你的博客变得有点干呢？ 也许是时间变得有点俏皮作为一个Blogger。

多年来，我已经学到的东西之一是，我越'打'我的博客和实验，我学习，帮助我，使我的博客更好。

实验可以帮助你不仅可以学到在博客介质工作 - 但也与您的受众工程。

笔记

• 观看全尺寸的版本， 成为一个好玩的Blogger
• 视频拍摄上松下GF1系列 （AFF） -这里是为什么我用相机拍我的影片 。

成为一个俏皮的Blogger谈话

我已经为那些喜欢这种方式得到下面这个视频转录。 转录转录人民 。

今天我想谈谈是俏皮。 我站在前面我四岁，在幼儿园做的一些艺术品。 它非常有趣，在过去几年看他的艺术性的进展。 他是一个非常艺术，创意的小家伙，他喜欢画画，他喜欢把事情和他爱基本上创建的东西。

但是，在他的工作的质量和错综复杂的发展一直是迷人的观看过去几年。

我注意到的是，他这样做，越多，他与不同介质和不同的方式拿着画笔，用他的手指和不同类型的油漆和切割的东西，坚持他们的实验，他的实验，他更多的学习和他越发展。

我认为这的确是真正的博客。

的事情，我多年的经验之一是，我尝试使用的东西越多，我越发现什么可行，什么不为我工作，我的风格，但也为我的读者，博客和媒介本身。

所以，我想问问你今天：

• 你如何发挥你的博客吗？
• 你是如何尝试？
• 你尝试过什么？
• 曾并没有奏效呢？

我想这是一个讨论。 对于我来说，我尝试了许多不同风格多年来的写作。

例如，我做我的博客上一些夸大其词。 我发现，你知道，我咆哮并未真正发挥作用。 偶尔，因为它不，我想我真的相信我咆哮，但作为一项规则，咆哮并没有真正为我工作。

我也试着写在人，有时实际上已经为我工作的第三次。 它有一个真正对人民的影响。

我还发现，要求视频后这样的问题，本身对我的作品。

它只是尝试用不同的沟通方式。 使用图像，您的设计，它转换在许多不同的方式在您的博客。

所以，你有什么发挥你的博客吗？ 你怎么也得有点俏皮的呢？ 你是如何尝试？ 你学到了什么？ 你曾在你的风格，不为你工作，你的风格？

在该视频下面的意见，我很乐意听取您的意见。

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

成为一个俏皮的Blogger，并注入一些能量到你的博客

共用此

它，因为我ProBlogger电子书推出了最新的数天- 文案博客记分卡 。 自那时以来，我们已经看到了超过1000本书的购买，并已经取得了一些奇妙的反馈。

这里是第一个评论别人怎么说，这样你就可以听到。

1。 在工商妇女克莱尔写

“电子书转移我的角度来看，每个博客文章的目的和价值。 当然，你可以有你的电话在博客文章结尾的行动-但你写的支持和鼓励访问者采取行动的内容“？ 阅读全部评论

2。 阿里·黑尔写道

“在阅读，不过，我感到震惊，许多新的作家在博客，这本书将是多么有用。 我每天看到基本的语法错误，我也看到基本上是健全的，但结构不良或格式化的职位。 它很容易失去关注网上， 这本电子书将是非常宝贵的博客都在努力建立一个观众。“ 阅读全面检讨

3。 从Kikolani克里斯蒂写道

“除了清单，电子书开始给你10个问题问你作为一个整体的博客 ，以及11个问题之前书面要求每个岗位 。 如果你是指这些答案，因为你写的每篇博客后，你的写作不仅改善，但你也应该看到您的文章，以及更好的读者参与。“ 阅读全部评论

4。 从外观教师保罗写道：

“当你发现在你的写作的弱点所有你需要做的是看在电子书这一节中，学习如何提高你的写作部分，并付诸实践。 在任何时候，它会成为第二自然，你会写完整的易用性与高品质的博客文章。“ 阅读全面检讨

5。 珍妮弗从Gurls庇护

对于博客的的文案分数卡是一个伟大的产品所有的作家，尤其是那些在网上写作。 它显示了一个很容易理解的方式很多博客在文案的秘密。 的主题是可操作的，往往有一个很好的提示，以帮助你更好地使用主题。“ 阅读全面检讨 。

6。 斯坦福大学从推动社会

退房酷视频审查这个记分卡 -斯坦福大学提供一些周到考虑分析。

更新和价格上涨

是一个积极的反馈绝大多数至今 - 不过我们也有一个很好的建议，就如何使它更好的情侣。 格伦和我已经谈论有关我们如何可以更新（任何更新将会给那些谁已经有免费），以使其更加有用和预期的时候，有一个重要的更新的价格上涨，9月1日（再次，如果你现在买，你会得到更新免费）。

请记住，目前的价格$ 9.97美元是一个介绍性的报价。 我们把价格上涨1月。 我们以前说的价格将上涨至14.97美元，但我们得到的反馈是，这是值得更多，更新，我们肯定会超出该商标了。

所以，以确保它在介绍折扣现在抢你自己的副本文案博客记分卡 。

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

6文案平衡计分卡的评论博客

共用此

由访客发表博客暴君


照片信用： andronicusmax

魔兽世界有超过11万用户支付月租费 。 这是所有时间最容易上瘾的视频游戏之一。 事实上，有几个网站，致力于帮助人们退出游戏。 甚至还有一个“戒毒中心”在中国，成瘾的孩子被送到。 它是那么糟糕。 而我不认为这些成瘾是特别有趣，我认为我们可以学到很多宝贵的经验教训，从魔兽世界，我们可以应用到我们的博客。 在这篇文章中，我要告诉你如何让你的博客上瘾，就像魔兽世界。

不道德的吗？ 他们的目的上瘾吗？

几个月前，有一个电视节目，视频游戏公司超过死于沉迷于他们的比赛结果作为一个十几岁的死亡被起诉。 在被曝光，该公司已聘请精神科医生，使游戏上瘾尽可能的瘾，是死亡的原因。 虽然节目从来没有作出任何提及的名字，很多人以为它是基于魔兽，因为那里是一个真正的生命诉讼，类似的事情。 亦曾有很多医学专家说，游戏是一个报告比可卡因更容易上瘾 。 至于是否有人谈论魔兽世界，我们不知道这样说只是猜测。

正如我已经说过，我不认为这些成瘾是滑稽。 如果一家公司知道，他们的产品是做给孩子的伤害，然后继续作出更多和更诱人的话，我认为必须提高一些伦理问题。 任何资本主义制度的缺点是，对利润的渴望往往大于副作用。 这是一种耻辱。

我不想庆祝，有些人沉迷魔兽，但我认为他们为榜样，我们可以从中学到一些有价值的博客教训。 深入研究这些“招数”，我认为它是好的原因是因为我不认为任何人都不会上瘾到博客。 如果这些方法可以增长你的博客，然后用它作为一个平台，以帮助人们，我认为这是一件非常好的事情。

如何让你的博客上瘾，像魔兽世界

照片信用： mangpages

现在，我有我的道德问题，我们可以进入后散装咆哮。 我会去一堆WoW的功能，然后告诉你为什么他们很容易上瘾，你可以申请，如何到您的博客。 一如往常，如果您有任何其他的想法或想法，请发表评论，让大家都知道。

1。 出现流行

第一个原因，WOW是很容易上瘾，实际上开始之前，你甚至玩游戏 。 之前，你甚至买CD。 你知道每一个玩家玩过WOW，你所有的朋友都谈论它，你不断在媒体听到。 这建立在一个非常积极的方式的游戏，因为它使你觉得你是错过了。 当我听说有11万人被认购的游戏，我只是要看看有什么大惊小怪的。

这种现象被称为“社会证明，这是任何人，他们是不是第一次尝试你的服务。 人们不喜欢错过流行的东西，但他们也不想是首次尝试。 如果你能出现流行的你拿走他们的关注，并为自己成功。

你可以将它应用到你的博客
有不少方法可以应用到您的博客这些社会证明。 记住，你想人所涉及的所有其他人感到好奇，但你也想约是第一次尝试，以解决他们的恐惧。 为了做到这一点，你可以尝试：

• 显示最近的评论
  在侧边栏显示你最近的评论。 这立即告诉人们，有与其他人在您的博客，你有一些受欢迎的程度。 显示您最近的评论是一个绝妙的主意，因为它也得到人们参与任何讨论，你可能有。
• 使用Wibiya
  wibya是，我开始一个新的工具栏上看到了很多大的博客和网站，包括达伦的数码摄影学校 。 是的，它是免费的。 你要做的就是注册一个帐户，然后添加一些代码到您的网站和你有这样漂亮的新页脚，显示每个人的人们对你的网站，如何与社会媒体等，这是一个非常有用的方法使您的博客出现静态和动态。
• 职位的读者参考
  当你写一个职位，这是一个好主意的人访问您的博客给喊奏。 例如，如果本一些人留下了一些相关的最新帖子真的好评，为什么不给人们讨论的链接，并在文章中提到他的名字吗？ 这显示，你得到的意见，以及增加是非常个人和触摸你的读者的忠诚度的双重效果。
• 使用微妙的见证
  大家都知道产品的网站上的推荐，但由于某种原因，人们不使用他们的博客。 一个微妙的和有条件的证明可以使你的博客比较粘的奇迹。 例如，在你的关于页面，您可能需要有一些关于您的流量，用户数或评论数点。 这有，别人都在用你的博客没有超过你的侧边栏抹灰这一切向人们展示的效果。

出现流行是非常重要的，如果你想让人们感觉他们需要的是行动的一部分。 这是可怕的，当你到达一个博客，看起来毫无生气的和死的。 另一方面，当你到达一个网站，是谈话和能源充裕，你只需要进入。 与你的社会证明是创造性的。

2。 利用人们的需要在一组是

点一，关于“魔兽世界”最容易上瘾的东西之一，非常类似的东西是，它利用了人们的需要，觉得一个组的一部分的事实。 这是一个非常原始的和微妙的心理现象，所有人类拥有。 我们寻找合作伙伴，结婚并有了孩子。 我们发挥团队运动，加入俱乐部，并在学校的时间挂在包。 人类需要感受到一个组的一部分。

当你玩这个游戏你不玩自己的，你加入来自世界各地的形式公会的玩家群体。 有时，这些行会成为非常接近，电子邮件和即时聊天，并经常登录的每一天，在同一时间一起玩。 这是一个非常强大的工具使游戏上瘾，特别是如果人们对外部世界的朋友有麻烦。 如果你想使你的博客越上瘾，你必须利用人们的需要，是在一组。

你可以将它应用到你的博客
那么，你如何申请自己的博客？ 你怎么做的人觉得他们是特殊的，和一组，将无法正常工作没有妥善的一部分？ 这里有一些想法：

• 发送电子邮件
  当有人离开你的博客的评论，他们通常会留下正确的电子邮件，让您拍摄他们感谢他们的评论，让他们知道你感激他们在您的网站上输入的信息。 现在，还有的插件自动做到这一点，但是这不是我一定谈。 如果有人留下了伟大的评论，你可能想发送的个人信息，感谢他们的专长。 或者，如果有人不断离开的意见，只要你写，你应该感谢他们的频率。 确保你奖励方面，您希望他们继续他们的行为 。
• 参照其他读者的评论
  其中的第一个网站，我曾经卖 ，主要用于妇女健身站点。 随着时间的推移，我建立了一些非常忠实的读者，他们中的很多健身专家，私人教练和营养师。 如果有人张贴一个问题，在有关锻炼或饮食计划，我偶尔会发送电子邮件给专家，要求他们帮助他们的意见。 这些专家，然后成为经常使用的注释部分，似乎总是愿意成为一个行动的一部分。
• 命名你的团队
  极其微妙但极其上瘾的东西是一个团队的名字。 在游戏世界中，它被称为一个家族。 一些氏族是非常难求，涉及几个“尝试”阶段。 例如，在WOW中，你需要在一定水平之前，甚至有资格加入。 一旦你在虽然你看你在战斗中有兄弟，给你提示，等它就像高中！ 给你的忠实读者，用户和评论者的氏族名称是一个简单的方法，以最大限度地发挥团队合作精神。

让人觉得像他们的独家组的一部分，你将有生命的球迷。 每个人需要的感觉，如果他们有一些排序的所有权在博客，仿佛它可能不是那么好，如果他们停止访问。 这个小组的心态是极其强大的工具，为所有的网络营销。

3。 引诱与承诺的奖励和新功能

为什么人们花他们的整个生活，玩WOW吗？ 一方面是因为游戏是不可思议的，一方面是因为花粉外面给我花粉症，部分是因为有不断升级诱人的可能性。 达到一个新的水平为何如此惊人呢？ 因为你进入新的权力和武器，并挑战新的老板。 您还可以得到相关的权利，与一个80级的，而不是一个可怜的79吹牛。

照片信用： videocrab

暴雪（魔兽世界的决策者）不断加入到游戏中的新事物。 他们调整的地图，以确保他们是完美的，他们改变某些法术的伤害，轻微的利润率，使战斗更有趣，并定期发布新的更新，让您访问的新老板，新地图和新的，当然，多层次的。 所有这一切都保持游戏的新鲜和新和停止无聊设置英寸

如何将其应用到您的博客
为了让你的博客感觉超级上瘾，你需要有一个人回来的原因 。 它拥有的东西，迫使他们一次又一次的检查，他们觉得他们可能赢得或获得新的东西，这样做的。 这里有一些想法：

• 有正规比赛
  你的博客应该经常（但不要太普通）的比赛，放弃一些有用的东西。 留下一定数量的意见，订阅饲料，或在Twitter提你的博客，可以赢得该奖项。 无论你的竞争是它应该是有趣的。 得到人们谈论的东西。 shoemoney和隔夜版画这样做非常好，一旦与他的名片竞争 。
• 有一个长期的，但秘密释放
  达伦不断上Problogger没有最酷的事情之一是建立一个新的功能，他被添加到网站。 这造成了很多议论，因为它是不是真的做过的东西。 现在这个伟大的事情是，他这样做是非常微妙。 首先，他获得了他以前没有自己的域名www.problogger.com的。 我们知道的东西了。 然后，他放弃了过去几个月一些提示。 最后，他推出一个新的社会上的地址，一旦每个人都在沸腾的好奇心。 完美地完成。 尝试，有一个人检查您的网站保持长期的原因。
• 计划的内容，并揭示仔细
  我们都知道，你需要成功的引人注目的内容，但很多人做不到的，是释放的方式，是有趣和诱人的内容。 WOW不只是让你访问所有的地图和功能一次。 你很无聊的一天。 相反，他们慢慢的让你在它之后，你已经获得它的互动和游戏时间（收视费）。 尝试，并认为你的内容，以类似的方式。 大家都知道的一个例子是达伦的31天，以建设一个更美好的博客 。

只有你的内容应该足以让人们回来到您的博客。 但是，如果你添加一个额外的奖励，一些漂亮的奖励或新的水平，你会产生利益之间有很多的常客。 没有新的水平，武器和魔法魔兽会是死的，现在没有了。 那么你添加到您的博客，为了保持它新的和令人兴奋的呢？

4。 创建一个为你的读者的另类世界

魔兽世界真正的球迷没有看到它作为一个游戏，他们看到它作为一种替代的世界。 在这个世界里，他们可以表演魔术，广交朋友，征服城镇和更改。 玩“魔兽世界”时，你得到几乎相同的生理反应的发生，因为如果他们在现实生活中实际发生的事件。 当你进入战斗你会得到一个肾上腺素繁忙，让您的视力模糊，当你不能够解决一个难题，你的压力和挫折淹没。

如何将其应用到你的博客 -最终的方式，让您的博客上瘾是为读者创造另一种世界。 一个地方，他们可以去摆脱生活上的问题，并吸收了志同道合的人本身的社会。 一个地方，他们学习新的东西，感觉真的比他们更强大的和发现自己的内在潜力。

• 使尽可能的互动 -一个博客不应该仅仅是一个地方，你读/写东西。 可能已经在他们的知名度背后的初衷，但现在他们是这么多。 如果你想让人上瘾，他们需要在各个层面上参与。 让他们提出的主题，提出问题的意见和聊天就交给你了Twitter和Facebook。 问你的读者的帮助，并给他们的任务来解决。 您的博客更多的互动，是人将要花费有更多的时间。
• 使美丽的，易于使用 -你的博客的设计是非常重要的，因为它有卖你的内容。 ，仔细阅读，因为我觉得很多人都无法把握的想法。 你的设计，销售内容 。 你有多少次留下了一个博客，因为它是丑陋的字体大小是太小或伤害您的眼睛的颜色？ 本来莎士比亚本人写这个博客，你不会关心。 确保你的设计是美丽的，你的导航是尽可能简单。 您的网站的外观和感觉应该成为像你的读者的第二个家。
• 解决现实问题 - 在您的博客 ，人们发现很难离开WOW是因为它解决了一些他们的现实世界的问题的原因之一。 典型的例子是孩子的斗争，使在校的朋友，但在艾泽拉斯，他指挥的军队。 你的博客应该总是试 ​​图使人们的生活更好 。 您的内容应该解决他们生活中的问题，即使只是间接的。 但是，如果你运行的产品博客，关于仿古罐或同样无聊的东西只会谈？ 以及确保，你地址的关注，令人惊讶的详细答复，并帮助人们找到他们寻求的答案。 你的读者想要什么感受和发现？ 是什么让他们高兴？ 这些重要的问题，要知道如果你想为你的球迷创造另一种世界。

你的读者想要什么感受和发现？ 是什么让他们高兴？ 这些重要的问题，要知道如果你想为你的球迷创造另一种世界。 和创造一个另类的世界是最好的方式，让您的博客粘。

结论

这个职位可能永远持续下去，因为“魔兽世界”得到这么多东西。 事实上，它可能已经更快地只写他们做错了什么！ 在任何情况下，如果你给别人的回报，帮助解决他们的实际生活问题，使他们觉得你是一组的方式有一部分的一部分。 然而，也许是最重要的是，你应该做的像暴雪一样，不断增加新的功能，内容和始终为改善和发展的方式进行测试。 现在，走了一会儿之外。

作者简介

博客暴君已售出巨款的几个博客和依靠互联网上的掌上明珠，赚取生活。 他的博客是所有帮助你主宰您的博客和博客的利基，只包括策略，他试图在自己的网站。 按照他Twitter或订阅他的饲料，果汁。

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

如何让您的博客魔兽世界一样上瘾

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此列写由金佰利特纳从Regator （一个伟大的工具，收集和整理世界上最好的博客文章） -达伦

HI-DEE灏，博主们！ 加入我每周的博客趋势的另一个版本，提供 Regator.com 。 （点击任何趋势看它的职位）Darren的职位“ 成功的博客的关键：不要的东西！ “从刚才这1你很多（和我一起）共鸣一周，所以它像了完美的一周似乎回头在一些重要议题，我们在本专栏中讨论过，并把这些技术至少两个工作在自己的博客本周发出了挑战：在屁股踢拖延。 然后分享到您的文章在评论中的链接。

如果你真正想要采取它到一个新的水平，下载达伦的31天，以建立1更好的博客 ，它有足够的工作来维持你整个月和1任何博客难以置信的资源......尤其是那些准备停止谈论他们将这样做有那么一天 ，今天开始做。 让我们来看看在本周最受欢迎的故事......你的挑战：

1， 地面零清真寺
您的挑战：如果你通常从一个中立的立场写文章，本周采取强烈的立场，至少在一个重要的和/或有争议的问题。
了解更多关于： 是自以为是的重要性
例如：VetVoice的“ 穆斯林已经有一个礼拜地点在9/11攻击网站 “备份与深思熟虑的推理意见最多。

2， 星球大战
您的挑战：如果你通常避开名单职位明确，写一本星期。
了解更多有关： 编写列表职位
例如： 庇护的“ 我们从星球大战庆典至五的5最喜欢的时刻 “做了明确的分目和照片伴奏的倒计时。

3。 Facebook的地方
您的挑战：如果你不经常使用的影片，给它一个尝试在这个星期至少有两个职位。
了解更多关于高效使用视频
例如： 混搭 “的” 关于Facebook Places的感觉如何四方 “，让读者/观众得到更好的Foursquare的副总裁的反应比单纯的文字感，将已经。

4。 吃！爱
您的挑战：如果你很少或从来没有做面试的职位，做一个这个星期。 它可以是任何格式（问与答，视频，播客等），但它必须是你自己已经进行，而不是一个在其他地方发现和重用的采访。
了解更多有关：有效面试
例如：MovieWeb的“ 独家：导演瑞恩·墨菲谈吃，祈祷和爱 “是一个独家的Q＆A

5。 巴基斯坦
您的挑战：这一周，从一个你从来没有尝试过的源图像使用。 确保发牌允许你使用它。
了解更多关于： 伟大的地方，找到高质量的图像
例如： 大图的“ 巴基斯坦洪水的21面 “使用照片讲述一个震撼人心的故事。

6。 博士 劳拉
您的挑战：在这个星期至少有两个不同的岗位，请使用引号。
了解更多有关：大部分报价
例如：Mediaite的“ 博士 劳拉来电讲出来：“我不想变成一个种族的事情，这 “有一个报价，激起好奇心的标题。

7。 伊拉克
您的挑战：头脑风暴至少五年的头条新闻，为你刚刚完成，而不是选择首先想到的职位。 然后考虑每个选择前出版的最好的一个。
了解更多关于：是什么让一个伟大的标题
例如：AmericaBlog的“ ？ 真正结束伊拉克作战 “问了一个问题，创建好奇心，然后回答全面提供。

8。 社会保障
您的挑战：设定一个目标激励或鼓励你的读者采取某种行动这个星期。
了解更多关于： 设定目标
例如： 虐老的“ “ 不偷我的社会安全”， “ 鼓励读者签署了一份请愿书。

9。 斯科特朝圣者
你的挑战：覆盖在一个创造性的或标新立异的方式的故事。
了解更多关于：如何深入挖掘，创造出独特的内容
例如：ScreenRant的 “ 批评为什么不管，如果观众恨自己喜欢的电影 “标识绑一个流行的故事更广泛的趋势。

贾斯汀比伯 10。
您的挑战：如果不正常写文章，写一本星期。
了解更多关于建立如何对这项工作的职位
例如：Lifehacker的的“ 如何创建自己的特色放缓向下的环境史诗 “视频步行通过一步一步的文字说明。

你的挑战？老实说，我不能等着看你已经创建。 我期待着每一个阅读。 请在评论中分享你的成就。

金伯利·特纳是一个创始人之一Regator.com和Regator iPhone以及屡获殊荣的打印记者。 你可以找到她在Twitter @ kimber_regator 。

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

博客趋势+挑战

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超过本周三部落，有一个论坛，讨论有关使用脱机事件的发言机会，以帮助增加您的电子邮件通讯清单。 莱昂分享他如何使用MailChimp的Chimpadeedee应用演示后收集电子邮件地址。 我还没有使用的应用程序，但它提醒我，我做了类似的东西，当我开始在6年前的一个事件，我发言的时间。

你可能会认为你不能这样做，因为你从来没有在活动中发言 - 但现实情况是，6年前我没有被邀请发言的地方 - 所以我自告奋勇地说在当地的社区活动。 这里是我分享它的第三次部落的故事。

我觉得太多人忘记了关于“离线”作为他们的在线增长方式。 我是一个大的信徒，在充分利用现有网络和机会，无论他们是联机或脱机。

对于我来说，当我刚开始，我做了类似的东西 - 我做了一个在当地的图书馆如何使用数码相机的免费研讨会。 库并免费研讨会由当地人民，逢星期四晚上，所以我自告奋勇。

在月底的会议上，我已经安排库有一个自己的电脑上网和可用，有一个地方，在那里人们可以离开他们的电子邮件地址，接触更多的提示/更新。

有没有mailchimp的应用程序，但它的工作一种享受，我有30人签署了20个。 这一天他们仍然不时联系我时打招呼，让我知道，他们仍然订阅我的新的摄影博客，6年后！

记住 - 这是6年前，当我第一次的摄影博客是处于起步阶段 - 20个新的读者可能不会听起来很多，但是当你在初期的时候，他们是宝贵的（从内存中，我只用了100元左右时间阅读的博客，所以这是增加了20％的人），因为他们每个人都有自己的网络和接下来的几年中，可以带动数百人（更不用说他们可能在未来几年内查看所有网页）。

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

如何成长你的博客读者脱机事件

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你打你的下一篇博客发布 - 但它是划伤？

• 这是引人注目的吗？
• 这是容易读吗？
• 这是语法正确的吗？
• 是搜索引擎优化？

不会是伟大的，有一个在你身边看你打发布，以确保它是真的准备在你的下一篇博客的编辑器？

今天我很高兴地宣布一个全新的的ProBlogger资源- 为博客撰稿记分卡 。 这是一个系统，以帮助你准备好您的文章发布和优化，为读者和谷歌。

我已经在此工作了几个月，另一次大澳大利亚博客和有经验的文案-格伦·穆雷神圣写入和感到兴奋，不仅因为它是全面的，有助许多博客-但也因为接下来的两个星期它是唯一的$ 9.97美元！

Why the Copywriting Scorecard is Important

As bloggers we know how important content is to the success of our blogs and we all know how those little things can make a big difference to the impact of that content.

We know the theory – but if you're anything like me there are days where you hit Publish on posts that could be better.

The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers is a downloadable eBook providing a list of recommendations to follow, as well as pitfalls to avoid, as you write that next blog post. It's a checklist of things that are common in most great copywriting and mistakes that are commonly found in ineffective copy.

All up, there are 63 things to consider, all comprehensively explained and divided into these four easy to read sections:

1. Writing — How to write engaging compelling posts.
2. Scannability — How to ensure your posts are easy to scan read.
3. Search engine optimization (SEO) — How to write posts that Google will like.
4. Grammar — How to avoid errors that undermine your credibility.

然后，一旦你读过的建议，只需打印出记分卡，检查你多少建议纳入到您的文章，那么你的分数为100总共加起来。 您的分数越高，你的职位是更有效的可能是（我打进这个职位 91/100 ）。

Using the Scorecard you'll quickly identify things you can improve to help your post reach its full potential – all before hitting Publish

In addition to the printable Scorecard – you'll also get plenty of teaching explaining each element as well as 2 additional chapters of teaching – one looking at principles to consider before you start writing and another on writing your posts.

