The post Ramit Sethi Exposed: How He Earns Millions Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest post is by Michael Alexis.

In this post, I’m going to show you the exact steps one blogger used to earn over $1 million. That’s making some serious money blogging!

I interviewed Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and if you’re serious about making money blogging, then you need to read this interview.

But a heads-up: this post is long and extremely detailed. It took me over 20 hours to write. It will take you about 15 minutes to read.

I know you may be skeptical about the $1 million, so let’s start by looking at the facts.

Ramit Sethi and I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Ramit’s advice on money has been featured on CNN, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, FOX Business, PBS, The New York Times, CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, npr, REUTERS, and most recently in a major feature in Fortune Magazine.

His personal finance book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is a New York Times bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

IWTYTBR is ranked 19,466 on Alexa. It hosts over 250,000 monthly readers, and has 100,000+ newsletter subscribers. Prices of IWTYTBR products range from $4.95 to $12,000. But most importantly, Ramit’s tactics get his readers results. See this post, where over 500 readers wrote 54,818 words that say so. That’s as long as a novel!

Impressive, right?

Now, let’s break down Ramit’s five-step system for creating and earning immense value.

1. Do Research That Gets Inside Your Readers Head
   • Examples of research insights for IWTYTBR
   • Use surveys to uncover the words readers use
   • Collect words from your email subscribers
   • When to ignore your readers
   • Don’t refer to comments on other blogs
   • Collect all the testimonials you will ever need
   • It’s your birthday: ask for feedback
2. Target your customers closely
3. Write a sales page that makes your fortune
   • Naming your product
   • Answer objections before your customers even have them
   • Don’t waste time A/B testing: it’s about the offer
   • Understand the taxonomy of pricing
   • Write Super Specific Headlines
   • Give Your Product An Unbeatable Guarantee
4. What to do right after the customer buys
5. Using ethical persuasion

1. Do research that gets inside your reader’s head

When you can truly deeply understand people, even in fact better than they understand themselves, then your sales skyrocket.—Ramit Sethi

There are two reasons getting inside a readers head will skyrocket your sales.

First, you will use the information to create a product or service that matches their wants and needs.

Second, you can use their exact language in your copywriting to reach them at a deeper level.

A big part of selling a product is being able to understand your reader’s barriers. What’s holding them back from their goals? In terms of money, people already know they need to manage and invest it. In terms of weight loss, people already know they need to lose weight and eat better. And in blogging, you know it’s offering immense value to your readers that will make you a problogger.

But they aren’t doing it. There is something much deeper than this goal, which is the barrier to achieving it. You’ll only discover that by doing enough research.

Maybe you’ll find out that in finance, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I really need to study a compound interest chart and start investing!” Nobody. They say, “this year I am going to try harder,” or “yeah, I should probably do that, but first I need to figure it out.”

When you know that language, you are inside your reader’s head.

Imagine you are a weight loss blogger. I want you to write a headline for a coaching session on losing weight. Go!

Wait. You don’t have enough information to write an effective headline. The best you can do is generic stuff like, “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days with our experienced coach!”

“Weight loss” is too broad a topic. Maybe your reader wants to lose fat from a specific area. Or perhaps they want to lose weight for a specific reason. A 50-year-old mother of two will have different reasons than a 28-year-old guy living in Manhattan.

So, you do some research and find out your target customer is a single woman who wants to lose weight from her thighs. You could write a killer headline pretty quick, right?

Soon, you’ll be able to truly understand your reader’s hopes, fears and dreams—and articulate them even better than they can. That’s the power of research.

Examples of research insights for IWTYTBR

During our interview, I asked Ramit to share some of the specific insights he has applied from his research. Here’s a big one.

A couple of years ago Ramit was doing a book tour, and he’d ask readers what they really want to learn. Everywhere he went, people were telling him they want to earn more money. That’s why he decided to create his flagship course, Earn 1k On The Side.

But just like “I want to lose weight” is too generic, so is “I want to earn more money.” Here’s what Ramit thought: “I’m so smart. I know my audience so well! They want to live a better lifestyle—fly to Vegas for the weekend and drop a couple grand.”

Then he did his research.

It turned out the real reason his readers wanted to earn more money was so they’d have the option of quitting their jobs. Yeah, just the option. This insight profoundly changed how Ramit created and positioned his course.

By the way, take a look at the signup page for Earn 1k. How much do you want to bet “I can’t freelance … I don’t even have an idea” was one of the objections Ramit was hearing over and over?

So, how do you go about doing research that gets you inside your reader’s head?

Use surveys to uncover the words readers use

The beautiful part is that because so few people are doing this, if you do even a small amount—you completely stand out. You don’t need 25,000 data points. That’s ridiculous. It took me years to be able to get to that. If you have 20 qualitative responses to one survey question, that’s pretty informative.—Ramit Sethi

Before launching Earn1k, Ramit collected 25,000 data points, and then over 50,000 for version 2.0. He calls this his “secret sauce,” which allows him to be the “wife who knows her husband better than he knows himself.” Most of that data came from surveys.

He says that a lot of people don’t use surveys at all, so they come up with useless advice like “keep a budget.” So if you survey even a little bit, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

Ramit starts with really broad surveys, and narrows the questions down over time. He asks the questions four or five times until he really gets at the truth. Sometimes it takes Ramit four months and 6,000 answers to get at a single nugget of truth. You don’t need that many responses, though: even 20 qualitative responses to one survey question can be extremely informative.

Preparing your survey

1. Sign up for a free or $20 account at Survey Monkey.
2. Ask open-ended essay-style questions. You aren’t aiming for statistical validity here.
3. Ask five questions. Keep them short and specific.
4. Include examples of the kinds of answers you want: really long, detailed responses, not one-liners.
5. The two most important questions are “What is it you’ve tried and failed at?” and “What do you want?”

Here’s an example of a question from one of Ramit’s surveys:

“In your own words, what skill would you use to earn more $ on the side? (For example, “I’m good at writing, but I just don’t know how to earn $1,000 using my writing skills…”)”

Download copies of Ramit’s surveys—and an audio case study that walks through an example step by step—here.

Never do this on your survey

I asked Ramit if there was anything we shouldn’t ask on a survey. Here’s what he said.

Don’t ask them what they would be willing to pay. They don’t know. They will tell you an untruthful answer, and it’s pointless to ask them. Okay. People don’t know how to do pricing, so they get lazy and they are like “hey, what would you pay for this special mastermind ebook bootcamp” and you get the worst answers in the world. By the way they are total lies. People aren’t intentionally lying, they just don’t actually know what they would pay for something.—Ramit Sethi

Another thing you shouldn’t do is try to sell. You are doing research. How do these two research questions make you feel?

1. If I told you I had an eight-week course that was guaranteed to make you 1k a month on the side, would that interest you?
2. Have you ever tried earning money on the side? What happened?

Aim for the second option. It’s like my mom always said: “treat people how you want to be treated.”

Getting people to take your survey

You write great material, you are adding value for your readers. They love you. They wake up in the morning and see you in their reader, or come to your website or see you on Twitter. They like you.—Ramit Sethi

The key to getting readers to take your surveys is that they have to like you.

If you don’t have a good relationship with your readers, then none of this stuff matters. You can stop reading this post and go read How To Build The Relationship With Your Readers instead.

But if your readers like you, you are set. You don’t need thousands of them either.

Step two is to reach out to your readers via email and social media, saying something like this: “Hey guys, I’m looking for some help here. I’m trying to figure out how I can help you best. Would you mind taking like 5 minutes to give me your thoughts?”

That’s enough. You are set to start getting in your readers’ heads via surveys. But there’s another way you can do it.

Collect words from your email subscribers

You can also use email to better understand your readers.

Here’s what Ramit does.

1. He writes a big, detailed email with a story about something that happened to himself or to a friend.
2. He finishes it with a call to action, “Hey, I’d love to hear your story. Please email me back, I read every one.”
3. He responds to some of the replies. The recipients of those personal responses think, “Wow, this dude actually reads his emails and he cares”.

That last point is pretty good for relationship building, too. These are the little things you can do that will bring you disproportionate results.

When to ignore your readers

Sometimes you’ll get reader feedback that you disagree with. Over time, you will develop a filter for what to listen to and what to discard.

Here’s a way to start developing your filter. When you get a good response, try to find out a little more about the person who wrote it. If everyone who buys from you is a 26-year-old man living in the USA, then listen to them. Ignore the 72-year-old grandma who’s complaining your font size is too small.

If you haven’t made sales yet, focus on getting to know your target audience. As Ramit advised in a previous interview, don’t write for everybody. For Ramit, IWTYTBR isn’t just another blog, so he isn’t interested in people reading just for intellectual entertainment. He wants people who will take action.

Don’t refer to comments on other blogs

You’ve probably heard this advice before: look at comments on other blogs in your niche, then blog about the questions they ask. Ramit says there is no value in this kind of research.

Why? Because audiences on different sites are so profoundly different.

Ramit recently wrote a post called The worst career advice in the world. It received over 200 long comments and was very well regarded. The article was syndicated by another site where the audience didn’t know him at all. On that site, the article got 24 comments, most of which were super-negative.

Your audience is unique and special—that’s why they are your audience.

Collect all the testimonials you will ever need

Another part of your research and development should involve collecting testimonials. We’ve all seen those generic testimonials that are totally contrived: “Oh wow, this is the best product I ever bought and it changed my life forever!”

You need real testimonials, and the best source is people that have bought your products. Send them an email that says, “Hey, hope things are going well. So happy to see how everyone is doing.” Then tell them to click the appropriate link: “If you accomplished x in 5 hours a week, click here. If you did y, but you were skeptical, click here.” This gives you testimonials for all those options.

Here’s another tip for getting rock-solid testimonials. As readers are going through you course, get them to fill out progress reports. That way, feedback is part of the funnel. Believe it or not, Ramit gets so much feedback this way he hired a guy whose sole job is to manage them.

And if you’re developing your first product, Ramit suggests two ways to get testimonials.

First, you may have some respondents you’ve never engaged with before. In your survey, include a comment like, “Hey, if you’ve used any of my free material for x/y/z, I’d love to hear your story. Please be specific”. All of a sudden you have 20 testimonials!

Another way is to offer free trials for your product. So, find five to ten friends or readers. Tell them “Guys, I’m planning to release this thing. It will be about $100. I’m looking for ten people to go through it and give me feedback. If you agree to fill out three surveys, you get this trial for free—and the final product as well.”

It’s your birthday: ask for feedback

During our interview, I asked Ramit about one other way I’ve seen him get people to leave feedback at IWTYTBR.

On his birthday this year, Ramit wrote a post and included this call to action at the bottom: “Nothing could be better than hearing how my material has helped you. Just leave a comment on this post. Or, upload a video to YouTube and tag it “iwillteachyoutoberich.”

“The more specific, the better Share a story. Tell us how IWT helped you hit a goal, pay off debt, earn more, get a better job — whatever. Provide specific, concrete #’s. Tell me what it meant to you. It would make my day.”

You know how many responses he got? Over 500. Check the post out at It’s my birthday today. Will you do me a favor?

The comments are people saying things like “I’m earning $70k more than I was before”, “I was able to quit my job and move across the country” and “I was earning $10 an hour, now I’m earning $40”.

These comments weren’t destined to be testimonials, but here’s one way Ramit uses them. When he makes a post about how he’s able to charge 100x what others do, and why his students are delighted to pay it, he includes the link. It proves that he’s not just providing information, but is also delivering actual results.

2. Target your customers closely

We saw earlier that Ramit targets his customers closely. He targets people who take action. He says it’s better to have a small core audience that takes action, respects what you have to say and gets results from your material, than a massive audience that doesn’t open your emails.

Here is a way to filter them out. Don’t sell via a squeeze page. Ramit sends subscribers through weeks of free material before giving them a chance to buy. If people complain, he unsubscribes them.

Then he tells the subscribers who can and can’t buy the course. For example, people with credit card debt are prohibited from buying his courses. If he finds out they bought it, he will ban them for life. Why? For one, Ramit doesn’t believe it’s right to take that money when he knows it will end up costing the customer twice as much. Second: it sends a message to the other readers.

3. Write a sales page that makes your fortune

We’ve had pages that convert at 68.7%, which in the online world is unheard of.—Ramit Sethi

Ramit spends months (or even years) doing research and development. He spends a lot of time crafting his product and offer, and he has converted as high as 68.7%. In our industry the average is 2-4%.

Realistically, you won’t get conversions that high. But could you improve your sales? Of course. If you don’t you are leaving a ton of value on the table—not just money—but value that users aren’t receiving because you aren’t messaging correctly.

Your blog doesn’t need as big a following as IWTYTBR to implement this. The basic patterns Ramit uses are modeled by people in businesses much larger and smaller. To succeed, you need to deeply understand your readers, then spend time on stuff that matters, and avoid what doesn’t.

Naming your product

Naming your product is some of the most important language on your sales page. If you want inspiration, check out Chris Guillebeau’s work at The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris names products like The Travel Hacking Cartel, Empire Building Kit and A Brief Guide To World Domination.

Let’s look more closely at how Ramit names his products. Why did he call his earning money course Earn 1k on the side? Because $1000 is an achievable figure. A lot of students go on to earn much more. But Ramit says if you tell them they will earn $10,000 they go “I don’t believe you, I’m not the kind of person”. Earning an extra $1,000 a month is life changing for most people. And it’s “on the side” because to become richer, people tend to think that they have to quit their job and start the next Google. The vast majority will not and cannot. But anyone can do five to ten hours a week on the side.

For Ramit’s new Find Your Dream Job course the naming process was similar. Even though the long-term goal is to help people find their dream career, he is using their language. If you are sitting around with your buddies, what you actually say is “I wish I could find a new…” What?

“Job”.

And “dream job” is what people are thinking.

Answer objections before customers even have them

Remember all those testimonials you collected? Now it is time to use them, and they are very strategic.

Imagine you find in your research that people don’t believe they have enough time to implement your advice. Great. Now you go to customers who are really happy and say “Hey, I’m looking for anyone who thought they wouldn’t have time to complete this program, but now you’ve achieved x results.”

Add that testimonial to your sales page, and when the reader’s there, they’ll find an answer to their objection before they even had it.

Don’t waste your time A/B testing: it’s about the offer

So few of us are even spending time on language. We are spending time on things that give us a shiny pop. You know you might be able to measure an increase in conversion by 1.6%. But when you do can things like this you can increase every other conceivable measure. Revenues up 500%. Engagement up 750%. Because you are actually speaking to people in the language that works with them, and not at them.—Ramit Sethi

Ramit really emphasizes how you should spend your time on the things that matter. “My point is, focus on the stuff that matters and is going to make the biggest most valuable gain for you… don’t get caught up in this microtesting world. It’s sexy. It’s fun. We see a 1.3% increase in open rates because we tweaked our subject lines. Or, you can get a 500% increase in revenue because you came up with a better offer,” he says.

Why all the hate? Two reasons. One is that even if you change the color of your button and improve opt-ins by 24%, it doesn’t mean you are going to convert any more sales. Second, even if you do increase the conversions to opt-in, they will eventually regress to the mean. You know who actually gets results from testing button color? Amazon.com.

Ramit says one area to test that can skyrocket your sales is your offers. Do your research and find out what people want. Do they want a standalone ebook? Maybe, and they’ll be happy to pay $97 for it. Or if someone doesn’t want a full video course, maybe they do want transcripts at a lower price. Others want accountability, like live calls every week or even a one-on-one call. Ramit warns that people might say they want an ebook but they may really need someone to check in.

One way to craft your offers is to study people you admire in both the online and offline worlds. What do they offer and how do they offer it?

McDonald’s created the kids’ meal. That’s an offer. They packaged up certain things in a certain way. Offered bonuses. Changed pricing. And the kids’ meal is one of the most successful packages ever created in the history of business.

When I interviewed Neil Patel of Quicksprout he told me about a $199 traffic generation system he offered. He also gave buyers a 30-minute phone call, and after hundreds of sales, is buried in scheduled calls. Ramit says Neil learned two things: that he will never do it again, and that people want his time. That’s very valuable.

Understand the taxonomy of pricing

There is a taxonomy of pricing that is well understood in the information product world.

It goes like this:

• blog post: no one will pay for
• PDF/ebook: $27-$97
• audio/video course: $497-$997
• must have video or live component: $997+
• in person, one-on-one: the most

If you are putting out a book, and all the others in the store sell for $10 or $15, it’s going to be awfully difficult to roll in and get $200 for yours. Stick to the taxonomy.

Write super-specific headlines

There are plenty of great posts on writing headlines, so I won’t dwell on it here. Check out Copyblogger’s How to Write Headlines That Work instead.

I will note that Ramit says headlines matter profoundly. So spend 50% of your time on them and get super-specific. Doing this, you might decrease conversions, but the people that come through are worth so much more—not just in terms of money, but also in terms of the value you offer them.

Then you want to start thinking about your guarantee.

Give your product an unbeatable guarantee

Offering a money-back guarantee forces you to step up your game, because if your product isn’t good, you don’t get food on the table. I think all of us in this market need that, because there have been so many sleazy people that released substandard products. So I’d like all those people to go out of business, and I’d like the best people, the ones who say “look, my product is so good you try the entire thing and if you don’t like it I’ll send all your money back, even the credit card processing fees.” I want more people like that, because that is a product with integrity versus a fly by night product.—Ramit Sethi.

A big barrier for business people who want to offer guarantees is that they are afraid people will rip them off. Guess what? Some people probably will. But the ability to get a refund will drive more revenue and expose you to many more great people than the few bad apples acting illegitimately.

People expect the opportunity to get 100% of their money back. If your product is good enough, why not let people try the whole thing and get their money back? You have nothing to worry about.

But you should monitor your percentages. On a $97 product you can expect a return rate of about 10%. If you are getting 40% of sales returned, your product is not good. If you are getting 2% returned, that’s a problem too. Why? You probably aren’t selling to enough people. Generally the higher the price, the more refunds are requested.

Ramit offered some tips on creating an unbeatable guarantee. First, the more powerful you can make your guarantee, the better. In The Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss talks about offering a 110% money back guarantee.

Second, the best guarantees are very specific. So don’t just write, “if you are not satisfied for any reason, we’ll give your money back.” Instead try something like, “if you don’t get three paying clients within 60 days, then write me and I’ll send all your money back.”

Third, take as much risk as possible onto yourself. That means offering refunds greater than 100%, paying for shipping, whatever—as much as is economically feasible.

Neil Patel says you can reduce refunds by sending people free stuff you didn’t tell them about during the sale. Just before the refund period is up, send them an email that says, “Hey, next week I’ll be sending you a document that breaks all this down.” Or, “I’ve got a special bonus for you that I’ll be sending along next week,” for example.

So you’ve created a sales page that converts like crazy. But what do you do after your reader buys?

4. What to do right after the customer buys

When they buy, think through their experience. What are they feeling? Nervous. Don’t want to have gotten ripped off. Don’t want to have been taken advantage of. Don’t want their friends to think they bought a weird internet course.—Ramit Sethi

If you told your friends you bought a $2000 video course, they would probably say you got scammed. Normal people don’t buy stuff online, right?

So your newly acquired purchaser is nervous. And after you ease those nerves, they’ll be excited. They can’t wait. Where do they start?

Welcome your customers with a video—Ramit recorded his first one with his MacBook. Tell them something like, “You made a great decision. This is what you are going to get. If you ever have problems, contact us at…” Then give them the material.

It’s important to curate the material your customers see. If you ask people do they want all the information up front, they say “yes.” But if you give it all at once they will be overwhelmed and more likely to cancel or ask for a refund. So tell them, “Here’s why I’m not giving you everything—trust me, and take these action steps.”

I recently watched a Mixergy Master Class called Grow Your Recurring Revenue. It was about how to keep customers that signup for your membership site or courses.

Noah Fleming led the course and said there are three essential Cs: Character, Content, and Community.

In the case of IWTYTBR, the character is Ramit. He’s the personality that readers buy from. The content is what you offer—Noah also emphasized not dumping it all on new buyers all at once.

