How I Started Making $3,000 a Month Blogging About Travel

It has been about one full year since I started blogging about travel, and I have started to generate $3,000 or more a month via my travel blogs.

My very first post was published on May, 4th, 2010, and it was nothing but grammar mistakes and partaking in an activity that I really don’t enjoy: writing. I’m telling you this because even though I am a horrible writer, English os not my first language, and I need other people to proofread my work, I’m proof that you really don’t have to be the best at something in order to do make money via your blog. I have started to make at least $3,000 a month via my main travel blog, wanderingtrader.com.

Initially, I started my blog to capture traffic for a day trading business that I was running. I wanted to get more people interested in day trading and, well, get more sales. What it turned into was my own personal travel blog about my passion for travel, and tips about day trading and travel. My whole blogging strategy is based on exposure; you might have read my post about focusing on quantity of traffic instead of quality when you first start out.

There are a million posts on ProBlogger about making money blogging online and frankly almost everyone online makes money the same way. It seems there aren’t very many new ways that bloggers can make money from blogs. Darren wrote a great post on how bloggers make money from blogs if you are interested in learning your different options.

Instead of talking about ways to make money blogging I’m going to share how I managed to start making $3,000 a month via my travel blog in less than a year. I consider it ten months, really, since I took two months off when I got extremely frustrated by a small change in my blog design that crippled the traffic to my main blog. The list below is what I started focusing on, in order of importance.

There are some instances where you find advertisers, but for the most part advertisers find you.

Once you have the right criteria you are eligible for a range of money making options with your blog. The most important thing is getting your name out there. You want to try to focus on guest posts, SEO, and getting on every single blog list that’s related to your niche. The more people who see your blog, the more likely it’ll be that advertisers will find you as well. Below are some examples of the travel-related lists that my blogs are listed on on.

By working on exposure, authority will come naturally. You want to be careful how quickly you build your authority online, because you can’t become an expert in your niche if you only launched your website yesterday.

Creating solid authority for yourself, and advertisers will know that you have a website that is both legitimate and powerful in the niche you’re covering. If you achieve enough exposure, and have good authority, then you may be considered for things like a press trip. That’s a bonus that might be restricted to the travel niche, but you get the idea.

How we measure authority is something of a debatable issue, since most of the lists on the web have some kind of limitation. Either way, when I have asked people specifically about this they have repeatedly given me the same information:

As I explained earlier, there was a time when I got extremely frustrated and just gave up. A redesign to my blog caused me to take a giant hit from Google, and I was extremely annoyed. I just gave up!

If I didn’t take that two- or three-month break, I might have been on my way to making double what I make now. The tactics I’ve outlined so far helped me in the very first month that I started to make money with the blog. I’ve now nearly doubled my income using the strategies I’ll share below.

When you get started blogging, you have to understand that you are the new kid on the block. There are people I know personally who have been blogging for five to ten years, and I call these people the Rat Pack. They’re the cool kids on the block that you want to get to know and work with.

How did you feel when you met that new kid in your class back in school? The way for them to succeed was to avoid being pushy or asking for too much. They had to be part of the community.

I made the new-kid mistake of approaching people the wrong way, and asking for things I shouldn’t have. Luckily I had a few bloggers point me in the right direction, and that allowed me to get to where I am today. Be engaging, but not demanding. Be interested, but not needy. It’s all about being part of the community and not trying to force your way into the cool kids’ group.

By interacting with the Rat Pack, you’ll open yourself to an extensive group of people who already know how things work and can share best practices. Since these people already have exposure, that may allow you to take a shortcut when you are ready to start making money with your blog. By talking to other bloggers in the field, I went from zero advertisers to having a list of over 60. Use the tools above for exposure and authority to find the Rat Pack in your niche.

I’m busy, the guy at Mcdonald’s is busy, your kids are busy. I get it, you’re busy. When I first started blogging I was running a day trading business, traveling around the world, day trading, and running my blog. How did I handle all of this? I hired help. I found what now is a team of employees overseas that I pay to do a lot of the admin and back-office work for me.

The old adage is really true: it takes money to make money. While you may not have hundreds or thousands of dollars to invest in getting someone to help you, you may be able to afford, say, $100 a month. Understand that your time is money. By outsourcing mundane tasks—even if it’s just a few hours’ work a week—you will free up your time to do more important things, like creating quality content and thinking of better ways to make money with your blog.

