Two Building Blocks of Successful Blogging
Someone recently asked me what I thought it took to be a successful blogger. As I sat pondering my answer all sorts of things ran through my mind: They must be committed, they must be an expert on some topic, they must be able to communicate well, they must be engaging, able to run a business, and so much more. But then it occurred to me – these are all skills you can acquire along …
8 Bad Decisions When Starting a New Website
A lot of new bloggers want to just dive right in and get started blogging. They figure they’ll learn from their mistakes as they go. In some cases, that’s fine. Too many bloggers are so afraid of making mistakes they never get started. Chances are you’re going to set up more than one blog anyway, before you really start understanding the business. But what if your first blog is a hit? Avoid these 8 …
Want To Write a Guest Post For A Blog?
More and more bloggers are finding out that they can often get better results with one well-placed guest blog post than they can with 10 or 12 articles placed in those cluttered article directories. As a result, owners of high-ranking blogs are being bombarded with email, asking if they’ll accept guest blog posts and what are their requirements. If you really want to write a guest post for…
Try The Sermon Structure For Your Blog Posts
I’m a huge advocate of using templates to help give structure to your blog posts and speed up the writing process, and what better template than one that’s been used for hundreds of years – the sermon template. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. When you hear a sermon, you sit up and pay attention to the …
How To Make Money Online Writing Poetry
It used to be that the only way you could make money with your poetry was to go through the long and arduous process of finding an agent and then wait for that agent to find a publishing house willing to promote your book. The path was littered with rejection slips and to even consider self-publication was literary suicide. These days though, you don’t have to cow-tow to the publishers anymore. Now you can make money online writing poetry. Self-publication no longer has the negative stigma …
10 Things Your Blog Doesn’t Need
Surfing around the blogosphere you’re likely to see just about anything on a blog – flashing neon banners, hip-hop or rap music, prizes, awards, badges, Twitter widgets and a zoo full of animated critters. When you see that cute little baby bouncing across the bottom of the page or that fire breathing dragon in the sidebar …
Website Traffic Types: Direct Traffic
If you were to walk out your front door and travel to the mall there are probably at least a half a dozen different routes you could take. The same is true for the people who come to visit your blog. They can follow a link from an email, a link at Facebook or Twitter, they can type your …
What Really Motivates People?
I’ve talked before about how the goal of your sales pages and squeeze pages should be to eliminate the obstacles between the buyer and the Buy It Now button. But let’s go into a little more detail. If you’re going to eliminate the obstacles you first have to know what those obstacles are. To determine that, you have to understand what motivates your reader. Before you can even think about racking up the sales you need to understand why a reader would even be motivated to hit that Buy button. Long story…
Processes That Lead to Blogging Success
Making that first sale on their blog is an event that most bloggers remember like it happened only yesterday. But leading up to any event is a process, a certain combination of steps you have to take to make that event a reality. During the course of your blogging career you’ll experience many milestone events. But before you do, you’ll have to understand and master the …
Website Traffic Types: Referral Traffic
There are three basic types of traffic coming into your blog every day: Search engine traffic, direct traffic and referral traffic. Each type of traffic is important for different reasons and today we’re going to focus on referral traffic. What is it? Where does it come from? And why is referral traffic important for your blog? What is Referral Traffic? Referral traffic is traffic that arrives at your blog via a link that someone shared. You can break referral traffic down even further into two categories: Social sharing traffic and Blog/Website referrals. Where does Referral …
Are Bloggers Losing Money by Not Selling Sponsored Posts?
When you get right down to it, every post on your blog is a sponsored post. You’re either making money with affiliate links or you’re earning ad revenue. In the end, somebody is paying your to blog otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it. That said, the next question is a little more specific: Should you solicit advertisers and write specific relevant content in exchange for money? Are you losing money by not selling sponsored posts? What are sponsored posts? Once you have an …
Go Hard or Go Home, Especially If You Are Building A Website
When you’re punching a time clock we all have days where we don’t feel like giving 110{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}, so you spend the day pushing papers around on your desk, trying to look like you’re actually working. But when you’re starting your own business you need to either go hard or go home, every single day, especially if you’re building a website. If I had a nickel for every domain name I’ve purchased I could probably retire and go live on some secluded tropical beach. But when it comes to building websites it’s not…
If Possible, Make It An Affiliate Link
I can’t tell you how many affiliate programs I’ve joined over the years. I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess. But I will tell you this: Almost every product or service you recommend has an affiliate program. And if you’re not using an affiliate link when you mention them in your blog posts you’re missing out on a significant source of income. How many times have you just casually mentioned to your readers that you used such-and-such product or service or you visited this-and-…
What’s Your Long-Term Blogging Strategy?
Contrary to what all those ebooks tell you, nobody sets up a successful, money-making blog in one weekend. In fact, if you’re like me and a lot of bloggers I know, you’ll set up a few blogs before you finally start hitting your stride. It takes months to develop a strong, loyal following and it sometimes takes a couple of years to start earning a predictable, full-time income. You can, however, help the process along …
Your Blog is Your Portfolio
Maybe you have the best job you could ever imagine. Your boss is wonderful, you make good money, and you really love what you’re doing. But what if something better came along? I know it’s hard to imagine right now but – What If? Of course, you can’t really answer that until you see what that “What If” is, but it might be an opportunity that surpasses even you wildest dreams. You could find out what that “What If” is if you use your blog as your portfolio. Most …
How To Turn Every Post Into A Sticky Web For Readers
Your homepage is usually the highest ranking page on your blog, but take a look at it, what do you see? Generally, all you see is a list of blog posts accompanied by a few snippets of text. Most bloggers think that just raising the rank of the homepage pulls all the inner pages up, as well. However, that’s not really how it works. In fact, if all your ingound links point to your homepage, you’re wasting a lot of link juice. Building the rank of your homepage…
What Are The Alternatives to Google AdSense?
You’re not the first person to ask, “What are the alternatives to Google Adsense?” and between you and me, my answer is, “Just about anything is a better alternative to AdSense!” But, I know, that doesn’t really answer your question. Since we’re talking about your business here you’d probably prefer I turn off the sarcasm and give you something a little more concrete. So let’s get …
Want To Make Your First Website?
As soon as your friends and family learn you’re making money online they all want to know how to make their own website. After the third or fourth time you sit somebody down and try to teach them the process you’ll realize that most people have no intentions of following through and you’ve just wasted…
How To Rank Well Your Inner Pages In Search Engines
Your homepage is usually the highest ranking page on your blog, but take a look at it, what do you see? Generally, all you see is a list of blog posts accompanied by a few snippets of text. Most bloggers think that just raising the rank of the homepage pulls all the inner pages up, as well. However, that’s not really how it works. In …
Blogging Isn’t All There Is to Blogging
Most successful bloggers didn’t get that way because they just sit there and blog all day. Their business may have started with a blog but now its grown into so much more. Yours will, too, as soon as you understand that blogging isn’t all there is to blogging. Step…