Community is the elements of your product that let buyers interact with each other. Noah says this is a great way to keep people around, and suggested the idea of forming small groups and giving them tasks: like creating a product together, or developing a landing page.

Ramit tried community by including a forum for Earn1K buyers. He took it down when he found people were spending more time on that than doing work. People still ask him for a forum. It’s what people want—but not what they need.

5. Using ethical persuasion

Life is not just about more conversions. You want to be classy. You want to be respectful. Yeah, you could make more money, but that’s not the goal—the goal is to help them make an informed decision.—Ramit Sethi

Why is ethical persuasion so important? Because now that you know Ramit’s techniques and frameworks for sales, you’d find it just as easy to implement them on the dark side. There are many ways you can use persuasion nefariously, like to convince people to buy things they don’t really need. Ramit says he knows of hucksters who find out how much money their leads have available on their credit cards, then charge that.

Here’s Ramit’s framework for knowing who to sell to.

rational (information + motivation) = decision?

• Rational requires that the potential buyer is in a sound state of mind and able to make their decision. Someone in desperate financial circumstances might not be.
• Information assumes the potential buyer has all the information in the world about Ramit’s product.
• And motivation means it is something they want.

If those three criteria are met, and the lead would buy the product, then Ramit has the privilege to persuade them to buy.

For example, take someone who’s earning $60,000, has $25,000 in the bank and works 9-5 but really wants to earn more. The person has the time, energy, and no credit card debt. If they took the time to go through Ramit’s program, and they trust him, would they buy it? If the answer’s “yes,” it’s a sale.

If someone makes $30,000, has $20,000 in debt, and is looking for a magic bullet, Ramit won’t let the person make the decision to buy.

So, I asked Ramit about those guys who run sites like www.SuperInstantMoneyMakingMachine.com. You know the kind—the ones where they tell you about their life on the beach, drinking margaritas, and chasing women. And there’s a picture of the guy in front of a jet. There is always a jet shot.

Ramit says if that guy has a product that would genuinely change a customer’s life, and gives them an out in the form of a full refund period, then it’s ethical to aggressively pursue the sale. He warns that many pages of long copy, flashing icons, the jet shot, and highlights are scams. Those guys do it because it works, and there are deep psychological reasons for it.

Can you do me a favor and leave a comment sharing the most important insight you got from hearing what Ramit has to say? Be specific—tell us a story, please.

I’m Michael Alexis and I interview the world’s top bloggers. Check out this ProBlogger article from the last time I interviewed Ramit.

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The post 52 Types of Blog Posts that Are Proven to Work appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest post is by Karol K of Online Business Design blog.

Blogging is not only about putting together 400-2,000 words of text and publishing them on your WordPress site. As a blogger, you can choose from a much bigger variety of possible blog post types (and content in general).

Let me be honest and admit that I’ve wanted to compile this sort of list for a long time. Coming up with new ideas for posts every couple of days might lead you to a hard stop on a brick wall very quickly… I believe writer’s block is the more politically correct name for such a situation.

One of the most effective ways of fighting writer’s block is having a big resource file, containing lots of ideas and frameworks for new posts. Besides, writing standard, old-school blog posts can get boring very quickly. That’s why every blogger needs some variety in terms of content if they want to be doing this for a longer period of time.

This list is divided into a couple of sections depending on the purpose and characteristics of each content type. Feel free to treat it as a resource file ≠ñ you don’t have to go through the whole list at once.

Article style posts (aka standard blog posts)

1. How-to/tutorial posts

This is one of the most popular post types and one that arguably brings the most value to the reader. The most important thing to focus on while writing it, is to give some specific information on how to do/perform/attain/reach whatever is promised in the title of the post. Videos and images work very well as additional resources for how-to posts.

2. News posts

Typically used by bigger blogs, leaders in a given field that have their finger on the pulse at all times. They are usually short (less than 500 words) and share an important piece of news in a given market. There are a couple of downsides if you want to make them an important part of your publishing schedule: you have to be fast (there’s nothing worse than yesterday’s news), news has a short expiration date (it’s hard to turn a news post into a piece of evergreen content), and finally, you have to be publishing them at least once a day.

3. Definition posts

A.k.a. Wikipedia-style post. What you basically do is choose a term that has a significant importance in your field and define it using simple language, so the term is easy to understand for someone who’s new to the topic.

4. Standard list posts

List post is one of the most popular post types in use today (you’re reading one right now). The basic idea is that you take a topic or a problem and you try to come up with a number of separate solutions to it. List posts are so popular because they are extremely easy to follow. Each point is usually not related to the other ones, which means that even a distracted mind can get a lot of value from the whole post. List posts are also great for bookmarking or sharing with friends—precisely because of their reader-friendly construction.

5. Resource/link list posts

Very similar to standard list posts. The difference is that now you’re not coming up with the content on your own, but searching for valuable information elsewhere and, in the end, sharing links to what you have found. This type of list post is very popular lately and many successful bloggers are using it as one of the most important elements of their publishing schedule. This kind of posts tend to get a lot of backlinks due to the fact that people who have been featured often like to let their readers know about that fact, so they go ahead and mention it on their blogs.

6. Profile posts

A profile is a post focusing on a specific person, usually someone famous or important in a given field. Profiles usually cover things like: why the person in question became famous, what’s so special about them, what they have accomplished, and what’s their history and background. There are no specific rules of creating a good profile post. You have to choose your target, find as much interesting information about them as you can, and combine it into an article.

7. Case studies

Case studies present a way of solving a problem based on a real-life example. They are usually constructed in a step-by-step manner presenting each step in a detailed way, and explaining why this specific solution has been chosen. Case studies usually end with a roundup of everything that has been done and present the final results.

8. Problems-and-solutions posts

This is similar post type to case studies, only here, the solution doesn’t have to be one that has already been applied. It can be a description of a theoretical solution to a problem, or an idea worth considering for other people struggling with the same problem. For example, let’s look at amateur bodybuilding as a topic. One of the most common problems in that field is gaining lean (fat-free) body mass. A bodybuilder-blogger might create a post targeting this specific problem by giving a number of possible solutions, like introducing a special diet, different workout regime, different hours of sleep, and so on.

9. Comparison posts

Every field has some specific characteristics or problems that can be solved by many different means. Comparison posts take two or more possible solutions and compare them to one another. Various aspects of these solutions need to be taken into account if the whole post is to be valuable. It’s also good to point out a winner at the end. Some of the things you can compare against each other are: software, books, courses, companies, etc.—even people.

10. Stories

There’s nothing like a good story. Stories are ones of the most reader-friendly types of blog posts. We ñ humans ñ are used to hearing stories ever since we were children. The power of stories lies in their ability of disguising certain messages while describing seemingly unrelated situations. You can create a story about someone who wanted to do something but failed because they didn’t know the most important elements of X, where “X” is the thing you want to share with your readers… Just an example.

11. Controversial posts

The truth is people like to read controversial articles even if they don’t agree with the author. That being said, not every author has enough balls to write such a thing. Interestingly enough, creating a controversial post is not that difficult. The easiest way of doing it is to pick a topic, write down your thoughts about that topic, and then sharpen them up to the point of absurd. You can use some sarcasm while doing so. Here’s an example. Instead of saying “some Internet marketing tips published online have very few possible applications in real life,” say “every Internet marketer knows nothing about real-life business”—strong, to the point, and easy to disagree with.

12. Inspiring posts

Usually an inspiring story about someone (hopefully, an underdog) achieving something. The main message here is “if he can do it, so can I.” The only problem is that it’s not that easy to find something interesting enough to be turned into an inspiring post.

13. Research posts

A step-by-step guide on how you are (or someone else is) researching a specific topic. For example, you can share how you’re doing your keyword research, or how you’re searching for a virtual assistant to hire, or how you’re doing market research to come up with a list of potential partners and competitors.

14. “What others are saying” posts

This is a combination of a research post and a link list post. The main idea is to find a topic and find other people sharing their opinion on that topic. Sometimes it’s better to not pretend that you are the most knowledgeable person in a given field, but share the opinions of other experts instead. It’s the thing Napoleon Hill was famous for.

15. “What if” posts

A hypothetical post about something—”What would happen if X?” kind of thing. To start, choose an interesting topic, find an element that’s certain to exist in that field, and try to write a post about what might have happened if that element never existed. For example: “What if WordPress was never invented?”

16. Parody posts

A satirical view on a given topic. The easiest way of coming up with such a thing is to choose another publication about something, note down some of the ideas presented in it, and extend them to the point of absurd. For example, many building-a-successful-blog gurus tell you about the importance of commenting on other blogs. In response, you could write a post on “why you need to comment on 1,374 different blogs a day if you want to be successful.”

Unconventional blog posts

17. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) posts

I’m sure you know very well what this is about. The only problem with coming up with these kind of posts is the “frequently” part. If you want to create a FAQ style post you need to have an audience to get the questions from. Creating a fake FAQ containing only some imaginary “frequently” asked questions is the biggest sin of them all.

18. SAQ (Should Ask Questions) posts

A similar type to the previous one, but this time you, as the expert, provide a list of questions and answers your audience should be asking you. The trick here is that frequently asked questions are not always the ones that are the most important (that’s because people don’t know what they don’t know), so in a SAQ post you can present your expertise and deliver much value to your readers.

19. Reviews

There are tens of blogs that focus solely on reviews of various products and services, mostly in the tech/gadget niche. I’m not telling you to start posting only reviews from now on, but submitting one every now and then surely can’t hurt you. In addition, you can include your affiliate links and make some money along the way.

20. Interviews

I’m sure there’s a lot of potential people you can interview: experts, celebrities, ordinary people who have managed to do something significant, people sharing their success stories, companies, other bloggers. Just look around your niche and I’m sure you’ll find someone interesting.

The interview itself can be done in a couple of different ways. You can meet with someone in person (the traditional way). You can mail them your questions and they will mail you back the answers. You can call them via Skype or phone. You can do a twitter interview (tweeting back and forth questions and answers). Basically, there are no limits. Sometimes being creative pays a lot, so try to come up with your own ways of doing interviews.

21. Ebooks

Whenever you have a big library of resources, your own posts, notes, etc. you can combine them and turn into an ebook, and then announce its launch in a standard blog post. One of the best examples of using your existing blog posts to create an ebook is the work of Darren Rowse in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Once you have your ebook ready, the best way of delivering it is, of course, as a PDF download. In fact, creating ebooks can be fun—something I found out for myself when putting together my own ebook.

22. Special reports

It’s like an ebook, only smaller, usually focusing on just one aspect of a given field, and in most cases delivered free of charge. Other than that, you can approach it the same as creating a standard ebook, and once you have it ready, announce this fact in a blog post.

23. Cheat sheets

As Wikipedia defines it, “a cheat sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference,” and that’s exactly what it is. I’m sure that you can find many rules, tricks, methods of doing/using something that relates to your field or niche. You just have to put it all together in a neat PDF file and share it with your readers. Just to give you some examples of nice cheat sheets: Cheat Sheets & Quick Reference Cards for Developers.

24. Checklists

A checklist is a set of specific steps that need to be taken in order to complete a task. Next to the headline of each step there should be an empty box where the person using the checklist can put a tick once the step has been completed. This forces you to use the PDF format once again. Once you have the checklist ready, write a post describing what it’s for and how to use it.

25. Infographics

Infographics are very popular in today’s Internet. They are cool to look at, present information in an easy-to-digest manner, provide a lot of value, and have a high share-with-a-friend factor. The only downside is that they are very time consuming to create. And in most cases you have to delegate this work to someone (or work together with someone) if you want the final result to be exceptional. Nevertheless, they are worth to consider if you have the time and the resources. Here are some examples of great infographics: Infographics for Web Designers: Information You Ought to Know, 12 Amazing SEO Infographics.

26. Projects

In my opinion this is one of the biggest things you can do for your blog once you have a moderate readership. By “moderate” I don’t necessarily mean the numbers, but people’s engagement with your posts.

The basic idea is this. You announce a project that you will be participating in (or are an author of) and invite your readers to take part in it, and share their results. A great example is what Pat and Tyrone have done with the Niche Site Duel project.

27. Open questions to your readers

This is usually a very short post. Just a single question to your readers about whatever topic. But, of course, it has to be something related to your niche, and it has to be something that actually interests you, something you want to know … maybe as part of research for your upcoming post. Publishing this kind of post can help you tighten the relationship with your readers and encourage some of the quiet ones to speak up. The only downside is that you have to have a moderate readership in order to make this work.

28. Starting a debate

Similar to publishing an open question, only this time you are saying what’s your opinion at the beginning of the post, and let your readers pick a side, so they can share their own arguments in favor or against. One more time … you have to have an audience for this to work. Once you consider the debate finished you can shut down the comments and write a follow-up post pointing out some of the most important parts of the debate.

29. Presenting an existing debate

Let me just give you an example. A while ago, Corbett Barr published a post presenting a debate between Pat Flynn and Everett Bogue on whether or not you should allow comments on your blog. The debate has been prepared earlier by interviewing both sides giving them the same questions, and then letting them take a look at each other’s answers so they could react to them. This is a great idea and I have to implement it myself in the near future. I encourage you to do the same.

30. Surveys and polls

Yet another way of connecting with your audience. This time again you are the one asking questions. A simple poll consists of one question with a number of possible answers. For example: “Which member of the A-team do you like the most? 1. Hannibal, 2. Face, 3. Murdock, 4. B.A.” There’s a number of different WordPress plugins that can provide you with a possibility of creating a poll.

A survey is usually something a bit bigger. For instance, a questionnaire containing a number of poll-styled questions as well as essay questions, and simple fill-in-the-blanks. You can search the WordPress plugin directory to find an appropriate plugin for this too. Surveys surely provide much valuable information about your audience, which makes them worth considering once you have an engaged readership.

31. Crash courses/gathering posts

This is a kind of post consisting of links to other post within the same topic, and maybe some additional comment or content. For instance, this guitar blog sharing information on how to learn guitar chords. Each chord gets its own post, and at the end of the series there’s one big gathering post featuring the links to all the other posts and some additional tips and resources. In the end, the whole post looks like a kind of crash course on learning guitar chords.

32. Twitter posts

In order to create such a post what you need is a topic, preferably a trending/popular one, and some time. Just go to twitter search and find some interesting tweets about the topic. You may search by keywords or by hashtags. Once you have a set of 20+ tweets you can combine them into one “what people are saying” post. This may sound like an easy way out, but in reality these posts can be very informative and, in many cases, very funny.

33. Income/traffic/expense reports (monthly)

Very popular lately. Some of the best examples can be seen at Think Traffic and Smart Passive Income. What you do is simply take a look at your Google Analytics account as well as your bank account and report any changes comparing to the previous month. Of course, you have to be comfortable with sharing this kind of information. The other problem is that telling people that your traffic is at 346 per month and you income at $12 per month might not be the best social proof possible.

34. Contests

Contests are a great way of connecting with your audience or even getting an audience in the first place. The most important element of a contest is the prize. It has to be something worth competing for, which mean it involves spending some money or finding a sponsor. The theme of the contest can be anything. For example: “whoever sings the highest note wins an iPod”—you get the point. Entries can be submitted via email or, preferably, via a comment below the post. It’s up to you.

35. Draws

Something similar to a contest. The only difference is that the winner is not chosen by someone, but gets drawn randomly. Other than that, same rules apply.

36. Races

Another idea that’s similar to a contest. The main idea of a race is to give your audience a specific task to do, and the first person to complete it wins. It might be something like: “first person to publish 20 comments this month on my blog wins an iPod.” The main benefit of such a thing is that apart from the winner submitting 20 comments you may get the runner up submitting 18, two people submitting 17, and so on. So in the end, running a race might bring you many more comments than 20. Just an example. The rules of running a contest apply here too.

37. Quizzes

How is it any different from a poll or a survey? Well, a quiz is not a tool for you to find out something about your audience, but a tool for your audience to find out something about themselves, usually in a funny and entertaining way. A great example is a quiz that can be found at theoatmeal.com, titled How long could you survive chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor?. It turned out to be a big link bait for theoatmeal and resulted in #1 ranking in Google for the phrase “bunk bed”, whether it was intended or not. Plus, at the end of the quiz you receive a cool badge which you can include on your blog or share on Facebook. I’m sure you too can came up with something quiz-worthy in your niche.

38. Software, tools, scripts, plugins, themes, services

You can use a blog post to announce your new software, tool, plugin, service, etc. Share some information about the thing—what it can do, who it is for, how and when to get it, and so on. This might be a good way of notifying your readers of what’s going on in your business, what you’re up to, and what’s in it for them. You can get some ideas for new services or products by doing a brainstorm and researching what your audience might be interested in. Of course, to make it happen you have to know your audience first.

39. Comics

Every day more bloggers start to publish comics as a constant element of their publishing schedule. Take a look at Web Designer Depot. If you are, or can get, someone who can create the actual comics, it might be a good way for you to expand your audience and give them something that’s very easy to digest. It can be a nice link bait as well. Two examples of comics-only blogs: xkcd and Wulffmorgenthaler.

40. Jokes

No further explanation needed. Obviously, it’s not a good fit for every niche, but who knows? Maybe it’s perfect for yours.

41. Icons and other graphical freebies

This is something that works well in the design niche, which is not very surprising. Designers are always on the hunt for some fresh, preferably free, icons/buttons or other graphical tools. Try to adjust this strategy to your niche. For example, if you have a photography blog you might share some free stock photos on Creative Commons license. If you’re in the business development niche you could get some Microsoft Word templates designed for you and then share them with your audience. It’s not just about icons.

42. Presentations

If you’ve ever given a presentation on whatever topic I’m sure you still have the slides somewhere on your computer. You can upload them to Slide Share and then embed them in your blog post. Inside the post you can describe what the presentation is about, mention when and where you gave it, and encourage your readers to re-embed it on their own blogs.

Audio blog posts

43. Mp3 files (as a podcast)

First things first: what is a podcast? Quoting Wikipedia: “a podcast is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication.” Translating it into plain English, a podcast can be a series of mp3s launched in a sequence. Probably the best idea is to register your podcast in iTunes and get some recognition there.

When it comes to the content itself, a podcast can contain whatever you want. You can give tutorials on various topics, tell jokes, even read poetry. Feel free to browse the iTunes directory to get some ideas.

44. Interviews

These are similar to text interviews, only this time you conduct them over the phone or Skype and record everything along the way. Then you share them as an mp3 on your blog or turn them into a podcast if you’re planning to release more than one interview.

Again, some people you can interview include: experts, celebrities, ordinary people who have managed to do something significant, people sharing their success stories, companies, and other bloggers in your niche.

45. Talks

Something similar to an interview, but this time you’re getting a number of people (three or four) on the line or Skype, and give them a topic to talk about. Of course, you record everything so you can share it with your audience later on. This kind of talk is more focused on a specific topic rather than on the people participating in the talk. This is a good idea if you have the possibility to convince a couple of influential people in your niche to take part in it.

46. Teleseminars

In order to pull this one off you need an engaged audience, or good marketing. The main idea is that first you announce you’ll be conducting a teleseminar on topic X and give people a link where they can sign up for it. Then when the time comes you give the seminar to a live audience. Of course, you can also record it and share as an mp3 later on.

The most popular way of running a teleseminar is to focus on a how-to topic. It should be something you can explain to your audience—something that’s really important to them, yet it’s not so easy to master alone.

Video blog posts

47. Talking head video

All video post types on this list have one thing in common: once you have the video made you can embed it in a normal blog post, or share it with your audience as a video podcast.

Now, the talking head video. It’s the simplest video to make. What you basically do is sit in front of a camera and talk about something. One of the most famous examples is Gary Vaynerchuk and the posts on his personal blog. Of course, the topic needs to be interesting if you want to have any kind of impact, and you have to be comfortable with the camera—something many people find challenging at first.

48. Screencast

Screencasting is another name for recording what’s happening on your screen. It can be done with software called Jing, for example. It’s a very easy-to-digest way of giving a tutorial on some technical things, like setting up WordPress or doing something in Photoshop. Sometimes it’s much easier to do a screencast than explain such things via text content. Usually the same amount of information can be delivered in a five-minute screencast as in 3,000 words of text. And the problem of you being uncomfortable with being in front of a camera doesn’t apply here, so it’s actually easier to make.

