9 Things You Will Quickly Need to Learn to Run a Successful Blog

May 5, 2013 By 10 Comments

 

I came across this awesome guest posting opportunity five minutes ago. Literally, five minutes ago. Five minutes later I wrote this post. Why? Well, I will discuss below, as my first line item. You learn things as a blogger, things which promote your success. If you are foolish you’ll ignore these lessons.

If you are wise you will cash in on these lessons. You must be aggressive to succeed in the blogging niche. Digest, and act swiftly. You will quickly need to learn these things to run a successful blog.

Run a Successful Blog

1 – Seize Guest Post Opportunities within Seconds

I remember a few years back. I’d struggled to generate one lead daily. I would write a guest post and 5-10 leads would flow in quickly. Now, since I am human, I forgot my success and stopped writing guest posts. But I smartened up a while ago.

Now I have 7 guest posts out there, either in the queue, or already published, plus this post. Guest posting is the quickest way to reach a massive audience, fast.

2 – Get Ready for Critics

Critics will find you. I have been heavily criticized for multiple elements on my blog and writing style. Why? Because I hit the “Publish” button for the first time 4 years ago and fell in love with blogging.

Do not take criticism personally. You receive opinions, or feedback, and if somebody is nasty, thank God for block buttons or blacklisting.

3 – Check Your Energy

I consistently churned out great content for months. However, critics were my audience. I thought like a failure. Sure, my content was excellent but on a subconscious level I felt no one would show up to visit my blog.

Check your energy throughout the day. Think, feel and act from a high energy, calm and confident place. You must blog with enthusiasm.

4 – Stay on Topic

Readers leave like mad if you change topics. I ran a personal development blog. Then I ran a cash gifting blog. Then I covered like 4 topics. Now I run blogs helping you generate cash online.

By staying on topic, you program your audience to respond to your persistent, consistent message.

5 – People Love Eye Candy

People rarely stuck around my blog until I used images for each post. Then I scrapped the images on each post but posted pictures of myself traveling all over SE Asia, from my top banner through my sidebar.

Images grab reader’s attention, quickly. Use images on each post or paste images all over your blog.

6 – Sell the Dream

Posting pictures is one thing. Selling the dream is quite another. I lived in Bali for five months, Phuket, Thailand for five months, and I hit a host of other tropical paradises over the past 2 years. Stop by my blog. I have pictures of many locations where I visited.

Read my blog. Follow my online cash generating tips. Live the dream like I live.

7 – Write Frequently to Improve Your Skills

As a newbie blogger you want to hide away. You write maybe once every week or two. Well, unless you are a talented writer bump that schedule up to daily writing. There is no need to post daily, but you must write daily to improve your writing skills.

The quality of your posts improves if you improve as an author. Don’t stop blogging. Write posts. Be patient. Find your writing voice. Prosper. Grow your audience.

8 – Write How You Speak

How do you speak? Write like that. Engage readers in a conversation. Be chatty with your posts. Recount your stories. Relate your experiences with your niche, or topic of choice, to make strong connections with your audience.

9 – Become Best Buddies with Influential Bloggers

I wrote for about a year until people discovered me. That is because I wrote for a year without making any friends in the blogosphere. After becoming good friends with influential bloggers, these buddies promoted my content to their audience.

Voila! The traffic started rolling. So that’s where my traffic was, right? Make buddies by promoting people aggressively. Post helpful comments to their blog posts. Build your network. Leverage your presence.

What tips can you add to my list?

 

Former fired security guard and current world traveler, Ryan Biddulph went from having a net worth of a nickel to generating steady cash flow online while traveling to tropical paradises like Bali, Phuket and Hoi An. How does he help you magnetize yourself to cash? To find out Click Here

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8 Steps to Building a Strong and Fulfilling Blog

August 20, 2012 By 6 Comments

1. Build Content that is interesting and attracts eyeballs. It should generate comments and conversation. Ask for feedback and don’t be afraid to be controversial. Keep writing every day, even when you think no one is reading it. This is paramount to a successful blog/site.

2. Track your traffic. Seems elementary, but do you do it? Google Analytics is great for tracking traffic and free. It will also give you a mental boost to know that people are visiting even if they are just lurking for now. Controversy and questions helps them make the step from lurker to poster which will help bring in more visitors who engage you.