What Others Say about the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers

We made this ebook available to a small group of friends and readers – here's what some of them have had to say.

Brian Clark – Editor of CopyBlogger

“I've built a multimillion dollar business not only by teaching the intersection of blogging and copywriting, but by using it. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers provides clear guidance on how to put this powerful combination to work for you, too.”

Leo Babauta – Editor of ZenHabits .

“This little guide contains a goldmine of blogging insights. It's years of expert wisdom distilled for beginners. Blogging is an art form, but this brings some order and science where none existed before.”

James Chartrand – Owner of Men With Pens

“The ProBlogger Scorecard reveals some best-practice techniques I use every day at my blog – and even some I wished Darren and Glenn would've kept a secret! It gives a clear checklist to bloggers who are serious about becoming my competition, and it provides a ton of practical info to freelancers ready to build a business through blogging.”

Clare Lancaster – Editor of Women In Business , Nett Mag Columnist and Forbes listed woman to follow on Twitter.

“What I like most about this book is the practical business approach it takes to blogging. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers focuses on the core activities you need to do well in order to have a profitable blog. That is, knowing what actions will improve your business and crafting your blog posts so that readers perform those actions.

Being able to tap into Glenn's 8 years of copywriting experience makes the price of this eBook a steal. For those of us who are blogging for passion AND profit, The Copywriting Scorecard is a must read.”

There are more testimonials from others who've already read this eBook here .

Grab Your Copy Today

为博客撰稿记分卡是现在可供下载。 As a launch special we're making it available for two weeks at 33% off – which means instead of $14.97 you can grab it today for just $9.97.

• Get full details on the Scorecard here
• OR… order it directly and get instant access to it as a downloadable PDF here

Note : if you're interested in promoting the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers as an Affiliate check out the details of our program here .

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

How Well Do Your Blog Posts Score Out of 100?

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A Guest Post by Glenn Murray from Divine Write .

这是真的。 Bloggers do it better. The good ones do anyway.

See for yourself: Choose a handful of your favorite blogs and a handful of static websites, and compare the writing.

(TIP: Try to choose sites that look professionally designed, as they're more likely to have professionally written copy.)

Which ones grab you? Which ones keep you reading? Which ones are friendly and full of personality, and make you feel like you're part of a conversation, not on the receiving end of a lecture?

Guaranteed, it's the blogs. (As a copywriter myself, this is a painful admission. But it's true.)

It seems counter-intuitive, I know. After all, most copywriters write for a living, whereas most bloggers just wish they did. And most copywriters are trained, qualified, experienced writers, whereas most bloggers are trained, qualified and experienced at something else entirely.

So why are your favorite bloggers writing more effectively than most copywriters? I've thought long and hard about this, and I see 8 main reasons…

1) They know what they're writing about

Most copywriters write about something different every day. Especially freelance copywriters. And it's rarely something they're even interested in, much less something they know a lot about. Sure, we can interview our clients 'til the cows come home, but there's only so much you can learn that way. (That's why the best copywriters are those with a lot of life experience and broad business experience.)

Your favorite bloggers, on the other hand, are writing about their own niche expertise. They know their subject matter inside-out, and they're passionate about it.

So they're more informative, accurate and helpful.

2) They have a more immediate and real incentive

Most copywriters write about other people's products and services. Rarely their own. And they're usually paid by the hour or by the job. Very few of us write for royalties or on a performance basis. In other words, we get paid for our work, not for our results.

Your favorite bloggers, on the other hand, are selling their own stuff. (Yes, this applies to affiliate links and banner ads too. The end product may not be theirs, but the click is — the click's their product.) And they get paid only when they write effectively. When they engage their readers and compel them to act — eg click a banner ad or click thru and buy an affiliate product.

So they're more results-focused.

3) They know their audience

Most copywriters have only a relatively vague knowledge of their audience. They don't get to meet readers or even talk to them. And half the time their clients aren't any better informed. Even when they're the business owner, they tend to know their product a lot better than they know their audience.

Your favorite bloggers, on the other hand, know their audience intimately. For a start, there's a very good chance their readers are like them, with similar interests and goals. (The readers are reading their blog, after all!) They also interact with their audience on Twitter or Facebook, and in their comments.

So they know what to say to their audience and how to say it.

4) They're not writing for clients

Copywriters have to write for their clients, because the client is the gatekeeper. It can be the best copy in the world, targeting the actual audience perfectly, but if your client doesn't like it, it won't see the light of day. Copywriters always have this nagging at them. It's like one of those cartoons where there's an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Only in this case, there's no angel. Ask any copywriter and they'll agree that most clients have no idea what their audience really needs to hear. They know about their product, and they want to talk about all the stuff they think is cool, even if their target readers won't give two hoots about that stuff. And then you have the old-school grammar-nazi: “You can't start a sentence with 'And'! I know because my high school teacher told me so in 1964.” Don't get me started on the old-school grammar-nazis…

Your favorite bloggers really have it over us here. They write direct for their readers. There's no suit-wearing, check-book-wielding, middle-aged middle-man, getting in the way. There's just them and their readers.

So they write what needs to be written.

5) They get immediate and real feedback

Sure, we copywriters know when our clients are happy, but we rarely hear anything about what our readers think. Or how they respond.

Your favorite bloggers are on the front line. They know what their readers think and how they respond, because they have access to comments, click-thrus and subscription stats, not to mention Twitter, Facebook, and so on.

So they're more responsive to their readers.

6) They're not writing for themselves

There's no getting around it. Copywriters see themselves as artists: They love to write for the sake of writing. Unfortunately, this means a lot of copywriters value the art more highly than they value the commercial imperative. They try to make everything sound poetic or clever or witty or profound. Usually what readers actually want is simple, informative logic. (Sure, there's an art to turning something complex, obscure and illogical into something simple, informative and logical, but c'mon guys, sometimes a sentence is just a sentence.)

Unlike copywriters, your favorite bloggers probably see themselves as business people or entrepreneurs, not specialist writers. They write only because it's a means to an end.

So they don't muddy the waters with pretentious writing.

7) They're not writing for their teachers

I think I was wrong in point 5. There's not just one devil sitting on the copywriter's shoulder, there are two. One's their client and the other's their high school English teacher or college Literature professor. Sadly, most of us are taught that complex writing is quality writing. I remember when I started out as a professional writer in 1994, this was the very first thing I had to un-learn. Readers don't want complexity, they want clarity.

Your favorite bloggers would probably rather spend their time counting their money than writing complex prose. (And most of them probably weren't paying attention to their high school English teacher anyway!)

So they write more clearly and concisely.

They follow best practices

Most copywriters don't follow best practices. Even those who know what they should be doing usually don't have the freedom to do it. And the rest are too tied up in misguided rules, bad habits and blissful inexperience to get it right.
Whether they know it or not, your favorite bloggers do follow best practices. Some may have taught themselves those practices, some may have been taught by a copywriter, some may just have a sixth sense. But they all follow them.
So they know how to write very well.

So what's it all mean?

It means your favorite bloggers write better than most copywriters because they aren't pressured into writing badly. Nor do they write badly simply out of habit. They have the freedom, the incentive and the understanding to write what their readers need to hear, and to follow the best practices most copywriters overlook.

So they're more likely to say exactly the right things, in exactly the right way.

Now excuse me while I duck for cover…

Glenn Murray is a specialist SEO copywriter. He heads copywriting studio, Divine Write . You can contact him on Twitter (@divinewrite) or by phone on +612 4334 6222. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com or for further details.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Bloggers versus Copywriters: 8 Reasons why Bloggers do it Better

共用此

Over the last few months I've been sharing a monthly breakdown of where my income comes from in the hope of illustrating some of the methods bloggers might like to look at when making money from blogging (see previous months linked to below).

The month of July was the second month in a row where eBooks were the biggest money maker for me. Here's a pie chart showing the percentage breakdowns.

Before I say much more let me show you how the different income streams have tracked over the last 4 months (note I've expanded 'speaking' to be 'speaking and events' to include the ProBlogger Training Day (which wasn'ta massive earner as we kept the price down – but because it's something I'd like to try again). I have also added a 'total' line to this chart to track total income.

A few comments:

• Obviously there was a big eBook spike in June as we launched a photography eBook that month. July was down on the launch month but still very healthy – partly because of a few specials that I ran in July (I did a 'Christmas in July' special as well as offering a few communities a discount on the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook ).
• AdSense was also pretty good last month – there's no real explanation for this as traffic was steady. I can only guess that some advertisers were involved in a bit of a bidding war on Digital Photography School which drove prices up a little.
• Affiliate programs were quite down – that can be explained simply by me not doing as many promotions in July – mainly because there were not too many product launches in my niches (for some reason they always seem to come out at once).
• Direct Ad Sales are on the rise and you'll see this continue to grow next month as I've been working with a direct ad sales rep who is now selling ads for my sites which has already led to some new clients.
• Over all it was a good month. While not as spectacular as July it was up on the previous two months significantly.
• Continuity Programs – a few people have asked what they are. In short – they're membership sites – ProBlogger.com and The Third Tribe .

August is shaping up to be an interesting month. Later this week I'll be launching a product here on ProBlogger (at a fairly inexpensive price point) which will be interesting to track. I've also participated in a couple of affiliate launches and have seen some interesting direct ad sales. I'm not quite sure whether it'll be as good as July but am working toward it.

How was July for you?

If you're interested in the previous months breakdowns they're at:

• How I make money blogging: April
• How I make money blogging: May
• How I make money blogging: June

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for July 2010

共用此

Over the last month several hundred bloggers in the SitsGirls and TheBlogFrog communities have come together to tackle 31 Days to Build a Better Blog together . The 31 days are coming to an end this week and I've been so excited to see how working through the workbook as a large group has helped so many bloggers.

Almost every day since the challenge started I've had participants tell me that their blogs have been growing as a result of participating.

I've chatted to a number of participants in the last few days to get their feedback on the workbook and to try to get to the bottom of why it has helped them (or how it could be better) and there has been one consistent piece of feedback that I think is so valuable that I just need to share it .

Image by sevenphonecalls

Here's the thing:

Almost every person I've talked to has said most of the teaching and exercises in the workbook are things that they already knew that they should be doing. The problem was that while they knew it – they were not doing it.

For example – Day 5:

Day 5 of the challenge is to email one of your readers. The idea is to give someone a little unexpected personal attention, to get to know them and to help them in some way beyond what they might expect.

The principle is simple and the concept wouldn't be foreign to any blogger. It's something most of us know that would be a worthwhile experience but yet its something that so many bloggers would write off as not important enough to really do.

The reality is that if you did this once a day over a year that you'd have 365 readers (each with their own network) who you'll have made an impression on.

The impact could be significant, particularly for a new blog, yet for some reason many bloggers are content just to have the knowledge that looking after readers and giving them some personal attention could help their blog – but never take action on it.

Example #2

This same theme came up as a result of the ProBlogger Training Day here in Melbourne two weeks back. Much of what we covered on the day was not particularly new or revolutionary (although for some it was). However this week I've had 3 emails from attendees saying talking about how they've already grown their blogging business (two doubled their readership and one told me that they've just started experimenting with affiliate marketing and are making over $150 a day!).

In each case I asked the blogger what it was that helped them and in every case they told me that they started doing something that they'd always said that they'd start doing.

This post is not a pseudo sales page for my workbook or training days (although sometimes when you pay for something you feel more accountable to take action) – the principle applies whether you use one of my products, read the free posts on ProBlogger or work on your blog alone. The key is to not be satisfied to KNOW how to improve your blog but to move beyond theory and do something.

What should you DO?

There are many things that help to grow a successful blog. In the 31 Days workbook I covered 31 of them but the list is almost endless.

One exercise that you might like to do today is to grab a notebook and pen and jot down as many things that you already know to do to improve a blog. Don't go looking for ideas or reading more theory today – but make a list of things that you already know that could improve your blog and identify some that you will implement today.

For you it might be increasing your content creation (for those of you who've let your posting levels slip), for others it might be paying some more attention to current readers, for others it could be reaching out to other bloggers in your niche, for some it might be about developing that eBook that you've been saying you'll do one day…. the key is to move beyond the theory and do something.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

The Key to Successful Blogging: Do Something!

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A few days back I shared a little analysis of my AdSense earnings as it related to sources of traffic and looked at how – for me – traffic from newsletters was actually the most valuable traffic that I get on my photography site .

This dispelled the myth that loyal readers to your site become blind to ads and are not likely to click them – but I wanted to dig down a little deeper to look at the difference between first time visitors and repeat visitors and how they interact with ads. Here's what I found when I looked at the last 3 months.

On my photography site it is the case the new visitors click ads and earn more per 1000 visitors than repeat visitors.

In addition to those coming from newsletters repeat visitors on my site would include RSS readers, visitors from social media (facebook and Twitter).

This makes sense – those there for the first time are probably clicking around more, exploring and looking for things to click on. They're also seeing ad units for the first time and are likely to click them.

However repeat visitors are not far behind. I'm not allowed to share the exact figures but the difference in CTR was tiny and the eCPM difference while noticeable was not huge. Repeat readers are still valuable – particularly as many of them are coming back on a daily basis so on a per visit basis they're not earning as much but over a year they're earning considerably more than a one time visitor.

update : I should say that one of the reasons that I suspect AdSense is better at converting for repeat visitors these days is that they not only rely upon CPC (cost per click) ads but also use CPM (cost per impression) ads which means that people no longer need to click ads for you to earn anything.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Repeat Visitors vs New Visitors – Which is Worth More to Your AdSense Earnings?

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This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world's best blog posts) – Darren

Think interviews are best left to Barbara Walters, news reporters, or magazine journalists? 再想想。 Conducting interviews for your blog helps create unique content, increases your blog's authority, and adds an additional voice of expertise. In today's post, we'll look at how some bloggers covered this week's most talked-about stories using interviews and how you can use interviews to your advantage. As always, the weekly blogosphere trends have been provided by Regator.com .

1. Proposition / Prop 8 – The Courage Campaign Institute's blog, Prop 8 Trial Tracker, has been traveling the United States, doing video interviews with both supporters and protesters of gay marriage. One interview in particular, from “ An amazing 24 hours: Round-up of NOM tour and marriage equality news ,” was featured by several other bloggers and news organizations. Creating exclusive content that is picked up by other media outlets gives you opportunities to build your blog's reputation as a voice of authority in your niche.

2. Steven Slater – There are a lot of ways to secure an interview and, while stalking apartment building elevators as City Room did for “ Flight Attendant Had Long Imagined Escaping Down Chute ” certainly isn't your best first option, it did do the trick and prove that a bit of persistence and thinking outside the box can lead to an unexpected win. Try a brief, polite email or phone call first, detailing what you'd like to talk about, the amount of time you expect it to take, why you are interested in talking with that individual in particular, and when/where the piece will be published.

3. Jennifer Aniston – You don't always need to interview the big celebrity to create a useful post. For “ Jennifer Aniston Not 'Destructive,' Say Parenting Experts ,” PopEater talked with parenting experts about Aniston's newest role. Insights from a social psychologist, a parenting expert, and a mommy blogger add information and expertise. If you blog in a particular niche, you should be working right now to build relationships with experts in your field. Keep a database of people who can be interviewed or quoted on your topic.

4. Teen Choice Awards – Odds are you won't be joining PopSugar on the red carpet of the Teen Choice Awards (“ David Beckham and Twilight Take Over Teen Choice, Zac Tips Vanessa's Sexy Dance, and Ashley's Bikini Party ”) and unless your blog is focused on celebrity gossip or pop culture, you probably wouldn't want to. But the good news is that “regular” people (aka non-celebrities) can be just as exciting and interesting—often more so because, unlike stars, the average Joe isn't media trained to spit out PR-approved soundbites. I interviewed musicians and actors for years and, to this day, one of my favorite interviews was with a cop who'd been fired for perpetrating a Bigfoot hoax. People are interesting if you give them a chance.

5. CEO Mark Hurd – Keep in mind that, because these are the week's most blogged-about stories, the blogs that are able to score interviews with the high-profile individuals involved are likely to be larger entities, such as The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn from them when it comes to growing your blog. “ Digits Live Show: Mark Hurd Isn't Leaving HP Quietly ,” shows the importance of prepping for an interview and researching your subject before sitting down to talk. Study the topic and come prepared with a list of questions. Never try to wing an interview.

6. Ground Zero – Though it's difficult to tell exactly how War Room's interview with Newt Gingrich's spokesman for “ Gingrich aide: Mosque at Ground Zero is like statue of Marx at Arlington ” played out based on the post, it does bring to mind another piece of interview advice: Leave controversy and potentially upsetting questions until last. Make sure you've asked your subject any other questions you may have because, by bringing up sensitive topics, you stand the risk of ending the interview or, at the very least, putting your subject in a less-than-helpful mood.

7. Net Neutrality – If you enjoy interviewing, consider adding a weekly or monthly podcast to your blog. Bits has a regular audio component that features a combination of interviews, news, and tips (“ Tech Talk Podcast: Net Neutrality ”). You can choose from any number of podcasting tools .

8. Senator Ted Stevens – GretaWire conducted a phone interview for “ Former Gov. Sarah Palin Reflects on Ted Stevens .” Interviews can be conducted via phone, instant message, email, or in person. If your subject is high-profile, they may have their own requirements. Otherwise, choose based on the length of the interview (driving two hours for a ten-minute in-person interview doesn't make sense) and the limitations of each option (email and instant message don't allow you to read body language and the subject's vocal cues). If you decide on an email interview, be clear about your deadline. If you choose phone and decide to record, be sure to ask the subject's permission.

9. Scott Pilgrim – The “ Exclusive: Edgar Wright Vs. ComingSoon.net…FIGHT! ” Q&A illustrates the most important quality of a good interviewer: being a good listener. Remember: The interview is not about you. It's okay to add some personal information to put the subject at ease or build rapport but keep the focus on your subject. In my personal opinion, this interview tends to bring the interviewer into the mix a little too much but it's clear that he is taking the time to listen to the answers and ask solid follow up questions. Follow-ups of this kind can yield some of the best information, and if you're too busy thinking of what you'll say next, you'll miss those opportunities. Keep quiet and let your interviewee fill the silence.

10. Katy Perry – Blogging is about filling a need for your readers. As you interview or prepare for an interview, ask yourself what your audience wants or expects to learn from your subject. According to “ YouTube Users More Interested in Katy Perry Than Barack Obama ,” YouTube's approach to interviewing Katy Perry was to actually ask YouTube users for question suggestions. You can try this on your own blog if you'll be talking with someone who is well-known in your niche. Keep in mind that the questions you choose—whether created by you or your readers—should be open ended (“What do you like about ProBlogger?” rather than “Do you like ProBlogger?”) and creative. Stock, overused questions yield nothing but stock, overused answers.

One last bit of advice: If you can't score the interview, don't do this .

Do you do interviews for your blog? Please share any tips you have as well as an example or two from your blog in the comments. I'd love to check out what you're working on. See you next week!

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator .

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Blogosphere Trends + Interview Tips

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I recently attended an event where a presenter talked about the reasons that they didn't use email marketing as part of their online business. One of the main reasons that he presented was that he didn't think that people coming from a newsletter would click the ads on his site.

His reasoning was that people coming to his site week after week from a newsletter would become blind to the AdSense ads he was using (his main source of income). So rather than working on building loyal readers he put all of his efforts into SEO to generate one of readers.

There were lots of nods in the room from attendees – on one level what he was saying did make some sense – but for me it didn't quite ring true.

You see my biggest days of earnings from AdSense are always the day I send out my newsletter. It drives a lot of traffic but also does seem to convert in terms of income (all kind, including eBook sales, affiliate promotions and AdSense).

Today I decided to dig a little deeper into my Google Analytics stats (which now integrates with AdSense) to see if what he said was actually true. Here's what I found when it comes to AdSense earnings on my photography site from different sources of traffic over the last 3 months.

I'm not able to share with you actual eCPM (earnings per 1000 impressions) or CTR (click through rate) as I think it'd break the terms of service with AdSense – but I think the chart speaks pretty clearly for itself.

'Aweber' is the traffic coming from my newsletter and I've included a number of other sources of traffic to compare how it performs. You can see on both eCPM and CTR that Aweber out performs not only Search Engine traffic but traffic coming from different types of social media and referral traffic from other sites.

Newsletter traffic is certainly converting on both CTR and eCPM. This is confirmed when I look at other newsletter traffic (for example traffic coming from AOL and Yahoo's mail servers) which is similarly higher than other types of traffic both in terms of eCPM and CTR.

What I also found interesting in these results was traffic coming from sites like Facebook and Flickr which both again out performed Google traffic on both CTR and eCPM. I had always assumed that social media traffic didn't convert as well as other types of traffic but at least on these results it seems that not all social media traffic is alike. On that topic – Twitter didn't convert anywhere near as well as Facebook.

Of course these sorts of results will vary from niche to niche. Perhaps because my photography site is not specifically a 'product' site but is a 'how to' site the traffic from Google is a little more general and less in a buying mood which could decrease the conversions – but for me at least it is an indication that I'm on the right track investing time into growing my newsletter list!

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Newsletter Readers Do Click Ads

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Each week I see multiple products launched targeting bloggers wanting to improve their blogs. I've tested many of them in my time and the reality is that most don't deliver what they promise and I don't promote them. However from time to time – some hit the mark and present unique and helpful information that delivers real value.

This week there were two of these such products that hit the market. Both are quite different in their focus but both are from experts in their field and will help bloggers improve two important aspects of their blogs:

1。 Jon Morrow's Apprentice Program for Guest Bloggers

Jon is someone who has built a career for himself as a copywriter and blogger using Guest Posting. He's been a guest poster here on ProBlogger numerous times and is a regular on blogs such as CopyBlogger.

Over the last week or so he's release a series of great videos ( here and here are two) on the topic of guest blogging and this week launched a comprehensive program that literally guarantees to get you a guest post on a high profile blog (if you don't you'll get your money back).

Jon's course is a mix of video, private forum, Q&A calls and one on one interaction with Jon.

Guest blogging is a technique many bloggers have used to launch their blogs to great things and Jon's the perfect person to talk you through how to do it. Sign up Today Here .

2。 Gideon Shalwick's Rapid Video Blogging

Gideon Shalwick has also taken his blogging to the next level by being prolific at one aspect of online discipline – VIDEO. He too has released a series of great videos this week that talk you through different aspects of using video to make money online (check them out here , here and here – they are free and whether you buy the course or not offer great insights) and today launched a great product – Rapid Video Blogging .

Gideon's course is massive and comprehensive. It includes 125 instructional videos and transcripts/audio version as well as a heap of great tools and resources including videos with great video bloggers, live interactive sessions for Q&A.

Video is an incredibly dynamic medium and mastering it is something many bloggers need to learn – check out Rapid Video Blogging for more information on just how to do that.

Which one is for You?

Both of these resources come from experts in their fields and will present different value to different bloggers. Neither are super cheap entry level products (you're getting a heap of content with both) and so you'll want to consider your needs carefully and view some of the free videos that the guys have produced – but if you've been thinking about how to take your blogging up a notch lately and want to make an investment into your learning – do give them both consideration.

They both do come with money back satisfaction guarantees and both Jon and Gideon are people I trust to honour that promise.

I'm looking forward to hearing how you enjoy these courses and seeing how they help you improve your blogs.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

2 Products Worth Considering to Improve Your Blog Today

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Many times we see successful product launches being talked about and are so dazzled by the huge sales numbers and income generated but fail to see all the hard groundwork that has been done behind the scenes for months and years before the launch.

Sometimes this is because those talking about their product launches don't want those considering buying their 'how to make money' products to know its actually hard work and sometimes they do tell us but…. well we only hear what we want to and the dream of fast money makes us deaf to the reality.

The reality is that behind every successful online launch there is a lot of groundwork. It might not be as sexy as the actual launch process and it's result – but it's just as important. This video encourages bloggers to keep the glamorous big picture launches in mind but to also do the unglamorous daily things that take you closer to the big pay day!

笔记

• Watch the full sized version at What they Don't Tell You About Successful Product Launches
• Video shot on a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 (aff) – here's why I use that camera to shoot my videos .

What They Don't Tell You About Successful Product Launches Transcript

I've had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People .

Have you ever seen a product launch that has done particularly well? We see it a lot in the Internet marketing circles, people selling their own information or products on how to launch a product by talking about how much they made. You know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in a launch or millions of dollars in a launch. These techniques to show what you've made are fairly typical in this Internet marketing space. But one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of times when these big launches are being talked about, they're not talked about in terms of the journey that has gone before the particular launch.

I recently had a big launch on digital photography school , we launched a travel photography book , I've talked it about a couple of times on ProBlogger .

The book did really well. We sold 5,000 or so copies in the first week and a half over the launch period and since then have sold another five or six hundred, so it's, it's probably around the six figure launch mark, which for me that's a fairly significant amount of money. As a launch event it was really quite profound, it was quite powerful and it was quite fun to be involved with. But that launch was built on the back of four and a half years of other stuff. It only succeeded and got to that six figure level because I put in four and a half years of work on that particular blog, and even before that four and a half years I'd been blogging about photography on another photography blog for two years, so six and a half years to get a six figure launch. I guess if you were to do the figures on that it probably doesn't add up to six figures in a month, it kind of adds up to maybe five figures a month if I'm lucky (I never was good at maths).

So what are the foundational things that you need to be working on as a blogger?

You know sometimes we hear about these six and seven figure launches and think there's no way we could ever do that, but the reality is that you can but, but you need to look it at as a journey, and there's a whole heap of things that you can do every day to take you a little bit closer to some of these bigger launches that you might want to do one day.

Build a Content Base

Every day over the last eight years on my blogs I have put up content and I've tried to make that content the most useful content that I can. So that for me is probably one of the most basic things that you can do every day on your blog to take you closer to that big launch that you might have, useful content, keep adding it to your blog whether it be video, whether it be a pod cast, whether it be a post, whether it be just tweets and, and adding content into the web in different ways.

Build Relationships

Another foundation for me has always been about relationships . Every day you have the opportunity to take yourself closer to that big launch by getting to know someone else on the web, whether that be a potential reader, whether that be another blogger, whether that be just someone who's interested in the same kind of stuff as you on Twitter, you never know where those relationships will take you. You never know whether that one reader may lead you to thousands of other readers, you never know whether that person may be someone that you can collaborate with later on a particular project. It's about building relationships. So not only should you be adding content to your blog every day, I'd be searching out for at least one other person that you can connect with, someone that you don't perhaps know yet that you can begin to get to know. Not with any agenda just to get to know them because who knows where that might end up.