49. Presentation video

This is basically a kind of screencast. But it’s made by first creating a PowerPoint presentation (of course, you can use other software too), then firing it up and recording everything while you talk the viewers through the presentation. It’s very easy to make and the results can be great due to some of the PowerPoint’s fancy features.

50. Interviews

Nothing new here, except this time you’re not writing or recording audio, but shooting a video instead. Video interviews always look more professional because they have that TV-like feel to them.

51. How-to video

Shooting a how-to video is a good idea if you’re in a niche where it’s easier to actually show something than it is to describe it with words. The guitar niche is a great example. It’s much easier to show people how to play a specific chord than it is to describe this to them. The main problem here is that you have to be comfortable with being in front of a camera. If you’re nervous, people will notice.

52. Webinars

Similar to teleseminars, webinars use video as the main medium. Other than that, the same rules apply.

Recycling

The final advice I want to give you in this post is to recycle your content. Now, what do I mean by that? Whenever it’s possible and makes actual sense, try to take a piece of your content and repurpose it by turning it into a different medium.

For example, you can get your videos and mp3s transcribed and then share them as a regular blog post. You can also go the other way around: create an article first, then turn it into a script, and in the end shoot a video and upload it to your YouTube channel. Another idea is to take your email newsletter series, read every edition out loud and share the whole thing as an audio podcast on iTunes. I’m sure you get the idea by now. As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

What’s on your list? Do you have any interesting blog post type ideas you want to share? What’s your favorite type? Speak up in the comments: your input is more than welcome!

Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a grad student at the Silesian University of Technology. He hates to do traditional business but loves to train capoeira. Tune in to get his advice on blogging and starting an online business.

The post 52 Types of Blog Posts that Are Proven to Work appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post 5 Simple Font Changes to Boost Readers, Comments, and Shares on Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest post is by Bnonn of Information Highwayman.

You may not realize it, but the font settings on your blog can have a huge effect on how many people read your content.

And how many people read your content has a huge effect on whether a post goes viral.

How huge? Well, by some accounts I’ve read, just one common mistake with colors could reduce readership by a factor of five. And if you’re not making that mistake, you’re probably making at least one of four others. So in this article, I’ll give you the five most important best practices for presenting text to keep readers glued to your content, and away from the old back button.

Font size—16px minimum

At the very top of the the pile of legibility problems is font size. Back in 2005, Jakob Nielsen reported that in a survey of web design problems, bad fonts got nearly twice as many votes as the next contender—with two-thirds of voters complaining about small font sizes.

Sadly, nothing has changed since then. A random sampling of new blog designs at SiteInspire (a web design gallery showcasing the best of the best designs) shows that the average font size for body copy is 12 pixels. Some as low as ten pixels. None over 14 pixels. Similarly, if you randomly sample offerings from the popular Elegant Themes or ThemeForest, you’ll find that every single theme sets post content at 12 or 13 pixels.

And of course, other theme creators tend to follow the lead of the bigwigs.

But as usability and typography expert Oliver Reichenstein of Information Architects points out, 16 pixels is the font size that browsers were intended to display by default—and it is not big. 16px text on an average screen looks about the same size as 12-point text in print. That’s the default size for most magazines, as well as all word processors, because it’s the size people find most comfortable to read. Many people—especially those over 40—find it very difficult to read smaller text. As Reichenstein observes:

There is no reason for squeezing so much information onto the screen. It’s just a stupid collective mistake that dates back to a time when screens were really, really small … At first, you’ll be shocked how big the default text is. But after a day, you won’t want to see anything smaller than 100% font-size for the main text. It looks big at first, but once you use it you quickly realize why all browser makers chose this as the default text size.

Use dark on light text—reversed is no good

Fortunately we’ve pretty much moved past the days when content authors thought that fuchsia on blue text was cool. But white on black text, known as reversed type, is still pretty common. As are variants like white on some other dark color.

Reversed type reduces not only the number of people who’ll bother to read your content, but also their comprehension of it. This is because it strains the eyes. Staring at reversed text for an extended period tends to create a kind of “glare” effect, where you feel like the letters are too bright to look at. Depending on what research you consult, studies show that light on dark text reduces your readership between 50% and 400%.

Why risk losing so many readers? Black or very dark gray on white looks clean, and there are plenty of great themes that use those colors.

Line width—45 to 75 characters

Here’s another little-known rule that a lot of blogs break. In order for your eye to easily follow one line to the next, you want no more than 75 characters in each line. This is called the line measure. Beyond a measure of 75 characters, it’s hard to track the end of one line to the beginning of the next without getting lost.

On the other hand, if you have a measure of less than 45 characters your eye will get fatigued quickly, because you’ve barely started to read one line when you have to jump to the next. You feel like you never get a chance to rest.

For this reason, your ideal post content area will have lines of text about 60 characters long. Of course, you do also have to take aesthetics into account. On many blogs, the “ideal” measure leaves a huge gap on the right margin, or makes the text seem squished into a tiny area. I use a measure of around 70 characters on my own website for exactly that reason. But if you’re pushing past 80 characters, you’re reducing your readership—guaranteed.

Line height—130% or more

Fortunately this is a less common mistake. If you’re using a professional theme, you probably don’t need to worry.

To give you an example, I’ve set this paragraph at the default line height (also called leading, after the strips of lead used to separate lines of text on old printing presses). It feels cramped and uninviting to read, and it’s hard to follow the lines from one to the next because they blend into each other.

On the other hand, this paragraph is set with a line height of 200%—equivalent to double spacing in a word processor. I’m sure you’ll agree that the lines here feel way too disconnected from each other, and unless you’re submitting a research paper this is not the way to go.

Finally, this paragraph is set with a line height of 150%. That means that for every pixel of font size, there’s one and a half pixels of distance between the lines. This turns out to be pretty reliable sweet spot for most fonts you’re likely to use on a blog—but feel free to experiment between about 130% and 160% to see what works best for your own content.

The left margin—don’t break it

This last tip isn’t exactly a font issue. But it fits into the same general category. Bloggers routinely include images in their posts. Whether or not that’s really a good idea is a topic for another time—but for now, let me just give you one piece of advice.

The left margin is sacred. It’s how we track text down a page in the Western world. It’s the “ground” out of which the lines grow (often to quite different lengths), and it’s the foundation for our eyepath as we read down the page.

But if you break the left margin, that all goes to hell. Your eye has to scan around to try to pick up the new margin, so you can keep on reading.

In other words, every time you left-align an image, you put a speed-bump in your reader’s path. And you’re compounding the problem by dragging his attention away from the text with your visually dominant image. Needless to say, readers who keep being distracted and having to relocate the left margin often don’t read to the end of a post—so they often don’re share it or comment on it.

Bonus tip: drop caps increase readership

By “drop caps” I mean initial capitals, where the first letter of the first word of your post stands out much bigger than the rest. According to research conducted by Ogilvy & Mather, this increases readership of a piece by an average of 13%.

Drop caps aren’t built into most blog themes, and they can be tricky to do on the web, but if you’re up to a little coding, check out this tutorial on how to create them.

Five mistakes: which ones are you making?

Now is the time to head on back to your own blog and see which of these five important best practices you’re not practicing. Then, fixum! But don’t forget to share the changes you’ve made in the comments below!

Bnonn is known in the boroughs as the Information Highwayman, he helps small businesses sell more online by improving both their copy and design. When he’s not knee-deep in the guts of someone’s homepage, he is teaching his kids about steampunk, Nathan Fillion, and how to grapple a zombie without getting bit.

The post 5 Simple Font Changes to Boost Readers, Comments, and Shares on Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post 7 Powerful Ways to End Your Next Blog Post appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

You know your title has to hook readers.

You know your first line needs to keep them reading.

The start of your blog post matters. But so does the end.

In fact, without a powerful end to your post, all the work that you put into the title and paragraph one is wasted. Because the end of your post is what keeps your readers coming back for more.

Here are seven powerful ways to end your post.

1. Sum up your key message

Sometimes, you need to hammer a point home. The final few lines of your post are a great opportunity to make sure that your key message gets across.

If you can, bring out a new point—or sum up in an engaging way. If you just rehash what you’ve already said, readers will wander off, bored.

Example:

To write 100 books (75,000 words per book) over the next 30 years, you need to be writing 1,000 words per day (writing five days a week, 50 weeks per year). At a brisk but comfortable pace, that’s an hour a day.

If you want to write 100 books in the next ten years, that’s 3,000 words a day.

Being prolific is closer to possible than you might have believed.
—David Masters, Writing Secrets of Prolific Authors, Write to Done

2. Encourage the reader to take action

Many blog posts are full of excellent advice, but how often does that advice actually get put into practice?

Readers love posts that are practical, and if you can persuade them to do something (and see the benefits) then they’ll be much more likely to return to your blog.

Example:

But in the meantime, here’s a tip you can use right away. You’ll have vastly better copy on your website in 20 minutes by following these two simple steps:

Go look at your web copy right now.

Take out every word that doesn’t contribute something new.

Come back here and tell us about the before-and-after. I bet you’ll have something to say!
—James Chartrand, Do You Have Useless Website Content?, Men with Pens

3. Ask the reader to share your post

If you want more tweets or Facebook shares, ask for them. Readers won’t always think of sharing your post, and they may not notice that you’ve got a “retweet” button waiting—unless you tell them.

You might also want to encourage readers to forward a post to friends: unless you’re writing for a predominantly techy audience, there’s a good chance that a lot of your subscribers are getting your feed by email.

Example:

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!
—Ali Luke, How to Have Confidence in Your Writing – and Yourself, Aliventures

4. Link to another useful resource

When readers finish one post, they’ll often be ready to read another on a similar topic. If you’ve written an inspirational piece, for instance, it’s a great idea to link to a practical guide that helps readers turn that inspiration into action.

You don’t need to link to blog posts, either. Pointing readers towards newspaper articles or books in your field isn’t just useful—it also helps demonstrate that you’re on top of what’s happening in your niche.

Example:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy these posts inspired by art:

• Writing as an emerging sculpture: Inspiration from Michelangelo’s slaves
• 15 ways modern art galleries can inspire writers

—Joanna Penn, 7 Lessons For Writers From Leonardo Da Vinci, The Creative Penn

5. Ask a question to encourage comments

Questions work well in titles and first lines—and they’re also a good way to end a post. Asking a question for readers to respond to (e.g. “do you any tips to add?”) is likely to increase the number of comments you get.

Don’t go over the top with questions, though: one or two are usually enough. You don’t want your readers to feel bombarded with a whole string of questions.

Example:

Did you find some great strategies of your own in the videos? What are the exciting ideas informing your own marketing—and how are you implementing them?

Let us know in the comments.

—Sonia Simone, 3 Content Marketing Ideas You Should Steal from Coca Cola, Copyblogger

6. Tell readers what’s coming next

If you want people to subscribe to your blog, or to keep visiting the site for updates, you need to let them know that you’ve got good stuff coming up.

At the end of your post, let readers know what’s coming tomorrow (or next week). You might simply drop a hint like “I’ve got something big to announce next week…” or you might tell them to stay tuned for a more advanced post on a similar topic to the one they’ve just read.

Example:

Next week I’ll post about moving larger WordPress sites. Those might not work with this method because your export XML file will be too large, and you might not be able to upload it via the WordPress import feature.
—Daniel Scocco, How to Move A Small WordPress Site Via the Import/Export Tool, DailyBlogTips

7. Promote your product or service

Even though you might have information about your book/ebook/ecourse/etc. in your sidebar, some readers won’t see that—they’ll either be reading in an RSS reader or they simply won’t notice.

The final line of your post is a great place to let readers know about your product (or to remind them that it exists). This works especially well if your post has been on a similar topic—for instance, if you’ve written about procrastination and you’ve got an ecourse on getting things done, there’s an obvious link between the two!

Example:

Also, check out our Blogging for Beginners Series for more blog tips and ProBlogger the Book for a comprehensive guide to improving your blog and deriving an income from it.
—Darren Rowse, 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog, ProBlogger

Which of these tips would work well on your next post? Leave a comment below to tell us what you’ll be trying out…

Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach, and blogs for a number of large sites. If you’re struggling to keep up the motivation to write for your blog, check out her post on Six Common Writing Excuses (And How to Overcome Them).

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Yesterday I shared some tips for busy bloggers on how to find time to blog based upon a lot of questions I’ve had of late on that topic.

As part of that post I was intending on describing my own blogging routine – but on the spur of the moment decided to email a group of blogging friends to ask them to describe how they go about blogging.

Each have graciously allowed me to share their responses. I hope you find them as fascinating as I do.

My Question to these bloggers was: Can you give us a quick snapshot of your blogging schedule – when do you do it? Do you have a routine or is it more spontaneous?

Tsh Oxenreider from Simple Mom

I have a pretty set routine, simply because it is my job (that I also happen to love)—but that doesn’t mean I don’t also have lots of random things I need to do here and there, which I squeeze in with I can with three little kids. I typically write in the morning, since that’s my brain’s best time, and then I’ll fill in the gaps with tasks that don’t take as much brain power for me. Every day is different, to be honest, but here’s a typical day for me:

• 6 am—Wake up, personal time, coffee, writing time (if my toddler doesn’t wake up).
• 7:30-9:00 am—Breakfast with the family, get the kids ready for the day and out to school.
• 9:00 am-1:00 pm—Work, work, work in my office at home while our babysitter is out in the rest of the house with the boys (my oldest is in school).
• 1:00 pm—My second goes to preschool and my youngest naps, so I either wrap up work or catch up on household stuff.
• 3:30 pm—Pick up kids from school, help with homework, start dinner, clean, and other typical mom stuff.
• 5:30 pm-8:30 pm—Dinner, baths, storytime, family time, bed.
• 8:30 pm-10:00 pm—Any combination of work catch-up (although I don’t write, I do more brainless stuff, like photo editing, email processing, etc.), but I prefer to do things like watch a movie or read a book.

Chris Garrett

I used to have a routine, now I write when I have something to say, and when I find time (which never seems to happen recently).

In the past I had a proper schedule because at one point I was writing for a dozen blogs and people depended on me to deliver (contractually and out of a feeling of obligation). Like many bloggers, I used an editorial calendar, and such. This makes me feel I should get back to that!

Christina Butcher from Hair Romance

My most productive time is the morning so I get up early and head straight to the computer to write. I just work on blog posts for 1-2 hours.

I ban myself from checking emails or social media as it’s too distracting. I work to an editorial calendar which helps me plan my content, but it’s still flexible so I can add stories at the last minute.

I have a waterproof notepad in the shower as I always get blogging ideas while I’m washing my hair!

Leo Babauta from ZenHabits

I write every morning, after I meditate upon waking.

But just twice a week is for my actual blog (as opposed to writing for books/courses).

So about an hour, twice a week, first thing in the morning.

Sarah Wilson

I tend to bang out some ideas and clip links as I go and keep about 20 “on the boil” posts in my drafts folder which I add to, patchwork, fiddle with over time.

Each Monday I try to devote to getting my blogs sorted for the week (I post Tuesday – Friday…ish).

I’ll write some afresh, or I pull one that inspires me from my drafts and tidy it up. My gorgeous assistant Jo will often add any links, caption pictures, do some extra research and run an extra eye over things. Invariably I get up on the morning of the post and tinker with it a little…often a bit of distance allows me to bring even more to it.

Neil Patel from Quick Sprout

I tend to schedule my blog posts, which means I blog in advance.

The 2 main days I find myself writing each week is Sunday and Wednesday. Typically I blog when I am at home or on the airplane.

As for my routine, I typically think of ideas to write on and then I just start writing.

Nicole Avery from Planning with Kids

I have a content plan spanning most of the year. Most of the time, I will write my posts on the weekend. This is when the kids have their dad home to look after them and I can work uninterrupted or at least that is the theory!

As I have a plan for what I am writing, I can look at the topics earlier in the week. This lets ideas and often large chunks of the post, start formulating in my head, when I am doing other things like running. So when I actually sit down to do the task of writing the posts, it is much easier and quicker. I will schedule my posts in advance, so regardless of what happens in the week amongst family life, my posting schedule stays consistent.

If I have extra time and have something I want to say, I will write and post spontaneously, but this would occur only a very small amount of the time.

Tina Roth – Swiss Miss

I blog in the mornings, mostly.

I have multiple tabs that automatically open to my favorite online stores, specifically to their “new arrivals” pages to get an idea for new products.

I am also so lucky to have loyal readers that send along wonderful things to my submissions email account!

Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project

For Good Life Project, we air a new show every Wednesday and often batch shoot 4 episodes in one-day.

For my personal blog, I use a very disciplined methodology I call “When I’ve got something to say, I write.” lol.

Chris Brogan

I blog a lot more spontaneously than not. I often have a core question that the idea of the post bounces against, but the actual “typing it into WordPress” happens quite randomly. For instance, I decided to write a post about Google+ the other day, but I framed it against the “if I’m a business person looking to get my feet wet, here’s a recipe for starting.” That’s the idea (google+) against the core question (how would I get started). I do that.

Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom

I try to get up at 5 a.m. every day and get in two hours of blogging and computer work before my kids get up (yes, they are late risers!). I then try to get in a few more hours in the afternoon, as well as a few hours on Saturday.

I’ve found that I’m much more productive when I compartmentalise my blogging time and try to leave my laptop and phone in my office as much as is possible so that checking emails and social media is something that I do during blogging hours — instead of during family time or at the dinner table.

Rand Fishkin from Moz

I blog almost exclusively very late at night on weekdays (between 10pm-2am) and on the weekends.

My work schedule is such that these days, that’s the only time I have to quietly reflect, write, build graphics, etc.

Trey Ratcliff from Stuck in Customs

My daily blog post the sweet albatross around my neck. I do it every day before 5 PM in New Zealand so that it appears around midnight in the US, which is still the biggest target market for English-language blogs.

I need to produce 365 unique pieces of photography art per year, so the production of the art actually takes much longer than the actual blog post. Maybe this is why I don’t mind the blog post. The blog post takes 5% of the time of the creation of the art. I write a short description of the photo and talk a bit about the art and the science behind it.

Chris Guillebeau

I have only two (main) posts a week, but they are rigidly scheduled and I’ve never missed one in five years of blogging. The streak helps to produce built-in accountability.

As for the actual writing, that tends to happen more spontaneously. I have a general quota of 1,000 words a day, but that can include a variety of writing. If I’m working on a book manuscript or traveling overseas, sometimes I create the blog posts in advance.

Stay Tuned for More

Tomorrow I’ve got a followup post to this where I ask these 14 bloggers for their key tips for finding time to blog.

Also – don’t forget to check out our eBook on the topic: BlogWise: Discover the Secrets of Productive Bloggers.

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Whenever I ask ProBlogger readers “what’s the biggest challenge that they face as a blogger?”, the answer I hear most is “Time”.

Finding time to blog is something that all bloggers struggle with.

Whether you are just starting out and blogging as a hobby, blogging as a part time job while juggling work, home, and a social life or even blogging as a full time business amidst other demands such as up-keeping of social media accounts, responding to comments and emails etc…

Finding time to write is a consistent challenge.

This issue is so prevalent, we actually published an eBook on the topic – BlogWise: How to Do More with Less (featuring 9 busy but productive bloggers such as Leo Babauta, Gretchen Rubin, Brian Clark, Heather Armstrong and more).

7 Tips for Busy Bloggers on Finding Time to Blog

I’m someone who periodically struggles with the challenges of being productive in limited timeframes. Over the last 10 years of blogging, I guess I’ve settled into something of a workflow and routine. What follows is a collection of reflections on what I’m learning.

I hope something in it connects with where you’re at!

1. It Starts with Life Priorities

I feel a bit like a parent saying this but the truth is, time management is a lot to do with priorities. 

It’s important to take time out to identify what is truly important to you, as this is a starting point for working out how you should spend your time.