The one goal I had for my blog was to break even. Any business or blog that you create should at least break even. You’re not going to be doing something for very long if you keep losing money. I pay a team of two people a total of $510 a month for roughly 45-50 hours a week of work. Just imagine the things I can accomplish during that timeframe!

After you have successfully started making money with one site, you can continue on to other ventures to increase your income and your online empire.

Think about expanding to other niches online. My main niche is travel which is absolutely massive. I now am branching out to my other passion, which is day trading. I have started an Online Day Trading Academy to help others, and now I can blog about day trading and travel across two sites, which will significantly increase my exposure online.

What about you? Are you making money from your blog yet? Which of these strategies do you use?

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What Aspiring Actors Can Teach You About Blogging

If you were an aspiring actor, and you spotted a famous movie star on the street, would you run up to them and ask them for help? You might, but I’m willing to bet that 99 times out of 100, you would get nowhere. In fact, those odds are probably very generous.

I am willing to bet that those odds would improve if you were to approach them, briefly introduce yourself, compliment them on their work, and ask if it would be okay to write to their agent with a few questions that they might consider answering if they get time.

When you’re dealing with people above your station, the hard sell is almost always a failure. If you were to deal with your fellow bloggers in the spirit of the more polite and unobtrusive aspiring actor, you would establish some highly valuable relationships.

As Darren explained, it’s wise to embrace the competition. It doesn’t matter what niche you are in—there are almost always going to be more authoritative blogs already in existence. And that is a good thing, for two key reasons:

It demonstrates that there is a market for your niche.It provides you with an opportunity tap into an established audience.

Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of a resource of already warm, highly targeted leads?

So how can you tap into the audiences of your contemporaries? Not in the way that many people try to, that’s for sure. Do not emulate the method of the rude and desperate aspiring actor. There is few things more irritating to a blogger than being contacted by another who simply asks for a link to, or mention of, their site.

Assuming that you are the proverbial minnow, you only need to concern yourself with one thing when reaching out to your peers—providing value. Whilst simply asking for help may occasionally reap short term rewards, it is far more valuable to establish long term relationships based upon giving.

The desire to reciprocate is human instinct. For the most part, if you offer value to your peers, they will eventually be inclined to return the favor.

So what should you do? Here are a few things you can do to get started:

Drop them a line and compliment their work.Share their posts.Add useful and insightful comments to their posts.Link to posts of theirs that you find valuable.Review their products.

Please don’t let your imagination be stifled by my suggestions—more inventive ways of reaching out to your peers can offer higher rewards! For instance, you might choose to post a video on your blog entitled “Five Reasons You Should Be Following (insert name here)”. That might grab their attention!

Always make sure that your complimentary nature does not turn into overt fawning, and don’t go out of your way to tell the person in question that you are doing all of these lovely things—it will look disingenuous.

The key is to do all of the above (and more) with absolutely no expectation of a reward. I would like to think that I have already established some really positive relationships with bloggers in a short period of time, and for the most part, my generosity has not been reciprocated. How does this make me feel? I’m totally okay with it. Reciprocity is not an obligation, and what you consider due reward for your generosity may not be realistic.

When I get in touch with a fellow blogger, it is not in the vain hope that I can get something out of it. It is because I think they offer quality content, and I want to get to know them better. If something comes out of a burgeoning relationship that positively affects my blog, that is a wonderful bonus.

Once you have started befriending bloggers, you’ll have to play it by ear. Your new friendships will probably bring about unexpected benefits without you having to do anything. But if you think that there is some way in which your friend can help you, and it is not asking too much, then once you are on good terms, you may consider asking for a favor.

If you do decide to, then make sure that you are not asking too much. Put yourself in the shoes of your compatriot—would what you are asking for make them uncomfortable? Always err on the side of conservatism if you feel compelled to ask for something. I personally am far more inclined to never suggest anything that does not offer some kind of benefit in return. Simply saying “can you please link to my site?” is not something I would recommend, because if you already have a great rapport with someone, they would have done so already if they wanted to.

You probably know of many bloggers in your niche. You have probably contacted some of them before. You may not have gone about it in what I consider the right way.

Now is the time to make amends. Start engaging with people—start helping them. You are entering into a long term process, but one which is bound to offer fantastic rewards, given enough time and the right attitude.

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7 Powerful Reasons Why Companies Will Pay for You to Blog

Influential bloggers are being paid top dollar to write sponsored posts (thousands of dollars per post is not unheard of). They’re gifted with luxury items, cars and overseas trips, and invited to events previously exclusive to A-List celebrities and long-established journalists.