Build Your Skill Set

Another thing that take you closer to these big launches is building your skill set . Adding to your repertoire of things that you can do, your abilities to, to patent design your blog perhaps master a different type of social media so getting, getting to the point where you understand and can use Twitter better. Maybe it's around video, whatever it might be. There's so many different things that you can learn, and yeah it's great to outsource some of these things but it's also good to learn and know them. If you can add to your own knowledge base you will be taking yourself closer to that big launch one day. You can add to your brand, just little things like, you know, tweaking your design, changing the brand that you have, thinking through what it is that you stand for as a, as a person and as a brand, all of these things can take you a little bit closer to that, that big, that big launch.

Build Your Email List

Another Foundation for me has been about building my email list. Building the number of people who are subscribing to my blog and finding new ways to do that. This is something that you kind of have to set up and let it run to some, some degree, but it's a day by day thing. Every day as you add people to your list whether they be email subscribers or Twitter followers or RSS subscribers, as you grow that network your influence grows and the potential to have a bigger launch and to have a bigger impact upon more people grows also.

I guess the point of this video is not to come up with a conclusive list of things that you can do that will take you closer to your, your goals one day, but it's to get you to think about what you can do today, what you can do tomorrow and to think about some of those little things that will take you closer to your ultimate goals. Set yourself some tasks this week. Just little things that you can do, posts that you can write, people that you can interact with, just features that you can add to your blog, new skills that you can learn. All of these things will take you closer to that ultimate goal. It's great to have the idea of a big product launch in the back of your mind, but at the front of your mind needs to be these sorts of daily activities that will take you closer to that.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

What They Don't Tell You About Successful Product Launches

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One week ago today in Melbourne the first ever ProBlogger training day took place. What started as a spur of the moment idea less than 4 weeks before ballooned into a very worthwhile experience.

Originally I had thought it would just be a day for 10-15 bloggers gathering around a board room table talking about blogging – but it quickly turned into a sold out training day with 150 bloggers from around Australia (and one from New Zealand) packed into a hotel's conference room to spend a full day learning about four aspects of blogging.

Speaking on the day were Chris Garrett , Yaro Starak , Collis Ta'eed , Pip Lincolne , Shayne Tilley from SitePoint and myself.

We covered four main 'pillars' of blogger:

1. Creating Killer Content
2. Finding Readers
3. Building Community and Reader Engagement
4. Monetization

Here's Yaro, Chris and myself – and no we didn't coordinate our clothing for the day but we're wondering if perhaps jeans and grey shirts are the new blogger uniform. Image by TheCreativePen .

There was also a couple of panels and two case studies as well as a work-shopping session.

I wasn't quite sure how we'd pull it all together in such a short time but considering there was only a few weeks lead time the event went swimmingly with loads of requests to do it again both in Melbourne and around the country (and overseas). I'm not quite sure when or how we'll put on another one – but I do hope we can do something similar again.

A number of people kept great notes on the day so I've compiled the ones I've found below for those of you not able to be there. Some of them are blow by blow accounts so you'll be able to pick up a lot of the tips touched on during the day. Also below is a video shot on the day by Lara from Social Rabbit asking attendees for tips on what they learned.

Summaries/Notes from the Day

• The Value-Add – Notes from ProBlogger Event Round Up (detailed notes – 6 parts with more pics)
• The Blog Stylist – 15 Useful Blogging Resources and Tools Discussed as a result of the ProBlogger Event
• Brendans Blog – ProBlogger Training Day Wrap-up and Part 2 .
• Connecting Librarian – Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3
• Nuffnang Better Blogging Tips from ProBlogger Training Day
• Would You Travel 1846 miles for this man?

PS : we did record the day and are trying to work out what to do with the 7 or so hours of content recorded. One option is to bundle it into a DVD – if you're interested in buying a copy please let me know in comments below to give us an indication as to whether it's feasible to do so.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

150 Bloggers Pack Melbourne Hotel for ProBlogger Training Day

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一两个月后，我决定开始我的视频帖子转录。 A number of readers have enquired as to why I am doing this – here are the 3 main reasons I have my videos transcribed:

1。 无障碍

不是每个人都能够消费视频内容的位置。 For some it is a technical issue – not everyone has access to broadband. For others it is about the device (although more and more mobile devices are set up for video).

其他还有一个物理问题，阻碍他们从观看视频 - 例如，我知道ProBlogger读者听力障碍和困难与我的影片（尤其是因为我倾向于咕哝和唇读困难）。

提供成绩单，满足各种需求的读者，谁也不能，或其他的原因之一，查看视频轻松。

2。 Learning Styles and Workflow

其他读者只是“视频的人”。 They rarely view them and would much rather read content than watch and listen to it. I myself would probably fit into this category – while I enjoy watching videos on occasion I'm much more likely to be drawn to content that is predominantly text that I can scan to quickly identify the juicy bits.

Ultimately its about appealing to people with different personalities, online workflows and learning styles to maximise your reach.

3。 搜索引擎优化

而像谷歌这样的搜索引擎索引视频内容的试验 - 现实情况是，当涉及到搜索引擎优化，文本仍然是国王。 只是一个视频的职位是没有可能作为一个良好的文本块后高排名。

你转录您的影片吗？

获取视频和/或播客转录确实需要时间和/或货币，但在我心中，它是价值最大化影响的一种方式的努力。 I'd be interested to hear whether you do it on your blog?

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

3 Reasons that I Have My Video Posts Transcribed

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Over the last week or so we've featured a series of posts here on ProBlogger that explore questions surrounding the theme of 'content'.

As the posts were spread out over 10 days I wanted to sum it all up with links all in the one place – so if you missed one – here they are!

• Source Quality Content… Continuously
• Blog Content Strategy 101
• Content Producer's Copyright Checklist
• Big Content Monetisation Ideas for the Little Guy
• 5 Ways to Build Your Blog's Voice
• Use Content Channels to Boost your Readership

Thanks to Georgina Laidlaw for putting together the series.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Essential Reading on Content for your Blog

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by Kelly Diels and Dave Doolin

In the ancient world of print publications – for example, in any academic or professional journal – when you send an article to the editor, you receive an acknowledgment of receipt.

Scratch that. In any time – past, present, future – professional publications (print and electronic ones) confirm receipt of your piece.

That is, you are going to get an email telling you somebody knows you submitted an article.

In the olden days (you know, like ten whole years ago), you would get a real, physical letter in the mail.

Quaint, sure.

But not hard.

The process isn't difficult; there are professional standards. You submit your piece. You get an acknowledgment. Later, you get notified that you're accepted for publication, or that revisions may be required, or that the article is denied. It's not hard to do or understand.

But in the blogging world, these standards haven't really developed. We all know people who've submitted pieces to another blogger and heard nothing.

Hell, we are those people.

And that disturbed Dave enough to email Kelly, informing her “I have a huge rant building on guest posts.”

Kelly's response: “Bad for brand. Do this, instead: write a piece *encouraging* bloggers to create guest-post submission channels with less friction. That's useful. Ranting about this isn't.”

Kelly is right ( this time -d ). There are more productive things to rant about.

And while it might not be productive to rant about the guest post process, it's certainly productive to talk about it. And improve it.

As bloggers, we graze on both sides of the fence – we accept guest posts for our blogs, and we guest post on other blogs.

So all of us know that guest posting can be hard. Hard on your nerves and hell on your courage. But worth it – because it can be a real honour to have your work published on another site, especially a popular, authoritative one.

That's something both of us hear from our people, again and again: how do you land guest posts on other, bigger blogs? And how do you get the courage to even submit them in the first place?

Well, you just do . You do things to bolster your courage. You do your research.

是这样的：

• you check to see how the other blogger prefers to receive pitches. Does she want to develop a concept, together? Or does he want a finished piece?
• you read all the recent pieces and poke around in the archives. Where is the gap? What piece do you need to read? Then go write that piece (or pitch).
• you check to see if the blog you want to submit to has guest post guidelines. That helps you understand what the other blogger wants – so you can deliver it.
• you check to see if there is a copyright statement – because you want to know who owns the piece after it is published. (Or at least we do. Because we get paid from our hot 'n sweaty 'n hopefully profitable content – and you do, too. So this is important.)

Doing all of these things will increase your confidence. You might even get brave enough to, you know, submit it.

To the other blogger. The blogger who will receive, read, and accept or reject your piece. The blogger who will hopefully publish your piece.

(And, being a blogger, sometimes you are that blogger – the one receiving and publishing guest post submissions.)

Since you know how stupid-hard it can be to get the gumption to send a piece in, don't you want to make it a little easier for others to summon the courage to submit a guest post to you? Don't you want to honor the submission effort?

是。 You do. Really, you do .

And so, to that end, this is what you, the publisher, could - and should – do:

1. have a dedicated e-mail address to which to submit guest posts (and an autoresponse confirming receipt)
2. have someone checking it and responding regularly
3. have a submissions guidelines page
4. have some language about copyright (who gets it?) and guest author expectations (respond to comments, tweet, etc)
5. have a worksheet to evaluate the guest post and return that worksheet to the guest author so that they'll know what was working/not working
6. have incentives such as a dedicated biographical box with a photo and keyword-anchored backlinks, or even better,
7. allow the guest author to use their own affiliate links or Adense codes.
8. consistently comment on your guest author's blogs, consistently promote their articles by retweeting, etc.
9. if you use a plugin such as CommentLuv, promote your guest post authors before promoting yourself
10. if your guest author provides a service or has a product of interest to your readers, allow your guest author to pitch congruently to your readers.

And you should do that because receiving guest posts, graciously, is just good business (and relationship-building) practice – not to mention honorable .

In fact, we should all do that because we all know that submitting your best stuff – and it does need to be good – to other blogs is hard.

The whole damn trying-to-get-published process is hard. It can be

hard to create a guest post

hard to part with it

hard to wait for an answer

But most of all, submitting a guest post is hard because you're risking rejection.

So we – bloggers who publish guests posts – aka “ publishers” – need to amp up our game, act like professionals, and honour the submission effort.

And that’s not hard at all.

About the authors: Kelly Diels writes Cleavage, a blog about the three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning . Dave Doolin blogs at Website In A Weekend, where you can learn how to blog . Together they founded the top secret (sssssssh!!!) League of Extraordinary Bloggers where you'll learn to have writing, blogging and business superpowers.

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

你知道吗？ Bloggers – You and Me – Are Publishers, and We Should Act Like It. (So Let's Not Be Jerks when Someone Sends Us A Guest Post!)

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This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world's best blog posts). – Darren

Each week, we look at the ten most blogged-about stories of the last seven days, as provided by Regator (which is turning two years old on Saturday!). Today, we'll see how several great blog posts looked beyond the basics of these popular stories to give their readers more value and provide unique content. Digging deeper to approach posts in an unconventional or creative way can mean the difference between getting noticed and fading into the background. Let's see some examples:

1. Proposition / Prop 8
   The basics: Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, was ruled unconstitutional.
   Looking deeper: Daily Intel ’s “ The Prop 8 Ruling: The Scrutiny Question, and What Will Happen Next? ” examines the judge's methods of scrutinizing the case, how that approach will impact future rulings, and the history of other cases that led to this point. When everyone else is telling readers what happened, do a bit of extra legwork to tell them how it happened.
2. Chelsea Clinton
   The basics: Chelsea Clinton got married last weekend.
   Looking deeper: Conservative blogger Kathleen McKinley's “ Weddings and More. How Two Former President's Daughters Are Quite Different ” looked beyond the bride's choice of hairstyle and gown by comparing Chelsea Clinton's wedding to the wedding of Jenna Bush, another first daughter. She then broadened the comparison past the weddings themselves and into the lifestyles of the young women. Use comparisons to create a post that's more appealing to readers in your niche.
3. 机器人
   The basics: It was reported that Android phones were outselling iPhones.
   Looking deeper: Rather than taking the figures at face value, Cult of Mac spoke to an analyst in an attempt to put the figures in perspective in “ Android Competing Against 'Dumb Phones.' ” Take time to question information you receive through press releases, other blogs, magazines, newspapers, television…well, pretty much any source. Don't be afraid to do some extra reporting.
4. American Idol
   The basics: Ellen DeGeneres left the show after one season as a judge.
   Looking deeper: While most blogs were awaiting official news about new judges, Pop & Hiss offered ten recommendations and the reasons for each in “ Why not hire a music critic as an 'American Idol' judge? Ten contestants for the job .” Add your own opinions and recommendations to a story to make it your own.
5. Oil Spill
   The basics: BP finally managed to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
   Looking deeper: Investment blog Seeking Alpha chose the angle that worked best for its readers in “ Static Kill a Success; What's BP Worth Now? ” The post hypothesizes on the company's current value and, just as importantly, explains how the blogger arrived at those figures. Use your expertise to provide value to your readers and information that other types of bloggers cannot.
6. Ground Zero
   The basics: An Islamic cultural center (incorrectly referred to as a “mosque” by some) is set to be built on the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, causing controversy and debate.
   Looking deeper: As the tagline “Answers to your questions about the news” indicates, Slate ’s Explainer does a fantastic job of looking beyond the headlines and dissecting issues. “ Can anyone stop construction of the mosque near Ground Zero? ” which examines the legal and zoning issues around the facility, is no exception. Look for aspects of a story that aren't being explored and try to tackle unanswered questions.
7. BlackBerry Torch
   The basics: Research In Motion (RIM) launched the BlackBerry Torch.
   Looking deeper: Instead of simply reporting the release, PCWorld ’s “ BlackBerry Torch First Impressions: Fresh But Familiar Indeed ” blogged their first impressions based on the blogger's brief interaction with the device at the launch event. Going out and employing a hands-on approach will always get you better results than sitting at your desk waiting for press releases or review products.
8. Kanye West
   The basics: Kanye West joined Twitter, spawning memes galore.
   Looking deeper: Vulture ’s “ What Did It Cost to Be Kanye This Week? ” is an extremely creative, entertaining approach to the story. Look for trends within a story (eg, not only is Kanye on Twitter, he often tweets about his lavish lifestyle) to find unusual and creative angles.
9. Google Wave
   The basics: Google's much-hyped Google Wave was shuttered this week.
   Looking deeper: In “ Why Developers Did Not Adopt Google Wave ,” ReadWriteWeb took a broad approach to coverage, discussing reasons Wave may have failed, the future benefits of its brief existence, and previous coverage of the product. Explaining why something happened (as well as how, see example #1) can be just as important as explaining what happened. Take the extra time and effort to give readers more.
10. Lady Gaga的
    The basics: Lady Gaga's cover story in the latest issue of Vanity Fair and record number of Video Music Awards put her on the list this week.
    Looking deeper: Gawker.tv used a combination of techniques we've discussed above—namely using comparisons and identifying why something (in this case, Gaga's popularity) has occurred—in “ Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and the Coup d'Pop: A Diva Revolution. ” Developing and supporting your own hypothesis is a sure way to ensure original content.

How do you get beyond the surface story to a unique angle that will appeal to your readership? Share your ideas and methods in the comments!

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator .

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

Blogosphere Trends + Digging Deeper

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I know it sounds incredibly odd, but it seems like a number of my colleagues, friends, and acquaintances all have been complaining about Web site issues as of late. In fact, last week I experienced the same thing. The reason that I was unable to make a post last week was because Google decided to ban this blog. Okay, I know that I'm not the best writer in the world but is it really that bad?

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

它已经有一段时间，因为我们有一个调查，所以今天我想踢一个主题WordPress插件。 What are your favourite FREE WordPress Plugins?

尽量保持你的前5名，这样的事情没有得到手 - 但其中免费WordPress的插件是最有用的给你在下面的评论，请购。

If you have some premium/paid ones that you want to suggest – please hold off on sharing those as I'll run a post later in the week asking for your feedback on those.

So – w hat are you favourite free WordPress Plugins – and Why ? Over to you!

这个职位是： ProBlogger博客提示 。

免费的WordPress插件-什么是你的最爱？

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I'm preparing a presentation on 'Finding Readers for your Blog' which I'll be giving at the Melbourne Blog Training Day next Tuesday.

It's got me thinking back to some of the bigger days of traffic that I've had on my own blogs over the years and I thought I'd open up some discussion on the topic to see if we can identify any trends.

What was your biggest day of Traffic (or 'days' if you can think of more than one) and what happened to make them occur?

I asked this on Twitter yesterday and it was interesting to see the responses. Some of the reasons giving included:

• controversial posts
• creative posts
• random links from bigger sites
• social bookmarking events (getting popular on Digg or Delicious)
• ranking high for terms in Google around big news events
• breaking a scoop news story

I'm sure we'll see some of these themes in your experiences but know that there will be other themes too.

For me there have been many bigger than normal days over the last 8 years. Two that spring to mind include:

• My Six Figure Blogging Moment – I had been blogging for a while and suddenly realised that I was on track for over $100,000 in a year earnings from my blogs. The first time I mentioned it was in an interview that I did. I didn't really think about the implications of talking about it at the time but that interview went viral – as did my followup post. What kicked it all off was a mention on Slashdot (which at the time was equivalent to getting on the front page of Digg).
• Front page of Yahoo (sort of) – then there was the day that a post on my photography blog was featured by one of Yahoo's tech blogs. That in itself didn't sent much traffic but when that particular Yahoo blog's post was featured on the front page of Yahoo for 4-5 hours one day I saw traffic hit my blog like I've never seen traffic before or since. I don't remember the exact numbers but I saw more traffic from that 4-5 hours than I'd normally see in a week of traffic.

So now it's over to you. What Was Your Biggest Traffic Day and Why did it Happen?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

What Was Your Biggest Traffic Day?

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A Guest Post by Karol Gajda from Ridiculously Extraordinary .

I'm going to come right out and say it: I'ma Lady Gaga fan.

I didn't really know who she was until about 6 months ago. I knew the name, but hadn't heard the music or learned about the artist. Then I heard the music and my first thought was: “pop genius.” That said, it wasn't until I heard/read a few interviews and witnessed how she carried herself that I actually became a fan.

Lady Gaga isn't just a pop genius, she's an unapologetic strong-willed marketing genius as well.

There is a lot to be learned from someone like that.

Here's the tip of the iceberg …

1) Be opinionated. Take a side. Lady Gaga isn't afraid to speak out on issues she feels strongly about. In doing so, she keeps herself in the public eye. Even more, she attracts her right people.

2) Don't be afraid to make money. Blatant product placements in the biggest video of the year? 当然，为什么不呢？ There is nothing wrong with making ridiculous amounts of cash if that's what you want to do. There is no such thing as a sellout. If you want to put ads on your blog, do it. If you want to sell products, do it. Don't apologize. You should be paid to create art. Being a starving artist is nothing to be proud of.

3) Don't call your fans fans. Give them something unique to connect with. Gaga calls her fans Little Monsters. Chris Guillebeau has a Small Army. Adam Baker has The Militia. And I have the Freedom Fighters. (Whoa, I just noticed a bit of a military theme!)

4) Be different even if it's obvious you're trying to be different. But don't state that you're different, because if you have to put it into words then it's not true. 混乱？ How about this: there are too many normal people with normal blogs and normal writing. You are extraordinary so show it. (Show, don't tell.)

5) Be good to your Little Monsters. Treat them well and they will reciprocate and make you a superstar. During concerts, Lady Gaga calls a fan in the audience from the stage and invites them to have a drink with her after the show. 哇！ What can you do to connect with your people on a deeper level?

Personal example:

For the Version 0.9 launch of How To Live Anywhere, if you were one of the 132 who bought in the first 24 hours you got a hand written postcard from Goa, India.

为什么呢？ 3 reasons:

1) I wanted to thank the Freedom Fighters for changing the world, because every sale in the first 24 hours got doubled (by me) and sent to Kiva.org. I ended up sending $1600!

2) I wanted to thank the Freedom Fighters for taking quick, decisive action. Because that's really what the Ridiculously Extraordinary Movement is about, action.

3) In this ever expanding online universe I wanted to connect with the Freedom Fighters old school. Yeah, it took me a good 6 hours to write out those postcards, but it was worth it.

6) Piss lots of people off. You can't please everybody, right? Take it a step further and piss off the people that you're not going to please anyway. It keeps Gaga in the news and reinforces her message.

7) Befriend the right people. Lady Gaga has, among others, people like Perez Hilton on her side. Having someone like Perez, who influences pop culture strongly himself, in her corner is a perfect ally in her quest for pop world domination.

Produce killer content. Gaga writes ridiculously good pop hits. Undeniable. She doesn't produce an extraordinary amount of content, but everything she does is done very well.

9) Don't be ashamed of the mainstream. Gaga straight up admits her pop sensibilities are calculated. Everything she does is on purpose. Shoot for the top of your niche with your blog or don't take a shot at all.

What did I miss? What other lessons can Lady Gaga teach us about blog domination?

Read more from Karol Gajda at Ridiculously Extraordinary .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

9 Proven Tips For Creating An Extraordinarily Successful Blog [Lady Gaga Edition]

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This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world's best blog posts). – Darren

Man alive, I hate bringing you a list of blogosphere trends that includes both Lindsay Lohan and Jersey Shore—not to mention Sarah Palin. But I report the list, I don't decide what's on it (neither does Regator —it just calculates what's being blogged about most this week). Then again, you might love Lohan and eagerly await the next episode of Jersey Shore . You may have voted for Sarah Palin. My distaste for those things is merely my opinion and, in giving it, I have given you a better sense of who I am. As a blogger, I am all for that. And you should be too.

If you look at the web's top bloggers, you'll find they have a couple of things in common: a unique voice , which we talked about recently, and opinions to share. As Darren pointed out , “Expressing opinions on your blog is like adding seasoning to food. Without it, your blog could end up being quite bland and blend into the crowd.” Reporting the facts is useful but adding commentary helps your blog stand out from the dozens—or hundreds—of blogs covering the same story. If you all have the same facts, it's your viewpoint that will help remove you from the echo chamber. You are providing your translation of the story and encouraging your readers to see it in a new way.

Let's look at examples of posts about this week's top stories to see how sharing your opinions can enhance your blog and engage readers:

1. Shirley Sherrod – Michelle Cottle of The New Republic pulls no punches in “ The End of Andrew Breitbart .” She rails on “conservative pseudo-journalism” and refers to Breitbart as a “toxic tantrum.” Be warned though: This technique is not for the timid. Cottle has a long history of writing highly opinionated pieces that have, no doubt, helped her build a tough skin when it comes to antagonistic comments. The most frightening thing about going from a blogger who reports news to a blogger who reports news with a viewpoint is that you will offend someone—particularly if you phrase your opinions in such a confrontational way. But you will also build a stronger relationship with the rest of your audience, particularly those whose stance is similar to yours (and those who enjoy a healthy dose of debate).
2. Facebook – Epicenter ’s “ Five Things That Could Topple Facebook's Empire ” is a far more subtle approach. Since no one knows what will (or could) harm the social networking behemoth, Ryan Singel's list comprises his own ideas about the challenges Facebook faces. This sort of opinion-sharing/hypothesizing is far less likely to ruffle feathers than the first example. While searching for a post that shared original thoughts on Facebook, I had to rifle through literally hundreds that were simply repeating that Facebook has reached 500 million users and Facebook was being taken to court and Zuckerberg was interviewed on television. They all had the same facts with nothing to differentiate one from another. That is what you want to avoid.
3. Lindsay Lohan – Crushable ’s “ Poll: Should Celebrities Always Do The Right Thing? ” shares the opinion that, due to her background, jail-bound Lohan should be allowed to make mistakes. The post follows up with “But maybe we are wrong!” and an invitation for readers to take a poll. One advantage of sharing your viewpoints is that it opens the door to the opinions of your readers and provides a venue for productive conversations. Your enthusiasm for a topic is contagious and much more likely to elicit a response than a straightforward repetition of the facts.
4. Comic-Con – While other nerd blogs were rejoicing in the glory that is Comic-Con, Techland ’s Lev Grossman was busy writing “ The Guy Who Hates Comic-Con Goes to Comic-Con, Part 1 .” It stands out among the posts on the event and the humor of it is a fantastic cloak for what might otherwise have been construed as a bit of a whiny perspective. It is fun to read and, most importantly, it is the author's brutally honest assessment of the convention.
5. Inception – Jim Emerson's “ Inception: Has Christopher Nolan forgotten how to dream? ” post from Scanners does contain spoilers, so beware of that. But it also contains a unique perspective on the movie that I found compelling enough to share on my social networking pages. Emerson's post shows the importance of providing supportive evidence to validate your opinion. Even those who do not agree with your assessment of a situation before reading your post may find themselves saying, “That blogger really has a point” if you provide enough reasons for your ideas.
6. Mel Gibson – Rufus F.'s “ In Defense of Casting Stones at Mel Gibson ” from The League of Extra Ordinary Gentlemen is a direct response to ED Kain's “ In Defense of Mel Gibson ” from the same blog. That is the beauty of opinions; they are likely (particularly among dissenters) to provoke discussions in the comments and, if they are divisive enough, to prompt entire posts providing an alternate position. For the record, I'm not encouraging flame wars or knock-down, drag-out arguments; I'm advocating respectful two-way conversations between adults with different viewpoints. Keeping your tone positive and staying open to contradictory viewpoints will help maintain a healthy community and positive vibe. I learn a great deal from listening to those who disagree with me, and you will too.
7. Oil spill – “Gulf of Mexico,” which has been on trending for several weeks, has been replaced by “Oil spill” thanks to news that China is dealing with a spill of its own. How depressing. But I digress… Treehugger ’s “ In Defense of the Offshore Drilling Moratorium ” takes the safest path to stating an opinion by defending the drilling moratorium. Sharing opinions is one thing, but sharing opinions that will alienate most of your readers (for example, a post titled “10 Best Steak Restaurants” on a vegetarian blog) is simply unwise. You don't need me to tell you that.
8. Steve Jobs – Flip the Media ’s “ On Media and AntennaGate ” cites the author's own history as support of an opinion, making ample use of phrases such as “I don't think so,” “I agree with him,” and “I doubt it” to make it clear that the blogger is providing her personal opinion. There's no need to go overboard, but be sure that you aren't phrasing your opinions in a way that could be misconstrued as fact.
9. Sarah Palin – From the moment you read the headline “ I'm Telling You, Palin Has No Chance ,” it is clear that Daniel Larison's Eunomia post is providing a personal opinion. He acknowledges that “it's risky to make absolute statements about anything…” but goes on to provide several reasons based on his findings. Again, this is a post that is a rebuttal to a post from another blog .
10. Jersey Shore – Portfolio ’s “ Here's the Situation: Fire the 'Jersey Shore' Cast ” provides its reasoning in the form of bulletpoints in what amounts to an open letter to the makers of the reality TV show. Open letters can be a fun and creative way to share your thoughts.