If blogging is important to you, the first step in finding time to do it is to name it as a priority.

Of course ‘naming’ it as important is only half the battle. For many people there is a HUGE gap between what they say is important and how they actually spend their time.

One of the most confronting exercises I’ve ever done, when it comes to time management, was when (as a young adult) I was challenged write a list of my priorities. I then had to track how I used each 15 minute block of time over a week.

At the end of the week I tallied up the different activities and was amazed to discover how much time I was spending on things that did not feature in my priorities list, and how little I spent on the things I’d named as my priorities.

My list of priorities included things like studying, career, relationships etc.

My actual use of time was dominated by TV, computer games, time in the pub etc.

Of course, at the time I was young and reckless… but I suspect if I did the exercise again today there would probably be a bit of a disconnect between my priorities and how I spent my time. The activities I ‘waste’ time on and my priorities today might be different but the pattern would probably remain.

One of the keys to finding time to blog is working out whether blogging is actually important to you and arranging your life so that time is allocated for it!

I know it’s sounds obvious but it is easier said than done… and needs to be said.

2. Name Your Blogging Priorities

In the section above I talk about ‘life priorities’ but now I want to hone in on your blogging priorities.

The challenge many bloggers face is that they feel overwhelmed and often distracted by the many elements of blogging that they feel they need to do to have success.

Writing blog posts, reading and commenting on others blogs, responding to readers comments, guest posting on others blogs, being active on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest (and more), working on your blog design, writing an eBook, finding advertisers, creating a media kit…. the list goes on and on.

I’ve had periods in my own blogging where this list overwhelmed me – to the point it almost paralysed me.

When I felt overwhelmed, I tried to strip my blogging back to the core tasks I knew I needed to do to keep my blog moving forward. Again it was really about priorities.

What do you need to do to grow your blog and make it sustainable?

For me, I strip my focus back to these areas:

• Create Content
• Find Readers
• Build Community
• Make Money Blogging

These are the priorities I have with my blogging. Simply by naming them simplifies things a little for me so I’m not looking at a long, crazy list of little things that I need to do.

With this list in mind I’m can set myself some achievable goals in each area.

For example, when it comes to ‘Create Content’ I’m set myself some goals with how many posts per week or month. Then I start to think about the types of posts I want each week.

So here on ProBlogger, my current goal is 5 posts per week as a minimum with 3-4 of those posts written by me and at least one of them to be a longer form piece of content (like my Guide to the Amazon Affiliate Program).

Within each of these areas I would normally have at least a couple of goals/priorities at any one time.

Simply having this list of things I want to achieve suddenly gives me direction on how to spend my time, which makes me much more effective when I do blog. Instead of sitting down at the computer to blog and then working out what to do, I have a list of things I need to get done – and I find myself just knocking them off.

3. Batch Process Your Main Tasks

I won’t go into great detail on this as I’ve written about it before but a number of years ago I changed the way that I do my weekly tasks and it significantly boosted my productivity levels.

Before making this switch, I would sit down to blog and find myself going through a whole day flitting from one thing to another…. but not really getting much done. I’d write an intro to a blog post, then jump onto Twitter, then talk to another blogger about a collaboration, then go back to the blog post, then moderate some comments, then jump on Facebook and then…. well you get the picture.

So I began to carve out longer chunks of time to do the most important tasks in ‘batches’.

For example, one of my weekly rhythms is to use Monday and Wednesday mornings to write. On those mornings, I will often set myself up in a cafe and work offline for 2-3 hours. This enables me to write as much content as possible for the days and week ahead. It is not unusual for me to write 4-5 blog posts that I’m then able to schedule onto the blog for the coming days.

By silo’ing off time to do the most important tasks, and removing other distractions, I found I churn through a lot more work than I had previously been able to do.

I now ‘batch’ process many tasks. I’ll often set aside half an hour to do social media for example (instead of popping into Twitter 20 times a day, I might spend a longer period once a day). Email is similarly something I try to do in batches, similarly I tend to read other blogs via RSS in batches etc.

Read more about ‘batch processing in my post ‘How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive‘.

Mental Blogging

In the early days of my blogging I had very very limited times to blog. I was working 3-4 part time jobs at any one time while also studying in the evenings. As a result I often would only have half and hour here or there during a lunch break, late at night or early in the morning to write content.

In order to be more effective at those times, I began to do what I now call ‘mental blogging’.

So while I was working in one of my jobs in a warehouse packing parcels, I would begin to write my blog posts in my mind. I would come up with a topic, decide upon a title and then begin to map out my main points – all in my head.

I sometimes would use a small notebook to jot a few words down to remind me what I wanted to write but after a shift in the warehouse, I would often be ready to sit down and quickly write out a pretty decent blog post (sometimes more than one) because I’d effectively written it already in my head.

Since that time I’ve come across countless other bloggers who do a similar thing during their own daily activities.

Later on I did a similar thing by jotting down my notes on my iPhone or even speaking blog posts into an audio recording app on my iPhone while I was out on a walk.

4. Idea Generation and Editorial Calendars

In my early days of blogging one of my biggest time sucks was coming up with ideas. I would sit, staring at my computer screen for hours on end, trying to work out what to write about on my blog that day.

I discovered that a much more effective strategy is to put aside batches of time specifically to come up with post ideas.

Instead of deciding what to write about each day, I began to create times to brainstorm and mind map blog ideas. I would then developed a file for each post topic so that on any given day I could sit down and within seconds I’d have something to write about

Mind Mapping is my favourite technique for generating potentially hundreds of ideas (read Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping).

Just having the ideas ready to go when you need them will save you a lot of time. You can take this a step further and consider creating an Editorial Calendar where you actually slot the ideas into a calendar over the coming week, month (or longer) and map out where you’ll be going with the blog in that period of time.

Editorial calendars may not suit everyone but I know of numerous bloggers who plan their blogs content well over a month in advance. This not only gives them an idea of where their blog is headed but they also find it useful to monetize their blogs as they’re able to share their calendar with advertisers who may wish to sponsor a relevant series of posts that might be coming up.

5. Break Down Big Jobs into Small Bites

Late last year, I recorded a free webinar where I shared 10 things I wish I’d known about blogging when I started 10 years before. In that webinar I shared the story of creating the first eBook that I developed over at Digital Photography School.

The idea of creating an eBook was something that I’d been meaning to do for at least a year or two but I’d always put off doing it because I didn’t have the time for such a big project. I’d never done something like that before and I felt overwhelmed by it.

In the end, to get the eBook created and launched, I decided that the only way I’d find the time to write it was to get up 15 minutes earlier every morning to work on the project.

15 minutes a day isn’t much (although we had a newborn at the time so 15 minutes sleep was precious) but I was amazed how much I could get done in that short period of time, on a daily basis. Over the coming 2-3 months I completed writing the eBook, had had it designed, had worked out how to market it, had researched how to sell it (shopping carts etc) and was ready to launch.

I effectively broke down a big job into little bite sized chunks until it was complete. That eBook went on to sell thousands of copies and became the template for 19 other eBooks that I’ve now launched (the main source of income to my blogs today).

I often wonder what would have happened if I’d never found that extra 15 minutes per day!

6. Slow Blogging is OK

“I have to post something today!”

Sometimes, as bloggers, I think we create monsters for ourselves for no good reason when it comes to posting deadlines and frequency.

I’m very guilty of this and it’s been something of a relief to realise that I can slow down my blogging a little and not see it ‘hurt’ my blog.

Here on ProBlogger you may have noticed a bit of a change lately. I’ve gone from posting 7-10 posts per week to posting 5-6 times a week.

For many years here at ProBlogger I felt the need to publish daily posts and at times, even aimed for 2-3 posts per day. While there were some benefits of doing so (more posts can mean more traffic) there were also costs in terms of the quality but also personally (it’s hard to sustain that kind of publishing for years on end).

Since slowing down, I’ve been fascinated to see that our traffic has remained steady (in fact some days it has been higher). The other impact has been a rise in comment levels, in positive feedback but also in my own energy and passion levels.

While deadlines and targets for posting frequency can be motivating – there may be periods of time when slowing down has some big benefits.

7. Make Space for Preparation, Creating and Rest

I first came this concept via an Aussie blogger Kemi Nekvapil, but I think this idea originally comes from Jack Canfield who talks about creating days for ‘preparation’, ‘success’ and ‘rest’.

Kemi talks about the structure of her week and how she has 3 different types of days during her week. They are ‘preparation days’, ‘success days’ and ‘inspiration days’.

So for Kemi, her Mondays are preparation days when she is getting ready to have a creative ‘success’ day, Tuesdays are successful days, Wednesdays are preparation days and Thursdays are successful days. Fridays are her inspiration days where she gets to do whatever she wants to do for herself.

By giving herself days with a different focus, Kemi says she’s able to keep her creativity up and to sustain herself.

It makes sense really – if every day is a day where you have to produce something and you never have time to prepare or to have a break the quality of what you produce will suffer (as will your energy levels).

I love this idea and almost intuitively have done something a little similar of late. My wife (V) works on a Wednesday, so on those days I’ve had a bit more to do with the kids (drop offs, pick ups and a shorter working day). I’ve decided to go with it not being quite as a productive day and make Wednesdays a little less hands on with work, giving me a little more space to just ‘be’.

I’ve been doing a little work but also am trying to put time aside on Wednesdays to read, walk and have a siesta. It might sound a little like a lazy day on some levels but I’m noticing that having a quieter day in the middle of my week certainly makes me more productive on the following days.

What Are Your Tips for Finding Time to Blog?

What I’ve written above just scratches the surface. I am by no means an expert on this and am keen to learn from your experience.

The post 7 Tips for Busy Bloggers on Finding Time to Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Blogging in 2023: How To Start A Professional Blog And Make Money appeared first on ProBlogger.

How is blogging in 2023 different from being a blogger five years ago, ten years ago, or more?

Is it still even worth starting a blog in 2023?

It blows my mind that as I write this the ProBlogger book is 15 years old. To say a lot has changed would be an understatement of the highest order!

Even back when Darren and I started discussing a potential book, blogging wasn’t new, and we had already seen the community undergo several changes. Each subsequent edition considered the evolution of blogging at the time they were published.

Darren and Chris promoting Problogger the book in 2010

As you can probably imagine, I have a lot to cover and what was to be one article quickly became over-sized, so instead I have broken it into a series.

In this series, I would like to answer the following questions (plus anything else you would like me to cover):

• Can we learn from how blogging has changed from when we started writing the book in 2007 to now?
• What advice would we give to someone starting today?
• How have some successful bloggers remained successful while others have faded away?

First, a question I am asked all the time …

Is it Worth Starting a Blog in 2023?

Is it still worth starting a blog today? Yes!

You might think the blogging ship has sailed but you would be wrong. People start new websites every day and make a success of them.

Part of the reason is that people also give up blogging every day. It’s sad but true. Life gets in the way, their passion fades, they are not successful enough fast enough, their interests change, or something happens to the site that they can’t recover from.

Another reason you could start blogging today and be successful is there are always new people entering every niche. People who have been writing about a topic for a long time move on to more advanced elements and forget about the beginners in their blog content.

There are also new blogging topics popping up all the time. Even a couple of years ago we could not have predicted that there would be consumer-level AI tools available that people wanted (needed?) to learn how to use!

Finally, search engines are a moving target. Ranking at the top of the search engine results today does not guarantee that you will get a ton of traffic tomorrow. This gives new players an opportunity to grow and take a share of the pie.

Definition of Blogging: What is a Blog Versus a Niche Website?

Back when the ProBlogger book came out I would be asked “What is the difference between a wiki and a blog?”, but now people ask “What is the difference between blogs and websites/niche sites?”

A blog is a continually updated website made up mostly of articles (blog posts) around a single subject, usually by a single author or a defined set of main writers.

Darren wrote this in 2005:

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

I would say, while there are lots of exceptions, this is still true. This makes the distinction between a blog and a wiki easy to detect, it makes it harder to tell the difference between a blog and a niche website.

To make things more complicated, many websites include a blog where they add new posts as a matter of course, as a way of adding fresh content for their audiences (and search engines).

The Difference between Niche Sites and Blogs

For me, the main difference between a blog and a niche website is the intent to continually put out more and more, fresh articles, and to keep happy a community of readers.

Darren defined 4 pillars of pro blogging, and niche sites check off only 3 of the four:

1. Content ︎
2. Readers/traffic ︎
3. Community ✘
4. Monetization ︎

Niche websites tend to be aimed at monetizing search engine referral traffic, and are less likely to develop a community of readers. A great many are built as a one-off project and are then only lightly maintained, sometimes through “programmatic SEO” or other website automation techniques.

Of course, there are hybrids, and niche sites that start out only for search traffic and then they find they attract a community or grow email newsletters after the fact.

The Evolution of Journals and Weblogs to Blogs

Blogs also tend to have an informal, conversational writing style. This goes back to blogging’s roots as an early form of social media.

Being a blogger in 2023 is very different from when I started blogging back in the 1990s, but the core desire to reach people with our writing is still the same, even if we don’t need to hand-code HTML to do it.

The first blogs were called “personal homepages”, mostly an “about me” plus a list of links for personal use. Most internet service providers offered a small amount of web space for personal use, and search engines were not really a thing back then. If you wanted to go back to a website that you enjoyed you needed to make a note of it somewhere.

Digital Marketing at the time didn’t consist as much more than this either. Companies would sign up with a hosting company, use one of the new HTML editor apps, and put up a static brochure website.

Only the most advanced would publish much more than press releases, and most of those would use an email list. Many business owners were still to be convinced that the World Wide Web was not a passing fad.

This was a time before Google Analytics so reporting up to the C-suite of site success required analyzing web server log files. Updating the site, doing backups, analyzing logs, and the like fell to the new job role of “webmaster”. If the webmaster was also the self-hosted website server administrator this was especially hard work because most of the modern conveniences afforded by hosting control panels and pre-configured Apache/Nginx were science fiction at the time.

After the initial bookmarks phase, personal websites became more online journals or diaries, a mixture of “I found this cool thing”, “what I think about that thing that happened” and “here is what I have been up to”. This is when we started calling these sites a weblog. Even with this evolution, the main call to action might still be “post a message to my guestbook” rather than “buy my thing”.

A weblog owner was the original “influencer”, this was social media before all the video streaming platforms created millionaire personalities. We would link to each other, remark on trends from popular forums, and comment on each other’s posts.

Getting started in the late 1990s and early 2000s consisted of signing up for a blogging service with a username and password. Going viral was when many people linked to the same thing at the same time. Brainstorming blog post ideas most days consisted of reading the news and your favorite blogging niche writers via an RSS feed reader.

Getting Started Blogging in 2023

Back in the day, it was the norm for a new blogger to sign up for a free blog on a free domain, something like myblog.blogger.com and there was no shame in that. Even back when the book was published, many influential bloggers used services such as Blogspot or Tumblr or started out on free services and then upgraded for more features on services such as Typepad.

Today it is more expected that you would have your own domain name, even when using a free blogging service such as WordPress.com, or a website builder such as Wix, Squarespace, and the like.

Many bloggers skip the free WordPress blog phase and go directly to signing up for a WordPress web host. Discount web hosts like Dreamhost, Siteground, Hostgator, etc allow you to get a domain, set up the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org), add an SEO-friendly WordPress theme design template, and often come with a bunch of plugins and other add-ons.

Make sure whichever host you choose is actually good and not currently the one paying out the highest commissions to reviewers!

Owning your own blog and your own blog content is vital today. So many people start a new blog or social profile, build up an audience and then have it taken away from them because they triggered some false positive tripwire in their blogging platform or social media service.

Blogging platforms are for most people the first content management system they use on a regular basis, and you only need to browse LinkedIn to see that this familiar functionality has made its way into most businesses, if not the largest enterprises who prefer to pay huge licensing fees.

In my opinion, and I am sure Darren agrees, while you COULD go and set up your blog right this minute and start writing, it is worth doing a bit of research and preparation first if you really want to make a success of it. Even back in the day, those of us who just started writing were lucky if we gained traction, blogging in 2023 means being a great deal more intentional about what you want to achieve.

What Types of Blog Are There?

For every type of content, there are as many types of blogs. There are bloggers and communities out there for all the blog topics you can imagine, and many target audiences that exist but you could not dream of in a million years.

Darren’s Mechanical Keyboard Photography

• Food blog – What to eat, what not to eat, recipes, where to eat. Recipes are huge on the internet, not just in written form but in short-form video too.
• Hobby blog – I am big into roleplaying games and Warhammer. Yes, I play with plastic toy soldiers, sue me! I also collect retro computers from the 1970s through to the late 1980s. Every hobby will have blogs and communities that are absolutely obsessed. Darren builds and collects mechanical keyboards, and my wife has a big Instagram following around knitting. Whatever the interest, people will want to discuss it and learn.
• Personal blog / online journal / online diaries – The traditional journal, though if you just write me-me-me content you will not gain a huge following. Personal blogs need to have wit, adventure, an aspirational story, drama, or some other hook to keep anyone beyond friends and family entertained.
• Parenting blog – A lot of parenting blogs start out as diaries but morph into communities, niche down, or offer advice to other parents.
• Content marketing for business – One of the main types of blogging today, especially for freelancers, is promoting products, services, and business news for a company you work for or own.
• Podcasts and Vodcasts – Yes, podcasts are a type of blog, but in audio form! Here you can also consider YouTube channels, TikTok, and so on.
• Travel blogs – People love to go on exotic vacations vicariously through other travelers, but also learn about the places, travel tips, and what to see and do. Darren Cronian has turned his travels into a whole business around remote working.
• Technical step-by-step guide tutorials / How-to – This is my go-to. I admit it, I am a nerd and a mansplainer at heart. One of the core reasons people search is for instructions on how to do something, how to fix something, what does this warning light mean …?
• E-commerce / Product News and Reviews / Affiliate marketing – If you have ever made an expensive or complex purchase I am sure you have done some internet research for trustworthy reviews and buying guides. Heck, people watch “unboxings” just purely for entertainment. Both Darren and I heavily got into photography and nerding out about cameras which lead us to start photography and camera blogs. Darren’s was successful.
• Inspirational blogs – Darren started a new blog called Find Your Spark – a place where I’m going to share weekly prompts to get unstuck. He wrote about the process of starting it here.

Do any of those options spark your interest or inspire other ideas?

Do you have knowledge or a passion that might attract other people with similar interests?

Are there already people being successful in those niches?

Could you find a way to be different and offer a unique angle on the subject matter?

Start thinking about these questions now and we will circle back to how to analyze and choose your niche, plus how bloggers can get paid for their writing today.

Blogging in 2023 Part 1 Conclusion

There is still an opportunity to be a successful blogger in 2023 if you start right now. Blogging in 2023 is very different from when Darren and I first hunched over our keyboards wondering if anyone would ever read what we wrote, but there are also many new opportunities and exciting options for those willing to go get them!

I am not for a moment suggesting that it will be quick or easy, but if you can enjoy the process of blogging then I believe you can find it rewarding in many direct and indirect ways.

In the next parts of this series, we will go into how to get started and how bloggers make money.

If you want to launch your blog properly and really make a go of it, stick around and I will guide you through setting up your blog, gathering an audience, and getting paid.

The post Blogging in 2023: How To Start A Professional Blog And Make Money appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post 17 Statistics to Monitor on Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

Today your task is to spend some time looking at your blog’s statistics/metrics package to see what you can learn from it.

I encouraged participants in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge to make sure they had a metrics package installed on their blog before they started so I hope you have at least a month’s worth of stats to look at. If you’ve not got a stats package installed yet you should get one on your blog ASAP as it’ll help you track how it is performing.

Take some time out today to do a little analysis of your blog’s statistics. There is a wealth of information in them that can be incredibly useful.

Important Note: this exercise tends to become more useful over time. If this is the first time you do it then hopefully it’ll be illuminating – but the longer you have been collecting metrics on your blog the more useful it can become as you track trends and see patterns over time. As a result – this type of exercise should be something you build into your regular blogging routine (I try to do an in depth review each month).

