20 Things All Bloggers Should Do
If you’re new to the world of blogging and you want to have a successful blog, whether that means making money from it or just helping others and creating a following, then follow the steps below. I’ve listed 20 things that all bloggers SHOULD do to help them be successful. If you haven’t done one of these things, I suggest you start now! Take action!
1. Write Quality Content – This is the most important thing about making a successful blog. You have to have quality content so people will read it and subscribe.
2. Use your own site – If you want to have a successful blog that you plan on making popular as time goes on, you need to have your own host and blog instead of using free hosted sites like Blogger.
3. Have an attractive, unique theme – Try to impress your new visitors with a nice attractive and unique theme to make a good first impression.
4. Have a logo – You should really have a logo. This makes your blog unique as well as having a nice theme. Try to make your blog different; better than the other blogs. Be creative.
5. Sign up for Twitter – This is a must for bloggers. Twitter is great and I definitely recommend it. It’s my number one traffic source and it’s the easiest traffic to get to your blog fast.
6. Sign up for Facebook, MySpace and other Social sites – By using Facebook and Myspace or other sites similar, you can make friends and share your stuff with all of them. This makes it easier to get loyal readers and subscribers.
7. Create a mailing list – If you plan on making money, creating a mailing list is going to be very important. If you don’t have a mailing list, I suggest you start one right now and get people to sign up.
8. Be consistent – When posting, try to be consistent. Don’t go posting every day for a week then leave and not post for 2 – 3 weeks. Try to be consistent. If you notice all of the successful blogs out there, they’re consistent and keep updating with quality content.
9. Teach others – Teach others what you know. By doing this you gain loyal subscribers and people who like you. You can teach others what you know either for free maybe in return of signing up to your mailing list. You could also make a product teaching what you know and sell it to your readers and make some money from it. If you don’t teach your readers anything they don’t really have a reason to listen to you.
10. Be positive/optimistic – I think this is very important. Successful people have successful mindsets. You have to think positive. Tell yourself your blog will be popular and make you thousands of dollars in the future. If you don’t plan on making money from your blog then that’s cool too, but you still have to think positive to be successful!
11. Offer your readers content in forms of eBooks – Like earlier when I said teach others, you can teach them things through eBooks. You can sell eBooks or give them away for free and get people to sign up for your mailing list to make more money in the future.
12. Use media (video, audio) – Like using eBooks, using media is also very important. Everybody likes videos. Think about it. If you visit all the very successful blogs like David Risley, John Chow, Problogger, Yaro Starak, they all use media. You will find a video of something on every single one of those sites. Videos are what’s in these days. By using media you can also get more traffic to your site by spreading videos around.
13. Comment on other blogs – Commenting on other blogs is a good way to get some traffic when you’re first starting your blog. Interact with others and be an active part of the community. You’ll become more widely-known and get more traffic.
14. Make guest posts – Make guest posts on other successful blogs in your niche. This is a great way to become more known and get traffic to your blog.
15. Hold contests – Hold contests on your blog. This is a great way to get more subscribers for your blog. You can give away cash or cool toys like phones, cameras, etc. You can get traffic this way. For instance, telling your readers that in order to join the contest, they have to retweet something, or they have to subscribe to your blog, and so on.
16. Get involved in forums – Getting involved in forums can bring you some decent traffic to your blog. I suggest creating an account at Digital Point. You will learn a lot here and get traffic to your blog. Interact with everybody. Help people by answering questions and being nice. You will make friends this way as well and they could become loyal readers to your blog.
17. Help other blogs or people – Help other bloggers or people in your niche. By helping others, good things will happen in return. More people will do things for you.
These last three are very important to success online.
18. Set goals – In the world of the internet, if you want to be successful you need to set goals so you know where you’re going. Set goals of how many subscribers you want, twitter followers, how much money you want to make. Set these goals and try your hardest to achieve them. This makes things a lot easier.
19. Take action – Once you’ve set some goals, take action! I even have problems with this. I think this is the most important step online to be successful. Take action! Don’t tell yourself, “Oh, I’ll start a blog this summer,” or “I’ll do it tomorrow or next week.” No! Start now. You can get your blog up within a few hours! Stop being lazy. You won’t get anywhere putting things off online. It’s that simple.