Are you opinionated on your blog or afraid of offending people? Let's chat about it in comments.

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Blogosphere Trends + Being Opinionated

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The 25th July is tomorrow and at our place we've invited a group of friends over for a Christmas in July dinner (we do it as an annual thing and exchange gifts and do a full Christmas dinner).

On the spur of the moment today I thought it might be fun to extend the 'festivities' to ProBlogger and offer you – our wonderful community – a little gift to celebrate the 'season'.

For the next week I'm offering 25% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog eBook/workbook . To get it just use this discount code in the shopping cart.

chrisjuly25

It will give you 25% off the workbook bringing it down to $14.95 (under 50 cents per day over the 31 days) for some great teaching and activities to improve your blog. Each day in the 31 days gives you a little bit of teaching and a practical and tangible activity for you to do that day to improve your blog.

Get full details of what the workbook includes here OR add it straight to your cart where you can apply the above discount code by hitting the button below.

I hope you find the workbook to be useful and join the many thousands of bloggers who've worked through it already in improving their blogs.

PS : I'm doing the same 25% discount on our 3 best selling photography eBooks over at Digital Photography School – check them out and use the same discount code here .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Christmas in July Special – Get 25% off 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Today

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Whether you like it or not, people will judge your blog by the quality of your writing. The first thing you should do is to avoid the most common spelling mistakes, as they can turn off first-time visitors to your site. Below you'll find 10 such mistakes to get you started.

1。 accept / except

INCORRECT: Please except this gift.
CORRECT: Please accept this gift.

Except , as a verb, means to exclude or leave out. As a preposition it means “with the exception of.” Accept means “to receive willingly.” For example: We visited every landmark except the Eiffel Tower. The school is accepting only those students who have had their shots; all others are excepted.

2。 advice / advise

INCORRECT: He refused to take my advise.
CORRECT: He refused to take my advice.

Advise is a verb. The s has the sound of “z.” Advice is a noun. The c has the sound of “s.”

3。 all right / alright

INCORRECT: He's alright after his fall.
CORRECT: He's all right after his fall.

Although arguments are advanced for the acceptance of the spelling, alright is still widely regarded as nonstandard. Careful writers avoid it.

4。 effect / affect

INCORRECT: His death really effected me.
CORRECT: His death really affected me.

The most common use of effect is as a noun meaning “something produced by a cause.” The most common use of affect is as a transitive verb meaning “to act upon.” For example: The disease had a lasting effect on the child. The family's lack of money affected his plans.

5。 every day / everyday

INCORRECT: Dan walks the dog everyday at six pm
CORRECT: Dan walks the dog every day at six pm

Everyday is an adjective that means “daily.” Every day is a phrase that combines the adjective every with the noun day . For example: Walking the dog is an everyday occurrence. I practice the flute every day.

6。 its / it's

INCORRECT: Put the saw back in it's place.
CORRECT: Put the saw back in its place.

It’s is a contraction that represents two words: it is . Its is a one-word third-person singular possessive adjective, like his . For example: The man lost his hat. The dog wagged its tail.

7。 passed / past

INCORRECT: The car past the train.
CORRECT: The car passed the train.

Past is used as an adverb of place, or as a preposition. Passed is the past tense of the verb to pass. For example: The past few days have been hectic. The deadline has passed. He passed her the biscuits. The boys ran past the gate. As we stood in the doorway, the cat ran past.

8。 quiet / quite

INCORRECT: We spent a quite evening reading.
CORRECT: We spent a quiet evening reading.

Quiet is an adjective meaning “marked by little or no activity.” Quite is an adverb meaning “to a considerable extent.” For example: The children are quite amiable today . Quiet can also be used as a noun. For example: We enjoyed the quiet by the lake. (The suffix “ness” should never be added to the abstract nouns quiet and calm.)

9。 then / than

INCORRECT: I have more eggs then you.
CORRECT: I have more eggs than you.

Then is an adverb that indicates time. It can go anywhere in a sentence. For example: The man paused by the door and then entered. Then the noise started. As conjunction or preposition, than will always be followed by a noun or a pronoun. For example: I like Melville better than Hawthorne.

10。 who's / whose

INCORRECT: I don't know who's dog you're talking about.
CORRECT: I don't know whose dog you're talking about.

Who’s is the contracted form of “who is.” Whose is the possessive adjective form of who. For example: Who's your daddy? Whose car are we going in?

Maeve Maddox holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas, and she is the editor of DailyWritingTips.com . The mistakes mentioned in this post come from her latest book, 100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

10 Common Spelling Mistakes That Haunt Bloggers

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A guest post by Barrie Davenport .

If you look at recent posts on Problogger, you will find a plethora of practical and useful tools and ideas for creating a blog, growing a blog, and making money from a blog. Like me, you have probably read and absorbed as many of these pearls of blogging wisdom as your brain will allow. However, as bloggers, we sometimes get so immersed in the business of blogging that we lose sight of what should be our primary focus in blogging — serving people.

There are many valid, self-serving reasons to blog. We all want to make money. We want the satisfaction of creating something that others read and having our ideas appreciated by thousands. But if you boil down the motivation for blogging to its essence, you come to understand that we each have a unique gift, and we want to share that gift with others.

There is tremendous emotional and spiritual satisfaction in that act of sharing and serving. If you've ever gotten a comment back from a reader remarking, “Your latest post helped me tremendously, and I can't thank you enough for sharing that,” then you know what I mean. Suddenly, it all becomes personal.

And isn't that what life is supposed to be anyway — personal? Being connected with others, even in the blogospohere, is what provides the uplifting and rewarding satisfaction that gives life depth and meaning. The truly amazing part about serving others through blogging is that these efforts will propel your blogging into the stratosphere of success. Look at Darren as an example. Or Leo Babauta of Zen Habits , Mary Jaksch of Write to Done , or so many other wildly successful bloggers. They give and give and then give some more. Their ability to give and connect with people has created real relationships that are mutually beneficial and deeply satisfying.

Many people start blogging because they are introverts and may not like interacting with people in a traditional work or social setting. Others (like me) enjoy connecting with people any way we can, and the internet provides a huge pool of potential new friends. Either way, it does take attention, effort, and careful tending of relationships to be a successful blogger.

6 Ways to add a Personal Touch to Your Blogging

Here are some ideas to help you reach out and touch your growing community of readers and fellow bloggers.

1。 真诚

Making connections and building relationships is not going to serve you or others if it is just a means to a financial end. You must believe in the inherent value of serving and of what you have to offer. Your sincerity and passion must shine through in everything you do, or people will see through you. You may not make a lot of money in the beginning, but you are building a treasure of trust and respect with your readers and fellow bloggers. That is worth its weight in gold.

2。 Always Serve Your Reader

In every idea you develop, in every post you write, in every comment you respond to, serve your reader. Give them something valuable and immediately usable. Give them more than they expect. Awe them with your gifts. Look at all of the free information, ebooks, and advice that Darren gives to you, his valued readers. Here's an article I wrote for Write to Done on how to serve your reader.

3。 Connect with Bigger Bloggers

You already know that this is a way to build your blog. Solicit guest posts, ask them to Twitter something, comment on their blogs. But what about reaching out to them as one human to another? Write them an e-mail congratulating them on a success or letting them know how they inspired you. Make contact with them with no ulterior motive except to reach out. Offer them something useful with no expectation of something in return. Be real and friendly but not gratuitous.

4。 Connect with Blogging Peers

Bigger bloggers always started out as smaller bloggers. Treat all bloggers with equal respect, because you never know when someone's small blog will take off and become the next Problogger! Communicate regularly with other similar-sized or smaller bloggers. Share ideas, frustrations, and resources. Blogging forums are a great way to do that, but one-on-one contact is even better.

5。 Arrange Virtual Meet-Ups

If you've been communicating on-line with other bloggers or readers, arrange a meet-up through Skype or some other phone or video conferencing software. Hearing someone's voice and seeing their face immediately makes the relationship more real and personal. It's the substitute for the business lunch or golf outing! Through these more personal interactions, you are building friendships and networks of people who will support you and you them.

6。 Arrange In-Person Meet-Ups

Connect with your readers and other bloggers who live near you and organize a dinner or meeting. If you are traveling, arrange to get together with people you have met through your blog. (Of course, be safe about this. Meet in groups or very public places.) Nothing can beat an in-person, face-to-face meeting for true relationship building. Life-long friendships can be developed with people in wonderful cities all over the world.

7。 Attend Blogging Events

Darren has already discussed Blogworld , the social media conference to be held in October in Las Vegas. I plan on attending this event, as do many of my network of blogging friends. This will be my first in-person connection with most of them. Attending these events offers so many opportunities for learning and for networking and socializing with bloggers. These events could be considered Relationship Immersion courses where you have the opportunity to build many great connections in a short span of time. If you haven't already, please check it out.

8。 Always Be Kind and Professional

This is worth repeating though I know it's intuitive. Communicating through a computer makes it very tempting to say things that we would not say in person. As a blogger, you are still a business person, a real person who has integrity and a reputation. If you receive a snippy e-mail or comment, resist the temptation to lob a snippy response back. Be kind, gracious, ever-professional. Don't gossip about other bloggers or undermine them on a public forum. It will serve you well in the long run, and you will serve as an example for those who read your blog or who look up to you as a blogger.

9。 Share Your Connections

Unlike any other business I know of, blogging is the most mutually supportive and interactive. When bloggers help and support each other, they are creating a larger network of connections and potential readers. Isolating yourself or hoarding your connections doesn't help you — in fact it undermines your growth. I serve as the editor for The Daily Brainstorm , an aggregate blog that links to a large pool of other blogs (including this one). Every contributor benefits from the readers driven to the blog. It is a great group relationship where everyone benefits.

If you want to build your blog, read everything Darren writes on Problogger about how to do that. But also, take a good look at how he conducts himself, what he gives away, and how he connects to people. Follow his example, not just as a blogger but as a person. Find other blogging mentors to emulate and connect with. Don't hide your real, flesh and blood self under a bushel. Reach out, connect, make friends, share, be of service. If you do all of these things, blogging success can't help but find you.

Barrie Davenport is a personal and career coach and founder of Live Bold and Bloom , a blog about bold and fearless living. Download her FREE e-book, How to Live A Meaningful Life .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Reach Out and Touch Someone: How the Power of Personal Connection Creates Blogging Success

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“ Being good on social media really has a lot to do with being good in relationships and conversation. ”

I made this statement in a presentation really and have been pondering it ever since. While there are a lot of great techniques for increasing the effectiveness in your use of blogging or social media – much of it does really come down to relational skills.

This video explores some of the similarities between being the type of person people are attracted to talking to in 'real life' and being the type of person people want to interact with on blogs and other types of social media including:

• Being interesting and interested
• Being engaging
• Having something unique to say
• Taking initiative and not just being passive

Notes : See the full sized video here . Video shot on a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 (aff) – here's why I use that camera .

Transcript of Video

I've had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People .

Last week I was at a conference speaking about social media – half way through I made a statement off-the-cuff that being good in social media or in blogging was really just about being good in life and good in relationships.

Social media is, as its name suggests, the social interaction that one person has with another person or a group of people. It's a communal activity and, as a result, a lot of the things that apply to just being good at relationships apply to social media as well.

This morning I was thinking about what makes someone attractive in terms of conversation and what makes someone good at being in relationships. I was thinking about when you go to a party and you come away from that party either having had really good conversations with people or really bad ones and I'm beginning to think about some of the dynamics that make a someone the life of the party, someone who is, that draws others to them at a party because a lot of those same characteristics actually fit within the social media space as well.

Now, I'm not saying that you need to be an extrovert to be good at social media, but some of the things about good party-goers actually do apply.

Something Interesting to Say

I was thinking back to some of the parties that I've been to recently and the people that I'm drawn to at parties are people who are, one, they've got something interesting to say. They have experiences or they have a knowledge or they have just the ability to be able to talk about interesting things. Sure, it's fun sometimes to talk about rubbish and to have a bit of fun with that but, really, I come home from parties thinking about the good conversations that I've had that have actually been interesting, that have been about things that I perhaps didn't know before.

Interesting but also Interested

So, these people are interesting but they're also interested. They're people who are not only willing and able to talk about themselves or to be able to talk about life from their own perspective but they're actually interested in what others think, in what you think. They look you in the eye, they ask you questions and then they listen to what you've got to say and then what they have to say builds upon what you've said.

They actually show you that they've listened to you and are able to build upon that and that's what a, that's when a good conversation happens is, it's not just when two people talk in monologues and then don't interact with what each other have said; it's actually something that builds, that gains momentum and that takes listening, it takes being interested as well.

They're entertaining , quite often, they're willing to be a bit playful and perhaps have a joke at themselves, at you and in a friendly kind of way.

They're engaging , they ask questions.

They're personal , they don't just talk as if they're talking to strangers in a room, a crowd of people. They actually look you in the eye, they actually will share something of themselves in a personal kind of way and add to the conversation in that way.

They're inclusive , and this is one of the things that I think really is applicable to social media is that these types of people, they quite often will not only be talking to you but they'll be engaging others around you in the party. They'll be making introductions, they'll be making, they'll be connecting other people together and in a way that actually sets those two people up for a conversation, by introducing two people and pointing out some common interests and facilitating conversations not just between them and one other person but they almost create a community around themselves at parties.

And this is one of the things that I think is particularly applicable to the social media space is that, not only can you have a great conversation with an individual, but you can actually create a community and introduce your readers, your followers to one another.
I'm seeing this happen at the moment through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge that's being run by SITS Girls . There's this community happening there and, sure, I'ma part of it – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog's going on – I wrote that, I'm trying to participate in that, but there's this whole thing happening almost without me participating at all and it's really a powerful thing to see a community build up around something that you've created.

These type of people, they take initiative . They don't just let conversations happen and then chime in where they want; they actually drive the conversation forward. They're taking initiative and thinking about what else they could say, what questions they could ask. They're not passive in that way. And sometimes they're actually quite surprising in the directions that they'll take in a conversation. It's often those conversations that end up in a completely different place that I think about as being good conversations. They're not just predictable, they're unique. They've got something unique to say and they're quite willing to go and explore those types of angles to the conversation.

These people, they're not arrogant, they're not aloof and they're not boring, they're not passive; they're actually taking initiative, they're interesting and they're interested. They're the type of people I'm interested in chatting to at parties and also in social media. I'd be interested to hear about some of the characteristics that you find attractive in, both in real life but also in the social media space. If you'd like to leave a comment, we can interact around those in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to be the Life of the Social Media Party

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Today I'd like to suggest an exercise to think about the future of your blog. It's a brainstorming task to get you thinking about the types of products and services you might one day add to your blog.

I remember doing this for ProBlogger 4 or so years ago and coming up with a long list of potential things I could add to the blog including a job board , membership area , eBooks , 'real' book , events and more.

At the time I wasn't ready to add any of these new products, services or featured – but having that list in the back of my mind enabled me to keep moving my blog forward towards achieving some of them.

The other benefit of identifying these potential income streams that you could one day develop is that others may already be developing them. This might feel a little like you've missed the boat but it could also be an opportunity as those with these products might be potential advertisers and/or might have affiliate programs that you could promote.

Once you've come up with your list of ideas feel free to share some of them in comments below – it'll be great to see what everyone is thinking.

PS : stuck for ideas? I don't blame you – it can be hard to think of how to add a product or service to your blog. Check out the list of products and services that other bloggers have added to their blogs in the results of a poll I ran here on ProBlogger exploring this very topic.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Brainstorming Activity: What Could You Sell from Your Blog?

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“How do you know which projects to go with and which to leave behind?”

This is a question I've been asked almost every time I've spoken at events recently so I thought I'd jot down a few thought on the process that I find myself going through when looking at opportunities to expand my business with new projects.

Of course I'm over simplifying it a little with this diagram – but it'll illustrate the basics of how I work.

I should also say that this isn't really a process that I specifically take myself through each time I launch a new project – rather its something I've noticed myself doing naturally as I look back on previous projects. Let me say a little about each step.

Idea – For me – idea generation is the easiest part of the process. I have them every day and have a long list of potential projects that I'd one day like to take through this process fully and explore.

I find that the more I start things the more ideas come naturally as you see how readers are using your site, as they ask for advice, as you observe trends in your industry and as you receive and answer questions from others exploring your topic.

The other thing that I find is that as your blog grows you start to get pitched ideas from others. As you become seen as a credible and authoritative source of information and as someone with influence – people want to align themselves with you and explore partnerships.

The keys with this stage is to have a way of capturing the ideas, to not rush in to do every idea that comes along but to be willing to take the best ideas and explore them.

Test – The temptation when you get what you think is a great idea is to just go out and do it. I've seen a number of friends move from having a great idea into investing (sometimes quite a bit of money) in developing that idea within hours. In some cases this might pay off – but in my experience most 'ideas' could do with some testing before moving into the development stage.

There are many ways to test an idea – here are some that I've done:

• Ask someone – whether it be a trusted friend, your partner, a reader, another blogger – bouncing your ideas off others can be very valuable. Getting another person's perspective will often help you filter out the crazy ideas and add depth to the good ones.
• Write a Blog Post – it may not always be appropriate to completely spell out your idea publicly (once they're out there you never know who might take your idea) but a blog post can be used to test whether there is a need for your idea to fulfil, can be used to gather data from readers responses on how your idea could help them most or could just be a good place for you to think out loud and get a little perspective.
• Tweet it – I often test ideas with my Twitter followers. Again, you probably don't want to spell out your idea in too much detail but use your social networks to test the things you're thinking about.
• Do a Survey or Poll – this is one of my favourite things to do and something I've done regularly over the years. If you're not sure whether your current readership or network will respond to your idea – test it by running a survey with a small group of them. For example I recently released a travel photography eBook with my photography site. Before commissioning it I did a quick survey with 1000 of my readers to see what topics they'd like more written about. One of the topics I suggested was Travel Photography – the response was that over half my readers said that they wanted more information on that topic – I then went ahead with it.

Testing need not be a long or involved process. A blog post, tweet or survey could all be put together in 24 hours. For us entrepreneurial types 24 hours might seem like an eternity – however the information you gain by doing it could either improve your idea significantly or show you when your idea is not something worth pursuing (which could save you a lot of time and money).

Tweak – Once you've done a little testing you're in a position to tweak your idea. This might actually be culling it all together or it could be about making big or small improvements.

Ultimately your 'testing' is about putting your idea 'out there' to some degree and your 'tweaking' is about taking on board the feedback that you get and making improvements to the idea so that if you do take it to a full launch that it is the best it can be.

Sometimes the 'test' to 'tweak' stage can be a bit of a cycle before you launch and something that you need to do numerous times to get to launch. In fact sometimes the 'test' and 'tweak' approach continues after launch as well as you continue to try new ideas and gather feedback to continue to improve what you're doing.

Launch – With a mixture of fear and excitement you gradually move your idea forward towards launch.

I can't tell you exactly how to launch a product or service because it'll vary hugely from situation to situation – however what I have found is that if you've gone through the test and tweak process well that you'll end up launching something that is not only a better quality product or service – but you'll hopefully have ended up with some ideas on how to market and launch that product.

For example as part of the launch of the travel photography ebook I mentioned earlier a survey I did found that many readers had regrets around previous photography that they'd done when traveling. This gave us a hint as to how to market it (which you'll see on the sales page).

You'll also find that if some of your testing/tweaking has been done in public (ie your readers know you're developing an idea towards launching something) you'll hopefully have also created some nice pre-launch buzz to assist with your launch.

Some examples

As mentioned earlier – I'm certainly over simplifying things a little here – nothing is quite as simple or easy as I'm making it sound. However I do find that this cycle is pretty typical of the things I've done. Let me give some examples.

31天建立一个更好的博客

The 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook that I currently sell from ProBlogger did not start out as an eBook. In fact it started 3 (or was it 4?) years ago as a series of 31 blog posts. The initial idea was to take my readers through a month of activities to improve their blogs. The first year was very basic.

That first 'test' of the idea revealed that people loved the idea of doing a project like this together. It also showed me that some of the activities that I did connected better than others.

I then ran it again two years later with improvements. I added a forum area, started an autoresponder email list to help participants keep on track and changed around some of the activities. Again I learned a lot. I also began to gather feedback from participants that they wanted it as a workbook.

I tested that idea with a survey and found that a good percentage of my readers would be willing to pay for such an eBook so I had it developed (with extra content, design etc).

WIth all this testing and tweaking done I was pretty much certain that I'd not only cover the costs I put into the development of the eBook but make a healthy profit from it on launch (which is how it has happened).

In essences 31DBBB has been through 3-4 different 'test' and 'tweak' cycles to get it to its current form (and I'm currently testing and tweaking it again and hope to offer a live version of the course later this year).

ProBlogger Live Event

The 31DBBB example above is one that has taken years to go through. Another more recent example is the ProBlogger live training day that I'm running in Melbourne. This is an example of a much speedier process.

The idea came 2 weeks ago.

I tested it with a quick email to two friends (Chris and Shayne) who both added their own ideas into the mix but reacted very positively.

I then tested it with a blog post asking for expressions of interest by inviting people to sign up for more information.

I then followed up those who responded to that call by inviting them to do a survey on their situation and needs as bloggers. Around 50% of people did the survey which gave me some amazing data. The survey revealed the topics we should cover on the day, helped us work out what styles of presentation we should do in the event and also told us that there was much more interest in the event than we'd previously thought (ie we needed a bigger venue).

All of this was before we'd booked a venue, decided on a schedule for the day or even committed to running the event.

Then came the launch – we knew approximately how many would come, what they wanted from such a day and how to cater for them. As a result we've had no problem pretty much selling it out.

TwiTip

This same process was how I launched TwiTip (my twitter tips blog).

The idea for a blog about Twitter had been something I'd pondered for a while before launching it. I decided to test whether people would be interested in reading tutorials about Twitter before launching by posting some posts here on ProBlogger – Twitter Tips for Bloggers.

These posts were very popular and got a lot of interaction.

As I began to plan the blog I started surveying my Twitter followers on the type of needs that they had and the questions that they'd asked themselves when they first started. In doing so I began to gather ideas for future posts but also began to see what categories I should have on the new blog.

I launched Twitip with a fairly 'soft launch'. It was on basic hosting and on a fairly simple theme (I used Thesis ). I could have invested into a custom design from day 1 but wanted to test the topic before spending too much on it – so went with a solid premium theme but one that wasn't going to break the bank.

It was actually around a year before I fully launched the site with a full custom theme.

I could go on and on giving personal examples

The more I think about it the more I realize that virtually every time I've launched a new blog, product or service that I've been through this type of process. Perhaps it's partly because I'm something of a cautious person and like to test before I fully commit – but I think it's also a fairly solid approach.

I've seen so many people launch businesses that have not been thought through enough that I just think a little extra time to do some testing would be well spent.

What about you – do you go through similar processes? What would you add or subtract from the process above?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to Take an Idea to Launch in 4 Steps

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Just over a week ago I had the crazy idea to run a training day for bloggers while Chris Garrett was in Melbourne. It was a spur of the moment idea and as a result something that I thought would be quite small, informal and relaxed.

I posted about the idea and asked for expressions of interest and was flooded with enquiries. What I thought would be a 20 person event was starting to look like a 50 person one. In conjunction with the team at SitePoint I started to look at venues of that size but as the expressions of interest continued to come in we realised we needed to think bigger.

We have booked a venue – the Jika International – which will seat 100 comfortably (there is a chance we can upgrade to a larger room) and on Friday opened the doors to start selling tickets ( via this page on EventBrite ).

As I write this – we have sold 88 seats and there are only 12 8 6 2 available. There is no guarantee we'll get the larger room so if you're interested – today's the day to secure your place.

A few details about the event:

• When : Tuesday 3rd August – 9am-5pm
• Where : Jika International in Fairfield (it's not a high end venue but has everything we need including wifi, plenty of food, close to public transport, 6km out of the CBD and some crazy carpet).
• Cost : $99 AUD – including lunch and morning and afternoon tea (plus some other bonuses/prizes). We've tried to keep it as affordable as we can and think for 6 hours of training this represents value.
• Who : this event is for people with blogs. It's not at the real beginner end (ie how to start a blog) but will be accessible for those starting out through to more intermediate bloggers who want to take things up a notch. The 88 people signed up already are a fantastic bunch from all around Australia (and New Zealand) (you can see them listed on the ticket sales page ). We've got people flying in from Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane etc and there will be time during the day for networking and interaction.

Sessions/Topics

The sessions in this event will cover a range of topics identified by a survey of attendees including:

• Creating Killer Content
• Finding Readers for Your Blog
• Building Reader Engagement and Community
• Monetizing Blogs

We'll be mixing up the presentation style with some keynote style presentations, case studies, a panel and some workshop/interactive times for looking at some participants blogs (we won't be able to do everyone).

I still want the day to be informal, relaxed and fun – but we should be able to cover some good solid teaching over the day too.

扬声器

Speakers will include both Chris and myself but we're also bringing in some other great Melbourne bloggers to do case studies including Collis Taeed from Envato and Pip Lincolne from Meet me at Mikes . There will also be some of the SitePoint team participating.

Prizes/Giveaways

Attendees will also be in the running for some cool giveaways. The team at Haul have put up an iPad folio or sleeve (like the one I have) for one lucky attendee, we'll give away some ProBlogger books , 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbooks , and the team at Flippa are giving all attendees $20 credit at their site. We're also talking to a couple of other companies about some giveaways/bonuses to add a little spice into the day (if your company would like to talk about that let me know).

If you're an Aussie blogger (or you can get to Australia on 3rd August) we'd love to have you join us. Reserve your seat today and if you find that all 100 tickets are taken please do add yourself to the waiting list as we'll do our best to find a way to add a few more seats or shift to a larger room if it is still available.

