use the article as a semi-script as you create a video while talking through all the points. The same slides can even be used to create a webinar.

Don’t forget to SEO and promote your blog post also. Susanne Meyers wrote a post about how to do that right here at Solosmarts. PLR really is one of the most useful tools you can access for creating content for your blog. Especially with the constant pressure to blog more and more frequently, it’s a relief to have someone else provide some of that content or get it started for you.

Want to learn more about how to creatively use PLR? Grab my FREE guide – 10 Easy Steps to Creating Unique Content with PLR. Or go directly to Business Content PLR to pick up some PLR you can start using right now. It’s all designed to be easy to make unique, and the topics are geared for helping you and your customers achieve business success.

Connie has accomplished a lot since she jumped into the internet marketing world in 2006 and I’ve looked forward to introducing her to you for awhile now.  Listen in and be inspired to just go for it :)

Books we mentioned:

• Huge Profits With A Tiny List: 50 Ways To Use Relationship Marketing To Increase Your Bottom Line
• The Inner Game Of Internet Marketing

Want to learn from Connie and her ‘Five Prong Approach’?

• Blogging
• Article Marketing
• Teleseminars/Audio
• Social Media
• Affiliate Marketing

Click here to learn more about what Connie has to offer.

I have a surprise for you. SEO is made out to be this complicated, geeky thing, but through be told, it’s actually pretty simple and as bloggers we have a big leg up since search engines love our content and the fact that we update our sites frequently. Today I want to share my basic SEO strategy with you. It’s exactly what I use every time I write a new blog post and it brings in quite a bit of traffic. I’m sure it’ll work for you as well.

Step 1 – Keyword Research

I usually start with a long-tail keyword (3 or more word) that I can easily rank for. You can get Keyword data from the Free Wordtracker Keyword Tool or the Google Keyword Tool. Sometimes I already have an idea of what I want to write about and search for a related keyword. At other times, I start by playing around in the keyword tool until I find a phrase that looks interesting and write my post from there.

Step 2 – The Title Of Your Post

Use your keyword as early as possible in the title of your blog post. This will insure it shows up as an H1 tag on your page, in the title tag and as the anchor text in your internal linking. If that sounds a little geeky and doesn’t quite make sense, don’t worry about it. Blogging software like WordPress takes care of all of that for you. Your job is to pick a keyword or keyphrase and work it into your title.

Step 3 – Don’t Forget A Description

The meta description is a piece of text that’s displayed by the search engines on the search engine results page right below the title of your post. If you don’t provide a description, Google (and the other
search engines) will grab a piece of text from your blog post.

By using a free seo plugin like “All in one SEO” or “Wordpress SEO by Yoast”, you can specify a description to be used for each of your blog posts. This won’t necessarily help you with rankings, but it
can make a huge difference in how many people click on your listing once you show up on page one of Google. Write something that’s interesting and includes a “call-to-action” for searchers, inviting them to click through and read your post.

Step 4 – Writing The Content

Next, let’s get to the interesting part and the one you’re most familiar with already – writing your blog post.

Here you’ll do what you usually do, focusing on quality of content and reader engagement. The only twist for SEO is that we want to incorporate the keyword in the content. I like to use the exact keyphrase I’m targeting in the first 100 to 150 words of my blog post. If it makes sense to do so, go ahead and bold or italicize the keyword.

Depending on how long your blog post is, you may want to include the keyword or a variation of it again once or twice. But don’t cram it in there just for SEO’s sake. Your main goal should always be to cater to your readers. Once that’s done, it’s time to publish and move on to the last step…

Step 5 – Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

It’s so easy to think that once you have hit publish on that post your work is done. In fact it’s really just starting.

No matter how easy a keyword you’ve picked, chances are pretty good that you won’t get all that much traffic – including SEO traffic – unless you start promoting your post.

