If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or you can leave me a message HERE. Don't forget to leave a comment. I allow Do Follow so you get a link back. Thanks for visiting!

These are the responses to the second round of Ask Josh. Occasionally I open up the floor for people to ask whatever they feel like asking. I don’t think there will be any perfect answers, but you asked for my opinion, so I’m giving it ;). Here we go:

Sherry Asks: What webhosting are you using? Have you heard of Shann Host or Dotster ? What do you think of the webhosting that I just mention.

Josh: I use 1and1.com as my webhosting. I have not heard of Shann Host or Dotster. I personally think web hosting has to do a lot with your needs are and how much you would like to spend. I have two servers, one shared and one dedicated, that I use for personal and business. I can tell you that the dedicated server customer support is much more knowledgeable and prompt. If you are only hosting a couple of sites and don’t drive tons and tons of traffic, focus more on the price. If you are hitting it hard, focus on the services and equipment.

BM Asks: When did you start blogging? How many blogs do you own? How many are active?

Josh: I started full-time blogging at the start of the year. I had written a few blog posts before that but wouldn’t really consider myself a blogger at that point. Currently, I work on about 10 or so active blogs. I have a few drifters that are waiting for some attention. Mostly I use the extra blogs to drive niche traffic or build support for other sites I work on.

Chelle Asks: Is the majority of your traffic from social media or organic search results?

Which makes me wonder, why do you think more people don’t search for more marketing related terms? I’ve done a lot of keyword research for it and there are very few that aren’t broad terms that get more than 20 searches a day. Are people just not thinking that way for marketing info yet?

Josh: Most of my traffic comes from organic searches or referring site. I am averaging about 150 marketing related searches a day via the major three Google, MSN and Yahoo.

It’s hard to have an accurate view of search traffic from just keyword searches alone. Once you are first for random marketing related terms, you would be surprised of the amount of searches they bring. I have moved up a lot recently for “marketing ideas” and related terms like “Halloween Marketing Ideas” which will bring a nice steady flow of traffic in at least until the end of the month. I usually see what people are searching for when they come to my blog and at what page I show up in the serps for that term. If they are finding me on page 5 and I know with a little work I can get to page 1, I will spend a little time doing that. The first spot on page 1 receives about 80% of the clicks for that search term. You never know what you are going to get until you do it.

shawal Asks: It is possible to sell a blogspot blog, if yes, HOW?

Josh: Technically, no. But can you work something out with a potential buyer? Probably yes. Not easy. That is one of the hard things to overcome in free hosting like Blogspot. Everything you do there is like renting a house. You don’t get the equity you put into it.

Driveway Sealing Asks: I’ve started a new site and I wanted to know: What would you do to get it ranked highly in the SERPS in under 3 months?

Is it blog commenting? or directory submissions? a combo of both maybe? Anything else I am missing?

Josh: I would approach this one of two ways depending on how old the domain is. If it is a brand new domain, you are going to shoot up in the serps and then right back down to work your way up again. This is Google’s way of preventing spam sites from taking over their serps. So in that case I would do directory submissions, blog commenting on dofollow high pr pages and reciprocal linking like blog rolls. It’s as effective as one-way links, but it passes link love more evenly while you crawl the new site back up the serps.

For an older site that has been established for at least 1-2 years, I would focus on high quality anchor links. Write a guest post for a high pr site with your link in it and comment on high pr pages with a contextual anchor link. I don’t personally do this but it works if done correctly to purchase a link from a high pr page. Sometimes it can run $30-40 a month for a good link, but it is an option. Always consider the risk vs. reward factor before doing any of this. Link building is strictly forbidden in search engines TOS.

Here is an Interview with Turnip of Power | Social Networking marketer on the creation of a new advertising network called CMF ADS. CMF (Changing Marketing Forever) ADS is a widget-based advertising system that allows advertisers to purchase ad space on quality niche blogs on a CPM (cost per thousand views) basis. Currently, there are 20 blogs in the network that have been selectively chosen to participate in the initial launching.

I like discovering new and up and coming products or services and thought CMF ADS would be a great candidate to share with everyone. After you read through the questions below, I encourage you to visit CMF ADS and see what it has to offer. Without further adieu, here you go:

What was your motivation for starting CMF ADS?

My motivation was to implement an idea I had posted several times on both my blog and on the Entrecard Forums. Each time the idea was ignored or given the canned response of “We have limited resources for that.” Then recently I was disappointed with the Performancing Ads Network. Stan from razzball.com approached me and said “Why can’t we do something like that?” That’s how it all started.

What are your short and long-term goals for CMF ADS?

Short term the goal was to get good people involved who wanted to be part of something new. We wanted to test our code, our server, public reaction, and iron out all the little unexpected surprises. Long term we would like to expand our portfolio of blogs and reach out to other social networks. As we are only 3 weeks old today, we are still refining our initial goals. Just yesterday I rewrote the widget code to allow for this expansion.

What is your major selling point for CMF ADS (elevator pitch)?

For publishers: We monetize your social traffic for you. All you have to do is maintain a quality blog. We help promote your blog, help you with your website when help is requested, and at the end of the day provide you with a small paycheck for displaying our widget in previously unused space next to their social networking widget.

For advertisers: We get your message out there on 20 of the best up and coming websites. No need to interact with so many small sites individually. We bundle our members’ page views and sell them to you in a very affordable CPM bundle, providing geotargetting and other advanced features the individual site owner could not easily provide due to a lack of technical expertise.

I could imagine many bloggers will want to utilize your service. Do you have strict quality control admission?