Reserve your seat here and join the great group of bloggers attending.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Melbourne Blogger Training Day
3 August 2010 – 12 Seats Left

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A Guest Post by Johnny B Truant .

I know what you're thinking. You're blogging to make money, or to express yourself. So why would you ever give something away? If you're in this as a business, giving stuff away without charging for it seems counterintuitive. If you're just out there writing for the sake of writing, then what you want are readers… and how is giving stuff away going to get more eyes on your blog?

The answer is that what goes around comes around. What you give comes back to you. What you sow is what you reap, and all of that. It's not just platitudes. 它的工作原理。

I was thinking about this because I'm in the middle of a promotion where I'm setting up self-hosted WordPress blogs for free. (In fact, if you want one, click over and go get one.) This isn't an experiment. It's the third time I've done it. I continue to do it because each time I do, my statistics go way up, my RSS readership grows, my Twitter followers grow, and I meet a bunch of new people who may end up being customers later. And thanks to the fact that I'm an affiliate for website hosting (which my free blog setup folks would have to buy regardless), I make money too.

All of my best tips come down to giving things away.

• Want to grow your mailing list? Write a great report or e-book — and then instead of charging for it, give it away to people who sign up for your list.
• Want to reach a new audience? Write a really good blog post, ideally one that is immediately actionable for people who read it. Reveal your best tip or tips in that post. Then, give it to someone else as a guest post rather than running it on your site.
• Want more referrals? Give a greater percentage of sales to your affiliates. I'm not quite gutsy enough to do this myself, but Dave Navarro told me once publicly that he gave affiliates 100% of the sale price on a certain product and then paid the transaction fees (which would normally come from the sale price) out of his own pocket. He “lost” money on his own product, but built a list in his shopping cart of people who liked his stuff well enough to buy it — a list he could promote to later.
• Want more goodwill, better Karma, or more raving fans? Then do something for charity. Twice that I know of, Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz.com has rallied her audience to raise money for a cause. The first time, she raised relocation expenses for a female reader who needed to get out of a physically abusive relationship. The second time, she raised over $12,000 for Cambodia — enough to build a school. The benefit to her? Tons and tons and tons of “good feelings” out in the blogosphere about her, which converted casual fans into die-hards.

I could keep going. There are tons of ways for any blogger at any level to increase either business or readership by trying the experiment of temporarily swapping “what can I get out of this?” thinking for “what can I give that people would really want and love?” thinking.

The really cool thing is that if you plan a little in advance, there's usually a way that you can benefit too. If you're smart, “giving it away” can get you a lot more than you're probably getting right now.

给它一个镜头。 And if you've done it, let's hear how it worked out in the comments!

PS: If you're still trying to figure out how to get your start in blogging in order to try this stuff? Well, now's the time because I think I mentioned I know a guy who's doing a mutually beneficial free blog setup promotion right now.

-
Johnny B. Truant blogs at JohnnyBTruant.com and is one of the two guys behind The Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to Boost your Income and Popularity by Giving Stuff Away

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This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world's best blog posts). – Darren

I'm often asked about the “ideal length” for a blog post. I've heard answers ranging from 200 to 800 words, but my answer is always the same: Enough to tell the story and not one word more. Writing short is actually considerably more difficult than writing long because every word has to truly pull its weight. There is no room for filler.

Challenge yourself: Try writing a post, going for a little walk to let it breathe, then coming back and cutting your word count by at least 10 (preferably closer to 15) percent. 不可能吗？ 不尽然。 Start by ditching unnecessary adjectives and adverbs (why say “really big” when “huge” conveys the same?). Find places where you can replace an adverb and a verb with a stronger verb (eg, “devoured” or “gobbled” rather than “ate quickly”). These steps alone will strengthen your post by making your writing more concise and your word choice more precise. Once you've done that, replace passive constructions with active ones wherever possible (“a pirate rode the unicorn” rather than “the unicorn was ridden by a pirate”) and get rid of wordy phrases (eg, “can” instead of “is able to,” “before” instead of “prior to,” “about” instead of “with regard to,” etc.). You've probably cut quite a few words by this point. Continue looking for places to tighten (eg, change “the opinion of the blogger” to “the blogger's opinion”). Wordy constructions are sneaky; there are more of them than you think. I think the best thing about Twitter is that it encourages people to be more concise in their communications…that's not to say you should start using “b4” and “urself” on your blog.

Let's say you've chopped as much as you can from your post and it's still long. You have three options: (a) Publish it as is and risk having distractible readers (that's almost all of them) get click happy and leave your blog (b) Break it up into a series (c) use some of the methods below to make the post more scannable and digestible. We're going to focus on option (c). Here are the top ten most-blogged-about stories of the week, as provided by Regator , and some examples of well-formatted but lengthy posts about each:

1. LeBron James – “ Did LeBron James Really Hurt His Brand? ” is 778 words long, but thanks to careful formatting, it reads quickly and is not intimidating to readers. In addition to subheadings and bolded text, which we'll discuss, SportsBiz uses a large pull quote to break up the text and generate interest. Pull quotes are less common online than they are in the print world, but a good pull quote can pique reader curiosity and serve to break up large blocks of text.
2. World Cup – Weighing in at 1,241 words, Bleacher Report ’s “ 2010 FIFA World Cup Final: How Spain Won It ” would likely send readers running if it weren't for its effective use of subheads. The title clearly conveys the post's purpose and the subheads deliver to that end by providing an easy-to-scan list. Subheadings are important for longer posts because they provide the reader with multiple entry points. Not interested in Spain's passing play? Perhaps the section on Cesc Fabregas will interest you. Subheads give readers that option.
3. George Steinbrenner – Both LAist ’s “ Dodgers Reaction to Steinbrenner's Death ” and Gothamist ’s “ Players, Politicians Remember George Steinbrenner ” use quotations to break up longer posts but comparing the two shows the importance of formatting. While neither seems overwhelming, The LAist post's consistent use of bold to introduce the quotes' sources enhances its readability significantly.
4. Mel Gibson – World of Psychology ’s 719-word “ Mel Gibson, Bipolar Disorder and Alcohol ” is broken up into five distinct, numbered points. We've talked in the past about the scan-ability of list posts , and this is no exception. The bolded subheads are complete sentences that give a clear indication of what that section will address.
5. Gulf of Mexico – The First Post's “ BP oil spill: the conspiracy theories ” was broken into two separate pages to disguise its nearly 1,300-word length. Tricky but effective. This is an example of a post that could have been broken into multiple posts with teasers for future parts and links to previous parts in each post.
6. Bristol Palin – While not excessively long to begin with, at only 500 words, TV Squad ’s “ Bristol Palin's Reality Show: If It Happens, Here Are 5 Things We Want to See ” seems like an even quicker, easier read thanks to its combination of bolded subheads, a medium-sized photo, and short paragraphs. Keeping each paragraph short helps you avoid large blocks of text that the attention-span-challenged may find off-putting.
7. Harvey Pekar – Comics Alliance ’s 937-word “ Harvey Pekar: A Timeline of a Comic Book Icon ” could have tried to recap Pekar's life in plain text, but it's unlikely anyone but the most die-hard fans would've made it past his first issue of American Splendor. Instead, the blogger broke the story up using an engaging timeline format. It, along with the images and short paragraphs, makes this long post more palatable.
8. Roman Polanski – Jezebel ’s “ Roman Polanski Runs Free Once Again ” isn't long enough to require subheads, but does make use (like many of this blog's posts) of prominent red links that, when scanned, provide a useful glimpse of the story (“not to extradite Roman Polanski,” “where he's been since December,” etc.) as well as multiple entry points.
9. Consumer Reports – At 909 words, Mashable ’s “ What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleeding ” uses many of the aforementioned techniques, including colored links, photos, and short paragraphs but also adds video within the post and oversized subheads with light grey lines around them to further divide the text.
10. Old Spice – In addition to using video, photos, bold subheads, quotes, and colored links, ReadWriteWeb ’s “ How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made ” is an excellent example of tight, concise writing that uses all of its 1,065 words to maximum effect.

How do you handle long posts? Please share your techniques in the comments.

Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Blogosphere Trends + Handling High Word Counts

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Yesterday I challenged readers to write a post that took a 7 link challenge – linking to 7 posts that fit into 7 themes. I thought I'd take it for myself here on ProBlogger.

1. Your first post – the first post I ever wrote on ProBlogger (I'd been posting on other blogs for a couple of years before this) was in September 2004. It was titled – Get to the Point . It was actually a post that I'd written on another blog which I imported onto this one. On the day I published it I imported 40 or so previously written posts into ProBlogger.
2. A post you enjoyed writing the most – 5 Things You Don't Know about My Dad the ProBlogger . This post was a departure from my normal writing style and as a result I had a lot of fun both writing it and reading the feedback on it.
3. A post which had a great discussion – Does a Bloggers Age Matter? This was a tough one to choose because there have been a lot of great discussions on ProBlogger in the last 5-6 years. I've chosen this one because the discussion is not only rich but it is fresh and has only just slowed.
4. A post on someone else's blog that you wish you'd written – I'm going to share a link here that is one that I refer to constantly in my blogging. It's Copyblogger's Magnetic Headlines series of posts. Most specifically I always head to the headline template posts – they're useful and I wish I had the smarts to come up with them as I'm sure many people keep coming back to them like I do.
5. A post with a title that you are proud of – 9 things to do to Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom . It's a mouthful but it certainly grabbed people's attention and was something that people retweeted a lot (I find good titles often get that happening).
6. A post that you wish more people had read – How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause . This was actually an 11 part series and while it did get a reasonable amount of traffic it was something that I was a surprised by in terms of lack of reaction as it was something that I put a lot of work into and something that I think is actually very important. Perhaps it was that it was spread out over too long a period for people to take in – but it's something I'm still proud of and hope people take the time to engage with (I'm even toying with the idea of expanding it and making it into a downloadable resource).
7. Your most visited post ever – How to Blog: Blog Tips for Beginners . This post just continues to gather traffic and is a series that I wrote a few years back for beginner bloggers that just seemed to hit the spot with readers.

I hope you've found this useful and am looking forward to seeing your 7 links .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

7 Links for Bloggers

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Today I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a fun challenge together that draws on a number of things that I've previously taught here on ProBlogger (see below for what these teachings are).

The idea is to publish a post that is a list of 7 links to posts that you and others have written that respond to the following 7 categories. Your links should be to:

• Your first post
• A post you enjoyed writing the most
• A post which had a great discussion
• A post on someone else's blog that you wish you'd written
• Your most helpful post
• A post with a title that you are proud of
• A post that you wish more people had read

You might like to add a few explanations to different links – for example to talk a little about why you enjoyed writing a post or what you like about the post on another blog that you link to or why you regret the post you regret.

The main aim of doing this challenge is to create a list post that highlights some of the posts in your archives to new readers (a sneeze page ), that links out to another blog and that hopefully is a little fun (and not too much work) to do.

If you tag your posts or are going to tweet a link to it – use #7links as a tag to help the meme continue.

I'll post my own 7 links tomorrow here on ProBlogger – stay tuned!

PS : once you've written your 7 link challenge post – link to it in comments below so we can take a look!

Tags: #7links

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Take the 7 Link Challenge Today #7links

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Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed by some element of your online business?

Image by Stephan Poff

I've felt that way many times, both in the early days and even now. For me it usually comes when I'm working on a new venture or expanding something that I'm already doing into something bigger. 例如：

• When I started my first blog and had no idea how to make decisions about blog platforms, didn't know where I'd find readers, or if they'd like me when they found me, felt inadequate in making my blog look good, worried what other bloggers might think of me writing about topics that they wrote about etc.
• When I did redesigns of my blogs (numerous occassions). Not knowing who to hire to design them, feeling confused about how to best lay them out etc.
• When I decided to launch my first eBook – unsure if people who buy it, overwhelmed by the task of writing it, at a loss as to how to put it together technically, confused as to how to promote and deliver it.

The list could go on – you could say that I'ma repeat offender when it comes to feeling overwhelmed and panicking about projects!

Having said that – I've also got a history of working through the overwhelming feelings and getting stuff done (at least most of the time). I think the key is not to let the feelings overwhelm you but to work through them. Here's how I do it:

1。 Focus upon the things you can control

One of the factors that used to hold me back was that I would spend a lot of time worrying about factors that I had little or no control over rather than focusing upon the things I could control.

Of course this is not just applicable to blogging – we all can fall into the temptation about spending a lot of energy worrying about things that we have no ultimate control over. It is easy to do but the reality is that focusing upon things we can't really control takes a lot of time and energy away from doing the things we can control.

So if I'm feeling overwhelmed by a project now I will (after a little panic) make a list of the things that are stopping me or worrying me about the project and then identify things on the list that I have some control over and those that I don't have control over – I'll then put aside or delete the external worries so that I can focus on things I can do!

So when it comes to starting a blog:

• Some of the things I can control include things like coming up with topics to write about, registering a domain, researching and choosing a blog platform etc
• Some of the things I don't have ultimate control over are things like what other bloggers will think about me, whether people will like what I write etc

Of course I might be able to influence the outcomes of some of these external worries – but in the end they're ultimately in the hands of others so are not my #1 priority. I generally will put them lower on my list of things to think about and get started on things I can do.

2。 Break it down into bite sized tasks

The key for me to get things done and not become paralysed by overwhelming projects is to break them down into smaller tasks that I can achieve.

For example writing the ProBlogger book was a daunting thing to be asked to do by Wiley. In fact other publishers had previously asked and I'd always put it off because it was too big. But once Chris and I started breaking it down it became much more achievable. We started with an outline which in itself became a list of smaller tasks to do. I then broke each of the chapters I had to write into smaller sections and tasks until they were bite sized enough for me to feel I could achieve.

I once spoke with an Hawaii Ironman who told me that this is how he got through his events. He had three larger segments of the day (swimming, running and bike riding) and then he'd further break the day into kilometre segments. In his planning and on race day he wouldn't think about the whole day – but he'd be constantly asking himself what he needed to achieve to complete the the next kilometre.

If it's helpful put the tasks you identify into some kind of timeline so that you can see the order of what needs to be achieved and so that you can tick them off as you go.

3。 Talk to others

A trap that I often fall into when faced with massive projects is allowing myself to wallow in my own desperation and fear of the things that I need to achieve. Perhaps it is my introverted personality – but I tend to take on the burdens that I face alone and don't naturally share them.

However I know that when I do externalise what I'm feeling that it helps a lot. Even if I simply verbalise the feeling to my wife who has no real comprehension of what I'm doing – just the act of speaking the problems can somehow put them in perspective.

Similarly (and even better) – seeking out people who have already done what you're trying to achieve to hear how they did it can be helpful. I remember when writing the ProBlogger book seeking out 3 other authors to get their advice on how they wrote their books. They all gave different answers but helped me to shape my own approach to it.

Also consider not only talking with others but collaborating with them. It may be that part of the problem you face is simply not having the skills to do the task at hand so partnering with someone else (or at the least outsourcing to them) might be a good solution.

4。 开始

There comes a time when you just need to roll up your sleeves and start working. You can dream and worry about a project forever and never do anything – the key is to start.

Start with one of those bite sized bits that you identified earlier. Choose something you know you can achieve and that will lead you naturally to the next bite sized bit. You'll find that once you start knocking off tasks that momentum will build and that it'll get easier to keep things moving – the hardest part is often taking the first step.

How do you tackle overwhelming tasks?

The above is how I approach it – but I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences too. What overwhelming projects have you worked on and how did you get them done?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to Get Things Done When You're Feeling Overwhelmed

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I am very excited today to be able to announce to you that at this year's BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2010 that Chris Garrett and I will be running a full day of training – the ProBlogger Track.

In this post I want to share a little more information about what we'll be doing in the ProBlogger track and also mention that the Early Bird Special (almost 50% off) for signing up ends 15 July. But first, let me tell you why I love BWE!

Why I love Blog World Expo

BlogWorld Expo is an event that I've had the privilege of attending for the last two years and for me it is the #1 event that I try to get to in the US each year. I love it because:

• Networking – thousands of bloggers and social media people in the one place opens up some amazing opportunities to build relationships and discover potential business partnerships.
• Learning – some great speakers share what they know at this event. Their expertise covers a range of topics, from design, to SEO, to monetization, to content creation, to community management. There are also a lot of social media specific topics as well as sessions for different niches. Over 200 speakers present – there's some great stuff to learn from them!
• Not too Big but Big Enough – some other shows are so big that they become completely overwhelming. BWE is certainly big enough to attract great speakers and a large number of people to network with – but it's not too big that you can't find anyone. This being focused upon blogging and new media also brings it enough focus that you continually bump into people with shared interests.
• Relaxed and Friendly – my own experience of this gathering is people are very friendly, inclusive and chilled. This is not a hyped up conference, but there is a lot of fun and plenty of opportunity to interact with others (the networking parties are great in the evenings).
• Vegas – I'm not someone who could spend a lot of time in Vegas, but 3-4 days can be a lot of fun. This year BWE is moving from the convention center to Mandalay Bay which will mean that it is much more focused upon one area and hopefully more people will be staying close to each other. Less travel and more chance to interact.

What will the ProBlogger Track Cover?

Most of you should know Chris Garrett – he and I co-authored the ProBlogger Book. This will only be the 4thd time we've met in person and the 2nd time we'll have run this type of thing together (we're doing one in Melbourne in a few weeks too).

Chris and I are still finalising the exact schedule for the day but here's what we can tell you so far:

• It will be held on Thursday 14th October. Please note this date so that you don't just buy a pass for Friday and Saturday. There are other sessions on Thursday also which the Thursday pass will also get you access to.
• I've recently surveyed a segment of ProBlogger readers on the needs and challenges that they face as bloggers. We'll be basing the sessions we run around the main needs identifies. These are 'finding readers', 'making blogs profitable' and 'writing killer content'.
• We are hoping to mix things up a little in terms of how we teach these topics. We want each session to contain solid teaching (keynote style) but also time for practical case studies/interviews with people who know what they're doing and some Q&A. So there will be a mix of keynotes, interviews and one panel on the day.
• Chris and I won't be doing everything alone – we're already pulling together a few other special guest presenters to bring their own expertise.

Also at BWE this year it looks like I'll be involved in a number of other sessions including the usual 'Super Panel' that looks at monetization and another that I'm not sure I can announce quite yet.

Update : The other session I'm doing is a keynote panel with Brian Clark of CopyBlogger and Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication .

BWE Early Bird Special Ends 15th July

If you're coming to BWE NOW is the time to get your ticket as they are currently running an Early Bird Special that ends on 15 July. The special gets you nearly 50% off so it is well worth taking advantage of! Sign up to attend BWE here .

PS: Promote BWE as an Affiliate

If you're a blogger with an audience that might like to also attend BWE – you can also become an affiliate for BWE (like me). They pay a 10% commission on any referrals you can bring in. With an average spend of $360 this is $36 per attendee referred. Sign up as an affiliate here .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Announcing the 'ProBlogger Track' at Blog World Expo 2010
Early Bird Special Ends this Week!

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If you're a blogger and looking to work with a group of other bloggers to improve your blog – then there are two new groups starting up to work through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook together in the coming few weeks.

They are both for different types of bloggers and both were started in response to my post a couple of weeks back looking at how one blogger put on a version of 31DBBB for his niche and in doing so raised his profile and helped many bloggers come together for mutual benefit.

In that post I offered any blogger who wanted to try something similar a head start by offering their group 25% off the 31DBBB workbook.

There are a number of groups starting in the coming weeks but two that are launched and gathering steam are:

1。 女性博客

SITSgirls – this community of thousands of women bloggers are partnering up with BlogFrog and ProBlogger to put on this event for their network (and anyone who wants to join them). It's kicking off on 19 July and looking at the hundreds of comments on the announcement post there is going to be a large group going through this together. Learn more and join them here .

2。 Movie Bloggers

Anomalous Material is running a 31DBBB for movie bloggers . This one is a little more niche focused but also is gaining momentum with quite a few bloggers from that niche signing up. They're kicking off on 2 August. Learn more and join them here .

Both of these groups have discount codes (25% off) for anyone who signs up to do it with them.

If you're not a woman blogger or a movie blogger – there is talk of another couple of groups coming together in different niches but as I mentioned in my previous post – if you're in a niche and can gather a group of 5 or more bloggers together feel free to contact me and I'll set you up with a discount code too.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Calling all Women Bloggers and Movie Bloggers – Two New 31DBBB Groups Starting Soon!

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It never ceases to amaze me how a customer's experience is often less than ideal. You hear stories all the time about rude customer service agents or front line employees checking people through the register while simultaneously talking on their cell phones… HELLO!!!

Today's quick marketing tip is about going the extra mile. As a Napolean Hill follower and someone who has benefited tremendously from understanding where to focus my energy, it's always on going the extra mile. The good news is that the concept, as simply as it may be, carry's great value.

I recently had a very good experience with this when visiting a local retailer. I asked someone if they had any more items of a particular kind in the back of the store. After waiting a few minutes, the clerk came back and said 'no'. But she didn't stop there. She said, “let me call another store to see if they have any in stock.” After calling the store and discovering that they were out of stock as well, she called a competitor to see if they had the item – which they did.

She was focused on making me happy. And because she went the extra mile, I will be back to her store many times over. The lesson to be learned here is to treat each and every customer with dignity and respect. And, most importantly, to go the extra mile. This pays dividends time and again.
When you are putting together your marketing program, work diligently to ask the question, “how can I go the extra mile?” Collaborate with people on your team, your customer service group, and even your customers. By baking additional value into the marketing and purchase process, you'll build everlasting loyalty among your customers!

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

When ever you initiate an online marketing campaign, consider the value of Word of Mouth marketing. By leveraging your customers and other who are interested in what you have to offer, you can take your marketing to new heights!

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

The next time you launch a product that doesn't do well, remember Coca-cola and how they managed to turn a negative into a positive. Today Coca-cola is on top of the Cola Wars and continues to be the beverage of choice for many throughout the world. Your marketing can be effective when you do your research, look at it objectively, and utilize your best customers for product improvement ideas. Doing so is nothing short of refreshing!

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

If you want to start making money online, I encourage you to sign up for an affiliate network. It costs nothing and can begin generating some extra cash for your wallet. Successful affiliate marketers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, or more. Affiliate marketing is a great way to do business online and everyone should join in.

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

Let me know if you're usin free trials and how successfuly they are for you!

For more free marketing advice, visit the marketing experts at http://www.MarketingScoop.com.

One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.

Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.

Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid fairly early on for a custom design.

These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.

There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I'd like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I've found them to be of a standard that I'm more than happy to pay for.

1. Aweber

Perhaps the single most important decision that I've made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).

I've outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won't rehash it all again – but this is a tool I'm more than happy to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.

2. Ustream Producer Pro

This is the latest tool that I've invested in. It wasn't particularly cheap at $199 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.

Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don't need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.

3. MindNode Pro

I'ma big fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I've tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode .

Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I'm willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.

4. Market Samurai

I've not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it's excellent. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines .

The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its great features to try before you buy – you might find that that's all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.

5. Screenflow

This is a mac only tool which allows users to do great screencasting. I've used it more for private resources that I've developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what's on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I've made with it include -

• How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
• How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
• How to Use Google's Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about

Note : I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

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One of the best new resources for those wanting to make money from blogging is a new eBook (and available as a 'real' book is How to Build a Successful Blog Business by Collis Ta'eed.

I had the opportunity to read this great new book last week and was really impressed by the mix of solid teaching, practical tips and fantastic case studies.

Collis Ta'eed is the creator of some highly successful blogging businesses – Envato, Tuts+, Freelance switch and AppStorm. He's built something with his great team from scratch to be some of the most popular and profitable blogs going around. He's someone that I respect so much that I've invited him to speak at the upcoming Melbourne bloggers day net week.

Topics in the book include a wide array of things including

• an introduction to
• teaching on how to plan and research your new blog
• tips on creating a brand, naming your blog, choosing domains and design
• a variety of teaching on staffing your blog
• content – how to write it, editing content, headline tips, evergreen content etc
• generating traffic for your blog – how to do it!
• monetization – teaching on an array of methods of making money from blogs
• building a long term business – expanding to multiple blogs and adding businesses to your blog

There are also 3 great case studies on the blogs that Collis has set up – these case studies are highly valuable in and of themselves and my favourite part of the book.

I found this 327 page book to be a refreshing read and one that I think will help a lot of people. For me the highlight was to get an insight into how another bloggers has approached his business – I picked up a lot of great ideas and know that anyone starting out will gain even more insight.

You can get a free sample of the book on the sales page for it (including full table of contents and the first chapter).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to Build a Successful Blog Business

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Kevin Geary is the author of Employee Revolution : A guide to being indispensable, irreplaceable, and higher paid (without lying, cheating, or joining a union).

If you have a personal blog, I'm talking directly to you. If you don't have a personal blog, get one now. Sorry, but this surefire strategy doesn't work unless you have a personal blog (you can keep your other blogs, you just need a personal one too).

What is a resume`?

Try not to fall asleep. This is short and to the point, I promise.

A resume is a list of your qualifications on one page. It's supposed to make it easy for a company to quickly determine whether or not you are qualified for a job.

But companies actually use your resume` as an excuse to exclude you.

Secret : They don't look at what's there, they look at what's missing. The key is to not play by the rules.

This is where your personal blog comes in. The resume` is dead . It's time to be unique. It's time to be relevant. It's time to be revolutionary. It's time to be a real problogger.

I want you to use your personal blog as a launch pad for your dream career. The personal blog is the new resume` of the revolutionary.

What's it look like?

In the new global economy, skills and titles are commodities. The times are changing so quickly that it's nearly impossible to keep up, much less completely stand apart from others skill-wise or title-wise.

How much better of a programmer are you really? How many more titles can you achieve over the next person in line? How much faster can you complete the design process? It's all a race in the wrong direction because there's always someone (or a computer) who can do it better and faster than you (or good enough to get paid a little less and keep the job).

What's important for the revolutionary is not physical skill and titles (things that look good on resume`s) as much as it is: personality, uniqueness, imagination, relevance, artistry, passion, personal connection, fearlessness, and problem solving. These are things that can't be replicated; things that make you an individual and not a commodity .

It's also a list of things that are impossible to communicate on a resume`.