There are all sorts of things you can do. Start by bookmarking your new post to your favorite social bookmarking sites. Install a plugin like “Sociable” to allow your readers to do the same. Send out a tweet with a link to your new post and put it on Facebook. Find some related blog posts you’ve written in the past and link to the new post from there.

The sky is the limit here and it all depends on how much work and effort you want to put into promoting your post. The things I mentioned above are the very basics. If you think it’s worth the effort, you may also want to write a few guest blog posts that link to your new post, do some article marketing and get active on forums and commenting on other blogs.

Ready for more tips on how to grow your affiliate income? Join Daily Affiliate Tasks.com for $10 per month and work on things that actually work to bring you more traffic, more subscribers and make more affiliate commissions working as little as 30 minutes per day. Learn more and join today at www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com.

Grace has a wonderful history in the world of baking for profit, professional catering and gift baskets.  All of her experience makes her a great asset to anyone looking to turn their kitchen skills into an income. People always want to pick her brain for advice on having a commercial kitchen and how to get started the right way.

I’m happy to introduce her to you this week and if you or someone you know is thinking about a business built around food, I encourage you to sign up for her free coaching group!

We’re talking about ‘detoxing your WordPress blog’ and we’ll be touching on important stuff like:

• Keeping up with updates.
• Are some plugins no longer necessary?
• Is my theme hopelessly outdated?
• How to deal with broken links?
• How to deal with spam?

Lynette offers an incredible learning opportunity over at Tech Based Training.  She’s kicking off a full year of live training sessions and you can secure access to all of them for a one time cost of $299.00.

Now she’s asking me:

When you start a new project, what is your process? Do you sit down to list the things you need to do and pull out the stuff your VA can do? Do you give yourself so much time a day or week to work on it? What happens to the other (older and ongoing) projects while you focus on the new project?

Great questions Lynette!

For me a new project starts with an idea, usually jotted down on a sticky note or typed into the notepad on my iPhone.  Ideas come from everywhere and I get far more than I can or should act on – so I usually have a little stack of them on my desk.

Eventually I’ll pick up the idea and spend some time thinking it through – brainstorming a bit.  Sometimes I’ll tap a friend (like you Lynette!) to talk the idea through, or I’ll take it to the forum at Solo Masterminds for input from our members.  Often I realize the idea isn’t quite right and drop it.

The ideas that do stand up to scrutiny I’ll take to the next level.  If it is something I don’t need to act on right way, I add a note to my calendar to prompt more thought about it later.  If it’s something for now, I add it to my Evernote.

When I add an idea there, it officially becomes a open project which is a ‘note’ in the ‘open projects’ notebook.  (See image.)

Every week I look through my open projects and prioritize them.  I decide which I’m going to give attention that week based on various goals and deadlines, then start creating to do lists for each one.  If the project is a partnership, I’ll have strategy phone calls with my partner(s) to work up time lines and to do lists for all of us.

If there is something for my VA to tackle, I’ll email her or have a phone call to give verbal directions.

So one note may have two or three different to do lists.  One more for me, one for my VA, one for things I’m waiting for from a partner, etc.

When I finish making my to do notes, I move to my calendar to chunk out my time.  For example, I set a goal to write 2500 words for my book this next week so I need to chunk out three blocks of time just for that.  I write best in the evening so I chunk out two hour sessions on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday nights.   I also need to get a new lesson published over at Solo Masterminds and plan out the next month of lessons so I’m chunking off two hours for that on Tuesday morning. By chunking the time on my calendar, I keep a clear view of my week and my VA knows not to book an interview or coaching session at the same time.

I’m very good at following through on the times I’ve set aside but I’ve learned to be generous with myself.  If I need 90 minutes, I give myself two hours. The extra cushion keeps me from getting stressed out.

Week by week I repeat the process.  Prioritize, plan, delegate, schedule, do.

When a project is complete, the open project note is deleted.  That is SO satisfying!

Some projects are small, they come into the notebook and get pulled out quickly.  Others are there for months.