Some of you will be used to doing this type of analysis so you won’t need a lot of help in doing it – but if you’re new to this here are a few metrics to pay particular attention to:

1. Overall Visitors – this is the metric most of us probably look at the most so I’ll start with it. Are visitor numbers on the increase or decrease? What might be the reasons for these changes (ie could it be tied to frequency of posting, topics, other sites links etc).
2. Most Popular Posts – what posts are being read more than other posts? Knowing this is important for a couple of reasons. For starters it gives you a hint of what topics you could write more on – but secondly it gives you some key pages on your site to optimize (ie think about how you can drive people from these posts deeper into your blog).
3. Referral Stats – what sites are sending you the most traffic? If it’s another blog or site, perhaps you could develop a relationship with them to see this increase. If it’s Search Engines, how can you adapt the posts to see it rise even more using on page SEO techniques).
4. What Questions are being asked? – what questions are readers typing into search engines to find your blog? These could make great future posts (learn more about how to do this here).
5. What Keywords are sending traffic? – knowing the keywords that people search for to find your site is very useful. It helps you to know how to optimize your blog for SEO even better and can give hints on what content to write more of.
6. What seasonal traffic is there? – are there any seasonal trends that you should be aware of and could use to capture more traffic? What caused the bumps in traffic and how can you prepare yourself better for next time those conditions might happen again (read more on seasonal traffic and how to capture it).
7. Daily/Weekly Trends – another trend to watch is what traffic does over different periods of time. What are the most popular times of day? What days of the week are most popular? Knowing this gives you ammunition in planning when to release new posts.
8. What’s Your Bounce Rate? – metrics packages like Google Analytics provide you with a ‘bounce rate’ stat which measures how many people arrive at your site and then leave again without viewing any extra pages. I find this a key metric to watch and attempt to change. Set yourself some goals to get this rate down and the page views viewed per visitor up by making your blog sticky.
9. Page Views Per Visit – Similarly to ‘Bounce Rate’ – This is a good one to watch over time as it shows you whether those coming to your blog are going deep into your blog’s content or simply looking at the page they arrive on. My goal on my blogs is to see this number increase over time. For tips on how to increase page views also check out 4 Quick and Simple Ways to Increase Page Views on Your Blog.
10. Time on Site – Another stat that can give you a sense on whether readers are engaging with your content is to look at how long they stay on your blog. The longer they are staying the more likely it is that they’re reading, commenting and interacting (or that they forgot to close their browser).
11. New vs Returning Visitors – This one gives you a sense of whether you’re succeeding in converting people to loyal visitors.
12. RSS Stats – If you’re using a tool like Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds you’ll have access to more useful information. Feedburner provides you with the number of subscribers but also what posts people are reading most of (again showing you what content people are engaging with most which gives you some good information on what type of content is working best).
13. Outbound Clicks – Not every metrics package will give you this type of information but if you have access to it knowing what links on your blog people are clicking to leave it can be very useful. It’s not that you want to stop people clicking links – but knowing what links they click on can give you some useful information on what motivates your readers to click a link and what type of information they want more of.
14. Where are People Clicking on Your Page – not all stats packages track this but some like Google Analytics or packages specifically for it like CrazyEgg will create heatmaps or visual pictures of what people click on when they visit your blog. I find CrazyEgg’s heatmaps better than Google Analytics but you do need to set it up on specific pages of your blog to be able to see them. This is very useful information when thinking about the design and layout of your blog but also can help you test how to layout posts to see where people click.
15. Exit Pages – A similar metric is knowing what page on your blog people are leaving from. A couple of years ago I checked my stats and noticed that the % of people leaving a particular page on my blog was triple other pages. When I investigated I found that the page had some very bad formatting issues on it that made the page almost unreadable – I was able to fix the problem and keep more readers engaged as a result.
16. Monetization Stats – many of you are looking to make money from your blogs so it’s also important to pay attention to any stats you have at your disposal on how your blog is performing in this way. The metrics you have at your disposal will vary from income stream to income stream but if possible try to work out where on your blog the income is coming from specifically. For example if you use Google Analytics and AdSense you’ll be able to see what specific pages are earning more than others. Otherwise – use what ever channel or tracking options your ad network or affiliate program gives you to help you work out which posts are performing.
17. Other Stats – There are plenty of other stats that can be revealing when you dig into them. Knowing the Geographic regions of your readers can be helpful as you think about content but also is useful if you’re dealing with advertisers, knowing the screen resolution and browsers people are using to view your site is good from a design perspective etc. Also worth doing from time to time is looking at other stats like how many posts you’ve done over time (post frequency can help you monitor how you’re performing personally) and how many comments you’ve had on your blog over a period of time and on which posts (which can be a great indicator of what kind of posts are working best on your blog and how reader engagement is going).

What Would You Add?

There are many other types of metrics that most statistics packages will provide you with. Feel free to share the metrics that you check most often and how you use them to improve your blog in comments below. Also let us know what tools you are using to check your blog’s metrics.

Warning: Don’t become a stats addict. Most new bloggers go through a period where they are checking their stats every hour. This is pretty normal but over time can add up to a lot of wasted time.

I personally try to do a quick check of stats throughout the day 2-3 times (just looking at traffic numbers mainly to see if there’s any spike in traffic that I need to know about) and then month put aside an hour or two to go deeper and look at some of the above statistics.

Further Reading: Using Google Analytics to Compare Traffic from Different Periods of Time – in this post I use the ‘compare’ feature on Google Analytics to track how my blog is going over time by comparing it to other periods.

This post was originally published 5th of May 2009 and updated 17th August 2023.

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The post 25 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider appeared first on ProBlogger.

When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog.

There’s a lot of reasons why you might choose a post over a page or a page over a post (that’s for another post) – but today I thought I’d highlight a few ‘pages’ that I have here on ProBlogger as examples of pages that bloggers might want to develop to promote their blog to different groups of people. Some are more essential in my mind than others but all have been helpful in the development of my own blogs.

1. About Page

Perhaps one of the most common uses of the ‘page’ function on WP is the good old ‘about page’. Having an about page is essential in my mind as it gives new readers to your blog a snapshot of who you are and why they should subscribe to your blog. This is the page that I go to every time I hit a new blog – if they don’t have one it decreases my chances of subscribing significantly.

Read more on adding an about page to your blog.

2. Contact Page

I’m amazed how many bloggers don’t have any way of contacting them on their blog. While I understand the temptation not to have one you could be missing out of wonderful opportunities by not giving readers, potential partners, press, other bloggers a way of contacting you.

Read more on Why your blog’s readers should be able to contact you.

3. Press Page

I don’t promote this page heavily (although do mention it on my ‘About Page‘) but use it more when interacting with journalists and mainstream media outlets. The way I use it is to show journalists what others have written about me. I find that in providing a list of previous articles in mainstream media you gain a little credibility and give journalists a head start in finding an angle to pursue for their own potential articles about you. It’s also handy to be able to provide this page to anyone else that you’re attempting to build credibility with that may not be that ‘new media savvy’. It’s amazing how a mention in mainstream media will open doors for some.

4. Disclaimer Page

In the interests of transparency and disclosure I have this page linked to on every page and post on my blog to show readers what I get out of this blog – ie that I make money from it and use affiliate programs. I also use this page to dispel some of the myths and untrue assumptions that people have about me and this blog by sharing some of the ‘costs’ of this blog. I find that this balanced ‘disclaimer’ works quite well.

5. FAQ Page

This page was written with a very selfish motive – to cut down my workload. I get asked a lot of questions, many of them repeatedly. As an attempt to answer some of these frequently asked questions I put together some answers for them. I still get asked the questions but being able to point to this page helps. I also have it linked to prominently from my Contact Page.

6. Subscribe Page

Having a page dedicated to how people can subscribe to your blog can be very useful. I do also link to a signup form in my sidebar and footer – so it’s hard to miss! But I do find that having a page like this can be useful as some readers don’t understand the idea of RSS or can be worried about issues of privacy or what it means to ‘subscribe’. Sometimes having a page dedicated to walking people through the process can pay off.

7. Advertise with Us Page

Looking to sell advertising on your blog? An ‘Advertise’ page is an important part of attracting new advertisers and a well written one can cut down a lot of work for you as it’ll help to filter out people by giving them information that helps them to know if your site is right for them.

Further Reading: Finding Advertisers for Your Blog.

8. Series Page – Compilation

I’ve used ‘pages’ in two ways when it comes to series of posts. The first way is to put together a compilation page of all of the posts in a series. I don’t do this that regularly but in the example linked to put together the content from all 25 posts on my series on Battling Bloggers Block. I found that some readers really appreciated having the series all in the one place.

9. Series Page – Central Page

The other approach to managing a series of posts with a ‘page’ is to use one as a ‘central links page’ that you update with a link to each post in your series over time. This is what I did in my Blogger Collaboration Series. The beauty of this approach over the ‘compilation page’ is that it can drive a lot more page views as readers are ‘sneezed’ in multiple directions into your blog. It’s also good because it allows readers to be more selective about which posts in a series they want to read rather than reading the full thing.

10. Affiliate Pre-Sell Pages

Having a dedicated page for an affiliate program that you’re running can be a very smart move. If you refer to a product that you’re promoting regularly in your posts – rather than linking to the affiliate program link to a ‘pre-sell’ page on your own blog. This allows you to ‘pre-sell’ the product more with a personal message. This is what I do on my AdSense page here at ProBlogger. This doesn’t work for every affiliate program but I find with AdSense that it works well as their landing page can be a little off putting to new potential users of it. It also gives me a little more flexibility with how I mention AdSense in my posts as their Referrals program doesn’t allow html linking. Further Reading: 5 Tips for Improving AdSense Referral Earnings.

11. Services Pages

If you offer services to readers then develop a dedicated sales page for yourself and link to it prominently on your blog. The example here is my Consulting page – a page I used to point to regularly. These days I don’t offer these services any more (due to workload) so have not promoted it for a while. I find that when you have a dedicated page to selling your services you can sell yourself much more expansively than just a quick mention elsewhere on your blog.

12. Key Information Pages

Do you have information that you’re constantly providing to people over and over again (whether in blog posts, via email or in other ways)? Make a page about it and keep the link handy. That’s what I did with my b5media page and have found it to help me cut down my workload in answering questions about the network. I also link to it in my navigational bar here on ProBlogger and it’s lead to some great opportunities. You could do this with any business or product that you’re associated with.

13. Landing Pages

This page is an example of a landing page over at DPS of a current campaign that we’re running for our new Lightroom Course. If you do choose to run an ad campaign to promote your blog then it’s much wiser to link your ads to a dedicated landing page than the front page of your blog. Read more on Advertising Your Blog and on Landing Pages.

14. Sneeze Pages

One great way to propel people deep within your blog is to develop a Sneeze Page or a ‘Best of’ page that highlights some of the better articles on your blog around a particular theme. Put links to these pages on your sidebar or refer to them in posts and you’ll see your page impressions per visit statistics go up.

15. Testimonial Pages

If you’re selling something (even if it’s yourself) like we do with ProBlogger Jobs advertising, having some sort of a testimonial page can be very worthwhile. People base buying decisions increasingly upon the opinions of others – so capture some of these opinions and present them.

16. Event Specific Pages

Speaking at an event? Create a ‘page’ specifically for those at it and mention that you’ve done so in your presentation. This way you can tailor a specific message to those visitors, their needs, your presentation and ‘sell’ something to them (whether it be subscribing to your blog, buying a product, selling your services or getting them to read certain pages on your blog. The example I’ve given is from a conference I did this time last year. I also used to have a section on that page selling a product that I mentioned in the presentation and it converted quite well.

17. 404 Page

When people arrive on your blog to a page that has been deleted, follow a dead link etc and end up on a default error page on your blog you’ve got a wasted opportunity on your hands. Customize your error pages to help readers find what they’re looking for or at least find something else that might interest them. Further Reading: How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page for Your Blog and this article from Search Engine Journal where I found the Disney example pictured above.

18. Special Projects

When I participated in a charity event called (Movember), rather than letting this event completely take over my blog for the month I created a dedicated page for the event that those who were interested in could follow my updates on.

19. Guest Blogger Page

I don’t accept guest posts on ProBlogger but we do invite writers to apply to write for dPS with some guidelines on how to write for this blog. As a result, I get more posts that are written in a format that I can use and it’s cut down a lot of work for me.

20. Archives Page

There are numerous ways that you can present that archives of your blog. It becomes more challenging the larger your blog grows to be able to direct people back to your best previous work and a dedicated page can be helpful in that process rather than just presenting a list of categories or dates on your site bar. What I’ve attempted to do with mine is to provide a page with dated archives but also categories with some suggested starting points.

Some of the above ‘pages’ can of course be created from ‘posts’ on your blog (and there might be some good reasons for doing so) however my preference is to make them ‘pages’. In most cases this is because I prefer these pages to not be date specific. The way I have my links set up here at ProBlogger posts have dates showing and in the link structure – but pages don’t. In many of the above examples I also didn’t want to page to show up in my blog’s RSS feed or categories – but preferred them to be standalone pages.

21. Start Here Page

When we redesigned ProBlogger (some years ago now), we mapped out a reader journey and part of that was for new readers landing on the blog knowing where to start. So our “Start Here” page introduces the topic, lays out the format of the blog and gives readers an induction into the content pillars and how to get the most out of their interaction with the blog.

I’ve recorded a podcast episode on Why You Should Create a Start Here Page for Your Blog and Kelly Exeter wrote a guest post about The 5 key elements your blog’s ‘Start Here’ page must have.

22. Resources Page

If you have an assortment of recommended tools, services or resources you use and recommend – particularly if you are earning affiliate commission, sponsorship or advertising from them – give your readers a page where they can see all of these resources in one spot and links for them to access. Just make sure that you disclose any commercial arrangements you may have attached to these resources.

Here’s both a podcast and an article I produced on How to Use a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income.

23. Privacy Page

New data protection laws that apply to just about every business in any jurisdiction mean that having a Privacy Policy published on your website is essential. I’m not a lawyer and we don’t dispense legal advice on ProBlogger, but our guest legal expert Jeanette Jifkins did write an article on What Laws in the World Apply to You?

24. Product Pages

Do you sell anything from your blog – products or services? Well, you’re best to create a “shop window” so your readers can become customers.

25. Member Pages

Many news sites now monetize via a paid subscription and you can gate all or some of your content behind a paywall for subscribers only. At ProBlogger we don’t have a paywall, but we do offer a FREE Member’s Library of resources, with access based on subscribing.

What page types would you add to the above list?

Update: Some great suggestions in comments so far, some of which I have now listed above. I agree that a privacy page is a good one, as is a comments policy (I have one of these but wrote it as a post – I think it’d be more appropriate as a page though). Another one that I should have included is a ‘resource’ page – a page that lists recommended resources, books, courses etc. Lastly – I should have included a ‘blog roll’ or ‘links’ page. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions – keep them coming.

The post 25 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Stop Reading. Start Doing. Now! appeared first on ProBlogger.

I’m going to hazard a guess that you are here at ProBlogger because you want to know how to make a blog a success. With a successful blog, you can make some money, right? With the knowledge you glean from here and other places, you’re hoping to take your blog to the next level.

But I think that’s where a lot of us get stuck. With the knowledge.

We may in theory know what it takes to create great content, find readers, nail social media, and run a much-loved blog. But we may also stop short of actually putting that knowledge into practice. And what is the point of having all that knowledge, if you’re not going to use it to help your dreams come true?

I think we’re all guilty of it to some degree. There have been tons of things I knew I should do, but thought I lacked the time or the skills to do so. One day, I forced myself to sit down and make those small changes on my blog, one at a time. And you know what? They weren’t so hard, and they didn’t take much time. Things like installing a sticky top bar messenger for newsletter signups, revamping my About page so it more accurately reflected what my blog is about, actually testing some Pinterest strategies… my list was seemingly endless. And seemingly endless lists can be overwhelming – so much so that we don’t even get started on them.

What I want you to do (today, if you can!) and pick one thing you’ve learned recently and actually do it.

• Define your niche. Really try to nail it down.
• Narrow your focus. Pick a few things you want to excel at, and put your energies into doing them well.
• Use these tips to boost your email campaign open rates.
• Launch an eBook in the most successful way possible.
• Keyword-optimise your images (even if you just do a few a day until they’re all done)
• Pitch a guest post

You know what those things are that are floating around in the back of your mind. That you’ll get to one day. Well, today is your day! Go! Do!

Which one do you think you will try? I’d love to hear in the comments what’s on your list, or what you’ve done recently that has really worked.

Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net, and the gal behind Veggie Mama. A writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd, she can be found making play-dough, reading The Cat in the Hat for the eleventh time, and avoiding the laundry. See evidence on Instagram here, on Facebook here, and twitter @veggie_mama.

The post Stop Reading. Start Doing. Now! appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging in 2023 for Increased Organic Traffic appeared first on ProBlogger.

In 2023, guest blogging remains a vital strategy for bloggers and businesses aiming to boost their online visibility, improve search engine rankings, and drive organic traffic. However, as the digital landscape evolves, so must our approach to guest blogging. In this comprehensive guide, we will examine current tactics to boost your guest blogging success. By leveraging cutting-edge tools and implementing actionable strategies, you can elevate your blog’s authority, expand its reach and increase your organic traffic and SEO performance.

And remember, there’s at least 7 Powerful Non-SEO Reasons to Try Guest Posting.

Google Algorithms and SEO:

In the current SEO landscape, Google’s algorithms have become more sophisticated in discerning quality content from manipulative tactics. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) are pivotal factors in search engine rankings. E-E-A-T assesses the credibility and reliability of content creators, which can significantly impact how well your blog ranks in search results. When crafting your guest blogging strategy, prioritize websites with strong E-E-A-T profiles, as association with authoritative platforms can boost your blog’s credibility. 

For instance, imagine you operate a fitness blog and secure a guest post opportunity on a reputable health website. Google recognizes the health site’s authority in the fitness niche, and when it links back to your blog, it signals to Google that your blog is also a credible source for fitness-related content. Consequently, this can positively impact your blog’s rankings for fitness-related keywords.

Additionally, modern SEO goes beyond E-E-A-T. Factors like site speed, mobile-friendliness, and user experience also influence search rankings. Therefore, when considering guest post opportunities, assess the overall quality of the host website, including its technical SEO aspects.

Content Quality and Social Signals:

In the era of SEO, user engagement metrics play an increasingly vital role in determining search rankings. Social media shares, comments, time on page, and other engagement signals are now essential factors that influence how search engines perceive content relevance and value.

To excel in guest blogging, focus on creating exceptional content that not only provides value to the host blog’s audience but also encourages engagement and sharing. Shareable content has the potential to spread across social media platforms, driving more traffic back to your blog.

For example, suppose you write an in-depth guide on healthy meal planning for a nutrition-focused blog. The post covers the latest research, includes practical tips, and offers downloadable meal planning templates. This comprehensive and valuable content is likely to attract social shares and discussions among the audience, leading to increased visibility and organic traffic.

Moreover, visual content, such as infographics and videos, can significantly enhance engagement. Eye-catching visuals make complex information more digestible and shareable, increasing the likelihood of social media sharing and backlinks.

Ethical Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging has faced scrutiny due to some practitioners adopting manipulative link-building tactics. However, ethical guest blogging involves building genuine connections, fostering credibility, and providing value to readers.

Avoid spammy link-building practices that focus solely on quantity over quality. Instead, concentrate on crafting guest posts that genuinely contribute insights and information to the host blog’s audience. Guest blogging is not a one-sided promotional strategy; it’s a platform to share valuable knowledge and expertise.

For instance, let’s say you have a tech blog, and you contribute a guest post to a renowned tech publication. The post discusses emerging technology trends and offers practical applications for businesses. The primary focus is on providing readers with valuable information rather than promoting your blog directly. By doing so, you build trust with the host blog’s audience and establish yourself as an authority in the tech industry.

In ethical guest blogging, nurturing relationships is key. Engage with the host blog’s audience through comments and responses to further establish your expertise and credibility. Over time, these relationships can lead to more opportunities for guest posts, collaborations, and even potential partnerships.