We have quality control on both the publisher and advertiser ends. Nobody wants to advertise on horrible made for adsense splogs. Likewise, no blogger wants scammy ads on their website. We manually approve all blogs and ads, allowing both publisher and advertiser to opt out of any ads or sites they wish. Each blog in our network was discussed in detail before being sent an invitation to join.

If a blog is interested in joining what will be the minimum requirements for joining?

Initially we invited only WordPress blogs. Since then we have allowed blogs using other content management platforms to join. The main requirements are your own domain name, a minimum of a 250 pixel wide sidebar, and maintaining a high-quality blog. Sometimes we work around the sidebar issue in special cases, but generally adhere to these rules.

How does the advertising widget effect the speed and efficiency of a site?

Our widget opens in an i-frame, so won’t ever slow down the rest of a site from loading. In addition, we host the bottom image locally, further speeding up the process.

What has been the overall perception of the widget so far?

Reception has been great. The first day we announced our network we sold 25,000 impressions as well as numerous high-quality blogs looking to join the network. Many curious bloggers have taken notice, along with a few advertisers.

Do you see yourself in competition to Entrecard or merely using some of their ideas to create a stand along advertising network?

We don’t see ourselves in competition with Entrecard or using their ideas. We took twenty well-respected blogs and made an ad network out of them. Now because we are active in the Entrecard community it was only natural that these twenty blogs were discovered through Entrecard. One blog has since left Entrecard and we welcome that, as well. A good blog is a good blog, Entrecard or not.

What measures are you establishing to provide the smoothest growth possible?

To ensure smooth growth, we are only letting in a fraction of the blogs asking to join. Each step of the way we have checked to make sure all issues were addressed before moving on to the next phase.

Conclusion:

I think this network has some great potential to develop into a full service advertising network. I don’t know how often they will be accepting new publishers, but I would make admission highly selective, more on the prestigious side. Say it only has enrollment every two weeks and only X number of new publishers will be allowed in during the beta stage, kind of like Gmail was invite only for the longest time. This would help in the beginning to have controlled growth of all the system resources preserving the quality of the network and service by not having a bunch of down time.

I really enjoy when people go out on their own by mixing and matching various different ideas to produce a worthwhile product. Time will tell how things play out, but I would again encourage you to head over to CMF ADS and check it out for yourself.

I have been seeing a lot of searches landing on my blog for Halloween Marketing Ideas and really wonder what people are tying to marketing on Halloween (or there about).

Here are a few of my Halloween Marketing Ideas for various industries:

Gas Station

I would hold a costume contest every day of Halloween week, where the winner gets a free tank of gas.

Restaurant

I would dress up the host or hostess in the scariest costume imaginable and have him or her jump out at everyone as they came in.

These ideas are to get people to talk about your business. I don’t think Halloween is as marketed as Christmas, but still, a lot of people participate. Seeing that this year Halloween is on a Friday I am sure a lot more people than normal will be out. Finding a niche that your business can capture and help the word spread by including as many people as you can is the key. Use what you have at your disposal to give away as prizes, include in the contests and help other to talk about you.

1. Go out of your way.

2. Make things easy for them to talk to you, then engage in discussion.

3. Direct and guide visitors to where they can go to ask a question, like that bright, shiny new email logo to the right

4. Sign up for all the social networking sites you can mange to get ahold of. Then add them to ping.fm to reduce the amount of time you spend using them.

5. Find people in your niche and comment, comment and comment (sincerely).

6. Print business cards and hand them out to people at any chance.

7. Write guest posts.

8. Create videos.

9. Start a contest.

10. Give things away and make it easy to share.

11. Offer and take free advice.

12. Be yourself!

13. Have fun!!

A large percentage of new bloggers want to make it big, to have a blog that tons of people visit and money pouring in. The truth is this rarely happens, and if your goal is to make money online, getting tons of people to your site is the wrong way to go about it.

I will probably get booed off the blogosphere for stating the obvious and so many people are ready to defend social media successes, but rarely do any of those defending it actually make money from the traffic that sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon deliver.

I won’t lie to you and say that if you make the front page of Digg you won’t get a ton of traffic, because you will. But did you know that most of Digg’s front page stories are generated by just a handful of people? The rest of the stories are generated by everyone else who is using the site. (Grip time) The traffic from these sites rarely comment, subscribe, buy, share or hang around.

When I first started blogging I used to think that social traffic was the end all and be all of blogging and that having good stats was better than anything. But if your goal is to make money, go where the money is and where you need to go in order to get paid. Provide for or target the people who are looking for a solution to their problems. Digg users aren’t looking for something in particular, they are looking for something random or weird that they can entertain themselves with for a few minutes while they kill time at work. They aren’t going to sign up for an affiliate program or buy a book. They are simply wasting time and floating from one thing to the next.

Making money online more often than not requires you to do and talk about the things that social traffic sites shy away from. This would be the niche blog or abstract art dealer site. By catering to the people who are looking for specific things like a service or collectibles you will find there is money to be made.

Before you persecute me saying you can convert that massive social media traffic, I will admit that many people can convert that traffic and have perfected the monetization of mass traffic flow. In the end, for me, if comes down to the amount of time spent achieving that goal and if that can sustain itself. If you stop for one week pressing, shouting, friending, digging, stumbling and so on, your business will wither. But if you set up a site that generates nice and consistent traffic and money you now have a business model. Don’t forget that a lead in the hand is worth more than a thousand fly by.

*For the record I have obtained mass traffic including having a number of posts hit the Buzz page on StumbleUpon, netting upwards of 35,000 page views per article. So it is possible, but simply unsustainable in the long run.

*Inspired by Vic and Grizz