If you’re planning on writing an eBook or doing something new to make money online, just do it. If it fails, then you’ve only learned how not to do it. Start over again and keep trying. Don’t give up.
20. Work hard – And of course, work hard! Once you decide to take action, you need to work hard to get things done. The harder you work the easier things will become and the faster you’ll see results.
Think there’s anything I left off this list? Add some things below.
Posted in Blogging, Blogging Tips, Traffic
5 Ways To Promote Affiliate Products
Today affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. You sign up for affiliate programs and promote other peoples products and make sales. It’s simple, but it’s not the easiest thing to do.
Think about it. There are a bunch of companies out there that want to sale as much of a product as they can. Therefore, they offer affiliate programs so they can spread their product even more and make even more money. If you really want to make some good money through affiliate marketing though, you’re going to have to work hard. Below are a few ways you can promote other products and make money with them.
1. Use A Mailing List – This one is obvious. I always talk about mailing lists and how important they are. They’re so important because they can generate a lot of money! How? Well by getting people to sign up to your mailing list, you can send out emails promoting affiliate products. If your subscribers are targeted and they have some use of the product you’re selling (hopefully you’re not selling a product that doesn’t have to do with your list), then you can make some good money sending emails about these products with your affiliate links or whatever. To build a mailing list, I suggest you give away some free content as a reward for people signing up.
2. Use Your Blog – If you get a significant amount of traffic to your blog and have loyal readers, your blog can be very effective. You can make a blog post telling all of your readers about a product. Tell them what you think about it, how it will benefit them, etcetera. Then you can include an affiliate link telling them where they can buy it. Check out this technique to help make money with affiliate produts using your blog: click here.
3. Use Twitter – Twitter can also be a good way to promote affiliate products. Since using Twitter your links are cloaked by using URL shortening websites, nobody can tell it’s an affiliate link. This is a good way to send some fast traffic to an affiliate product. John Chow reveals here how he once made $306 with Twitter in 24 hours. $306. Not too shabby 
4. Advertise Your Affiliate Link Through Other Websites – This is another way you can promote affiliate products. If you go to a website that is relevant to the product you’re promoting, you could advertise on their site with your affiliate link to bring in some extra sales.
5. Advertise Your Affiliate Link In Forums – If you’re an active member in forums, you can promote your affiliate link through them. In forums you have an area that’s called a signature where you can put some text or links or whatever. You can put your affiliate link in your signature with whatever anchor text you’d like and maybe get some sales that way.
Those are just 5 simple ways to promote affiliate products. I recommend numbers 1, 2 and 3 over 4 and 5 because they can make the most money. Try some of these out if you haven’t. Promoting affiliate products can make you some good money if done right. Good luck!
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online
5 Tips For Never Running Out Of Content To Post On Your Blog
1. Write A “Bundle” Of Posts – When first starting your blog, I suggest you write 5 to 40 articles or more. Yes that’s a big gap I know but it depends on how much you care or how easy you want to make things. Before starting your blog, I suggest you write a bunch of articles (as many as you can) and save them as drafts. This saves a lot of time in the long run.
If you write say 10 articles in a day, then you’re done with your work for 10 days! That’s if you post every day though. If you post every 2 days or 3 days that means you have 20 – 30 days of work done! You get the point. This makes things easier as well. Sometimes bloggers get overwhelmed and and want to give up because they’re not seeing success so they won’t feel like writing. This way it takes very little effort to publish a post. So if they’re not seeing success, it won’t be hard to just go and publish a quick post.
2. After That, Continue Writing “Bundles” Of Posts – After your 10, 20 or however many days is up, spend another few hours to write another 10 or however many articles you want. This always makes things easier. This way, when it’s time to post on your blog you don’t have to think and think about what to blog about. You already have posts written down and ready to be published. This is actually my 4th article I’ve written today. I plan on doing a few more. It sure makes things easier!