Social Media Integration:

Social media and guest blogging are two symbiotic marketing strategies that can reinforce each other’s impact. Once your guest post is published, actively promote it on your social media platforms to increase its visibility and reach.

Share the guest post with a compelling caption that encourages engagement and interaction. Tag the host blog, the author (you), and relevant influencers to expand the post’s reach. Engage with your audience and respond to comments to create a sense of community around your content.

Furthermore, social signals from engaged readers can significantly bolster your blog’s SEO. When users share your guest post, it signals to search engines that the content is valuable and relevant, potentially leading to improved search rankings for both your guest post and your blog.

Here’s more on How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Blog

Tools of the Trade:

1. NinjaOutreach:

NinjaOutreach is a comprehensive outreach and influencer marketing platform that streamlines your guest blogging outreach process. It helps you find relevant bloggers in your niche, track their contact information, and manage your outreach campaigns efficiently. With its extensive database and powerful search filters, NinjaOutreach can help you identify the best guest posting opportunities.

2. HARO (Help a Reporter Out):

HARO is a popular platform connecting journalists and bloggers with expert sources. Subscribing to HARO allows you to receive daily emails with queries from journalists seeking expert opinions and insights. Responding to relevant queries can land you guest blogging opportunities on authoritative websites and media outlets.

3. Moz Link Explorer:

Moz offers a suite of SEO tools, including Link Explorer, which can help you assess the value of guest posting opportunities. This tool provides valuable insights into a website’s domain authority, spam score, and backlink profile, allowing you to make informed decisions about where to guest post.

4. AnswerThePublic:

Like Quora, AnswerThePublic is an excellent resource for generating content ideas for both your blog and guest posts. It helps you discover popular questions and topics related to your chosen keywords, giving you valuable insights into what your audience is looking for.

5. Google Keyword Planner:

Google’s Keyword Planner remains a reliable and free tool for generating keywords for your guest posts and anchor texts. It provides search volume data, competition levels, and keyword suggestions, helping you optimize your guest content for better search engine visibility.

7 Tips for Effective Guest Blogging:

1. Identify Target Blogs:

Research and identify authoritative blogs and websites in your niche. Look for platforms that align with your blog’s values and target audience. Prioritize quality over quantity and choose websites with strong E-E-A-T profiles. Tools like Moz Link Explorer can assist in assessing potential websites.

2. Craft Tailored Pitches:

Personalize your outreach emails to each target blog. Highlight your expertise and propose engaging guest post ideas relevant to their audience. Show genuine interest in contributing valuable content. Tools like NinjaOutreach can help you manage your outreach campaigns effectively.

Here’s how to Find and Pitch the Perfect Guest Posting Opportunities

3. Deliver High-Quality Content:

Create exceptional guest posts with original research, expert insights, and practical tips. Ensure the content aligns with the host blog’s audience and provides unique value. Leverage tools like AnswerThePublic for content idea generation.

4. Optimize for SEO:

Strategically use anchor text and internal linking to optimize your guest posts for search engines. Align your target keywords with the host blog’s content and your own blog’s focus. Be mindful of keyword diversity and avoid over-optimization.

5. Leverage Social Media:

Promote your guest posts actively on your social media platforms. Encourage sharing, engage with your audience, and foster discussions around your content. Social signals play a crucial role in SEO. Tools like NinjaOutreach can assist in managing social media promotion.

6. Be Consistent:

Consistency is key to guest blogging success. Regularly contribute high-quality guest posts to build authority and maintain visibility. Engage with host bloggers and their audience to strengthen your presence in the niche.

7. Monitor and Adapt:

Analyze the performance of your guest posts and assess their impact on your blog’s traffic and rankings. Use analytics tools to track backlinks and measure key performance indicators. Adapt your guest blogging strategy based on the insights gained.

Build Long-Term Relationships:

Beyond individual guest posts, focus on building long-term relationships with host bloggers and influencers. Nurture these relationships through ongoing engagement, collaboration, and support. Reciprocity within the guest blogging community can lead to increased exposure and opportunities.

Here’s A Guest Post Follow Up Strategy for Maximum Success.

Guest blogging remains a powerful tool in driving organic traffic and elevating your blog’s SEO performance in 2023. By adopting contemporary strategies that prioritize content quality, social signals, and ethical practices, and leveraging cutting-edge tools designed for effective guest blogging, you can achieve remarkable results with your guest blogging campaign. Stay updated on *Google’s algorithm changes, adapt your approach to align with current SEO best practices, and elevate your online presence through thoughtful guest blogging efforts. With these actionable recommendations, you can propel your blog to new heights of success and visibility. As you implement these strategies, remember that successful guest blogging is about providing value, building relationships, and making a positive impact on your audience and the host blogs you collaborate with.

*The Google Search Central Blog is where you can find official Google Search core algorithm updates, announcements of new Google Search features, and SEO best practices.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging in 2023 for Increased Organic Traffic appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Six Ways to Get Feedback On Your Posts and Pages (And Why You Need To) appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Are your blog posts working well, or leaving readers unsatisfied? Is your About page enticing, or confusing? Does your Hire Me page do a great job of selling your services, or is it too bland?

Often, the only feedback that you have comes in the form of numbers. Maybe readers aren’t spending long on your blog. Maybe you rarely get comments. Maybe no one’s ever hired you.

The problem is, it’s hard to tell why. Without any feedback from readers, you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.

Honest, constructive feedback isn’t the same as a comment saying “great post!” Good feedback:

• tells you exactly what’s working, and what isn’t
• offers suggestions on how to fix any problems
• encourages you to make the most of your strengths.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking no one will give me any feedback. I don’t have any readers yet. Or maybe your blog isn’t even online—you’re struggling away with your posts and pages, trying to get your core content together before you launch.

Don’t give up. I’m going to give you six easy ways to get feedback.

Six ways to get feedback

1. Look at your current comments

If you’ve received any comments on your blog, look at the following.

• Which posts have the most comments? These will, in some way, have struck a chord with the reader.
• Are there any suggestions that you can use for future posts? Sometimes, commenters will tell you exactly what they’d like to read. Other times, they’ll mention what they’re struggling with—and you can use that as the basis for a post.
• Did any posts get negative or confused comments? If a reader leaves a comment to say that they didn’t understand, you might want to take another look at that post and make sure it’s clear.

2. Ask around on Twitter or Facebook

If your blog is new, you might well have a bigger following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks. Try asking there for feedback: post a link to a particular post or page and explain that you’d welcome any constructive criticism.

You’ll be surprised at how generous your friends—and even complete strangers!—can be. Don’t discount the opinions of non-bloggers, either; they might not “get” the technology, but they’re likely to be representative of your general audience.

3. Find a blogging partner

Some bloggers like to swap posts with one another. If you’ve got any blogging friends, ask around and see if anyone would be interested. A blogging partner can do a lot more than just read your posts, too—check out Find a Blog Buddy [Day 15 – 31DBBB].

If you don’t know a single blogger yet, try looking in the comments sections of relevant blogs (ProBlogger might be a good place to start). Find someone who seems to be at a similar stage to you, and drop them an email.

4. Post a message in a forum

When I’ve been looking for feedback, often on sales pages, I’ve posted in the Third Tribe forum. I’ve always had great responses from other members, with plenty of insightful feedback. When you put out a request like this, it’s often helpful to specify what particular areas you want feedback on. You might ask questions like these:

• Was my About page clear?
• Did it encourage you to read on?
• Is there anything you think I should add?

If you’re not currently a member of any blogging or business-related forums, you might want to take a look at ProBlogger’s own community site: ProBlogger.Community. ProBlogger Community even offers a “blog review swap” thread.

5. Join a blogging-related course

Many ecourses will include some element of interaction—that might be live calls with the tutors, or forums where you can easily interact with other members. There’ll often be a chance to ask questions and get specific feedback.

Even if it’s a big course without any individual instruction from tutors, you’ll find that other members are very willing to help out. People taking an e-course are often more engaged (and at a slightly further stage) than your general audience on Twitter or Facebook.

Checkout ProBlogger’s Courses, where they have both free and paid courses, including several on creating content.

6. Hire a writing coach

For really in-depth, expert feedback, look for a writing or blogging coach. They’ll work with you to help you shape and polish up your content, and a good coach will be careful to preserve your own voice and style.

Coaching is definitely an investment, but many bloggers find it a very worthwhile one. That applies even if you have a strong writing background. One of my own coaching clients, Prime Sarmiento, is an experienced journalist. She wrote about the benefits of getting coaching in a guest post for Men with Pens: Why Hiring a Writing Coach Can Help You Build Your Business.

The review

So, you’ve found someone willing to give you feedback. What should you ask them to look at?

I think there are several key areas where you’ll want to make sure your writing (and formatting of posts) is as good as it can be.

Your cornerstone content

If you’re creating a series of posts as cornerstone or pillar content—posts that readers will go back to again and again—then you want them to be as good as possible.

It’s worth asking someone to read through the whole series, so that they can help you both with the small details (like typos and clunky sentences) and the big picture (making sure that all the posts fit together well).

Your About page

Did you know that your About page is probably the most-read page on your blog after your home page? (Check your Google Analytics if you’re not convinced!) It make sense—new readers will often read a blog post or two, then click on “About” to find out who you are and what the blog’s purpose is.

A great About page can turn a casual visitor into a subscriber. A poor About page might lose you that visitor completely. About pages are really tough to write, so it’s definitely worth getting feedback and even some help with the drafting.

Your Services or Hire Me page

If you’ve got any services (or products) for sale, you want to make sure that your sales page does a great job of drawing potential customers in. That means, at a minimum, being totally clear about what you do and who you work with.

I’ve read lots of incoherent and confusing sales pages—and even decent sales pages often don’t sell the blogger as well as they should. You should always get feedback on a sales page, to make sure that your offer is totally clear.

Your next steps

Pick one page or post on your blog, and find someone who can give you feedback on it. That might be a friend, a forum member, a coach … the important thing is that you get a second opinion. Ideally, it should be someone who understands your audience (even if they’re not part of that audience themselves).

And if you’re not sure who to ask, why not pop a comment below? You might just find a new blogging friend…

Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach, and author of The Blogger’s Guides series of ebooks. She has a weekly newsletter for writers and bloggers, and has just released a mini-ebook How to Find Time for Your Writing –click here and sign up for her newsletter to get your free copy.

The post Six Ways to Get Feedback On Your Posts and Pages (And Why You Need To) appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Content Creation vs Content Promotion: Where is the Balance? appeared first on ProBlogger.

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A few days ago we published a post on ProBlogger titled ‘Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging‘, which led to some interesting discussion on Twitter and in the comments.

I love the points author Nicholas Whitmore made in the post but I wanted to give a few thoughts, based on my own experience, on developing great content and promoting your blog.

Nicholas wrote some great arguments for focusing your energy on writing great content as the central way of growing your blog. He writes:

“When you write and publish awesome content on your blog, good things will come your way.”

I completely agree with this sentiment. As a blogger your #1 focus needs to be on producing content that is useful, engaging and of as high a quality as possible. Without it, all the marketing you might do will be wasted as you’ll just be directing people to something that is of no value to them.

As Nicholas goes on to write:

“When you write and publish boring content then spend hours on end building links to it, trying to force people to your website, good things will never come.”

Again, I agree with the sentiment expressed here.

However, on Twitter a discussion among some of my followers highlighted that some bloggers differ quite a bit on how much effort should be put into promoting a blog vs developing content for it.

• On one hand, there were certainly people who felt that if you build a great blog that it markets itself.
• On the other hand, there were people who felt that if you didn’t get out there and market your blog you ran the risk of all your hard work in developing great content going completely unseen.

While I think we all agree that the content on your blog needs to be of a very high focus, I’m also of the belief that if a blogger wants to grow their readership they also need to put effort into promoting that blog.

I like the idea of the marketing being taken care of by your visitors, if you have good enough blog post. In my experience, there are things you can do to promote your blog to help speed the process up, without compromising the quality of your posts.

In the early days of my own current blogs (here on ProBlogger and at dPS) I estimate I probably spent almost as much time writing content as I did working on growing the readership. In fact, I’m sure there were some weeks where I did spend considerably more time promoting my blog than writing content!

In short, I don’t see marketing and creating content as mutually exclusive – both are really important to me.

How did I grow my readership (or market my blogs)?

I recorded a webinar last year on this very topic with a load of tips in it. You can listen to it and see the slides here so I won’t rehash all of that but here’s a summary slide of the points I talked through.

You can see that my process actually talks about the content that you develop as being a part of finding readers for your blog (both in points 2 and 8). But by getting off your blog to promote what you do you are certainly able to significantly grow your blog.

Point #9 shows that this is a recurring cycle.

For me, I’d say that the balance of creating content and promoting has changed over the life of my blogs over the years. This is probably partly because the life cycle of a blog but also due to my own personal circumstances and how much time I have available to work.

That said , I would always prioritise both on a daily basis… and would probably also add in that I prioritise other things too such as ‘engaging with readers/building community’ and also a focus upon ‘monetization’ (without which I can’t sustain what I do).

Where is the Balance of Promotion and Content Creation for You?

I’d love to hear how others get this balance right in your blogging?

The post Content Creation vs Content Promotion: Where is the Balance? appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

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This is a guest contribution by Nicholas Whitmore.

The title: What on earth does it mean?

Well, recently it seems like a lot of bloggers fancy themselves as marketers. You can’t read a post on a blog without seeing a load of other bloggers commenting at the bottom, with a link back to their own site. Of course other bloggers use black hat SEO tricks and other shady tactics in order to drive traffic to their blog. Each to their own you might say, but at the end of the day life can be much, much easier.

If you publish blog content that’s truly awesome, everyone else will market your blog for you.

If you seem to spend half your life trying to promote your blog with your efforts never coming to fruition, now’s the time to stop. There’s a reason why things aren’t working out – and you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s the actual content in your blog posts.

Sorry to have to break it to you, but your blog posts suck.

It’s time to go back to basics because if you’re guilty of trying to build links and force traffic to your blog, you’re trying too hard.

The art of blogging involves thinking up great topics and blog titles, performing research where required, then authoring great work.

Building links and driving traffic to your website does not fall under the blogging remit – that’s marketing, something different altogether.

Good things come to those who wait

Starting a successful blog is not something that you can do overnight. In fact, it can take months or even years before you start to see traction and those crazy traffic figures you’ve dreamt of. If you’ve got a short attention span or you’re incredibly impatient, the chances are that you won’t make it as a blogger.

Whilst some bloggers out there make a living from their sites, don’t go quitting your day job and blowing your life savings just yet – getting a blog to the point where it can be successfully and sustainably monetized takes a very, very long time.

Expedite success with more awesome blog posts 

The only way in which you can expedite the success of your blog is to publish more high quality content. Be careful not to inundate your visitors with too much content to digest though in your race to the top. Careful balances need to be struck between quality and quantity – a balance must also be struck between too many and too little blog posts.

Rarely will you see a sparsely populated blog that’s extremely popular. One of the core ingredients of a successful blog is frequent content – there’s no getting away from that fact. You don’t have to post 10 new blogs each week, but it would help in a lot of cases.

Hard work always pays off 

On my desk is a mug that my father used to drink out of. It says: “Hard work always pays off” – I find that little saying resonates around my head at least one million times each day. There are few things in life truer than this saying – and it can of course be applied to the world of blogging.

Be prepared to spend a good few months writing awesome posts that few people will read initially.

Keep plugging away – keep publishing great content and your blog will be recognized. The pay off comes when the recognition that your blog receives snowballs – links from other blogs start rolling in, and people recommend your posts on social media.

Recognition usually starts like a little trickle of water – gradually it will build up into a raging torrent. The more recognition your site receives, the more people will read it. As more people read your blog, it’ll receive further recognition. It’s an infinite loop of goodness for you as a blog owner!

In Summary 

When you write and publish awesome content on your blog, good things will come your way.

When you write and publish boring content then spend hours on end building links to it, trying to force people to your website, good things will never come.

Spend your time blogging – not marketing. The marketing side of things will be taken care of for you by your visitors if the blog posts that you publish are good enough to be recommended and shared across the internet.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sharing posts you publish via social media with friends and followers – it’s the ideal way in which to generate that initial buzz and interest about your blog. When the marketing of your posts takes longer than it does to actually write them however, you’ve almost certainly lost your way as a blogger.

 Nick is a freelance journalist and website content editor from http://www.contentwriting.org. He writes extensively about the art of blogging, as well as online marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC and SMM.

The post Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Who wants to grow their blog’s audience?

I’m yet to meet a blogger who doesn’t, so I’m picturing in my mind a room full bloggers with their hands in the air!

If you’re one of them, I would highly recommend you spend a few minutes today listening to the first 20 or so minutes of this podcast by Tim Ferriss who outlines how he’d build his audience if he were starting from scratch today.
Note: the rest of the podcast answers other questions which are good but less relevant for bloggers.

There’s some great ideas in his answer that in essence are similar to what I’ve written and spoken about previously:

1. Identify who you are trying to reach
2. Ask where those readers are gathering and/or focusing their attention
3. Work out how to build a presence in those places

But one of the other key messages in Tim’s podcast that really stood out to me was this statement that he made:

‘The most labor-efficient way to build readership over time is long-form evergreen content.’

There is so much wisdom in this statement and I’d highly recommend bloggers ponder two parts of it.

Long Form Content

There has definitely been a trend over the last few years for many bloggers to move toward shorter form content. I’m not sure if this has been the result of the short for nature of social media, an assumption that people’s attention spans are short, the pressure to publish more posts or something else – but I’ve heard it taught from the stage at conferences and have definitely noticed more and more bloggers creating shorter posts in recent years.

My experience has been similar to Tim’s. I’ve noticed that it’s my longer and more in-depth posts that tend to get the most shares, the most links and the most traffic – both when they’re launched and over their long tail life.

There are definitely exceptions but today as I look through the top 10 most read posts here on ProBlogger over the last 12 months the shortest one is 714 words and the longest is over 7000. Their average is 2491.

I recently spoke about some of the benefits (and some of the costs) of creating long form vs short form content here so won’t go on too long about it except to say that at the very least longer form content is worth weaving into the mix of content on your blog.

I’m not arguing that every post needs to be longer form – it takes a lot of effort to create and there is a definitely place for shorter content – but the effort you put into longer posts can be a great investment to make into your blogging.

Further Reading: read Search Engine Journal’s article Why You Need to Start Creating Long, Evergreen Content Today.

Evergreen Content

Note for those not familiar with the term ‘Evergreen Content’: Evergreen posts are ones that don’t lose their relevancy over time. You write them today and they will be as helpful to readers in a few months (or even years) time.

I know that not every blog topic/niche naturally lends itself to the creation of evergreen content (for example ‘news’ and ‘reviews’ sites can sometimes struggle with it) but most blogs should be able to find a way to create at least some content that doesn’t date quickly.

As I look through the most read posts on both ProBlogger and Digital Photography School over the last 12 months every single post is what I’d consider to be evergreen content.

Of course part of the reason for this is that it’s the main focus of what I do – but we do cover ‘newsy’ type posts from time to time on dPS and apart from a spike in traffic shortly after it is published it rarely ever gets more than a trickle of traffic ever again.

Evergreen Content Case Studies

To illustrate the case for evergreen content, let me give you a couple of examples.

Here’s how a time sensitive post announcing the launch of the New Adobe Lightroom that we published on dPS recently performed in terms of traffic.

You can see the initial burst of traffic as it went live and as our readers excitedly gobbled up the hot news (and it was fairly significant news in the photography niche).

But in the month after it’s had little traffic and I suspect will never see more than a handful of visitors coming to it in a given day again.

Contrast this with an evergreen post I published back in January of 2007 on the topic of ISO Settings.

The post had it’s own little spike in traffic in the first days (although I had hardly any readers at that point) but to this day it continues to get traffic (for example yesterday it had over 1100 visitors).

The beauty of evergreen content is that it not only gets the same initial spike of traffic to it when you publish but it also is much more likely to be searched for and found in search engines in the years to come.