Your personal blog is going to tell your real story. It's not the story of physical skills and titles. It's the story of getting things done. It's the story of being invaluable. It's the story of doing what nobody else has done, solving problems nobody else could solve, and not just having ideas, but consistently acting-on and shipping them (getting your idea to the public).

The revolutionary doesn't have a resume`. The revolutionary has a story that is digitally recorded, spread across the globe, talked about, shared, commented on, revered, admired, hated, and loved. It's uniqueness translates into scarcity, which translates into value in the marketplace.

Your personal blog is a chance to tell who you are and show what you do (beyond skills and titles) in a way that makes you irresistible. It's the way you're going to land the job you really want. It's the way you're going to make an absolute fortune.

This is where you expect the list.

There is no list. There can't be. If there was a step by step process to creating a blog that accomplishes what we just talked about, everyone would have one.

There's only step one: get started. Use what you've learned here from Darren to get everything set up. Then think about answering the following questions:

• Who are you, really?
• Why are you different?
• How are you relevant?
• What have you accomplished (not ideas, but actual accomplishments in your industry)?
• 你觉得呢？
• Who will recommend you?
• What have they said about you?
• What are your ideas?
• What problems have you solved?

There are many more, but I think you get the point. These are all things a company should ask, but doesn't. This is how you change the rules. This is how you win .

The revolution is new, but the revolution is real. I invite you to leave the confines of the box everyone lives in and be a revolutionary. You're important. We need you.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How to Make an Absolute Fortune From Your Blog (Really)

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In 3 simple words you too can be on your way to making some real money with little effort. It's called the “eBay Partner Network” and it can drive some serious revenue if you put in the effort.

We are about to take full advantage of eBay's affiliate program.

它是如何工作

• First and foremost, visit Ebay Motors and choose an extremely high priced vehicle. The rarer and more custom the better. It's always good to go with vehicles in the 500k range for best results.
  • This will cause attention when you market it since people don't see these too often.

Post to Forums

1. Next do a quick Google search for forums and websites where people discuss vehicles. You will want to look for the sites/forums with the most activity and discussions. This means you will have a better chance at people seeing any posts you make.

2. Now start creating your posts! Post a topic with the title “ This is INSANE! Check out the price of this Porsche! “

3. Now that you are all set with the forum and you have the post started, lets finish it! In the post description, type in something like “OMG, I was just browsing ebay for parts and I stumbled upon this badass Mustang, I'd love to own one, but you won't believe the price – <ebay link>” .

4. After you have created about 10 posts or so in each forum you choose, by now you should be able to place a link or banner in the footer. Place a link/banner and start having discussions throughout the forum, which will have you drawing more attention to the link since its in your footer.

5. Now just rinse and repeat on other related forums.

Why does this work?

Well each time a visitor goes through the eBay link, eBay pays you a small given amount depending upon how good the traffic is (The % that spend money there).

Each related topic will get you at least 200 uniques, it's not surprising to get 10k hits to eBay Partner Network with about 30 – 40 posts a week.

At 3 cents per click, you can easily make $300-$500 per week from eBay with just 4-5 hours worth of work per week!

VERY IMPORTANT: One thing I have to STRESS is that the link HAS to be value adding to be a successful money maker for you. You need the link to stay around, and you want people to bump it with comments. Now, there is NO reason to spam, as you can make thousands quickly with very few posts. You will definitely make less money if you spam, spamming this does not work! Tools to automate this should always have a custom message printed by a human that fits each forum's genre. For instance, I have automated it, but I have a tool that let's me change the message for each niche of forum, this is critical, it MUST BE VALUE ADDING, IF YOU INTEND TO SPAM ONLY YOU WILL MAKE NOTHING!

PS: Of course make sure the eBay rover link is cloaked, users won't click on rover links!

Curious How to Redirect?

The reason you redirect the link is so that eBay doesn't think your spamming their link all over the place.

1. You will first need a website to redirect the link from. If you don't have a site already, create a simple quick and easy one.
2. In the header of the page that is being redirected, place the following code:
3. <META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT=”0;URL=http://www.the-ebay-site.com”>
4. Just replace the “ http://www.the-ebay-site.com” with the site you want to redirect to and your done!

As an internet marketing, I am always looking for new ways, tricks, and techniques to get my backlinks out there and my sites pushed up the Google search ladder. If you have a blog or are continually updating your site, this is the tutorial for you!

上手

To start off, you will be creating the following:

• A new fresh blog post
• 3 keywords related to your blog post
  • ie Seo, web marketing, link building

First, create a new category for each of your keywords. Under each of the categories, you will want to create your articles.

It should look like the following

• • • Category Keyword 1
      • 第1条
      • 第2条
      • 第三条
    • Category Keyword 2
      • 第1条
      • 第2条
      • 第三条

The Backlink

Ok, now that we have the boring stuff out of the way it's time to start the fun stuff and building backlinks.

Go to Wikipedia.com and do a search for your keyword. Once you have found an article matching your keyword, scroll down to the portion of the page that states:

“== External Links ==”

Click on the “Edit” link to the right hand side of that section and include the following to add your link:

* [http://www.yousitename.com Anchor Text]

(So you will be adding your website address, then leaving a space and placing your anchor text)

That's it!, you've just received a backlink on an insanely popular site!

Now just start adding the rest of the links for each article you had created.

This article aims to show you how to attract users and make them hungry for more. Who is this post for? Anyone with a web site. Not all of the items listed below will apply to you and your business, but they are, at the very least, a source for inspiration.

Fresh and catchy content

If you have good content, people will always come back for more. One of the most important things about content is to keep it fresh and up-to-date . But, just like Smashing Magazine, make sure you archive your content for people to refer back to.

Listen to your community

If you are already lucky enough to have a community or even just some regular users, listen to them. You can do this by emailing your users directly, setting up comment forms, live chat , or even user feedback systems such as UserVoice , which allow users to vote on site issues and functionality. By listening to your community you can determine exactly what they want.

Monitor how your site is used

Knowing how users use your site is vital. This allows you to target their needs better. The best way is to keep a close eye on your analytics data, check what country/area your users are coming from, what search terms are working well for you, and what sites are giving you the best referrals.

Find out how users navigate your site via Heat maps . These help you alter your site so that it is easier for your visitors to use and find what they want. This keeps your users happy and more likely to return.

Take part in the on-line community

When you read your favorite blog or read an article of interest, leave a comment with your name, email and web site address. Ensure you are an active member of a relevant forum discussion or networking group. Make sure you are seen to be an active member of your site's online community sector.

Submit to directories and galleries

This should be an ongoing process as there are many local, national and worldwide directories. Your first port of call should be DMOZ.org . Following this submit to the local directories and those specializing in your sites business sector.

If you are designing web sites and proud of your work, submit your site to web design galleries. These directories such as CSS Beauty and CSS Elite feature beautiful and creative designs and ask users to comment and rate each design. Once people see your work their visitors may become yours too.

Email signatures

Whenever you send out an email, make sure you have your URL attached to the email signature . Simple idea but effective.

Business cards always at hand

Ensure you always have your business card to hand. If you meet someone needing your services it always pays to have a striking and memorable business card to exchange. It is worth spending time on your business card to make it creative and memorable , otherwise you may just be left at the bottom of the pile with the rest.

Company stationary

Put your web site address on everything; pens, letterheads, flyers, and anything that represents your company. Make sure it is clear and promotes people to visit your web site eg “For more information on our new product check ourwebsite.com”

Win an award

Winning an award is not easy but it can lead to a flood of visitors to your site. Even if you are a runner up, people will be curious as to who you are. The winner of the .net magazine interactive site of the year 2009, www.ecodazoo.com , received huge amounts of visits from the www.thenetawards.com site. Choose your competition wisely and remember, winning is not everything but getting your URL in front of as many readers as possible is.

比赛

On the flip side of winning an award, running a competition can be just as beneficial to your analytics stats. This could be as simple as designing a new logo or coming up with a new name for your latest product. Either way this will attract more users to your site and show you are giving back to your users as well as taking.

搜索引擎优化

Effective SEO, common sense and web standards go hand-in-hand. The idea is to create a semantic, valid code, that essentially uses the right tool for the job. This means using the right HTML tags and having a unique title and meta data for each page. Ensure search engine spiders can correctly index your site and good content is a must. Remember the most important way to climb the search engine ranks is through quality links. For full information on this see the Google Webmasters/Site owners guidelines .

Paid advertising

Pay per click advertising can drive a great deal of traffic to your site if you correctly target your keywords. Placing your banner or link on relevant sites will vastly improve the chance of you getting noticed.

Have you ever spent a day trying to build your backlinks, getting your website's links on other people's sites, blogs, or forums, and then come a week later and you have nothing to show for it and no backlinks to your site?

The trouble with building backlinks these days is that everyone is doing it. And you might be sitting here right now thinking…well DUH Bryant, of course they are! But let's take a step back and look at the issue at hand…

Let's take the word “Web Marketing” for example. Web Marketing has 140,000,000 search competitors. If you are wanting your site to come up in a search under this term, that would mean that you are competing with 140 Million other people who are doing the same thing!!

Again, the issue with backlinks is that everyone is doing it. And we sit here and question why our backlinks aren't showing up (staying on a site for a prolonged period of time), let's look at why none of them seem to be sticking…

The Example

To get your backlinks in a forum post you have to do 1 of 2 things:

• Place your link in the editable area
• Your link in the Signature field

Now, if you can get a signature field when you first sign up for forum, GREAT! 做到这一点！ However, many forums require you to be their for a given amount of time, or a given amount of posts must be made. If you are looking to create massive amounts of backlinks, your goal should be to hit as many forums as you can in the smallest time period you can.

So many people place their backlink in the editable field, and come to find out that a day later their post and/or account is deleted for spamming.

But how can we make this a win-win solution? To get your backlinks on forums quickly , and get them to stick?

The Solution

In short: link back to your site using a smiley as an anchor text. Your hidden link will go unnoticed but it will help you as far as seo is concerned – despite not having a proper anchor text.

You can post on forums and include a smiley backlink, or you can leave a comment on a wordpress blog and include a smiley backlink, and the mods will have a hard time detecting your hidden link cause the smiley will look just normal.

Code for Forums:

[ URL = " http : / / www . google . com " ] : ) [/URL]

Code for WordPress Blogs:

<a href=”http://www.google.com”>:)</a>

This is a method of getting free links.

• Have Google PageRank (PR)
• Allow you to use your keywords as the anchor text

I'm not going to argue about how accurate PR is. At the end of the day, it's a quick and easy way to see how much a link is likely to help you. If a page has a PR4 for example then the chances are it has at least a few external links going into it and wil benefit you in the serps.

After you have done your on-page SEO, it comes down to links links links! If you want to rank for the word “Bingo” then go ahead and buy/spam/socialise(link bait etc) 1,000 links from high quality sites with the anchor text “bingo”.

I was actually using this method quite a few years ago but in a slightly different way which I will save for the next post

Quick overview
The basic idea is to look for forum posts which already have PR, we then signup to the forum and post a relevant message on the post. After a day or two, we return to the post and edit it to include our link.

Full process

第1步
Install an add-on for your browser which allows you to view the pagerank of each search result in Google. This allows us to quickly see which forum posts have PR without having to visit each individual page. You could use SEO For Firefox or SEOQuake

第2步
We start by searching for forums, it's that simple. For example, we might perform a search for vBulletin Forums .

第3步
Select one forum from the results of step 2 and do a site: search on it.

In the screenshot above you can clearly see there is an internal thread which has a PR2 (a tell tale sign for vBulletin forums is the use of a default URL structure.. showthread.asp?t=xxx).

第4步
Signup to the forum and verify your account. Make a relevant post on the previously found thread.

Step 5
Repeat step 2-4 many times and ensure you keep a note of all the posts and your login details.

第6步
Leave it a day or two and return to each of your posts, login and edit the post to include your link!

Great, a free link with my chosen keywords as the anchor text from a PR2 internal page!

Top Tips

• Ensure the thread you're looking at has only one page worth of posts, so that when you make your post, you're also on the page with PR
• Take the time to write a relevant on-topic post. These are free, reasonable quality links and worth putting the few minutes of time! If your first post is spammy or “Wow, great thread!” then it will be removed as spam within minutes on most forums.
• Most of the threads with PR will be reasonably old, this is because toolbar PR obviously only gets updated every now and then. As such you should come up with a convincing reason for why you're dragging up a post that is 3 months or even 3 years old! The way to do this is to associate yourself with the thing being discussed, if someone is talking about a problem then describe how you have the same problem and even if there's a solution, state that it doesn't help you and request further advice.
• The longer you can leave the post without editing it the better. If you leave it for a short amount of time only then there is a chance someone will notice the edit and report you to the administrator. Be aware that some forum software does put a time restriction on how long you have before you can edit a post, I haven't ran into this problem many times.
• Mix up your search in step 2 so that you don't hit the same forums as other people.

Many people always seem to ask me why this site is so successful at getting into the Top 3 position listings on Google for their chosen keywords . I use most of the Software that I Review and often get asked how I use each one in my overall Backlinking Strategy for SEO. I thought I would provide you all with the basic plan of action I use for succeeding with all of my sites.

While there are many different ways to approach a backlink strategy, this is just one…

1. Keywords

Your keyword selection is the most important thing you have to figure out. I spend more time in keyword research than I do in deciding where I am going to promote my sites. I use Market Samurai almost exclusively when I am researching keywords , but you can get the exact same information through the Google External Keyword Tool for Free.

For example, if I am working on a site that is in the Weight Loss niche, I first do a base search on Weight Loss. What you find is that there is way too much competition in the Weight Loss niche to try to compete for the base keywords themselves, so I focus on keywords that are low competion that still bring in a decent number of searches per month. I like my keywords to have a minimum of 1000 searches per month. I then choose 4 that relate closely to my target site. For example: simply weight loss, slimming weight loss, fastest weight loss, and best weight loss programs .

Now that I have my keywords , I place each one in the Google Search tool again and see all of the related keywords that go with them. I now create my website pages, reviews, articles, and social bookmarking blurbs. All of these either have the keywords in them and they have the related keywords . I like to have a 2-3% keyword density for all of the base keywords I use on each page. You can check this at KeywordDensity.com . Don't answer the question to your overall subject in your offsite promotional articles. Use the articles to push visitors to the answer to their questions or where they can get more information on your main site.

2。 文章纺

I now take all of the articles that I wrote and I spin them with the Mass Article Creator (from Mass Aricle Control) and the Magic Article Rewriter . I like the Mass Article Creator to setup my articles for submission through the Unique Article Wizard (UAW). It formats my articles and spins my phrases and sentences perfectly for UAW. This is not the only way to do this this is just my way. I then use the Magic Article ReWriter to prep my articles for SENuke (my SEO Backlink software tool). The Magic Article ReWriter will format my articles exactly the way SENuke wants them (it will format your spun article with the {|} formatting required in the SENuke spinner. Yes, SENuke has a Rewriter, but I don't think it is the strong suit of SENuke, so I use better tools becauseI can afford to.

Once this is all done and prepped, I get ready for my initial submission processes.

3. Unique Article Wizard & Social Bookmarking

I now submit a few of my site's pages, to include the Home Page, to about 20 of the Top Social Bookmarking sites . I pay particular attention to Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit , and I also push the URL's through Twitter on my main account. Usually, this alone will have my site indexed in Google, sometimes within a few hours if I am submitting a blog or about 48-72 hours for an HTML/ PHP site. This is all done using all of the Keyword Phrases I developed in Step 1, each used with a different URL where the keyword is the most applicable to your Page's content.

I have by now created a minimum of one article for each keyword phrase. I have 4 spun copies of each article built specificlly for the Unique Article Wizard. Each set of articles for each keyword is used for one submission in UAW. Once I complete the submission process for all of my articles, I can now expect to push the specific keyword anchor text I created to over 1000 sites with just this method. I use the spin feature in UAW to ensure I cycle through my 4 keyword anchor text phrases across each article, so I spread all of the keywords across all of the articles. If the site wasn't indexed by Google before, with this step I am almost definitely in after 1 or 2 days. The UAW submissions will actually grow your backlinks over time and not all at once. This is one of the bigger benefits of using UAW as opposed to a traditional Article Submission service.

Here is the key though : I do not link to the home page of my site with the Keyword Anchor Text at all through the UAW process. I link to pages within my site in order to build strength within my site and not just drive traffic to my home page. For this to work, you have to ensure that you link all of your pages within your sites together, preferrably with a Silo type structure. Additional random linking also helps, like if you use the Simple tags Plugin for WordPress sites, which will link your blog posts together with tag links randomly.

4。 Wait a week or so.

Yes, I wait. I don't want to saturate Google with Backinks right off the bat. I will submit Articles to EzineArticles and GoArticles during this time, but that is about it. These 2 Article Directories can be submitted to through SEnuke too, but I usually submit to them individually. They are powerhouse article directories which will bring in a ton of traffic if you do things right. Focus on your main keywords for these sites. If you need to use your home page for these sites due to your site having limited content, these are the directories that will maximize your link building efforts. These Article Directories should receive your best Articles outside of your site's actual content. If you follow up with additional submissions later, focus on articles with content just over the minimum in order to push traffic to your site.

5. SENuke

SENuke is my Primary Tool for High PR SEO Backlink Building. I now load up my SENuke specific articles and get to promoting through all of the Web 2.0 sites and Article Directories that SENuke offers. I do not submit to EzineArticles and GoArticles as I already did that in my previous step. I have at least 5 articles setup for each keyword phrase at this point from my article spinning session I talked about in Step 2. In SENuke I have created 5 profiles for this specific niche already, so now I will submit one article through each Profile with a separate keyword focus for each. I do the same with the Social Bookmarking section of SENuke and the High PR Profile submission section. This entire process usually takes me about a week or two. I don't rush it and to be honest, even with the automation of SENuke, it takes awhile and I am usually working on other sites and projects while this is being done. It is important when you create Projects like this, that you Plan accordingly. Project Management is key so you can keep this going for multiple projects at the same time. If you haven't used SENuke, or want more information on SENuke, you can see my Review which has Video on how to use it and it's capabilities here .

6. Link Farm Evolution

I only just started using this a month or so ago. The great thing about this software is it allows you to use WPMU, Blogger, Pligg, and Tumblr to maximize backlinking. I think I have added about 40,000 backlinks to all of my sites together using this software over the last month. It doesn't have the site range you may want, but it is a great compliment to SENuke. It doesn't always work great (updates are constant), but when it does, it is fantastic. I use some of the same articles I have already spun from Mass Article Creator for this and it works great. I have been using this constantly for all of my sites, so I don't have a good timeline for it's use, but for any type of SEO promotion work you do, SPAM is not an option. You have to be smart, More is not always better. If you have a huge spike in backlinks over a few days for one site, you will see your rank climb and then suddenly fall. Google is always watching. For more information on what Link Farm Evolution can do, see my video review here .

7。 目录提交

By now about a month has gone by. I now like to move on to other things in order to not focus on just one or two sites. I now look at submitting my sites to a bunch of High PR SEO Friendly Web Directories. I do this through Directory Maximizer which allows me to space out my submissions over several weeks and I can choose 4 or 5 Keyword (Title) Variations and Descriptions and they do the submitting for me for a small $0.14 per directory fee. This isn't the only option for Directory Submissions. The Warrior Forum provides great Special Offers for Directory Submissions from time to time. Directory Maximizer is very convenient to use and it works very well.

8。 Social Bookmarking and High PR Links

I now also use a Social Bookmarking service I purchase through the Warrior Forum Special Offer section and I also use a High PR link building service from Angela Edwards there as well which gives me 30 links per month. Both services cost me about $100 total each month for each set of keywords I promote. Like I said before, I do it because I can afford to. Having them do it saves me time and money so I can focus on other aspects of my business. In fact, I normally don't even write most of my own articles anymore, but I do still do all of my own Article Spinning.

Last Step: Use Analytics, Stats, and Do it Again

Now it is time to evaluate what you have done, which you should be doing from the start actually. Keep track of your stats and see what is working and what isn't. Make changes, add new keywords , promote new links in your site, etc. Wash, rinse, repeat. Do it all over again with new stuff and you will dominate the Niche you are working on taking over. With low competition niches, this method described above might do it by itself. If not, keep adding new articles through the whole process. Track your backlinks, track your traffic, and track where you stand for the keywords you chose.

Here is the Key takeaway from all of this : Using the keywords that are close to your main keyword should now give you residual traffic from your main keyword. It should also push you up the ranks for the main keyword. Most people don't type the words: “weight loss” into Google. The type keywords that relate to their problems or what the want to figure out, like “how can I achieve weight loss fast”. That is why you will still suceed.

This all works and it works well. You should end up with a few thousand backlinks after using this process and they will have good range from High PR to low which makes your backlinking look natural. You can see that by doing this, you can move ahead of the rest in the pack. If you just saturate the web with backlinks to random keywords and focus just on your home page, you will not get even close to the results that you can with this method. I know that most webmasters don't use these techniques because I routinely jump to the Top 3 in almost any Niche I choose. I was in either the Top spot or within 2-4 slots from Number 1 in Google during the massive Commission Blueprint 2 Product Launch last week in which I made over $10,000 in Affiliate Sales between 3 Clickbank Accounts.

Lastly: I always get asked about how much website traffic my methods generate. There is no simple answer for this because it is all based on the keywords you select, the quality of your articles (I could write an entire Blog Post on just this), and how much competition there is in the Niche you are in (which goes back to keywords again). If you choose a tight niche where you can dominate 4 Keyword Phrases that generate 4000 searches per month, you can expect at least 2000 -3000 hits from those Searches if you are number #1 with a good Title. After that it goes down substantially. If you can dominate 4 Keyword Phrases that generate 10,000 Searches per month, you can see what you may get with that. If you don't research your Keywords and see what people are searching for, you have already failed.

Plan to Suceed and you will.

UPDATE: I was emailed fairly quickly by a buddy of mine who reminded me that I forgot to mention a Social Bookmarking tool that I use daily, but do not use at the same time. I used to use Bookmarking Demon as my tool to get indexed fast. I still do when I am pushing a fast affiliate promotion. Laziness has driven me to outsource. I still use Bookmarking Demon (I have for over 3 years), but I use it more for the Randomization features it has in Version 4 than anything else. It constantly keeps my sites in their positions and it keeps me from having to write a ton of articles to keep my sites in their positions. I am sorry I forgot and I feel like I slighted those who I have told for years that this was an essential tool in building backlinks and driving quick bursts of traffic to my sites. I load up Bookmarking Demon and then let it run in the background while I do other things. I am constantly promoting with it, but it is not my Primary tool if you know what I mean.

Craigslist now requires anyone who wants to post in the Services section to verify their telephone number. But what if this was part of your marketing efforts and now since you only have one telephone number, they have brought your marketing technique down to a screeching halt.

it seems now that everyone is scratching their heads at what to do, and have heard over and over about people buying added telephone numbers just to create accounts or outright buying Craigslist accounts with verified telephone numbers.

I say, save your money!

Obviously if people are able to purchase multiple accounts that are phone verified, there has to be a way around this.

What You Need

The following tools are required before you begin:

• Proxies and proxy changer
• You can eliminate the proxy changer by getting an auto poster like CladGenius (You can get a Free Trial, or if anyone wants, I can post up how to bypass the CladGenius Free Trial) CladGenius.com
• Skype (Skype.com)
• Ccleaner (ccleaner.com)

The Method

Step 1: Turn on Skype and Login

Step 2: Go To http://ring2skype.com

Enter all your Skype details and in return they will give you a free SkypeIn number for people to call you at.

Step 3: Now that you have your new telephone number, create a Craigslist account at phone verify it by using your new number.

Step 4: One completed, create a new Skype account and start the process all over again.

BETWEEN EACH ACCOUNT CREATION/POSTINGS, CLEAN YOUR FILES AND COOKIES WITH THE CCLEANER PROGRAM SO THAT YOU ARE AS HIDDEN AS POSSIBLE AND YOUR ADS HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF STAYING UP.

Here's a quick PR9 backlink tip that can be accomplished in less then 3 minutes for everyone out there.

Here's How To Get A Free Link on Amazon.com
1) Create an Amazon.com affiliate account .
2) Select the aStore option.

3) Fill in the keywords you would like to use and select a product category related to your site.

4) At the bottom of that page while still on step 1, Insert your link and anchor text.

5) Complete the last 3 steps. All are fairly short and quick

6) Cop/Paste your custom affiliate URL. It'll be in this format: http://astore.amazon.com/username

7) Run the URL through PINGLER 。

Restart at #1 and continue to do it until Amazon figures out they have a loophole in their system

Having Trouble Writing Multiple Articles?

To go along with my previous post of how you can turn 1 article into 1,000 visitors in just 48 hours. But let's say you want to take your one article and target search engine rankings rather than rollover traffic

It's time to ReWrite!

The concept of rewriting is simple. Using your 1 article and mixing the verbiage up to create a brand new unique article without having to actually write anything.

In this day and age, speed is king. If you don't have article writers at your disposal or have the money to afford one, this may be a viable option for you.

The Software List:

Quick Content Wizard

QCW substitute's the article text with similar words. This isn't the most accurate Plug & Play tool, so you still need to clean up some of the lines.

Random Paper Article Spinner

RandomPaper is really nice. It can rewrite your article into almost a completely new and unique article. But again, you need to do some corrections on certain words and lines since it may have grammatical errors 。

Article Changer

Article Changer is one of the best. It can accurately make changes and substitute the words with correct sentences.

Free Article Spinner

Free Article Spinner allows you to set the keywords density changes when you spin an article. You can prefer whether to
rewrite or spin your article depending on the accuracy.

EZ-ReWriter Software

This has a clean and easy interface, as well as works as intented. The interface will also show you which words have been
rewritten.

Jet Spinner

Jet Spinner is by far my favorite. Not as easy as some of the copy&paste tools above, but has an excellent site that is user friendly and can litterly create hundred of articles for you.

Word Flood

The software can be a bit difficult and tedious at first considering you will have to to choose and substitute the words manually. But would be a top pick for article rewriting in SeNuke.

Lost at how to get more visitors from your articles?

Everyone knows that writing a good 500 word article can literly be gold if done correctly. There are even people who do nothing but write articles all day as part of their SEO Marketing tactic. But what about all of us other people who don't have the time (or patience) to sit around all day writing articles? How can we turn one article created in 20 minutes into a multitude of backlink's for our site?