3. Keep A Notepad/Journal – I find this also makes things easier. When you get an idea that pops into your head, write the idea and a few details about the post into a notepad or a journal or anything that you have access to wherever you are. If you don’t have access to a journal because you’re in the car or out to eat, or at the zoo or whatever, maybe write the idea in your phone or any place you can. I find that when I think of things and don’t write them down they don’t tend to come back to me. It’s frustrating because they’re great ideas but I forget them.
When it comes time to write your “bundle” of posts, you will have a some ideas listed on your journal so it’ll be a piece of cake on finding out what topics to write about.
4. Check Out Other Blogs – By visiting other blogs in your niche you can get some good ideas from reading their posts. I definitely do not advise you to copy their content though. Maybe if they have a top list of ways to do something, pick one point on that list and elaborate. Or you could write a post that covers the same topic but tell what you think about it and share your knowledge on that topic. But seriously, don’t copy other people’s content. You won’t be successful.
5. Spend Time Thinking Of Posts – Try taking maybe just 10 – 30 minutes out of your day to write down as many post topics as you can. This way when you need an idea on what to write about you can just look at what you wrote down. This goes with keeping a notepad/journal to write down your ideas but instead of writing when you get an idea, you take some time out of your schedule to just brainstorm post ideas.
Those are some simple but effective tips that help me with not running out of content to publish on this blog. Follow these tips. Trust me, it will make your blogging success come easier. If you just write a bundle of articles, and schedule them to post at a certain time and day, you can just spend your time on marketing and other important things. This will save you a bunch of time!
Posted in Blogging
A Step-By-Step Guide To Starting A Profitable Blog
Today there are so many new bloggers just getting started. According to Technorati, 7.4 million new blogs were made in the past 120 days. That’s 2 new blogs every 3 seconds. That’s a lot. All bloggers want to generate traffic and followings, and most bloggers want to make money from their blogs. So, below I’ve created a guide to help new people start a new blog that I would go by if I had to start a new blog again.
1. Decide What You’re Going To Blog About
This is the most important part of starting a blog. Without it, you couldn’t start a blog. You need to think of a passion you have. Something you really enjoy doing. This will make it easier for you in the long run because creating content for this topic should come easy. Once you pick a market, you need to do some research. Find out if it’s profitable; if there’s enough people interested.
2. Get Web Hosting And A Domain
Next of course, you need some way to get your blog online. You need to buy web hosting. I recommend CreativHost where you can get web hosting for your blog for only $4.50 a month which is very cheap. That’s $45/year. Then you’ll need a domain name. If you order your hosting from CreativHost, you can get a domain with your hosting for only $10 so it all adds up to $55/year.
3. Install WordPress On Your Site
Now that you’ve got your web hosting and domain name, you need to install WordPress. If you don’t know how, look up on Google how to install WordPress or something. It’s really simple. Also, with CreativHost, you get Fantastico which is software that can automatically install WordPress for you with a click of a button. Once you’ve installed WordPress, I suggest you install a few WordPress plugins to make things easier. Check out some of my older posts 10 Great WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Plugins to Increase RSS Subscribers.
4. Get A Blog Design
Now that your blog is up and running with some nice plugins installed, you need a nice design for your blog. If you know XHTML/CSS I suggest you code your own WordPress theme; it’s very easy. If not, I suggest either going to Unique Blog Designs or something like WooThemes. They both have very nice WordPress themes that I recommend. If you don’t like any of those just browse around Google. You’ll find something.
5. Start Writing Great Content To Launch With
Now that your blog is up and running with a good looking theme, you need to start writing QUALITY content to launch your blog with. You need the best quality content you can write so when people visit your site, you make a good impression. Don’t copy others writing, it will get you nowhere. If people enjoy your content, they’ll most likely subscribe to your blog which is always good!
6. Write Great Content For Later
After you’ve creating that quality content to launch your blog with, I suggest you write a few articles to make the following days, or weeks, easier. I suggest you write about 5 – 20 articles and save them as a draft in WordPress. This way, you don’t have to write an article every day. You can just write articles and set them to post at a certain time using WordPress (WordPress is awesome, huh?). This makes everything easier. I always suggest having articles saved as drafts that you can publish at any time.