3. Subscribe to Google alerts for your keywords. If you keep writing daily, and your articles are fresh and original, Google may pick you up as an authority. This increases your chances that Google will send out your blog posts to others who subscribe to alerts for your keywords.

courtesy Hubspot

4. Have something to give away. That can be a newsletter or an eBook on a topic. Send communication to your audience once or twice a week, not daily. The key is that you build a list of subscribers. Later on you will use that list to monetize what you are sending with money generating offers.

5. Host contests, and other giveaways as you progress and your blog matures to generate buzz and more subscribers. You want a list that makes money for you when you hit the send button.

6. Go to authority sites in your niche and become an expert commentator and put your link in your signature. Most blogs and forums allow this. Once the people on those sites get to know and like you they will click your link and begin to visit your site.

7. Try to stand out in some way, be unique. Take a different angle/view from the herd. Don’t manufacturer this mindset, but certainly there are areas where you disagree with the masses. Go for a niche within a niche sort of thing and then expand to be more general from there. You have a better chance of getting to the top of search with topics and keywords that are not so saturating, but good content generated repetitively will help a great deal.

8. Monetize, but wait until your content is progressing nicely. Don’t be afraid to put product and services that you find valuable in front of your audience. In some circles it seems to be taboo to make money from your site. Baloney. Promote quality and you’ll be doing your readers a favor. Google will see you as an authority if you are a content first person.

Ken Chiarella is a successful veteran in the internet marketing space, and the founder and CEO of e-commerce site Wormman.com Ken has built dozens of revenue generating sites over his career, and has a strong grasp on the processes of building a winner.

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Traffic Transparency – Are you sharing your Stats?

May 9, 2012 By 3 Comments

trans·par·ent - easily seen through, recognized, or detected.

Transparency is frequently sought after in the world of Blogging. Generally, transparency makes the organization or individual more attractive to the reader. We tend to show more trust when the source is open, and shows some vulnerability. Bloggers also care about traffic. Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us care. It may not be #1, but it’s up there. We all like visitors.

Over the last 4-5 months I’ve found four individuals that share their traffic data along with any income they bring in through blogging. Month in and month out they post their numbers. They provide detail on what worked, and maybe more importantly, what didn’t. Both newbies and veterans can learn from their experience.

Magnet4Marketing – Is a site that provides online marketing and blogging tips. Fabrizio Van Marciano resides in the UK and started this blog in mid 2010. His motivation for sharing his traffic reports is twofold. He does it to inspire other bloggers, but also to leave a footprint for himself to see what has been successful. Here’s part of Fabrizio’s traffic results from April 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it was a hectic month for Fabrizio, where other commitments chewed into his blogging time, the site still attracted just shy of 10K unique visitors. Over 80% of the traffic comes from Google/Organic. A combination of solid keyword research and a ton of content. Fabrizio goes into detail about improving bounce rates along with other helpful hints on his site.

TrafficGenerationCafe – Ana Hoffman brings readers, as the title of site suggests, information to generate traffic. Ana provides a great education on Marketing Tools and SEO. As Ana says, blogging is all about “Walking the Walk” and that’s her driver for sharing results.

This Google Analytics shot displays the traffic sources for March 2012. Ana provides additional detail about the new Google rules, referral traffic sources, and her March income from the blog. Great information that is helpful to any blogger looking to generate traffic.

Dragon Blogger – Is a Technology and Entertainment portal, the creation of Justin Germino. The site had an incredible 103K unique visits over the last month with 132K pageviews. Yes, Wow. Each month Justin delivers a breakdown of his earnings that gives great insight to his paid sources.

TheFinancialBlogger -This financial blog is the main contributor of a few sites that brought in 290K visitors in February, including over 400K pageviews. The blog income report gives plenty of detail on the revenue generating pieces including: Adsense, Affiliate deals, Private Advertising, and Niche websites. The sites collectively took in over $10K in February 2012, although expenses were roughly $4K. The breakdown of the earnings and traffic is robust. Mike also provides a monthly snapshot of his assets and net worth It would take quite some time to get through all the content.

So, are you publishing your traffic stats monthly? Once you’ve hit some numbers you’re comfortable publishing, what better motivator than to share your traffic data with your readers. You’ll be providing your audience with a learning experience while pushing yourself to maintain/exceed previous traffic numbers.

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