The other benefit of the evergreen content is that you (and others) are able to keep sharing it on social for years to come also! It is this evergreen content that I’ve built my whole social media workflow around.

Take a look at this daily traffic graph of the same post on ISO where you’ll see some bigger daily spikes periodically on the days I reshare it on social media.

I have given that post a refresh occasionally over the years but it’s largely the same content that I published in 2007 and despite being 8 years old still gets a great reaction every time I share it on social.

Worth noting here is that this example is not what I’d consider to be ‘long form content’ – it’s around 700 words in length which isn’t short – but it shows you that there’s a place for ‘mid sized’ form content too.

The Most Compelling Case for Investing Time into Evergreen Content…

As I look at the two examples of posts I’ve just shown you what strikes me most is the investment that was put into those two posts was similar.

From memory I probably spent an hour or two writing the post on ISO. I’m not sure how long the author who wrote the Lightroom announcement post spent on it but looking at it he put at least that much time into researching and writing it.

Considering that investment of time – I’d say the case for evergreen content is pretty clear.

The quote I started with from Tim Ferriss was all about labor efficient ways to build readership. It’s not the only way but I’d have to say that I think he identified one approach that really resonates with my own.

Further Reading: Check out Ali Luke’s post Your Ultimate Guide to Creating Amazing Content that Draws Readers Into Your Blog.

If you want to learn more about creating content, take ProBlogger’s Create Content Course to learn how to create compelling and engaging content on a consistent basis over time.

The post How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Thinking of Quitting Blogging? Here’s How One Blogger Turned it Around appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Today we chat to Nicole Avery from Planning With Kids, who was dangerously close to burnout a few years ago. She knew if she didn’t change her approach to blogging, she was going to ditch the whole thing entirely. Her ideas of how to pull back, recalibrate and start again with a new focus is super-inspirational, and I am sure that those of you who are looking for fresh ways to do an old thing will find Nicole’s tips incredibly useful.

5 tips to get you back on track when you feel like quitting blogging

Towards the end of last year I reached my lowest point with blogging. I was tired, overwhelmed and feeling completely over blogging. I felt like quitting.

Blogging brings along amazing opportunities but it is possible to take on too many. Blogging is a wonderful medium to share, but it is no longer just about blogging, there are newsletters to write, social media channels to grow and products to make. Blogging is a fabulous medium to start an online business but with tens of thousands of blogs started every day, keeping up can feel like you are continually running a super fast race struggling to keep up.

My love of blogging though won out and I continued blogging, managing to turn around how I was feeling in the space of three months. While I did more than what is listed below, here are 5 key things I did to get me back on track.

1. Take a break

Each year I usually take two full breaks from the blog, one in the summer school holidays and then the second in the winter school holidays. Due to family circumstances, I never had the break in July and never seemed to find the time to take it later in the year.

Taking a break from the blog is essential to maintaining my enthusiasm and love of what I do. So at the end of December, I took a break (I had planned to take time off in late January). Usually to take a break I work super hard in the lead up to schedule blog posts and social media posts. This time I just took almost a week off and didn’t post. I gave my weekly newsletter a rest for the whole of January and I pared back my social media activity, for example I went from four posts a day on facebook to one.

2. Analyse your time

It was in my break that I came across the Pareto principle. If you are not familiar with it, it can defined as follows:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[1] {source}

If I was to apply the 80/20 rule to my blogging it meant that 80% of the time I was spending on blogging was only creating 20% of my results. Effectively most of my time was being spent activities that were not adding value.

To understand this better and see if it was indeed true, I used RescueTime to see exactly how I was spending my time. RescueTIme focuses on measuring exclusively active computer time and detects when your computer is idle. My initial analysis showed me very clearly that the vast majority of my time was spent on activities that contributed very little to results, way too much time on email and social media. On my least productive activities I was spending only 26% of my time on design and composition. A huge wake up call and a stark reminder that if you are spending your time on the wrong activities, no matter how well you manage your time, you will not achieve the productivity you are after.

3. Set a goal

I came across an interview with Jay Papasan, the author of the book The One Thing. Listening to him speak helped me realise something I think I knew all along. My many and varied goals needed to become a goal clear and concise goal.

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. Russian proverb

So I created one goal for my work life and one goal for my personal life. It has made a huge difference to how I operate on a daily basis. It gave me clear purpose and has aided me in making better decisions. My goal is in the forefront of my mind every time I make a decision – will it help me achieve my goal for the year? If not then I have no choice but to say no. Having one goal makes this process so much easier.

4. Create a work schedule

Creating a work schedule helped me get back on track for two key reasons:

• It scheduled in the activities that will help me achieve my goal for the year. We are all aware if you don’t plan it is unlikely to happen.
• It prevented decision fatigue – work is just one part of my life. There is always a great deal going on at home and by creating a work schedule it is effectively telling me what to when. Not having to think about what to do means I can just get started on my work each day and not lose time procrastinating over where to start.

5. Practice daily gratitude

This one is a little out there I know, but I have found my attitude to the task at hand plays a huge part in how I approach it and the results it creates. Practicing gratitude does wonders for improving your attitude – we do really have so much to be grateful for if we take the time to think about it.

I began using the 5 minute journal app which I cannot recommend highly enough. I have always thought practicing gratitude would just add to the list of things I have to do and become a burden. This app however allows me to practice intentional gratitude in 5 minutes each morning and evening.

Instead of bemoaning the pressures that come from running a small online business, I would very frequently list it as something I was grateful for. For example:

• I was grateful I could easily help out in my son’s class at short notice.
• I was grateful picking up a sick child from school was not stressful and could be done in minutes.
• I am grateful I can choose to clear my calendar and not take on additional work to free up more time when family life gets busy.
• I am very grateful blogging allows me travel overseas each year.
• I am so grateful I receive the most amazing feedback from readers who read my posts and take action.

Have you ever felt like quitting blogging? What did you do to turn things around?

Nicole Avery is a Melbourne mum to five beautiful kids aged 16 to 6. Nicole is slightly addicted to spreadsheets, tea, running and CrossFit. Family is the most important thing in her life and her goal is to be a planned, patient and present mother to her beautiful kids.

The post Thinking of Quitting Blogging? Here’s How One Blogger Turned it Around appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post 4 Ways A Superhero System Will Make You A Better Blogger appeared first on ProBlogger.

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“That’s it! I’m starting a blog!”

We all had that fire, that passion when we first started a blog. The excitement of creating content and putting it out into the world was tangible… that feeling (and motivation) to publish a few posts and see what everybody thinks.

Fast forward a few months: what happened? Where did all that motivation go!? Now that excitement somehow turned into: “I just have a blog that nobody reads, I’m tired of updating, and I’m wondering if it’s even still worth it.”

We’ve all been there.

Life gets in the way, our kids get sick and keep us from working on our blog that ONE day we had free, or we come home from work dead-tired and fail to write even the first sentence of a new post.

I certainly know I have. I first started my blog Nerd Fitness fourteen years ago, and I can probably count on my fingers and toes how many times I sat down to write simply because I was motivated to do so. More often than not, writing was the last thing on my mind. And yet, here I am: now a pro-blogger (750 published posts, most of which are 2000+ words), and a published author!

I’m not saying this to brag, but to prove a point: I didn’t rely on motivation, but instead put a superhero system in place to make sure I stayed on target.

After all, we all know how awesome superheroes are, and influential they can be in our lives. Just ask Darren!

Today, I’m going to share with you a 4-step system that will help you finally crack the code and consistently improve at your efforts to become a superhero blogger. It’ll help you stop relying on motivation and instead use rock-solid strategies to take over the world…or save it.

BATMAN: Hack Your Batcave to Win.

One of the most important ways I’ve learned to manufacture discipline in life (instead of relying on willpower and inspiration) was through hacking my Batcave.

Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman, is unique in the superhero world in that he doesn’t have any special powers. He can’t fly, he can’t teleport, he can’t regenerate or shoot lightning out of his fingers. Instead, he’s a regular guy that uses his gadgets, gizmos, and a normal mortal body to fight crime.

Since we’re also mere mortals, it’s time to start thinking about your own bat cave (your surroundings) to help you effortlessly stay disciplined like Bruce Wayne.

Your Batcave will probably be your apartment or home office, your kitchen table, or wherever you set up shop to work on your blog. Ask yourself: is this Batcave designed in a way to help me get closer to crushing it as a blogger, or farther away?

Because we are products of our environment, everything around us is subtly pulling us in one direction or another. That TV in your living room is saying “watch me! I have reruns on my DVR!”

While at your computer, Facebook is saying “check me! quick! You might have more likes on that cat video you posted!” Your phone might be next to you might have a notification about a new comment on Instagram, or an email about a sale at JCrew.

If you are going to succeed as a superhero blogger, it’s time to get serious about putting systems in place that work for you. Willpower (aka the power to say “I will write and I will not do all of the other amazing distracting things around me) is a finite resource, which means the more you have to rely on it, the more likely you’ll be to fail.

So stop relying on willpower. Create a lifestyle that sets you up to blog consistently.

I start by adding steps between me and the bad habits that keep me from writing:

• Cancel your cable. Those shows are useless anyways.
• Put your TV in your closet. Or at the very least, far away from where you write.
• Install Freedom.to on your computer and block time wasting websites until you’ve written your 500 words for the day.
• Uninstall all social media apps from your phone (life will go on), and turn off all notifications.
• Find other creative ways to limit the powers of distractions in your life.

I then decrease the number of steps between me and the writing habit I’m going to build:

• I write first thing in the morning, before I check email (don’t even keep the gmail tab open!)
• I have a blank document open on my computer before I go to bed so as soon as I sit down, it’s the first thing I see.
• I set a daily goal of 500 words. It doesn’t matter if it’s good content, or if I want to write, I have to write 500 words.

You need to cultivate discipline, and your environment needs to work for your writing, not against it.

SUPERMAN: Recognize and understand your kryptonite.

Next, we turn to one of the most powerful superhero ever created: Superman!

This dude is faster than a speeding bullet, can leap over tall buildings in a single bound, and shoot freaking lasers out of his eyes! There’s a reason many on earth consider him a god.

However, for all of his powers and abilities that are unlike anything else in existence, he can still be undone by a substance: KRYPTONITE! This glowing green mineral can be used by bad guys to keep Superman at bay.

We all have kryptonite in our lives too that can keep us from becoming Superhero Bloggers if we’re not careful. Not only do we need to recognize our kryptonite, but we need to prepare for it too.

Again, we’re not relying on willpower here, but rather we’re going to kryptonite-proof our lives so we can work daily on our blog.

Let’s start by identifying what your Kryptonite is: this is something that you have almost no chance at withstanding. For me, it was video games: I had purchased NerdFitness.com and did nothing with it for two years because I was too busy playing video games online with my friends and never “found time” to write.

FORTUNATELY, my computer broke, and I couldn’t afford to fix it, so I told myself I couldn’t play another video game AT ALL until I made my first dollar through my website. For the next 18 months I came home work and wrote articles for Nerd Fitness, eventually making money through ebooks with the site. Only then did I allow myself to play games, as I was better equipped to handle them properly.

What is your kryptonite, and how can you fight it?

• Do you come home from work exhausted and all you want to do is plop down on the couch and watch TV? That’s okay! Recognize that writing after work isn’t an option for you, and build the habit of writing BEFORE you go to work.
• Are your kids your kryptonite? I don’t mean they’re glowing and green, but I bet it’s quite tough to focus on blogging and building a side business if you have kids and a family to take care of. So wake up before they do. Yup, it might mean waking up at 5AM to be able to write for 90 minutes uninterrupted before they come jump on your bed.
• Is it TV? Video Games? Negative people in your life? Get rid of them. Life goes on without TV, Netflix, or Fallout.

Maybe your kryptonite is self-doubt. You’re afraid to hit publish because things aren’t perfect, or you are afraid of what people will say, or what if nobody reads it. Seth Godin said it best: “Be judged or be ignored.” People will say anything and everything, so might as well get them talking about you and your work!

If you know where your energy is going to get zapped from, you can prepare for it ahead of time and make sure you get the important stuff done before that kicks in.

WONDER WOMAN: Fight with Passion and Strength

After the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader, we turn to a female badass: Diana Prince, better known as her alter-ego, Wonder Woman!

This Amazonian goddess has gone through many iteration over there years, but a few things have stayed tried and true throughout her comic book career: her inner and outer strength (I mean, come on…she’s WONDER WOMAN!), determination, passion, and compassion.

It starts by being honest with yourself: are you in this for the right reasons? I think a lot of people like the idea of running their own business, buy a course on blogging, and then try to go into a niche they have no idea about because they’ve told “this is a profitable part of the internet!” These are the people that give up after a few months when they realize money doesn’t just magically start shooting out of their computers once they publish a few blog posts.

The truth is this: becoming a professional writer, running an online business, or being a problogger is a lot of freaking work. I love The Four Hour Workweek as much as the next guy (I bought NerdFitness.com after reading it!), but many people took it the wrong way in assuming they were simply a few weeks away from making a living online with a tiny bit of work. If you are blogging about something that you don’t care about, eager to make money immediately by creating a product before you even have a site worth reading, you’re setting yourself up for a short (and quick) trip back to reality.

Instead, pick a subject you are passionate about. I hate to use the word “passion,” as it gets thrown around by Internet Marketers looking to get you to buy their course on hopes and dreams and unicorns (apologies to any unicorn bloggers), but there’s an element of truth to it. You have to LOVE the topic you’re writing about and the community you hope to build, because you might be writing on that subject with no audience and no money for a long long long time.

Help people. Wonder Woman is known for her humanity: feeling compassion and giving love without discrimination. If you’re struggling to figure out what to write about, solve a problem. When in doubt, help people. Sure, it would be great if you could get paid to eat pudding and watch Netflix, but who will pay you for it? Start creating an insane amount of uniquely helpful content that solves a specific problem for people, and answer every email without discrimination: whether or not that person every pays you a dime, improve their lives in some way.

For the first 5 years of Nerd Fitness’s lifespan, I answered every email that came into the inbox, and the autoresponder people got when they signed up asks “what’s your biggest struggle when it comes to getting fit?” Everybody got a response, and today we have 750 free blog posts, free message boards, in addition paid courses and events. We still answer each email and help each person regardless of who they are or where they came from.

Help people. Write about things that you are fired up about. And expect to do it, thanklessly, for a long time.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: Surround yourself with powerful allies to keep you accountable.

These days, bands of superheroes are everywhere, from the Avengers Movies to the upcoming depiction of the origins Justice League in Batman vs Superman.

Real life allies can be incredibly powerful – the difference between success and failure.

Think of it this way, if you skip your blog writing today to watch TV, nobody would know, and who does it hurt, right? But now imagine you’re in this with a friend who is also writing, and they notice you didn’t have your blog post up and give you a call. This is the beginning of introducing some accountability to your system.

I got a bit extreme with this, and gave a coworker $500 of my dollars, and for every day a blog post was late, she would donate $50 to a cause I HATED. Of course, I couldn’t possibly live with myself knowing my money funded something I disliked so much, so I had to get my blog posts done on time. Sometimes it was at 4AM, other times it was seconds before I had to hit post… but I got them done.

So form your own Justice League!

• Follw the Problogger Facebook Page: It’s a community of people who are struggling with the same things you are!
• Build your own mastermind group. Online or in person, group up with others who share your excitement about building a business and holding each other accountable.
• Find an accountability buddy…aka accountabilibuddy. A single person that will call you on your excuses can an incredibly long way in holding you accountable when you need to get shit done.

I’m not quite sure if Batman gives Wonder Woman homework, or if Superman makes sure Bruce Wayne gets to his workouts on time, but I like to think they do!

The world needs more heroes. Will you heed the call? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below with:

1. 1 environmental hack you can use to stay on target with your blogging
2. Your blogging kryptonite and how you will fight it off.
3. One way you can be more helpful and serve your audience better.
4. 1 friend you can recruit to your Justice League

Steve Kamb is the author of Level Up Your Life and creator of Nerd Fitness, a worldwide community of average joes and jills looking to live better lives.

The post 4 Ways A Superhero System Will Make You A Better Blogger appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Strategic Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Over the past year I’ve been meeting with a business coach who has been helping me to look at my blogging as a business rather than just a job. One of the things that has become evident to me is that good sustainable businesses don’t usually just happen by accident.

Instead they take planning, strategy and intentionality.

Thinking through some of the “big picture” issues that underpin your blogging does take some time and brain-power, but (especially if you’re feeling a little bit lost) could be the difference between a good and a great blog.

I know that for some this type of talk will be frustrating – words like mission, vision, values and strategy are not where you’re at – but humor me please. You see I believe that if you get these things right you’ll find many of the next steps that I share later in this article to be much more powerful as you’ll be able to use them in much more focused and effective ways.

This mega-post combines a series I wrote to lead you through a strategic plan process that a friend of mine gave me to think through another (non blogging) project that I’m working on – I think it’s highly relevant for ProBlogging and hope you find it helpful. Here are the steps of the strategic blogging process we are going to follow:

1. Mission
2. Values
3. VisionGoals
4. Issues
5. Present Position
6. Future Direction
7. Strategy
8. Action Plan

Each step of the process gives some homework – a few questions to ask that hopefully will help you to think through the issues at hand. Feel free to answer them in private or to even think out loud in comments of this post.

Mission

13 years ago when I started studying my Marketing degree the focus of many of my first year lectures was ‘Mission Statements’. I remember writing mission statement after statement – to the point where I started to dream about them. It was obvious that my lecturers through they were a pretty important starting place for any good business venture.

Whilst perhaps ‘mission statements’ are not quite as much of a buzz phrase as they were in the early 1990s I still see asking questions around mission as a worthwhile task – especially when it comes to blogging.

‘Why do you exist?’

This is the key question that my friend’s strategic process asks in the area of ‘mission’. I don’t think it’s asking us to ponder the meaning of life – it’s not quite that deep – but it does ask a business (blog) owner to try to get back to the basics of what they are on about.

‘Why do you blog?’

Take a few minutes (or better still a few hours or even days) to ponder this question. What is it that you blog for? What are your core motivations? Be honest as you answer this question because it’s important to nail it down as much as you can as everything else comes from this.

Some blogging ‘missions’ might include:

• ‘I blog to make a living’
• ‘I blog for recreational purposes – to help me relax’
• ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
• ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
• ‘I blog because I want to help others’
• ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
• ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
• ‘I blog because it’s fun’
• ‘I blog because I want to build profile – I want to be known’

These are just a few examples that come to mind off the top of my head. Some of us will have simple sentences, for others our reasons for blogging might be a little more complex and combine a number of things.

One person’s blogging mission will be different from another’s – there is really no right or wrong here – behind each blogger there is some sort of mission whether it’s deep, shallow, silly, smart, selfish or altruistic. The task now is to name yours.

To identify these missions is very helpful because knowing why we blog then helps us to work out how we should blog to best reach our mission.

So what is your mission? Why do you blog?

This is not a question about measurable goals or strategies and your answer probably shouldn’t be too blog specific yet (ie don’t write one for each of your blogs if you have more than one) – rather get at your motivations and big picture hopes for your blogging.

Values

Having thought about our mission (or why we blog) it’s time now to turn our attention to the values that we have that help to shape how we’ll achieve our overall mission.

There are many means to an end and many ways of achieving a mission. For instance if your mission is to make a living from blogging you could do so in many different ways ranging from blogs that rip off the content of others, to blogs that are purely original in content, to blogs that explore topics of purely a ‘family nature’ to blogs that are quite explicit and ‘adult’ in their nature etc.

These decisions come out of our values as a blogger.

What values determine our behavior?

Our values will come out of many different places including our family, culture, experiences and perhaps even personality type. They are worth naming in the early days of our blogging as there comes times in the life of any Blogger when the temptation to step outside the boundaries of behavior that we believe in comes a knocking. Having previously named (privately or even more powerfully – publicly) these values helps us to resist the temptation in the heat of the moment. Values are also important in helping others understand how or what we blog.