Blogging can be overwhelming and sometimes you just decide to not post. With blogging, you have to be consistent if you want to succeed. It’s that simple. So by having drafts saved, it makes everything easier and saves time.
7. Create A Mailing List
This is very, very important to your success if you wish to make money online from your blog. As soon as you set up your blog, you need to sign up for a mailing list account. I suggest using Aweber. It’s what I, and majority of the bloggers out there use. There’s a simple equation for mailing lists. Here it is:
Mailing List = Money
It’s true. If you have a mailing list, you can make good money from it. Obviously, you have to have targetted traffic that will sign up for your mailing list. You don’t want people signing up for your mailing list that could give a crap about your market, you won’t make money. Once your mailing list is set up, put the form to sign up somewhere visible on your blog so others will see it and join!
8. Launch Your Blog
Now that you’ve gotten WordPress installed, some plugins, a theme and some quality cdontent, it’s time to “launch” your blog. Publish an article and make sure everything is ready to go. Then once your blog is online it’s ready. Tell people about it. I’ll mention some traffic techniques below.
9. Sign Up For Twitter
If you haven’t already, sign up for Twitter. This is very important. My number one source of traffic is Twitter. This is probably the fastest way to get traffic when starting your blog. It’s great because you can send people to your blog very quickly and easily. Using Twitter, you can use updates that are 140 characters or less telling people about your blog or whatever. We refer to this as “micro blogging”. Once you’ve published a post, make an update on Twitter telling people about it!
10. Start Generating Traffic Other Ways
Now that everything is ready to go for people to see, you need to let others know about your site. A good way to spread your link around so people can visit your site is by finding other blogs in your niche and commenting on them. When commenting, you can leave a link to your site in one of the fields. This links your name to your website so when somebody sees it, there’s a chance they’ll click your link and visit your site. This can also be good because some blogs have a ‘Top Commentators’ section for everybody to see. If you’re active on different blogs and are a top commentator, you can get some easy traffic from that. It can also get you quality links to boost your PageRank.
Hope you find these tips useful and if you plan on starting a blog anytime soon I suggest you follow these steps.
Posted in Blogging
10 Great WordPress Plugins I Recommend
Below are a list of really great WordPress plugins that pretty much every blog should have installed. The plugins range from preventing scam to search engine optimization. I use all of these plugins and they help a lot.
Akismet
This is the best spam protection plugin ever! It comes default with WordPress already. All you have to do is click the ‘Plugins’ tab and activate it. It’s a great plugin and works great. It keeps out all the spam so it’s never displayed. The only bad part is sometime it makes legit comments worth being displayed set as spam. So when checking the spam comments, check and see if it’s a good comment or not.
MaxBlogPress
This plugin displays a stripe across the top of your website. You can set the color of the stripe, the font, and the color of the font. What this plugin does is allows you to put text into multiple fields and it randomly chooses an option and displays it when somebody visits your site. You can include links to affiliate products, your twitter or facebook accounts and more. Download this plugin here.
All-In-One SEO Pack
If you care at all about search engine optimization, which you should, I recommend you install this plugin. It does all kinds of things like avoiding duplicate content, generate meta tags automatically and more. Download this plugin here.
SEO Title Tag
This is another great SEO plugin. With it, you can set the title of pages, posts, categories, tags and links. It lets you override the titles that are automatically generated. Download this plugin here.
Show Top Commentators
I use this plugin and I really like it. It’s always nice to give your top commentators a reward for commenting on your blog. By isntalling this plugin, you use a piece of code that displays the top 10 commentators on your site. You can put this link on your sidebar or something and give them a link. Download this plugin here.
WP Greet Box
This plugin displays a greeting message to new visitors to your site before a post. It tells them if they are new here that they should subscribe to your RSS feed. It displays it to the new visitor the first 3 times they visit. Download this plugin here.
WordPress Related Posts
This is another cool WordPress plugin you should install. What it does is when you publish a post, it shows a list of other posts that are related to it. This way readers can find other great related content of yours. Download this plugin here.
Subscribe To Comments
This plugin lets readers subscribe to certain comments if they choose. When a reader subscribes they get notification of new comments sent to their inbox. You can also take this plugin and email the readers who have subscribed. Download this plugin here.