Bloggers worldwide are proving to be fierce competition for mainstream media, as companies decide how to get the best return on investment for their marketing buck.

If you have the following seven things, then your blog and social media networks will be highly valuable digital assets, sought after by major companies.

Even if you don’t quite have the same reach and clout as some of these bloggers, you can still apply these principles to negotiate your own deals with smaller businesses in your niche.

ProBlogger Training Day event speakers Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace are travel bloggers who landed a corporate sponsorship deal with a major airline, to cover a high profile international sporting event. At the end of this post, we’ll see these seven points in action, as we take a look at their success in attracting sponsorship from a major brand.

The people in a profitable niche for major companies tend to be decision makers, consumers or influencers in the buying process, for either highly priced items (like cars, technology, travel or finance), or highly consumed items (like food, health products, household goods).

How do you know if your niche is profitable? Just take a look around in mainstream media. If companies are already paying big bucks to advertise to your audience on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers, then you’re in a profitable niche.

If you’ve created a group of people who gather on your blog and social media networks, then what you’ve created has the potential to be extremely financially valuable.

Companies always want to know where their target market is hanging out and get in front of them. Trouble is, as outsiders, whose primary motivation is to sell, they’re not exactly welcomed.

That’s why they’re willing to pay to get access to your tightly formed online community, which has its very own culture, rules and etiquette. Your intimate knowledge of how your community thinks and behaves has a valuable price tag on it.

Being in a commercially attractive niche and having impressive reach in numbers (in terms of blog traffic, subscribers and social media followers) makes your community really valuable. A big corporate client will be after the exposure you can give them.

What kind of numbers are valuable? That all depends.

Essentially, it comes down to the demand to reach your niche, how targeted your audience is and what other advertising avenues are available to the company to reach that specific audience.

The more profitable the niche, and the harder those communities are to access, the more money a company will be willing to pay you to get in front of them.

This is what makes a blogger much more appealing to companies for advertising potential than say, television, print media, billboards and flyers.

Bloggers engage with their audience, who eagerly share their thoughts and feelings. In addition, they actively give bloggers permission to communicate with them, by following or subscribing.

Engaged communities also show clear signs of activity, through comments, posts and tweets. This is valuable in the eyes of a potential marketer, because an active community gives the company a way to evaluate and measure a campaign’s success.

An indicator of a successful marketing campaign is one where the target market responds to it, hopefully positively (although a highly engaged negative response can also be seen as successful, depending on the company’s objectives).

A blogger with a highly engaged and active community is more likely to have influence, which is what’s really going to make a company take notice.

A company will pay for your ability to help get the word out, your referral or your endorsement.

If you can do all three, to an audience who will listen to you and believe you, then you are in a very strong negotiating position to command a price.

A bigger company with a large marketing budget is most likely interested in building brand awareness, exposure and chipping away at a longer-term objective to improve market perception.

The good news for a blogger is that they’re unlikely to expect a huge spike in sales from working on a one-off campaign with you. This eases the pressure off you, relieving expectation that you’ll influence your readers to rush out and buy the product.

Having said that, if you do have the clout to change attitudes, beliefs and market perception about a particular product or service—or you can get people to buy in noticeable numbers—then that will clearly make you extremely valuable in the corporate marketplace.

If you have all of the above advantages, then what a company wants is to align with your brand. You’re obviously credible and your brand says something that they want to be perceived as being.

They want your audience to think they’re worthy of attention, too.

Is your going rate less than the cost of advertising with traditional media power houses, or a celebrity endorsement? Most bloggers are. You’re instantly more appealing, price-wise—especially if you’re willing to accept non-cash payments which the company can offer you at low cost to them.

More importantly, if a major company is willing to do business with you, then they see you as a profitable return on investment.

To demonstrate these seven points, let’s take a look at a blog that’s had success in attracting big-brand sponsorship.

After blogging for a little over a year, Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace secured a sponsorship deal with Australia’s leading international and domestic airline, Qantas, to travel around New Zealand and cover the Rugby World Cup.

If you would like to hear more about the specific steps they took to secure this sponsorship, you can listen to my exclusive interview with Caz on my blog, Mother’s Love Letters.