So what are the values that shape your blogging behavior? What are the boundaries that you’d be not willing to cross? What are the topics you’d be not willing to blog about? How will you treat those around you (other bloggers, your readers, suppliers of information etc)? Take a few minutes to write a list of the values that you want to shape your blogging. These might include things like:

• I value the work of others and when I build upon it I acknowledge them
• I don’t blog about anything sexually explicit, gambling, drugs or concerning Harry Potter
• I create an environment where everyone can have their say without fear of censorship
• I respect the privacy of others in my blogging and don’t reveal private conversations or contact details
• I only publish fact and will state if I’m speculating
• If I make a mistake I publicly acknowledge this and correct it
• I will always make it clear if I’m benefiting from something that I write
• I value people and will not blog about them in degrading ways

Of course such a list will always cause discussion and debate simply because one person’s values will vary from another person’s values. In a sense we’re talking ethics here.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to write up a set of values like these as a public blogging value statement of manifesto to promote the type of blog/s you’re keeping and to give your readers permission to keep you accountable to what you’re on about.

With your mission and values in place you’ll be ready for the next stages of actually mapping out how you’re going to move forward in your blogging.

Vision

Having answered questions about why we blog (mission) and setting some boundaries for our behavior in doing so Values) it’s now time to be a little more concrete in our big picture thinking. Where are you headed with your blogging? More specifically:

What is your objective for your blogging in the next three years?

Now three years might seem a long way away (and perhaps one or two years might be a better time frame to set objectives for in the ever changing field of blogging) but look beyond the near future and ask yourself questions about vision.

We’re now narrowing down the mission that we have into some more measurable and specific things to aim for in the long term. Don’t get too specific (we’ll get there) but make it concrete.

For example – your mission might be to make a living from blogging but your vision for three years time might be to be a full time blogger that need not do any other work.

Make your objective/s (don’t come up with too many) big enough to be inspiring but realistic enough to be achievable. They should probably come out of or at least relate to your mission.

Take some time to plot some longer term objectives for your blogging.

Goals

For each objective that you’ve mentioned you now should be breaking things down into smaller achievable goals. Perhaps this strategic plan is a little pedantic here and adds too many steps (hence I’ve added Vision and Goals together) but the basics of what we’re doing with goal setting is breaking down the big picture into smaller achievable parts.

In setting goals you might like to ask:

How will we know we have achieved our objective (vision)?

For each objective there will probably be multiple goals that signal it has been reached. For example if the vision is to be working full time in blogging in 3 years the goals might be to ‘quit from current job’ (once a certain earning level from blogging is reached), be earning $XXXX per month regularly by a certain time.

In a sense we’re breaking down our objectives into bite sized parts that can be ticked off one at a time as they are reached as stepping stones to a larger vision.

Issues

If we want to design a strategy to help us reach our goals we need to identify the areas in which we need to work. At this point in the strategic plan we take time to break down the task of blogging into activities or issues that we face.

What are your main activities?

The answer to this question will vary from blogger to blogger depending upon their focus and current approach to blogging – but they will probably include some of the following:

• finding content
• writing content
• blog design
• marketing and publicity
• administration (monitoring comments, processing cheques, book keeping)
• finding and managing advertisers
• managing other authors
• search engine optimization

In a sense what you’re describing here are the areas that you need to achieve in to make your blog successful (the above list is only partial). The list may include tasks that you already do well, don’t do well or don’t yet do at all.

In identifying these issues or activities you define areas that you’ll need to consider some strategy in.

Present Position

Having identified each activity that you need to engage in to be successful in achieving your objectives and goals you now do a little analysis of how you’re currently performing in each activity. The question you want to answer with each are is:

Where are we?

What am I doing well in this area? What am I neglecting? What is working and what isn’t working? These are all good questions to ask. You may want to do a ‘SWOT’ analysis here (look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and assess the current reality. Be honest with yourself – if you’re anything like me there are some things that you’re doing very well and other things that you’re ignoring.

Whilst it may not be pleasant to acknowledge current short fallings it’s vitally important as your blog will only ever go as far as your weakest area allows you to.

Future Direction

Now you’ve described the current reality you again should look in to the future in each of the activities that you’ve identified and ask yourself:

Where do I want to be in this specific activity in a year?

You know where you are now but what are you going to work towards? For example you might have identified marketing as one of your ‘activities’ an in analyzing it find that you’re great at marketing to other blogs in your niche but that blogs outside your niche and non bloggers have never heard of your blog. As a result you might say that in a year you want to be known outside your niche and be getting exposure in the wider media.

In a sense you’re again setting mini goals, breaking down your overall ‘vision’ into specific areas of your blogging.

Go through each of the activities that you’ve identified already and come up with some future direction. Be specific enough in each one that you can measure your success in each area. Don’t write how you’ll achieve this direction yet (that comes next) – rather try to paint a picture of the future in each of the areas of your blogging.

Below you’ll see a table that illustrates how each of the above three steps might look if you put them into some sort of spread sheet. Of course I’ve completely oversimplified the process here in order to illustrate the point. Each ‘issue’ is likely to have a multifaceted description of the present position and may in fact have a number of ‘future directions’ for each.

Strategy

You’ve analyzed your current position and have looked into the future to how you want your blog to be in each of the activities of your blogging – now you basically need to compare one with the other. How does your current reality and future vision compare? Do they match up? If they do you’re either a brilliant blogger, you’re lying or you’re not aiming high enough.

For most of us the current reality doesn’t match what we want to achieve.

What major changes do you need to make to get to your future vision?

Albert Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same old things the same old ways and expecting to get different results’ (paraphrased). The only way you’ll see changes in your blogging is if you change your approach. Which of your ‘activities’ needs to change? How?

You might find that some of your activities are doing well and don’t need too much changing – but the reality will be that we can all improve in all areas – and that in some areas more than others we might need a complete overhaul if we want to really achieve something. Make a list of the changes you need to make.

Once again I’ve included a diagram that hopefully illustrates how this might look (in a very over simplified form).

Action Plan

We’ve reached the last step of the strategic plan and now we finally get to a time of planning (and doing) some action.

In each of the ‘activities’ break down your strategy into achievable tasks. You might like to break it down into some sort of a timeline.

• what will you do in the next month?
• what will you do in the next 3 months?
• what will you do in the next 6 months?
• what will you do in the next 12 months?

Your action plan should contain very specific tasks.

Some might be ongoing tasks like:

• ‘post 10 posts per day every day for the next month’
• ‘start 1 new blog every month until October’
• ‘add 3 new affiliate links to my blog every day this month’
• ‘write 1 press release to promote my blog each month’

Others might be one off tasks like:

• ‘apply for Adsense program and integrate into blog’
• ‘get to know blogger X’
• ‘do survey of my readers to find out who they are’
• ‘write a series of posts on <insert topic here>’

Once again these tasks need to be specific, measurable (you need to know when they’re complete) and achievable. In doing this you’re achieving the very big picture dreams and objectives that you’ve previously set one step at a time.

You’ll see once again below that I’ve filled in (in a very simplified way) how some of the strategic plan might build as you add your action plan. In reality each ‘issue’ could have multiple strategies – each of which could have multiple actions assigned to them. By this point you should be left with a larger list of ‘things to do’ that you need to prioritise for and then begin to work through. Once again these actions should be broken down into small enough parts so as not to overwhelm you. Make them measurable and achievable so you can begin to tick them off and create some momentum to your blogging.

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The post Principles of Choosing a Profitable Blog Topic appeared first on ProBlogger.

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I recently had a conversation with a reader about selecting the right topic for a profitable blog. In this discussion, I realized that finding a balance among various factors is crucial. Let’s explore these essential principles for choosing a profitable blog topic.

Topic Popularity

One important factor in the success of any profitable blog is that it will need to find readers. I could probably build a blog that would dominate the niche for ‘green striped paper bags’ and get 100% of those searching for the term on Google (there is no competition) however the fact of the matter is that I’d probably be my only reader. It’s important to choose a topic that meets a demand for information. It need not be on a topic that absolutely everyone is searching for information on – but the popularity of the topic is obviously one factor that could increase the chances of success.

Selecting a topic with a significant demand for information increases the likelihood of attracting readers. While it’s important to find a balance between popularity and competition, identifying niches within popular topics can be highly profitable. For example, rather than starting a broad blog about fitness, focusing on a specific niche like “keto diet for beginners” or “high-intensity interval training (HIIT)” can yield better results. These focused topics allow you to position yourself as an expert and capture a dedicated audience.

To gauge the popularity of a blog topic, keyword research tools can provide valuable insights. These tools help identify search volume, competition, and related keywords for conducting your niche analysis:

• Google Trends: This free tool allows you to explore the popularity of specific keywords over time and in different regions. It provides data on search interest, related topics, and rising trends.
• SEMrush: Known for its comprehensive keyword research features, SEMrush offers insights into search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor analysis. It also suggests related keywords and provides an overview of the competitive landscape.

Topic Competition and Narrow Niches

Another way of increasing the chances of profit is to choose a topic which currently has few quality sources of information already existing online. You may think that no such topic exists – but you’d be wrong. Whilst the web is a crowded place there are many topics where there is little competition and as a result you have the ability to be one of the biggest fish in that small pond. Sometimes you have to narrow your topic to find such niches, other times you have to be ‘the first’ as a new topic emerges and other times there might be existing sites on the topic – but they are of a low enough standard that you can compete easily by producing something better or more useful. Finding a niche with limited competition can provide opportunities for significant growth and profitability. Here are a couple of examples:

1. “Indoor Urban Gardening Tips”: With the rise in urban living, many people are interested in growing plants indoors. By focusing on providing valuable content and advice on indoor urban gardening techniques, tools, and plant care, you can establish yourself as an authority in this niche. Monetization options can include affiliate partnerships with gardening equipment suppliers or creating your own line of indoor gardening products.
2. “Sustainable Fashion for Men”: As sustainability becomes a global concern, the demand for eco-friendly fashion is rising. By catering specifically to men and providing content on sustainable clothing brands, styling tips, and ethical fashion practices, you can tap into a growing market. Revenue streams can include affiliate marketing with sustainable fashion brands and collaborations with eco-conscious clothing companies.
3. My narrowest niche blog is one that I run on UAV’s or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Now it’s not my most profitable blog by far – and when I started it ten years ago there weren’t as many people searching on the topic and I was able to get a fairly large % of those searching for my keywords because I ranked so highly on Google for them. These days this topic is a lot more competitive but it’s an example of what you can do over time if you’re willing to carve out a niche for yourself.

Here are some additional niche analysis tools to help you identify untapped markets:

• Ubersuggest: offers keyword suggestions and competition analysis. It provides information on search volume, difficulty, and related keywords, helping you discover specific niches with lower competition.
• Ahrefs: a powerful SEO tool that enables you to analyze competitors, discover low-competition keywords, and explore niche opportunities. It also offers content gap analysis, helping you identify areas where your competitors are lacking.

Availability of Revenue Streams

Ok so you’ve found a topic people search for and you don’t have much competition – but you’ll never turn a profit on it if you don’t find an income stream for it. Contextual advertising programs like Adsense offer varying click values for different topics. Ideally, you’d want to choose a high-paying topic, but you might discover intense competition within those niches. It can be worthwhile to explore medium-level click values with less competition. Remember, Adsense is not the only revenue stream for bloggers. Explore available affiliate programs relevant to your topic and consider opportunities for sponsorships from private advertising sources.

Identifying topics with potential revenue streams is essential for long-term profitability. Here are two recent examples:

1. “Smart Home Automation”: With the increasing popularity of smart home devices, blogging about smart home automation can be lucrative. Monetization options include affiliate partnerships with smart home product manufacturers, sponsored content from companies in the home automation industry, and creating digital products such as e-books or online courses on setting up smart homes.
2. “Digital Nomad Lifestyle”: As remote work and location independence gain traction, the digital nomad lifestyle has become a popular topic. Bloggers in this niche can generate revenue through affiliate marketing of travel gear, sponsored content from travel agencies or co-working spaces, and offering coaching or consulting services for aspiring digital nomads.

Researching “your topic affiliate programs” on search engines and exploring Amazon’s affiliate program can be excellent starting points. Here are a few examples of tools to assist you in assessing your blog affiliate revenue potential:

• Amazon Associates: Amazon’s affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, allows you to earn commissions by promoting products relevant to your blog’s niche. With a vast range of products, it can be a valuable income source for bloggers.
• ShareASale: an affiliate marketing network that connects bloggers with various merchants and brands. It offers a wide range of affiliate programs across different niches, allowing you to find relevant partners for your blog.

If you are going to use Adsense you ideally want a high paying topic. Unfortunately whilst you might identify one you may just find that your competition is incredibly high. Sometimes it is worth picking a topic that is in the medium level of click values and has less competition.

Availability of Content

You’ll want to do a little research on your topic before starting a blog to see if you’ll be able to sustain it in adding fresh content over a long period. The thing that kills many commercial blogs very quickly is that the author simply runs out of things to write. I’ve started numerous blogs over the past couple of years that I quickly found I had nothing much to say about.

Ensuring a steady stream of content is crucial for maintaining engagement and attracting readers. Here’s an example:

• “Plant-Based Recipes for Families”: As more people embrace plant-based diets, there’s a demand for family-friendly plant-based recipes. By curating and creating delicious, kid-friendly plant-based recipes, you can cater to this audience. Content can include meal planning tips, nutritional information, and creative plant-based alternatives for popular family meals. Regularly sharing new recipes and engaging with the audience can help build a loyal readership.

If you’re wanting to test the availability of content keyword research tools can help identify popular topics and generate content ideas. Here are two tools to assist you:

• BuzzSumo: allows you to discover popular content in your niche by analyzing social media shares and engagement. It helps you identify trending topics and create content that resonates with your audience.
• AnswerThePublic: This tool generates a visual representation of questions and phrases related to your chosen keyword. It can inspire content ideas by revealing what people are searching for and what information they seek.

Measure your own Energy, Passion and Interest

Lastly (and very importantly) it’s worth trying to objectively measure your own passion, interest or energy level for the blog. Whilst there might be plenty of news going around on the topic will you still be energized by posting on the topic in 6 months time (without the motivation of money – because it might take take a year or two to establish yourself in a niche). If you don’t have something motivating you to post on a topic it can become very difficult to keep doing so – unless you have a very dedicated personality type.

Put it all together

The fact is that you’ll rarely find a topic that all these factors come together on unless you’re either very lucky or the first in a popular new niche that you just happen to have a passion for. Most blogs fall down in one (or more) of these areas. This does not mean it can’t be a viable and profitable blog, but it’s good to be aware of the weaknesses as you venture out. The beauty of blogging is that there are no rules – and some of my most successful experiments have flown in the face of most of the above principles.

For example (just to disprove myself and give a little hope to you rebellious types) – arguably the most successful blog I’ve ever been involved with (over a short period of time) was the Athens Olympics Blog that I ran with a mate which generated 2 million visitors in a few weeks and made us a tidy sum of money.

This blog succeeded despite having massive competition (from every major news website going around) and despite having very low click value on Adsense and few lucrative affiliate programs. The sheer weight of people searching for information over a short period of time was the main ingredient to our success. This was coupled with us working incredibly long hours (around the clock for two weeks and for months before) providing a blog that was actually quite useful. We actually became known as a site that updated statistics and information faster than most of the ‘professional’ sites covering the event.

Despite being dormant (and falling into disrepair lately) it still even gets reasonable visitor levels to this day.

So take these principles as friendly advice – not rules. In many ways they are ‘ideals’ which you will almost certainly have to compromise some of at some point but which can help you choose a topic that has a greater chance of success.

Add your own suggestions and experiences in choosing a blog’s topic below in comments12.

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The post An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs appeared first on ProBlogger.

Image created in Canva

The following post was originally submitted by Duncan Riley from the Blog Herald, Weblog Empire and updated with current tools and tips.

I asked Duncan to explore the topic of using Images on Blogs. I think you’ll agree that his article below is a very comprehensive exploration of the topic, which I hope you will find helpful.

Any good blogger will tell you that images and imagery are vitally important in the development and rise of any good blog, but they can also be frustrating, time-consuming, and challenging to work with. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to understand how to effectively use images on your blog.

Types of Images

For ease of use, let’s categorize images on your blog into two categories: design imagery and content imagery. Design imagery includes any images you may want to use in the header, sidebar, or footer to enhance the overall visual appeal of your blog. Content imagery refers to photos and images you include within or exclusively as blog posts. While we will cover common ground in dealing with both types of images, there are some distinct considerations for each.

Toolbox

While there are various tools available, let’s focus on free resources for image editing and creation to suit different needs and budgets:

1. Canva: an excellent web-based graphic design tool that offers a user-friendly interface and a wide range of customizable templates. It provides an extensive library of free images, icons, and illustrations to enhance your blog’s visual content. It’s what we use here at ProBlogger.

2. PicMonkey: another useful tool for creating visual content for your blog with photo editing and design plus templates for logos, banners, thumbnails, and more

3. GIMP: powerful open-source image editing software available for PC, Mac, and Linux. Many users consider it as powerful as Adobe Photoshop but without the price tag. GIMP offers a comprehensive set of features for manipulating and editing images.

Posting Images to Your Blog

The method for posting images to your blog depends on the blogging platform you use. Most platforms, whether free or paid, offer image hosting as part of their services. However, it’s essential to consider the bandwidth/traffic limitations of your blogging package and how image sizes can impact your blog’s loading speed. To optimize your images, you can utilize image editing software such as GIMP or Canva, which allows you to resize and compress images.

TIP: If you’re having trouble wityh your image file size being too big, try using TinyPNG which is a free service for Smart WebP, PNG and JPEG image file compression.

Copyright Issues

Copyright laws vary, but in general, using copyright-protected images as extracts or complements to your posts falls under Fair Use or Fair Dealing. However, using such images as part of your blog’s design may not be considered fair use. It’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the legal concepts of fair use and fair dealing in your jurisdiction.

When it comes to commercial sites, it’s safest to assume that the images are copyrighted unless stated otherwise. It’s advisable to avoid using such images unless you understand the legal implications.

It’s also important to follow the unwritten rule in the blogosphere of providing attribution when using images from other blogs. Include a link back to the source blog within or at the end of your post, giving credit to the original creator.

Where to Find Copyright-Free Images

To find copyright-free images, you can explore the following resources:

1. Unsplash: offers a vast collection of high-quality, copyright-free images contributed by photographers worldwide. The images are available for free and can be used for both personal and commercial purposes. We’ve previously used Unsplash a lot at ProBlogger.

2. Pixabay: provides a diverse collection of copyright-free images, illustrations, and vectors.

3. Pexels: another popular platform that offers a wide range of high-quality, free stock photos and videos. You can search for specific images or explore their curated collections.

4. Freepik: provides a vast selection of free vectors, PSD files, icons, and photos. It’s a great resource for bloggers looking for graphic elements to enhance their visual content.

5. Canva’s Free Image Library: In addition to its design tools, Canva also offers a free image library with a wide variety of high-quality photos and illustrations that you can use in your blog posts.

Remember to review the specific licensing terms and requirements for each resource to ensure proper usage and attribution.

What services are there to help bloggers with images?

There are several ways you can enhance your image experience as a blogger:

Forums: If you encounter any image-related issues, check out the user forums of your blogging platform or hosting service. These forums often contain valuable information and discussions on similar problems. You can search for solutions or even post your own questions.

Support: If you’re using a paid blogging service like TypePad, take advantage of their customer support. Reach out to their support team via email with your questions or concerns. While they may not directly assist with image-related issues, they can point you in the right direction or provide helpful resources.

Blogs and Bloggers: Many bloggers have encountered and solved image-related challenges. Utilize search engines like Google and blog directories like Technorati to find blog posts or articles discussing similar issues. You may discover valuable insights and solutions shared by experienced bloggers.

By utilizing these resources and tools, you can effectively incorporate images into your blog posts, enhance your blog’s visual appeal, and navigate any image-related challenges that may arise.

Remember to always respect copyright laws, give proper attribution when necessary, and strive to create a visually engaging and appealing blog through the thoughtful use of images.

What tips and tools do you have for using images on your blog? Drop them in a comment below.

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