Now, you ask about ongoing projects and what happens to them when I take on new things.

If it is an ongoing project – it is in my open projects notebook in Evernote so I don’t forget it.  I’ll admit that older projects do sometimes get less priority than something new, especially when there’s a deadline looming on a new launch.

I can’t juggle too many open projects.  If there are more then ten open and needing attention, I get edgy about it.  When I get that edgy feeling, I’ll come back to the list with my virtual machete, asking myself, “what’s got to go?.”  Projects will get shelved or dropped entirely until I feel like I’ve brought things down to a manageable level again.

It’s better to set some ideas aside than for me to be all stressed out and have everything I do end up being mediocre.

When the number of open projects gets low… say there are only four or five open project notes in Evernote, that acts like a signal to me to start brainstorming – and the process starts all over again.

My next question for you Lynette:

I know you’re kicking off a new year with Tech Based Training.  What technical skill sets do you believe will be in the highest demand from virtual service providers in 2012 and what topics are you most looking forward to teaching others about?

I’ll be watching for your reply!

Today I was looking back at the earliest posts on this blog which are from 2005 – and I got totally choked up!

If you are feeling like you’re so far from where you want to be – I need you to go back and read the posts I wrote.  Use the archives page and scroll down to the bottom, start with March 2005 and read the first six or so posts.  Seriously, it will give you some perspective on where I come from compared to where I am today.

This Week’s Win: 2012 started out with some family fun. We went up to Traverse City to the Great Wolf Lodge on New Year’s Day and enjoyed the water park.  It’s such a nice place and there was a blizzard going on outdoors so we opted to stay in and have dinner at their restaurant – which was delicious.  (Especially the chocolate fondue we ordered for dessert!)

Taking little trips like that are so enjoyable and provide a nice mental reset for me. And the fact that I rang in the new year AWAY from the home office sets a tone for my whole year!

This Week’s Fail: While I was enjoying my holiday away from work – the temporary license on my membership site software expired and nobody could log into the forum! Grrr! It was entirely my fault. I knew it was a temporary license and I should have marked my calendar to remind me to grab the permanent code.  The big Fail here is that while I was back home within 24 hours – the company I needed the code from was on holiday hiatus for two more days – so my forum was down until they got back to attend to my request. Embarrassing Fail!

This Week’s Give:  I want to give some buzz to my client and friend Grace Becker of Dough Raising Mom. She is offering up a free three week group coaching series for those who are interested in creating an at home baking business.  Grace’s extensive experience in this area makes her THE expert on making it work.  If you know anyone who’s ever talked about turning their love for the kitchen into a business, please tell them about the free coaching.  They can sign up here.

How’d your week go?  Want to share your own Win. Fail. Give?

It was supposed to be my ‘desktop publishing empire’ website.  ‘The Newsie Writer’ describes that I could write newsletters for your business to send out via direct mail. I’d write, print and mail them for you.

I got exactly zero clients for that.

Instead, I got requests like this: ‘Hey, can you build me a website like that?’

And of course I said yes ;)

Oh how long ago 2002 seems to me today!

I distinctly remember starting to really get a feel for things in 2003 and wishing that I could create a website that would make people trust me.  I looked around at some folks who claimed to have long years of experience on the web and wondered what it would be like to be able to say that.  They seemed so wise and experienced!

As a newbie, you feel like you’ll never get there, but thankfully you develop such a love for the work and the people that you hang on.  Then look what happens.  You turn around one day and realize you’ve been doing it for a year, five years – TEN years.

Admission at the ready:  I LOVE that I get to now refer to myself as a ten year veteran on the web LOL!

It was six years ago this month that I gave notice to quit my full time job and come home to be a full time solopreneur.

Definitely feeling grateful today.

What anniversary will you celebrate this year?  What milestones of success do you WANT to celebrate?

The line made me smile and totally agree.  I am SO OVER 2011!  It’s been a rough year but I have to say it’s ended up pretty well.