Contact Form 7
This is just a simple contact form that you can use for your readers to reach you. It’s what I use and haven’t had any problems with it. It’s simple and works great. Download this here.
Google XML Sitemap Generator
Another good plugin for search engine optimization. This plugin automatically generates an XML sitemap for your blog to submit to Google. It sets a priority for certain posts with most comments to be checked more often. Download this plugin here.
Tags: cool wordpress plugins, great wordpress plugins
Posted in Plugins
10 Useful Tips For Writing A Blog Post
Have you ever thought your blog posts are boring and dull? Or, perhaps, that your posts weren’t put together well enough and nobody ever read them? Here are a few useful tips that I use when writing a blog post. I don’t want to sound cocky but I find a lot of people enjoy them. So give these tips a try!
1. Write Attention-Grabbing Posts
Make your headlines or titles or whatever you call them attention-grabbing. This way people will want to read the article more and are more likely to subscribe or comment. This comes in hand with writing quality content and gaining loyal readers.
2. Include Bullet Points or A List
Include bullet points or a list in your posts. It seems those kind of posts are the most popular. It structures the information nicely and makes it easier to read. For instance, a post of the top 10 ways to do something. Kind of like this post.
3. Make It Easy To Scan
Make your blog posts easy to scan. A lot of times, people are going to be lazy and aren’t going to want to read the whole article word by word. Therefore, you need to make your posts easy to scan. This way you won’t scare off too many readers. You’ll probably get more comments this way as well because it’s quicker for people to understand and say something.
4. Don’t Write Too Much
Try not to write too much. This kind of goes in hand with making your posts easy to scan. If you write 20 paragraphs trying to explain something most people aren’t going to want to take the time to read it all. Sure some people will, but a lot of people will be lazy. Try to keep your posts down to only a few paragraphs that are spread out. If it’s not possible to not include a certain amount of content, try breaking it down into a series like part 1 and part 2. If that doesn’t work, at least try adding some images or bullet points and separate the paragraphs a bit to make it easy to scan.
5. Include Your Opinion
If you have an opinion, let your readers know it. Include your opinion in your posts. People come to your blog to see what you have to say so tell them. They want to know what you think. By knowing what a person thinks, they can relate. You want your readers to be able to relate to you.
6. Use Keywords In Your Post
Try to aim for a 2% – 3% keyword density. That means that out of every 100 words you use about 2 or 3 keywords in a post. This will help with mostly search engine optimization.
7. Link A Bit
Link to other content in your blog that relates to the post you’re writing. This way people will get a few more ideas or some more help regarding the topic. This will also make them want to come back more for more content. You will be able to gain more loyal readers.
8. Proofread Your Post
Once you’re done writing and you think everything is done, go back through it and make sure that everything is correct and makes sense. Check to make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Sometimes when you’re writing, you can get all these thoughts in your head and end up making simple mistakes. I see it happen all the time.
9. Write Like You Know What You’re Talking About
Write with confidence and passion. Write like you know exactly what you’re talking about. You want to seem like an expert so people listen and like what you have to say. If you’re not confident, why would anybody listen to you? You’ll lose readers this way.
10. Use Some Images
Using images in your posts are great. This makes reading more enjoyable and nicer in my opinion. They can draw attention to your posts and add some color. Also, if you have a post with a bunch of words in it (which I don’t recommend unless it’s unavoidable- see #4), images break it up a bit and make it easier to read.
I hope you find these tips useful! What do you think are good tips for writing a blog post? Feel free to add some more ideas to list below!
Tags: tips, tips for writing, tips for writing blog posts, writing a blog post
Posted in Blogging Tips
8 Ways To Get More RSS Subscribers
Looking to get more RSS Subscribers to your blog? Below are 8 tips I’ve listed to help you. These methods have all helped me grow my RSS subscribers quite a bit over the past week.