Blog: y Travel Blog
Niche and Community: Travelers, world-wide.
Sub-niches: Independent world travel, working holidays, family travel.
Reach: 

50,000+ visitors a month70,000+ Page Views per month3,000+ Facebook fans5,000+ Twitter followers1,200+ subscribers

Level of engagement: Average 15-20 comments per blog post. Daily social media interaction. Reply to almost every blog comment. 12,000+ Tweets to date. Facebook fan page is the most interactive and engaged in this niche.
Influence: Klout Score: 70

Brand:   Fun-loving, friendly travellers who are about making your life a story to tell. They believe life is all about the memories, so they make sure they live their life in a way that creates many memories through travel. Their goal is to help people get inspired, get informed and get going.

The deal: All expenses paid 12 day tour of New Zealand, doing activities and attending Rugby World Cup matches. Qantas will also be promoting the bloggers. In return, all Craig and Caz have to do, is have fun, blog, Facebook, and Tweet!

What impressed Qantas most: The bloggers’ level of engagement with their active community.

A key secret to their success: Guest posting. This was key to growing traffic.

Their top tips: Be clear about your brand and make it authentic. Network and build relationships in order to build your community. Social media is crucial, but look at offline networking opportunities, too. Value yourself. Consider how short-term income opportunities for advertising and sponsored posts that compromise content quality may affect your blog perception and brand in the long term. Learn how to write a sponsorship proposal. Don’t be limited by the fact that you’re a new blogger. Every big blogger starts off by being a new blogger.

Is corporate sponsorship for bloggers something that’s common in your niche? Are you looking at aligning yourself with a company, as a monetization strategy?

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Run an Awesome Blog Contest in 5 Steps

Running a contest on your blog can be a great way to generate new readership, reactivate stagnant subscribers, and increase the engagement of your readers.

Competitions can be a lot of hard work for little or no results, unless you run them to a plan and have a clear objective in mind.

Here are five tips for running an awesome blog contest campaign.

As bloggers we love readers, we love engagement, we love community—a contest can help you achieve any or all of these things. When planning your contest, set a goal as to what you need to achieve.

Do you want more:

email SubscribersRSS readerssocial media fanssales of your productcomments and engagement?

Set your goals as numbers—if you wish to increase your email subscribers, how many do you want?

The true measure of a successful competition is in its metrics, and without a clear, numerical goal in place, you won’t know if your hard work is paying off.

If youire hoping to attract new readership to your blog, you want your contest to be seen by as many people as possible. You can do this using a few strategies:

Increasing your contest’s visibility is the key to success, and the easiest medium to send your contest viral is social media.

A third-party app helps you to encourage your fans to share their entries on social media. You can either use a blog plugin to run your contest, or use a Facebook based application such as Binkd or Wildfire App. (Full disclosure here, Binkd is my product!)

Leveraging someone else’s list is a powerful way to attract a fresh audience. Team up with a non-competing colleague in your niche and share the rewards of your contest. In exchange for the cross promotion, you could allow them to market to the list generated by the contest.

Getting a high-profile sponsor of your contest to assist in the promotion or in the donation of a prize is another way to help market your contest. It also adds credibility to your contest by transferring trust.

If you’re using a competition app, there are several types of contests available:

A skills contest requires your entrants to perform a task to be elligible to answer. Short story contests, answer a question contests, and write a jingle skills contests are popular. Entrants can then either be drawn randomly, or encouraged to share their entries to get their friends to vote. Skills contests are similar to sweepstakes, but the entrants can influence their success or failure in the competition.

You can select to have the entrant with the most votes win, or have each vote count for an entry, and drawn similar to a sweepstakes contest.

A visual form of skills contest, here, your entrants upload a photo, and then appeal to their contacts to vote for the photo. This is a really good way to visually promote your brand. Getting a photo of your fans using your product, or performing a stunt related to your brand spreads the word about you far and wide!

A challenge contest can send your entrants on a virtual scavenger hunt around your site and social media pages, searching for answers to your questions. This type of contest is powerful for creating engaged and interactive entrants.

Your entrants submit their entry, and the winner(s) are randomly drawn. Sweepstakes are a game of chance, not skill.

Increase the stickiness of your contest by increasing the engagement of your entrants.

Statistically, contests with multiple entry steps deliver more engaged and sticky entrants. A challenge contest gives your entrants the opportunity to explore your site, and interact with various articles on your blog.

Make the contest goals achievable for your entrants to complete. For example, if you’re running an article contest to generate some awesome new articles, don’t set word counts or criteria too high or tight.

Don’t make your challenge contest questions too difficult to answer, or be too cryptic in your clues.