Since it is the end of the year – I’m spending some of my day looking back over the whole year, not just this week.  Here goes:

This Year’s Win: Total Business Rebranding.  Whooooo! It took most of six months to finish but as 2011 ends, my business rebranding is made complete with the sale of Mom’s Talk Biz to my good friend Nicole Dean.  Now ALL of my business products and coaching are 100% focused on the Solopreneur market.

I gotta tell you, there is nothing like being totally focused to create momentum, progress and profit!

Going forward into 2012 I am very focused on equipping and coaching.  I’ve got some flipping amazing strategies to share with my coaching clients and can’t wait to get started.

This Year’s Fail: When I look back at my goals for 2011, the goals I set last at this time last year, I feel like such a flop.  All of the projects I said I would conquer that are undeveloped – I’ve mentioned them before in my Win. Fail. Give. Un-met goals, un-acheived resolutions, un-fulfilled aspirations – they suck!  Yes, I accomplished a lot inspite of my issues – but man – I know I could have done so much more if I hadn’t been dealing with crappy health through a big portion of the year.

Hey, I’ve got to get over this – I’m kinda hung up on what I lost as far time and productivity. I’ve caught myself whining about it one too many times.  So here goes my one last pitty party:  Waaaaaaaaa!  Ok, done.  Moving on!

My goals for 2012 now look a lot like my goals for 2011.  More ‘Smarts’ products, a HOT Hot Seminar Series & a rocking bunch of ON FIRE coaching clients. I’m ripping into all of these with fresh vision and determination.  Can’t wait to share everything with you as we go.

End of Year Give:  I’m geeked as all get out about this Free WordPress Plugin, Brainstorming Your Funnel.  If you haven’t grabbed it yet – please do it now.  It’s going to help you plot out the new year with an eye for ‘going deeper’ with your customers and clients!   (By the way, it comes with an audio that explains how it’s used.)

If you’re not a WordPress user, you can grab this printable version instead.

Happy New Years to you!

Have you ever heard this? “I’m so broke, I’m going to have to lower my prices.”

When money is tight, there’s a strong temptation to drop your prices. The idea being that lower prices will appeal to more people, increasing your sales and putting some cash into your pocket.

This CAN work – on the short term.

For example: You need to raise money fast, maybe you desperately need a new computer. So you offer a huge discount on your services for a limited time. Hopefully this brings a fast influx of cash and you can run right out to buy that computer. IF you don’t mind doing a lot of work at a discounted price, this is totally fine.

There are potential problems involved that you should consider.

• Will your current clients want you to work for them for the discounted price? (Maybe.)
• Will those who take advantage of the discount flee when you go back to your regular prices? (Probably.)
• Will the discount make you look desperate? (Depends.)

The key to success with a short term discount is to present it carefully. If you’re just trying to raise cash to pay your bills – keep it to yourself. You can run a sale without having to have a reason. But if you do have a good reason for the special – go ahead and tell your story, it might influence buyers.

Offering discounts can be BAD news in the long run.

Offering specials too often can have a negative impact on your business. If you’re offering huge discounts every few weeks, the message you send is that you can’t get clients to pay your regular prices. It can make you look needy and that doesn’t inspire confidence in potential clients.

If having a sale is the only way to make sales, could your prices simply be too high? Do some research and see how your prices compare to your competitors.

If you’re financially desperate, offering a discount or lowering your prices is probably NOT the answer.

When you need more sales or more clients, its probably time to up your marketing efforts, not lower your prices.

Does your website do it’s job? Is it attractive, organized and easy to use? Have you removed all distractions? Test the entire sales process and make sure there are no problems.

If you have a great product but experience poor sales, consider hiring a copywriter to improve your sales copy.

Are you doing all that you can to promote yourself? (Most aren’t!) Put a referral or affiliate system in place so your fans can spread the word.

Next time you’re feeling a money squeeze, I hope you’ll look for ways to market yourself instead of underpricing yourself.