We use the power of the web and already established sites to automate the process! No, I'm not talking about using any software. All SEO tactics should be free with nothing but a necessity of an internet connection.

I am talking about using established sites to get the complete trio instantly! READERS – TRAFFIC – BACKLINKS

So, let's get started.

Estimated time: 1 hour

When you great a blog post or submit an article to an Article Directory, what happens next to the article? You just scrap it or save it to spin and resubmit later on right?

So you spend more added time trying to spin the article and resubmit, just to get some measly traffic from 1 article and 9 spun.

别急！ I have an idea! What if there was a way that you could use that same article without it being spun? As well as be indetectable as a duplicate from Google's bots.

That would be a Goldmine wouldn't it?!

The solution is finally here. The idea is to use the initial article and submit it to online document hosting sites. Not only do many of these sites have good traffic, but are continually patrolled by Bots, which means your article will be submitted almost instantly.

Although not all of then allow backlinks, the point is traffic and getting them indexed on a Google trusted site.

The Tactic

Now that you have your one article written and submitted to your Article Directory, open up word. Now that you are in word, edit your headed to state your domain name such as “YourDomain.com”. I like to put it in 32 size font and change the color to read. I also recommended you place this in your header so that it's continually on the top of all your pages.

Save the work document.

When you upload the document to these sites it may seem that they convert it to PDF type format. 这是不正确的。 I have noticed that Google easily crawls uploaded Word Documents, but doesn't seem to crawl PDF uploaded documents.

So the next task is to convert your work document into PDF format.

Don't have a PDF converter? Go to: https://createpdf.adobe.com/

Create an account, and then you can upload your word document for PDF conversion FREE

Once you have your PDF, upload it to the document hosting sites. By uploading to 10 sites, you only need 50 visitors a day to get to 1,000 in 48 hours . If your article is good an unique, there is no reason why you can't achieve 2,000+

To get quick indexing, ping your sites by going to Pingler.com

Document Hosting Sites:

• http://www.scribd.com
• http://www.issuu.com
• http://www.docs.google.com (click share > Publish as webpage)
• http://www.prezi.com
• http://www.calameo.com
• http://www.docstoc.com
• http://member.thinkfree.com/member/goLandingPage.action
• http://www.loosestitch.com
• http://www.live-documents.com/
• http://bookgoo.com/
• http://wwww.mixedink.com/main.php

**Scribd and DocStoc get the most visitors**

You could generate a few hundred viewers in 48 hours by using these 2 sites only, and then social bookmarking them.

Or add images to it and create Slideshows:

• http://www.authorstream.com/
• http://www.slideserve.com/
• http://slidesix.com
• http://prezentit.com/

One of the things that first attracted me to blogging was the creative genius that I saw at work in many of the blogs going around at that time.

There was an 'anything goes' type attitude among bloggers who were pushing the boundaries of what could be done on a blog. Of course I look back now and much of this past creativity has become quite normal now (for example I clearly remember seeing a blogger include a short video in a post a number of years back and thinking it was cutting edge).

Another thing I loved about blogging was the humor, irreverence and fun I saw happening on blogs. Bloggers were not constrained by the editorial process, policy and standards that journalists worked with and as a result some of the content that they produced was like writing I'd not seen before (note: I'm not saying that editorial processes, policy and standards of journalism are a bad thing – but that what I saw bloggers doing was markedly different to what I saw happening in mainstream media at that time).

Blogging was an exciting genre – we were cutting new ground as a community of bloggers.

Of course this tradition of pushing boundaries and expressing ourselves creatively lives on – in fact it's a real feature of many successful blogs.

Be a Playful Blogger

In a presentation last year on principles of successful blogging – one of the points I made that tried to get at this pushing of the boundaries and new way of writing was titled – Be Playful .

Not every successful blog is 'playful' but many are. Whether it be in the experimentation with new mediums, tools and ideas, or whether it be in the type of content that they produce – almost anything goes when it comes to blogging.

In fact as I look back on the most memorable posts that I've published on my blogs it is often the 'playful' ones that stick out. A few examples:

• 5 Things You Should Know about My Dad the ProBlogger (I wrote this post in the voice of my 2 year old son – the voice seemed to capture the imagination of readers)
• How to Reduce Camera Shake – 6 Techniques (the pictures in this post where the author scribbled over her butt and asked readers to ignore it (by drawing attention to it) went over so well with readers. The post went viral on Digg and many other sites.
• Does My Butt Look Big in This? – What Clothes to Wear in Portraits (the title of this one drew in a HEAP of visitors)

A few quick starting points for being playful

There are many ways to 'be playful' on a blog but a few starting points include:

• Experiment with your voice – it is often not 'what' you say but 'how' you say it that grabs people's attention.
• Humor – careful use of humor can really make an impact upon readers.
• Surprise – much of what I'm trying to get at with this post is to allow yourself to do things a little different with your blog – things that surprise your readers will make them stop in their tracks a little and take a second look at what you're doing.
• Fun Projects – pretty much any project that allows your readers to do something fun and interactive would fit into this category. On DPS this would include our Weekend Photography Challenges where we ask readers to submit an image on a theme each weekend or here on ProBlogger it'd include our group writing projects over the years. These projects are largely about fun, interacting with others and a little self promotion for readers.

How have you been playful on your blog?

Being playful is not something you can make a definitive list of how to do. Playful blogging comes in all shapes and sizes so I'd love to hear how you've done it on your blog (or how you've seen others do it). Please feel free to share a link below to your examples!

PS: playful blogging is also fun and can help you to get through tough patches where you feel like giving it.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Be a Playful Blogger

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And now for a guest post with a difference from Cartoonist Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com who created this comic to illustrate the writing techniques he uses to create his cartoons, and how they can help bloggers push through writer's block.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block

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If you have a spare 37 minutes today to grab a coffee with me (or at least are doing something that will allow you to listen to something for 37 minutes in the background) check out t his interview I did with Robb Sutton late last week . Robb's also transcribed it for those who prefer to read.

In the interview Rob asks me about a whole range of stuff including:

• my background in blogging
• my philosophy on lots of sites vs focusing upon a single (or just a few) sites
• the process of going full time (and my wife's six month ultimatum)
• my shift in focus to e-books and membership sites
• a little about Third Tribe
• finding readers for a blog
• my best advice for new bloggers
• a number of more personal questions like, favourite, food, drink, about the car I drive, the brand of camera I use

Hope you find the interview interesting.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Have a 37 Minute Coffee Break with Me [Audio Interview]

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A few days back I asked readers a question:

What Have You Been Putting Off and What's Holding You Back?

Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they've been putting off done.

So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February?

I'm not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you're meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you'll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach what you want to achieve.

My Goal for February : I want to get a new E-Book out the door by the end of the month.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?

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Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips .

I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (eg, direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.

Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.

In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.

1。 I added units to my Big Websites

Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.

Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).

Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.

2。 I added units to my Small Websites

As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.

I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don't have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.

Don't underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.

3。 I used the Large Units

If you want to make money with AdSense you'll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.

Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.

All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.

4。 I placed the Units above the Fold

My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.

I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.

5。 I Focused on Organic Traffic

My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (ie, people coming via search engines to my posts).

To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don't even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.

6。 I started using AdSense for Search

I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.

Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you'll get, so it is a win win situation.

7。 I started using AdSense for Feeds

Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.

You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.

8。 I played around with section targeting

Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can r ead more about it here .

I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren't enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.

9。 I tested with Different Colors and Fonts

If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.

You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.

On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.

Daniel is the owner of Daily Blog Tips . He is also the author of the Make Money Blogging ebook , which you can download for free by signing up to his newsletter.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days

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Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?

Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.

His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.

One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every 'rule' us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.

Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I've been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.

Last year I came up with a list of 'debates' in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of 'debates' to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.

All in all I've come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.

Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they're in and the type of audience that they're attempting to connect with.

29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

1. RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
2. Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
3. Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
4. How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
5. Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hypens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
6. Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
7. Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
8. Content – Link content vs Original content
9. Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
10. Design – Professional Design vs Templates
11. Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
12. Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
13. Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
14. Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
15. Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
16. Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
17. Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
18. SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
19. Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
20. Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
21. Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
22. LinkBait – Anything goes (eg. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn't Acceptable
23. Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don't Interact
24. Blog Platforms – WordPress vs ((Insert Other Platforms Here))
25. Monetization – Blogs Should Be Monetized vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetized
26. Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
27. When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
28. Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
29. Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.

Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.

I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for 'the formula' might see that there's a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

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A guest post by Josh Hanagarne .

World's Strongest Librarian was about four months old when I got interested in sponsors. I'd read the articles about how to do it, and none of them sounded that plausible for me and my situation.

For one, my traffic wasn't impressive, certainly not to the point where sponsors were approaching me. And, while my blog has become slightly more focused in its first ten months, it wasn't targeted at any group of readers in particular, so I wasn't sure how confident niche advertisers would be. It's a little more focused now, but I can't really think of a better term for my readers than “The Loyal Weird.”

So I tried a little sponsorship experiment. My expectations were virtually non-existent. I did it more out of curiosity than anything, hoping that it would engage readers and foster some good will.

这里发生了什么事。

Auditions and criteria

I decided to hold “tryouts” for anyone who was interested in a sponsorship slot on World's Strongest Librarian. If you like, you can read my initial post here. If you're terrified of leaving this page because there's so much wisdom in the air, here's the summary of what I asked interested readers to do:

Dear potential sponsor, please give me:

• One paragraph on something you did in the last year that you are proud of
• 您的网址
• A description of your blog/business
• Why you're interested in running an ad on World's Strongest Librarian
• Your pitch: Why you? Just how cool are you?

And I made it very clear that I did not care about the size or look of the blog. As long as a blogger wasn't peddling anything heinous, illegal, or spammy, they had as good a chance as anyone.

I would run auditions for the rest of August and then make my decisions.

The plan at that point

I figured that I'd get a small response and run ads for the four people who responded out of pity. Then I'd run their ads for the month of September. When September was winding down, I would thank each blogger, ask them if they wanted to pay for another month or more to stick around, or part ways while remaining friends.

I figured I'd repeat this cycle for a few months until all of the ads were paid for. Then I'd end the auditions.

What I didn't expect

I got a lot of responses. In fact, I got close to 100 auditions. Some were lengthy and hilarious. Others were half-hearted and poorly written. Some came very close to flat-out begging, and others were so standoffish that I couldn't tell if they were actually interested or not.

The good things about this

Any reader response and engagement can feel like a huge win for the new blogger. So of course it was gratifying to see that there were people paying attention.

I also learned just how eclectic my reader base was. I got emails from bloggers covering every topic and angle imaginable. I got emails from foundations. I got emails from businesses. Word spread, and suddenly I had a bunch of new readers, and some readers I'd never engaged with came forth out of hiding.

The bad things about this

There's really only one: because I had underestimated the response, I hadn't really thought through my judging criteria. And suddenly I had a mountain of auditions to sift through. It was really, really hard to decide. And in a couple of cases, I wound up choosing in a more arbitrary manner than I was happy with, but I couldn't figure out a better way at that point.

Here is my post announcing the winners.

This caused some hurt feelings, a lot of negative emails from disappointed applicants, demands for explanations of how I chose…and so on.

“Okay,” I thought. “Next round, I've got to do this better.”

There wasn't going to be a next round.

The best things about this

A couple of the winners left after one month with no hard feelings between us. But several of them stayed…and paid. When I was able to show them their click-through rates and they told me how “sticky” the traffic from my blog had been, I didn't need to convince them at all. And suddenly I had a very, very modest income from sponsors—but I had sponsors!

I was also spared the difficulty of going through another round of auditions and making people mad.

It also got a lot of people blogging about the experiment, and of course, the traffic was its own reward.

Suggestions for anyone interested in trying this

• Overestimate the response you'll get, this way you (hopefully) won't get overwhelmed
• Explain your judging criteria. You may still have some sore losers, but having a prior explanation to fall back on may be helpful
• Give it your own spin
• Decide which system you're going to use to display ads with, and figure it out earlier than the night before you're supposed to run the ads. I can be a real dunce. This was one prime example of my duncery.

Your own variant of this experiment could be a way to grab some sponsors and figure out how some things work before your numbers are commanding sponsors on their own.

Above all: enjoy it, have fun, and use this experiment opportunity to make connections, spark some creativity, and do your own thing.

Don't try too hard to be like anyone else. You are not anyone else. This is a good thing, whether you believe it or not.

About the Author : Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World's Strongest Librarian , a blog about living with Tourette's Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you're 6'8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How I Got Some Paying Sponsors Without Really Meaning To

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Guest post by Mike CJ .

“Treat your blog like a business” is something we're told all the time. It's solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business .

But what does it actually mean?

Have a proper accounts system

Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.

Set objectives

The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that's fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you're going to earn over the next year.

Set budgets

Once you know what's coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger ? Don't waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it's in budget do it, if it isn't, don't.

Seek opinions and advice

Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don't run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.

Produce reports

Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn't. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it's even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it's your partner.

Enter into collaborations

Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.

Use professional tools

It's too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they're a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren't right.

Invest in training

Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you'll get a far greater return than the initial cost.

Treat your readers like customers

Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that's fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.

Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike's Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

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Just over 48 hours ago those of you on my newsletter list would have received an email from me introducing a new venture that I've been working on – The Third Tribe .

Third Tribe is a new collaboration between myself, Chris Brogan , Brian Clark and Sonia Simone .

I'm going to tell some of my story of why I'm involved in this venture below – but if you want to skip straight to the offer you can read the story behind Third Tribe, what it is and how you can be involved here .

Third Tribe – A Conversation Between Two Worlds

If you were at Blog World Expo last year you might have seen a panel that the four of us were on where we began to explore the topic of our journey as online marketers trying to find our place between two groups of people who we didn't always feel quite at home with.

Of course these two groups don't really exist as groups – they're generalisations and are probably more two extremes of a spectrum we all find ourselves somewhere on – but they are:

• Traditional Internet Marketers – known for their hype, at times obnoxious, annoying and manipulative tactics.
• Social Media Cool Crowd – known for their ethics, value of community and relationships – but also renowned for struggling to make what they do profitable.

Over the years I've felt like I've spent a little time in both groups. I've been to their conferences, tried their 'tactics' and 'approaches' and attempted to fit in. I've also, at different times, swung too far into either camp and done and said things that I now regret.

Tangent Time – A Story of 2 Conferences

I remember speaking at one internet marketing conference a few years back – my first – there were fireworks…. literally and figuratively. My memories of that week include

• speakers selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of coaching and product from the stage (I saw people literally run to signup)
• a presentation on how one internet marketer was setting up hundreds of meaningless blogs to game Google and make money
• one speaker make an entrance that included a light show and fireworks
• a movie star coming to sign autographs

Some of what I saw was amazing – much of it left me feeling quite uncomfortable and out of place.

Mixed in with all that there were also some amazingly genuine and smart people who made a real impression on me and taught me a lot despite being surrounded by hype.

I also remember another conference a few years ago – it was a social media event where I was invited to speak about making money from blogging and social media. In retrospect I think I was actually set up by the organizers who knew those attending would want to shoot me down in flames.

The Q&A time was filled with biting questions – the theme of which was that social media should not EVER be used for anything other than relationships, community and social good. Marketing or profit was certainly not welcome in social media in these people's minds.

Of course at the event were also some amazing people who I also learned a lot from about the value of community and the power of social media to do good.

I tell these stories for two reasons:

1. there are things about these two groups of people that I've learned a lot form and resonate a lot with. Much of what I do is based upon elements that I've picked up along the way from a variety of people all along the spectrum.
2. there are things about both groups which leave me either uncomfortable or in some kind of conflict. I do want to make money online – but I don't want to resort some some of the extreme, deceptive and hyped tactics I see happening around the web.

I'm not the only one who feels a little out of place between these two extremes. I meet people who grapple with these same things regularly.

Back to The Third Tribe

Brian and Sonia started blogging about these same themes last year and the idea of a 'Third Tribe' began to emerge as a term to describe those of us in the middle. Chris Brogan joined the conversation and then I jumped in and we began to plan a panel for Blog World.

The more we talked about the Third Tribe concept and the journey that we'd been on to find our place as online marketers the more people began to come out of the woodwork expressing similar experiences and feelings. We decided it was time to call people together and provide those wanting to explore the topic with some training on what we were learning and a place to connect with others on the journey.

As you'll see in the story on Third Tribe – there's an amazing group of people lined up to share their journey with Third Tribe members. What's better still is that since launching 48 hours ago we've had may others join and begin to interact – the depth of what's being shared is fantastic (there's already over 1000 posts on a great range of topics) and I can see that there are going to be a lot of great collaborations emerge out of this.

The other reason I'm excited about Third Tribe is the mix of people involved all bring such a wonderful collection of skills, strengths and experiences. We've got people with experience in copy writing, social media, building membership sites, E-Book marketers, SEOs, affiliate marketers, those who use social media to market their real world businesses…. and much more.

The Offer

As we're still growing and shaping The Third Tribe we've set up a discounted Charter Member Offer for those who join in the first week. This is partly to thank those in our current network but also simply because the site is still growing and those who join now help us to build it with their contributions in the forum (thus they should get a discount).

Third Tribe Marketing is a paid membership site. If you sign up before February 5th at 6PM (Central Time – GMT -6), as a Charter Member the cost is $27 USD a month (you're locked in at that price even after the price rise). If you sign up next week, the cost jumps to $47 a month.

You can see what the deal entails and what you get on the inside of the TT here .

Of course both the topic and the deal will not fit for everyone. If you don't resonate with where we are at or don't find the deal is where you're at we're not wanting to pressure anyone to join up.

You're welcome to sign up and trial things for up to 30 days – it it's not where you're at you're welcome to a refund.

Join us Today

I'm really excited by The Third Tribe and hope you'll consider joining us.

Check out the details here .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

The Third Tribe – Launched [My Back Story]

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As we continue to explore principles of successful blogging I want to turn our attention to a matter at the heart of the topic – content.

Much could be said on the topic but in the presentation that sparked my principles of successful blogging series of posts I spoke at length about the idea of ' crafting content '.

The idea of of successful bloggers displaying 'craftsmanship' began to strike me after meeting a number of pretty high profile bloggers at the SXSW interactive conference a few years back. I remember sitting down at that conference with a number of bloggers who'd build great blogs to pick their brains and having the realisation that their blogs had not 'just happened' but that they'd really put time, energy and thought into shaping them over the years.

This 'shaping' of their blogs happened on two levels – it happened on a daily basis in the posts that they wrote – but also over time as their blogs grew and matured.

Crafting Blog Posts

My own experience of blogging is that in my early days of experimenting with the medium I would tend to sit down at the computer on any given day and then put up on the web whatever I was thinking about at that moment and within seconds of punching out a first draft the post would be live online.

• little thought went into the planning of posts
• no more time than was absolutely necessary was put into the writing of posts
• no consideration was really ever given to improving posts before they went live
• it was rare that I gave thought to how to time, launch and promote posts

My blogging was very impulsive and minimalistic in terms of how much effort I put into the most important factor of blogging – the content on it.

I got away with this to some degree, perhaps partly due to the fact that the blogosphere was in its infancy – but look back on that time now wondering how much more I could have achieved early on if I'd just given more time to 'crafting' my content.

Don't get me wrong – I still sit down some days to impulsively write – but over time I've found that I get better results if I take a more craftsman-like approach to blogging.

One of the factors that changed my own approach to blogging was out of the experience of beginning to write series of posts on my blogs.

I don't even remember what the first series was (or why I did it) but I do remember the realization of how much better my writing was when I put some time into planning what I would write ahead of time.

Setting oneself the task of writing a series of posts ahead of time mean you need to consider what you'll write about (in general terms) but knowing what topics you'll be covering in the future means that your ideas begin to marinate ahead of time and that by the time you come to write your posts you've given the topics thought, you've got ideas on how to explore it on a deeper level and you've hopefully got some creative ides of how to introduce and explore the topic in a way that makes the post stand out a little.

Crafting Content can happen on many levels and depending upon the type of blog you have you might not find them all to be relevant to every blog post you write – however here's a series of posts that I wrote on the topic in 2008 that was designed to help bloggers consider ways that take a little extra time could improve their blogging:

1. How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
2. Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you'll develop something that matters to readers.
3. Crafting Your Post's Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
4. The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you've got someone past your post's title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
5. Your 'point/s' (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it is just an intriguing title and opening you'll get people to read – but if the post doesn't 'matter' to them it'll never get traction.
6. Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
7. Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
8. Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post 'look' good can take it to the next level.
9. Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
10. Post Promotion – having hit publish – don't just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic 'nudges' can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
11. Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.

Crafting Blogs on a Big Picture Level

The other level that I think bloggers could do well to apply the idea of craftsmanship to is thinking about the big picture of a blog and seeing the blog, in its entirety, as something that needs crafting.

Over a time as a blog grows and matures it takes on a certain shape and form.

The accumulated body of content, the voice and personality behind the content, the visual design of the blog and even the interaction with readers and emerging community are all things that go into how a blog is perceived.

Some blogs manage to evolve without much thought in a good direction – but behind the scenes of most successful blogs there is a person or team of people who are shaping the blog, plotting its course and making sure that it stays on that course.

I spoke once with a museum curator who told me about her job and it reminds me on some levels of what I do on my blogs.

Curators do many tasks to get an exhibition together – good exhibitions don't just happen. Their work starts with careful planning, research, study and sourcing of exhibits well before an exhibition takes place.

They are not only involved in deciding what to exhibit but they're also involved in what to leave out of exhibitions (avoiding clutter and confusion for those attending).

Once they've sourced the exhibits they're involved in arranging them and making sure that they are presented in a way that draws people in and takes them on a journey.

As I spoke with this curator about the care in which she put together an exhibition (a process that took a lot of detailed thought and energy over considerable time) I was challenged to apply some of what I saw in my own blogging.

Great blogs don't just happen – they take thoughtful consideration, planning and shaping. They too are not just about what you publish but about what you don't publish. They too take thought as you consider the journey you want to take your reader on.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Craftsmanship – Principles of Successful Blogs #9

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Yesterday I had the privilege of eating at a great Melbourne restaurant – Maha .

The food was exceptional but what I came away from the meal with was…. well it was an 'experience' and not just a 'meal'. A number of things went into the 3 hours that we dined at Maha that stood out and left me pondering what I could learn from the success of this restaurant and apply to my own business.

note: I'm not going to draw too many parallels to blogging specifically but rather will put the lessons out there and let people apply (or leave) them as they wish to their own situation.

Lesson #1: First Impressions and the Power of Contrast

Walking into Maha there was an immediate transformation that occurred that drew us into the experience.

Situated on a small and fairly ugly street filled with the back ends of buildings and car parks (I have to say I wasn't expecting much of a place in this part of the city) – Maha's fit out immediately created an impression that lasted for the rest of the afternoon (and beyond).

It was anything but like the street outside and was a luxurious yet tasteful version of a middle eastern dining room. Dark, cosy and inviting – in stark contrast to the bright, stark, surrounds of concrete outside.

Lessons : first impressions matter a lot and can create a lasting impression that sets up the experience someone has of what you're doing. Unexpected contrast is also something that will grab people's attention and make them take notice of what you're doing.

Lesson #2: Simplified Dining

Sometimes dining in places like Maha can be an overwhelming experience for a guy like me. I'm no gourmet and being confronted with a menu filled with dishes that need translation and being overwhelmed with a wine list with so many options that I have no idea where to start isn't my idea of a great way to start a meal.

Instead at Maha we were warmly greeted, seated and giving a very simple drinks menu (with an invitation for a more extensive one if we required it). The menu for the day was a banquet (chefs choice – although we could have some input if we had special needs) which I also appreciated. Conversation was not interrupted with choices of food and drinks and the overwhelming nature of those menus and wine lists were eliminated.

Lessons : choice is great but sometimes it can be overwhelming and simplicity can be appreciated.

Lesson #3: Engaging the Senses

Throughout the meal it was not just our taste buds that were stimulated. In the corner a three piece band played middle eastern music, outside was a court yard where people smoked shi sha pipes (creating sweet smell that drifted into the room) and at the end of the meal we were offered to have our hands rinsed in a little lemon cologne which engaged both our senses of smell but also touch.

The cologne also made a lasting impression – even as I fell asleep last night it lingered on and I was once again reminded of the experience of Maha.

Lesson : engage the senses and you transform something that can be quite one dimensional into something experiential.

Lesson #4: Unexpected Gifts

When it came time for the bill to be brought to the table the waitress also delivered three small white boxes (one for each couple) with some small pastries in them. They were a little take home gift to extend our visit.

These gifts served a several purposes including:

1. something we didn't 'pay for' – it is amazing what impression getting something for free makes (or course we DID pay for the gift as the pastries would not have cost much and our bill more than covered it). This perceived extra value and a gift will of course create a lasting impression, increase the chances of us returning and telling our friends about the experience.
2. extending the experience – today as I ate a pastry (24 hours after dining at Maha) I'm still thinking about the meal.

Lesson : gifts (big and small) and extra value create an impression!

Lesson 5: Focus Upon the Positive

As we were about to leave our waitress stopped by the table. Instead of asking if everything was ok (often the way wait staff word this question) our waitress asked us what our favourite part of the meal was.

Couching the question by asking us for the best part of the meal was a pretty smart move as it shifted our minds away from parts we might not have enjoyed (not that there were any for me) and onto the best parts of the meal just as we were about to leave. We left pondering the good rather than what could have been better.

This also served as a great way for the staff to gather feedback on what was working – something that no doubt helps them to continue to improve what they do.

I also wonder whether asking this question set up some cues in our minds that might be repeated later as we discussed the meal with others. We'd already each said something good about the meal within seconds of completing it – perhaps that'd be what we'd say next time we spoke about the meal.

Lesson 6: Choreography/Process

As we drove home from Maha V and I both commented on how those behind the restaurant must have put some real thought into the experience that they offered those who dined with them. Having eaten in another of the restaurants owned by one of the owners we saw some patterns in some of what we've mentioned above.

Our experience didn't just happen. Everything from the ways in which we were greeted, through to the small touches like the lemon cologne and complimentary pastries were intentional and planned steps in a choreography of a typical visit to Maha.

I'm certain that the process evolved over time but the experience was not left to chance – there was a clearly thought through process in place which ensured the best chances of a great experience for diners and a profitable business.