1. Quality content
How many times have you heard this? Content is king and you need quality content. It’s been told so many times but it’s very important. Not only having quality content, but posting quality content daily or frequently is important as well. I have been posting daily and with better content for the past 4 – 5 days and my RSS subscribers have already doubled. That’s not GREAT, considering my RSS subscribers is only at 50 right now, but 25 subscribers in 5 days is decent.
2. Make your subscribe section visible
A lot of people have a subscribe section but don’t make it completely visible to everybody. A lot of people will put their feed count, or their subscription place on their footer or lower down on their page. Put your subscribe section where it’s very easily seen; the top of the sidebar or somewhere in the header.
3. Promote your feed
Besides promoting your feed on your website, try promoting it off of your website as well. For instance, you can promote your feed through forums by putting the link to your subscription page in your signature. You could also put the URL to your feed in emails you send. Another way to promote your feed is by doing a guest post on another blog. You can include the URL to your RSS feed in the post as well. So, instead of only promoting your feed on your site, try promoting it off of your site as well.
4. Offer email subscriptions
Offering email subscriptions is a great way to get more subscribers. For me and a lot of other blogs, email subscription is the leading subscription option. So if you don’t, try offering email subscription. Also, I see some blogs that use a link saying subscribe via email. That might work, but most of the time having the actual subscribe form right there will result in more sign-ups. The less steps the reader has to go through to subscribe, the more subscribers you’ll get.
5. Offer something for free
This is a great way to increase your RSS subscribers. When somebody subscribes to your blog you give them something for free. For instance an eBook. I would suggest doing this through Aweber so they can automatically download what you offered them when they subscribe. This method works great for some people. For example, John Chow and his eBook explaining how he went from making $0 to $40,000 per month from blogging. Also, when ShoeMoney offered his free 12 week internet marketing course for free, his RSS subscribers jumped by 10,000 in a matter of 3 days or so.
6. Offer subscription options throughout your site
Another good way to pump your RSS subscribers is by offering subscription options throughout your site. Instead of just having a subscribe section in your header, or navigation, you can also have a subscribe option below your blog post. This way once they’re done reading the post and see the option to subscribe, if they liked it they might subscribe.
7. Offer a full feed instead of a partial feed
There’s been debate about offering a full feed instead of a partial feed but if you want maximum subscribers a full feed is the way to go. If you notice, all the big bloggers like ProBlogger and John Chow offer a full feed RSS. So if you don’t offer a full feed RSS, try offering it and your subscribers might go up.
8. Install some plugins to help grow your feed
There are a lot of plugins out there to help you get more subscribers as well. For instance, WP Greet Box, or Subscribe Remind. These plugins put reminders on your site to new visitors to subscribe to your feed. They can really make a difference. To see where to download these plugins and view more plugins to help grow your subscribers, view my post of WordPress Plugins To Increase Your RSS Subscribers.
Hope you find these tips useful. Try implementing some of the things I said and see how it works out for you. So far, they’ve all worked great for me.
Tags: get more subscribers, RSS, subscribers
Posted in RSS
The Triangle Of Trust
Last night I watched Frank Kern’s video called “Sneak Attack.” In this video, Frank Kern drives down to John Reeses house to do a “sneak attack,” but fails. I thought it was pretty entertaining, but if you don’t wanna sit through the whole video watching Frank attempt his sneak attack then forward a bit more into the video.
Frank talks about his method called the “Triangle of Trust.” This method is great for bloggers because it involves using a video with a sales pitch at the end and a blog post with the video and a link beneath the video to your affiliate product or your product; whichever you are promoting.
Watch the video where he explains in greater detail. Anyway, Frank explains how this technique is effective. Here is how it works: by sending an email to your subscribers saying check out this video on my blog. By using the word blog, you will receive a higher click through rate. Why? Because at the moment, blogs are seen as more trustworthy than just a regular old website. So, by telling them to go to your blog and check out this video, they don’t think they’ll be told to buy something.
Then in the video, you want a bunch of good content to keep them watching. At the end of the video you say something like, “Hey, I used this product and it was great… I really recommend you buy it. There’s a link below this video.” This way, with the blog being trustworthy, then a nice video saying check out this product I recommend it will result in more people viewing the product. Frank Kern has made a lot of money using this technique so try it.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Videos