Best of all, the 'choreography' wasn't obvious or intrusive in any way, it just naturally unfolded.

Lesson : great experiences don't always just happen. A little thought can go a long way to helping people move through an experience in a positive way.

Which of these principles could you take and apply in your blog or online business?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Lessons from a Fine Dining Experience

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In a quiet moment yesterday I asked my Twitter network:

“what's one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what's stopping you from doing it now?)”

The answers were quite varied – everything from redesigns, to writing E-Books, to posting more regularly to SEO optimization, to monetization.

A number of people reflected that just being asked the question helped them to move forward with things that they'd been procrastinating with – so I thought I'd ask the question again here on the blog.

Of course there can be good reasons for putting things off – timing is important and you can't do everything at once – but if you're anything like me there are things that you know you probably should be doing that you're simply procrastinating about.

For me one of the big procrastinations for me until mid last year was creating a product of my own. I'd always said I'd write an E-Book – but every time I sat down to do it I never got past the planning stage (I have notebooks with about 10 different plans that never eventuated).

Why didn't I do it? Was it laziness…. or busyness….? If I'm honest about it I'm sure it'd be a bit of both of those things – however I suspect it was also partly fear that held me back.

Fear that it'd flop, fear that nobody would buy it, fear that people would critique me for selling something and not giving it away for free, fear that it wouldn't be perfect, fear that perhaps I didn't have it in me to create a product like I wanted….

Actually – saying I was too busy might sound a bit better – I sound very insecure!

In the end – I knew that if I didn't create an E-Book that I'd be kicking myself later. The time came for me to draw a line in the sand and just do it. I don't have any secret strategies for getting over the hump of getting myself into gear really.

I did tell a couple of others that I was doing it – I did set aside two days purely to put it together – I did engage the services of someone to help me design it – I did set myself a deadline.

All of that helped me get going but in the end it was a change of attitude that got me over the hump.

“what's one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what's stopping you from doing it now?)”

PS : one of the reasons I started ProBlogger.com was to help those of us who procrastinate to be accountable to others. A number of our members over there are setting themselves (and each other) challenges to help them keep moving forward.

For example Paul recently set a challenge for members to create a free report/e-book to give away (that link is only viewable by members). What's exciting to me is that a number of members have actually got their reports ready and launched as a result of working together in this way rather than just tackling their list of things that they must do alone.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

What Have You Been Putting Off and What's Holding You Back?

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I started blogging in 2002.

Since that time the question I'm most frequently asked by strangers at parties who hear what I do has changed 3 times.

• what's a blog? (2002-2004)
• how do you make money blogging? (2005-2008)
• you still blog – doesn't everyone Tweet these days? (2009-2010)

I wonder what'll be next?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

My Most Frequently Asked Questions at Parties (since 2002)

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guest post by Kelly Diels

I have a problem with authority.

Step inside my echo chamber. I'ma blogger, and apparently now a ProBlogger (just quit my job and I'm making money!) so I'm keenly interested in bloggers who blog about blogging. Especially bloggers who blog about blogging for money. 'Cuz, like, I like to eat. And I figure that reading and digesting and applying the bloggingforcash lessons of those who have climbed this hill a little longer, for a little more money, is a good idea.

And up high on the meta-blogging mountain they yodel: get thee some authority-yyy.

Yet every time I read that I need to get authority, I recoil, I cringe, I raise my feminine fist to the heavens and wail and curse and gnash my teeth.

My neighbours don't love this. I'll probably hear from the authorities, soon.

What's my problem with authority?

In really precise and technical terms, it icks me out.

First, in real life, my aversion to authority is a philosophical, political, feminist, and don't-wanna-be-bored thing. I don't want to do what I'm told because a lot of what we're told to do by institutions, experts, parents, teachers, bosses, friends and lovers is just patently bad for us as human, feeling, thinking, interesting people.

Second, when it comes to blogging authority, I don't understand what we're talking about:

• What is this authority of which we speak?
• How do we get it?
• Why do we want it?

Online Authority. What Am I Talking About? I Have No Idea.

Let's start at the beginning.

Here's what I'm talking about:

It might be worth stating that the type of blog that I'm talking about in this series is a blog that isn't purely about profit or traffic – but a blog that has influence in its niche.

It is certainly possible to build a profitable and/or well trafficked blog without Trust – in fact I know a few bloggers who blog purely for Search Engine Traffic who don't really care about influence, brand or loyal readers but who just want traffic that they can convert to cash…

What I'm on about is helping bloggers to not only be profitable and have traffic but to build blogs that have profile, influence, authority, credibility, respect and a brand that opens up opportunities beyond quick profit. - Darren Rowse

Good blogging creates authority, plain and simple. Writing consistently about your area of expertise makes you an authority figure within your industry and niche. You will enjoy a definitive advantage over competitors who do not blog, and likely even over those who have been blogging for shorter time periods.

Professionals and other business people have long been writing for trade publications and newspaper columns to build authority, coupled with networking in the community and at trade shows and conferences, all in an attempt to build word-of-mouth referral business. With blogging, you're building authority and networking all at once, and on a global scale if your business model benefits from that kind of reach.

The goal is not to be on the A-List as determined by the Technorati Top 100 Blogs. Your goal is to be on the A-List for your niche, geographic region or industry. - Brian Tracy

It's much slower and harder with an authority blog to develop traffic as you have to be more choosy. It's not enough just to do linkbait or SEO tricks, you have to attract the right people and delight them with your content so they subscribe and come back. Here you actually need to get to know your audience and what they like. You have to treat them as individuals rather than a herd of potential ad-clickers. - Chris Garrett

Authority. The Common Ground (I think). It Is Male Territory (I think).

What do these guys have in common?

• they're guys (this might have been obvious from the question) and white, male and pretty ones
• they ranked high on Google for “blogging and authority”
• they were who I was thinking about when I was thinking about blogging and authority, because I've read them and learned from them
• and I still don't know what they're talking about.

I've got a theory about why I don't know what they're talking about and it all starts with liberal arts. I'm slandering Socrates right now.

I went to University for a long time and during that time the title of nearly every book and academic paper started with “Beyond ________.”

Beyond Pluralism. Beyond Democracy. Beyond Feminism. Beyond Macrophysical Marathoning and Towards Paper Mâché. I just made that up .

My point: all of the writers arguing beyond a concept were reacting to a history or an asserted wisdom that constitutes the canon. They were suggesting that there was more to their field than the regular, accepted arguments and outlines. They were saying, yes, that's true, but there is so much more to this story .

I have a suspicion that the reason I'm not grasping 'authority' is because that's what these bloggers and social media thinkers are doing, here, too, with online authority. They're saying things like “it is not enough to…”, “the goal is not…”, and “isn't purely about profit or traffic” – all of which makes me suspect there is a discussion or core knowledge animating these beyond-ish arguments.

So I'm convinced that they all know something I don't – which is easy, because I know nothing. And I know it. Thanks, liberal arts .

(For this I paid an average of $17,000 a year for six years. Ah, higher education.)

And because I think there is a core idea underneath these discussions, I keep asking this question: when we're talking about online authority, what are we talking about?

Is authority

• internal, like mastery of your subject and therefore of your domain and possibly the world?
• an external perception, assessed by others based on your contribution?
• Empowerment?
• 知识？
• Expertise?
• Reputation?
• Search engine rankings?
• Some bundle thereof?

Questioning Authority and The Tautology Thereof.

So I asked, directly.

I went to the Misters and the Masters (because sometimes – a lot of times – they are the same and I know this from real life and Women's Studies, thanks liberal arts ) and asked them by e-mail,

What is authority and why do we need it?

Yes, I questioned authority by going to the authorities on authority for advice about authority. Ahem and a'men. All men. Again .

Chris Brogan : Is authority the same as trust? A great question. No. Authority is that sense that someone knows enough about something as to be useful. Trust means that PLUS the sense that you'd take this advice, implement it, and follow one's recommendations on some things (not necessarily all) without much question. I think authority is to the left of trust on a spectrum, so to speak.

Chris Garrett : Authority could be credibility, could be based on your expertise, experience or results, but it is often simpler than that.It is the answer to the question “why should I listen to YOU?”

Can you demonstrate that you have valuable knowledge, insights, ideas? Have you done something that I would like to be able to achieve too? Do other people look to you as the go-to person in your subject area?

What it absolutely is not is beating people over the head with your credentials and calling yourself an expert – in fact that would work against your authority rather than in favour of it. Labels do not create authority because what a badge gives we can undo in moments as soon as we open our mouths

Chris Guillebeau : Authority matters! All authority is perceived authority, meaning that it is determined largely by personal interpretation — but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. When people look to you as an expert and trust what you say, you have a powerful relationship with them, either as a blogger, a marketer, or just a human being. Credentials for credentials sake aren't that important anymore, but authority is here to stay.

Jonathan Fields epends who's asking. If you're a kid, it's the folks who make the rules. If you're a grown up, it's the people who refuse to be constrained by the rules. Those who question authority, create their own paradigms, push envelopes and buttons, then bring others along, opening doors, expanding world views, crafting experiences and solutions and, most importantly, walking the walk.

Real authority is also about aligning words with deeds. It comes from those who dare to live. Those who dare to be judged. Those who open themselves to failure and swap spewing for doing. Real authority takes work and risk. Because if it was easy, everyone would be doing it…and everyone would be an authority, leaving the word so diluted as to have no import.

Honestly, I'm Still Not Getting It. WTbadword is Authority?

These are some smart answers from some very smart people – but I'm still not getting it.

So I posed the question to my friends, family, lovers and stalkers who then proceeded to break Twitter and blow up my blog comments.

Neat fact: the people who answering my question “what is authority and why do we need it?” are not all men (nor are most of them named “Chris”). Holy revolution.

Authority to me, and based on my experience, is that you believe what someone says without having to verify it from a 2nd source. It's half trust, and half faith that someone knows what they're talking about. - Nathan Hangen

Authority is earned on some level. Chris Brogan became a social media authority when everyone believed he was. My question is…when did HE believe it? - Kelly Livesay

Authority is also respect. Have learned that, (in my culture anyway.) a person must choose between authority & respect…or will we choose rapport and communication and transparency? Rapport encourages connection, a lack of fear and a sense of security. But there is a cost – often a loss of respect comes with rapport if it's chosen over authority, especially if that person is a woman. - Franis Engel

Authority is in the eye of the beholder - Mary H Ruth

“Authority” squelches innovation, originality, unconventional acumen. It keeps us looking 4 the same answers in the same places. “Authority” says that “they” are experts when actually “they” might just be louder or more privileged, male, white, pretty.”Authority” can have sumptuous merit – lived experience, deep digging, TRUE interest. It leads tribes. Bottom line: ALL AUTHORITY NEEDS TO BE QUESTIONED, including one's own, for true freedom and creativity. Never stop asking. - Danielle LaPorte

I think we are moving to a new place about what constitutes authority, so I am glad you are writing about it. The etymology of authority goes back to the word “autor” -from the Old French for “father”. So there are the patriarchial roots….My new definition of authority is authenticity + clarity (haven't figured out what to do with the o yet). When I show up as fully myself – with my beautiful flaws and mistakes and fears, and say “this is my truth” from a place of clarity – that is worth listening to. This type of authority is on the rise. If your authority means getting people to listen to you, to follow you, that's fauxthority. You're just looking for clones. If it means showing people the possibility of authenticity + clarity to find their truth, now we're talking. - Lianne Raymond

Authority and Women. That's a No Go, Boys.

Rich, gorgeous stuff, yes?

And a bit thematic and consistent.

Did you notice a point that kept emerging from the women weighing in on authority?

Authority might be a bit off-putting to women: it feels pretty linear, competitive, male, and exclusive. And – again with the precise language – kind of icky.

(Bloggers and internet marketers, take note. There is an ISSUE here. More than one woman talked about how authority doesn't resonate with them, or how it signals all the wrong things. It might be as simple as speaking a different language or it might be more .)

No wonder I can't get my head around what authority means. We all mean different things by it, and it resonates and triggers wildly different associations in each of us:

• 可信性
• 信任
• Respect
• 经验
• Rapport
• 影响
• 连接
• 社会证明
• reputation
• 问责制
• 谷歌

I don't really know what to do with that. How does one systematically go about attempting to manufacture influence and manipulate perceptions?

(Actually, I think this is called “branding”).

Still: fertile ground.

Wherein It Turns Out Online Authority is Way Simpler and Less Sexy and Sexist Than I Thought.

Buried in all of this yummy, complicated, thinky hummus were two great potatoes:

Authority is landing on 1st page of Google for search term. Preferably in the top 3 - Dave Doolin

Normally “Authority” online is a reference to how Google values your website / pages. Google considers a Site more authoritative if it has the keyword in question in the site's URL, if it is an older site, if it has plentiful backlinks from other sites considered to be high value sites, and if the content relates well to the search (among other things). Not too differently from how one might look for an Authority on a topic — who does everyone else look to / listen to (link to) for information on a specific topic? - Bruce Nunnally

Oh well, okay then. Now we're talking. Now we're sheering off all the emotion, politics, genitals and gendered intersections and just talking about results.

Search engine results.

I think we just figured out the old school ( really old school – as in Platonic ) online authority that everyone is obliquely telling us to get beyond.

Authority is the Goddess Google via John Mellencamp. Worship Accordingly.

So at its most basic, Platonic level, online authority is search engine results .

And contained in this most minimal of definitions is an action plan. Here's how you get online authority:

• backlinks (guest posts)
• backlinks ( commenting on other blogs)
• backlinks (great content and value aka “ linkbait “)
• backlinks (community. Play nice.)
• backlinks ( relationships . Be nice.)
• and all the stuff bloggers advise you to do to build traffic, dominate SERPS and create online authority is about…backlinks

I must confess that my inner feminist, idealist and fist-shaker just died a little for the 47 millionth time since I started this essay approximately six hundred years ago.

Fortunately, all of my alter egos are resilient. And persistent.

So is John Mellencamp, from whom I unabashedly stole the title of this piece. His 80s old school words of wisdom , in song:

I fight Authority, Authority always wins
oh, I've been doing it since I was a young kid and I always come out grinning.
I fight Authority. Authority always wins.

And Authority is Google and I'm pretty sure she's a woman.

To woo her, you'll need backlinks. To keep her (and her friends, the ones she very kindly sends your way), you'll need plain ol' likeability, credibility, and respectability.

You know, exactly what everyone was telling me but I just had to keep questioning. Curse you, liberal arts.

_____________________

Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She's also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage , a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

I Fight Authority and Authority Always Wins. (And What IS Online Authority Anyway?)

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A Guest Post by David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

After the initial excitement of launching a new blog fades most bloggers are a few steps away from being overwhelmed with the pressure of blogging to the point that they quit, losing the momentum they were building up and all the progress they'd made. This is an unfortunately common occurence.

写作。 Guest posting. Commenting. Responding to emails. Continuous learning. It's a lot to take in and if you're not adequately prepared to face challenges as they appear there's a likelihood that one day you'll choose not to publish another post and then you're back to square one.

Recently, just a fornight ago in fact I became conscious of these feelings as my most recent blog was reaching the 6 month mark. I'd surpassed all the goals I'd set for myself but there was stilll that worry of being locked into my work instead of having control over it. I have no problem with hard work, but when it hits the point of dominating my life I prefer to step back and ask myself “How can I make this easier on myself?”

And that's what I really want to share in this article. This is not about escaping the work of blogging (because I do honestly enjoy it, just not when it causes imbalance in my life) but to relieve yourself of the constant worry and uncertainty that blogging entails.

Set smaller goals

I'm an advocate of thinking big in most areas of life. If you're dedicated and disciplined then ambition can often fuel creativity and drive. But blogging is different. There are so many interwoven components to blogging that a big goal often becomes an aimless goal, and an aimless goal is as bad as no goal.

Writing is the most important task for a blogger, so let's use that as an example. One common belief held by many writers is that you should sit down in the morning at 9am and then not move until 5pm. The idea is that this forces you to write. Do this for 3 days in a row and you'll lose whatever passion for blogging you ever had. The alternative is much more attractive.

When you sit down to write tell yourself this magical phrase: I'll be satisified when I've written X words . Replace X with the smallest amount of words you can be realistically satisfied with. Once you've made this decision and are no longer constricted by outrageous word counts or time frames there's no anxiety as you work and I expect you'll find yourself greatly surpassing the “satisfactory metrics” you set for yourself.

Clarify and simplify

What do you want to get out of blogging? Answer that question at least once a month for as long as you own or write for a blog. I imagine most people will respond “to make money” and that's fine, but there has to be a motivation higher than that, because blogging isn't exactly the most effective approach to generating an income.

Once you understand with crystal clear clarity why you're blogging you can eliminate a ton of the garbage that leads to blogging-based stress.

When I first started blogging I had the “make money” goal lodged in my brain, but over the past few weeks I've had a shift in my thinking, in that what I truly love is writing and making exciting (and sometimes weird) changes in my life. After I had clarified this I realized that my actions were inconsistent with what I wanted. Instead of writing I was spending most of my time leaving comments on blogs, posting in forums, and using other standard blog promotion tactics. Most of this was unfullfilling.

Now my approach to writing and building a readership is far simpler. These days I do 2 things:

• Write (for my own blog and guest posts such as this).
• Care (responding to tweets, emails, blog comments etc).

This has been enormous, so don't underestimate it. Clarify exactly what you want out of blogging and shape your actions to accomodate for that . Sure, if I were to leave 20+ comments on blogs per day, or become an active member in lots of communities my readership would probably climb faster. But at the same time the very essence of what I love about blogging would be lost, and that'd be setting myself up for eventual failure. Classic example of short term sacrifice (a small boost in traffic) for long term gain (endless fulfillment).

Become a “what matters” blogger

Conventional blogging advice indicates that you should write 3-5 times per week without fail. Yes, in the early days of blogging (at least the first 5-6 months) consistency is crucial. You need to prove that you've got the chops and that you're not going to abandon your readership. But, aside from news blogs and blogs that have multiple contributors, I'd suggest you lower the frequency significantly.

This is something I lifted from Tina of ThinkSimpleNow.com who is well known for taking multiple months away from her blog. I doubt everyone could be met with success using that approach, but the lesson still holds true: to ease the pressure of writing and heighten the respect from your readership only write and publish content that truly matters .

What “matters” is a subjective gauge of course, but at its core it's your own highest inner standard that you must hold yourself too. Through this approach you will end up spending more time writing individual posts, but:

• Each post will provide you and your readers with lasting fulfillment.
• There'll be less of a frantic rush to publish content.
• Freeing yourself from a strict deadline and schedule is incredibly liberating.

As a poll here on Problogger indicated, lowering your frequency is not what causes people to unsubscribe from your blog, it's posting too much that readers dislike. Here's a quote from Darren himself:

I've lost count of the number of bloggers who tell me that scaling back their posting frequency a little brings a new life to their blog…scaling back a little means that they are able to develop better quality posts, that they get more comments per post (the posts remain on the front page of the blog longer) and readers say that they appreciate it.

People don't unsubscribe from blogs when every piece of content provides them with genuine value .

Successful blogging requires sustained effort over a long period of time. I don't want to make it seem like you can eliminate hard work and the anxiety that comes with the process. But you can make it easier on yourself. Take action to ease the pressure of blogging and refocus on what you truly care about .

What strategies do you use to ease the pressure of blogging?

David Turnbull is a life-long geek who loves to write about life hacking, simplicity and technology at his blog Adventures of a Barefoot Geek .

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

How To Ease the Pressure of Blogging

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The last poll here on ProBlogger examined a growing trend among bloggers trying to monetize their sites – to sell their own products from their blogs rather than just relying upon advertising and affiliate revenue.

Whether it be by selling an E-Book, training program or some other kind of learning program or whether it is selling one self as a consultant or promoting a product from a business that the blogger owns – more and more bloggers do seem to be exploring this as a way to make money.

The poll results were as follows:

I've not run this poll previously so have nothing to compare it to – however my gut feeling on this one is that if conducted even just a year ago the percentages would have been further apart. I suspect in the year ahead we'll see them grow even closer.

Out of interest I thought I'd compile a list of the types of products and services that people said that they sell in the comments of the poll post. You can see that there's a lot of variation (it's actually a really inspiring list to me that illustrates a little of what can be done with a blog!

• Design work
• Web/Plugin Development
• Membership Site
• Coaching/Mentoring
• 电子图书
• 报告
• 法律服务
• Book (hard cover)
• 软件
• Speaking/Training Services
• 音乐课
• Copy Writing Services
• SEO services
• 家教
• Screencast/Video Content
• Scrapbook Supplies
• 缝纫图案
• Photographic Prints
• Excel Templates
• Music/CD
• 手艺
• Flowers/Florist
• Bag Patterns
• 营销服务
• 护肤产品
• 手工皂
• Makeup Artist Services
• Craft Kits
• 日历
• 古董衣
• Gourmet Food Items
• 玩具
• 网站模板
• Paintings/Art
• 饮食产品
• Real Estate Brokerage
• Fitness Program
• Scuba Diving Education Business
• Personalised Spoof Newspaper Front Pages
• T恤衫
• 珠宝

There are sure to be many many other examples of what can be sold off the back of a blog – feel free to add more of your experience in this in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

44% of Bloggers Sell a Product or Service Of Their Own From Their Blog

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A Guest Post by Christie Burnett . Image Source .

Feeling sluggish about blogging in the new year? Being innovative on your blog can be a great way to re-energise yourself. The process of being creative and trying something different can definitely up your blogging fun quota when you are feeling stale and uninspired. Trying something new also has the advantage of showing readers a new side to your blogging persona and this could have the added benefit of engaging a whole new set of followers. And you never know, you might just start a new blogging craze. Let me give you an example.

In November 2009, I published my first “ From My Notebook ” post. I basically replicated what I had written that day in my own personal journal, presenting it on a graphic notepaper page, and the response from my readers to the format was extremely positive. I had lots of Twitter questions about how I had created it and positive comments left in response to the post. And I enjoyed the process of doing something different. It was fun, challenged my creative processes a little and was a much quicker post to put together than many of my others – no photos to edit, no laboring over what I was writing, no research to include. It was simple, yet effective.

Every now and then throwing in a new style of post keeps every one on their toes. So, here are 20 words to get you thinking about fun ways to step away from your usual style and give readers something fresh.

1。 画

Put pencil to paper or pen to tablet and say something with illustrations, instead of words.

Check out Miao & Wafupafu for inspiration.

2。 照片

Set yourself the challenge of telling a story without words, just photographs.

Telling Your Story with Words and Images offers great tips for choosing the right photographs.

3。 股

If your blog is usually full of product reviews or technical information, turn things upside down by sharing a personal story instead. Or tell readers something about you that they never would have guessed.

In Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog , Darren shares his reasons for why stories engage readers on an emotional level.

4。 衡量

Insert a graph, pie chart, table or diagram to make your point.

5。 辩论

Invite another blogger, preferably one who usually takes an alternative stance to you, to enter into a debate with you via online chat or Skype and then publish it on your blog.

6。 笑

Make your readers chuckle – self deprecation, jokes, comic strips – whatever works with your target audience.

7。 看

Give vlogging a twirl or insert a relevant video from YouTube to get readers talking.

8。 给

Give something back to readers by hosting a giveaway. Or donate $$ to your favourite charity for every comment left on a post.

9。 教

Make something from scratch, and then create a tutorial to teach others how to do it too.

10。 介绍

Invite a guest blogger to be featured on your blog and introduce readers to someone new.

Try You'll Never Know Unless You Ask for more information about inviting others to guest post on your blog.

11。 表

When was the last time you write a list post? If it has been a while, compile a list which will be useful to readers today.

Check out Ali Hale's guest post at Problogger, 10 Steps to the Perfect List Post .

12。 资源

Develop a free downloadable resource for your readers.

13。 颜色

In colour psychology, blue equates to serenity and calmness whilst red is strong and gutsy, dramatic even. Think about creatively using colour to add intensity to your post or to set the mood for readers.

14。 Solve

Do readers email you with questions, problems or dilemmas? Take the opportunity to channel 'Dear Abbey' and help them out with some useful advice. I did this recently with, “ The Case For Not Packing Away .”

15。 启发

Source relevant inspirational quotes to share with readers. Or include statistics or new research findings.

16。 问

Find out more about your readership by asking them to participate in a survey or poll.

Read more about surveys – Survey Your Readers and Discover Who They Are and How You Can Be More Useful to Them .

17。 标题

Use the powers of the internet to source news stories relevant to your niche and readership. Include your personal reaction and thoughts.

18。 Re-package

Re-package your post differently – standard content wrapped up in a new look. Present it as a postcard, a journal page, a post-it note, a shopping list, a recipe, or a collage.

Try Super Stickies for a bit of fun.

19。 链接

Create a list of great posts, linking to other blogs in your niche. Keep them relevant and your links will be popular with readers. You might even find that you get linked back to in return.

20。 挑战

Develop a challenge for your readers and offer to publish the best submissions you receive. It could be a group writing challenge , an online photography exhibition or any challenge that best suits your niche and target audience.

Keep this list handy and come back to it for inspiration whenever you are feeling stale or depressed about blogging. You are limited only by your imagination and willingness to try something new.

Christie Burnett is a trained early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and, most importantly, Mum. She blogs at Childhood 101 about all the things that contribute to growing a memorable, healthy childhood, with lots of ideas, tips and information for families.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

20 Ways to Up Your Blogging Fun Quota

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A couple of weeks ago I hooked up on Skype with a great blogger by the name of Pat Flynn who has a fantastic story to share.

Pat was working as an architect and was about to get married – life was good – but unexpectedly he was laid off from his job and was left wondering what to do.

It turns out that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to Pat – he took a small blog about an architectural exam (the LEED exam) that he'd been using to help himself study for the exam and turned it into a six figure income generation machine.

He launched an E-Book off the back of his blog and in its first month he made $8000. That was just the beginning though – in his first year of business the site generated over $200,000!

You can check out Pat's blog at Green Exam Academy and his newer site at Smart Passive Income .

My chat with Pat was both inspiring and informative and today I'm sharing it with those who have subscribed to the ProBlogger Newsletter and will be adding it as a free bonus to anyone who subscribes in future.

Sign up below to get access to our weekly newsletter and this free Podcast with Pat Flynn.

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Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger .

Interview with Six Figure Blogger Pat Flynn Available for ProBlogger Newsletter Subscribers

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