You can effectively run a contest just on your blog, or by a forum and email management system, but it’s a lot of hard work and can be an administrative nightmare!

There are several applications on the market that automate running a contest and allow you to keep the list of entrants to market to during and after the contest.

Some of the most popular are:

Binkd a contest platform that offers a WordPress plugin and Facebook Sweepstakes and Challenge contestsWildfire App, for Facebook Sweepstakes, Photo Contests, and Vote to WinBulbstorm, for Facebook Sweepstakes, Photo Contests, and Vote to Win.

Running a contest can really help you build up your readership and drive quality, qualified fans to your email subscriber list and social media platforms. You can simplify the job by using a third-party application to handle the grunt work of administering the contest.

Have you used a contest to promote your blog and engage readers? Share your experiences and tips in the comments.

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3 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rates and Increase Conversions

One of the many tough obstacles that newer bloggers have to deal with is the fact that many of their visitors, which they work very hard to get, will often “bounce” away from their pages—they’ll immediately leave the blog after landing on the homepage.

This “bounce rate” can have a drastic effect on your blog’s success at any stage, but especially in the beginning. It’s very important to be able to keep the interest of your earliest visitors in order to build the loyal following that’s the essential foundation of any great blog.

So, what can you do to keep people around your blog long enough to explore its great content?

As a blogger, you’re probably very familiar with (and even have) a navigation bar on your blog, and you likely recognize its importance in helping readers get to your content.

However, many people do not take full advantage of this above-the-fold navigation bar, which inevitably draws a lot of clicks. After all, your nav bar really stands out on your site, and people are very familiar with how these menus work.

You can get more out of your navigation bar by having it link to pages that are much more than just a sequential list of posts in separate categories (as most bloggers do). I’d like to show you how by teaching you about a tactic that I call “super pages” that will direct readers to your best content.

Instead of just listing those categories up on your navigation bar, you can create separate blog pages that accomplish many useful goals, including pages that turn into SEO powerhouses and are incredibly shareable (linkbait), pages that convert new visitors, and pages that help you establish trust with people coming across your blog for the first time.

First things first, one super page to include in your navigation bar would be a Start Here page, where you can include a lot of elements that could be beneficial for first-time readers, and boost your subscriber count.

This page will reduce your bounce rate, guaranteed, as readers who may otherwise have been confused and left your site now have somewhere to begin. In fact, on many of my blogs, it is the most clicked link on my navigation bar.

Secondly, the Start Here page gives visitors a chance to see what your site is really about. You can also make this a little About Me page, putting a trustworthy face on a formerly anonymous website, and letting visitors know that your blog is run by a real person looking to offer great content.

Third, if the above two things weren’t enough: you can use this opportunity (after a descriptive About Me section and great Getting Started guide on your page) to offer visitors a way to get email updates, and if they like what they’ve seen thus far, they will opt in.

So not only will you be reducing bounce rates, you’ll be gaining more subscribers who might otherwise have slipped away after visiting your Getting Started page.

The other way to use super pages effectively is illustrated by Copyblogger. You’ll notice the navigation on that site includes topics that the site posts about, such as landing pages, email marketing, and keyword research. However, these links on the nav bar do not take you to a categorical list of posts.

Rather, they take you to a super page that presents a long description of the topic, including useful insight into getting started in that category, with plenty of links to the best posts on Copyblogger on that specific topic.

So, for instance, on the Email Marketing page on Copyblogger, an intro on the topic and its effectiveness is given, followed by links to great Copyblogger content, followed by a link to the Copyblogger newsletter specifically on email marketing (which people are obviously interested in). This is followed at last by an opt-in form that states that Copyblogger is a great place to learn about email marketing.

Anyone clicking to this page will be interested in email marketing, so now they have a list of links to great posts that is easily shareable (you’ll find that super pages are some of the most shareable pages on your site), a way to opt in to get updates, and a great descriptor of the topic at hand.

Much better than just a list of archived blog posts, wouldn’t you say?

One strategy that is implemented on almost all successful WordPress blogs is the giving away of freebies. These are almost always digital products, so that it doesn’t cost the blogger anything to give these products away.

This strategy works so well because people are much more likely to follow your blog if they see free and valuable content coming their way: they won’t want to miss out on anything in the future.

One of the best ways to do this is to create an autoresponder to send out a freebie if people sign up for your blog’s updates. I’ve found an extremely useful tool on MailChimp for doing this, which is described in detail on MailChimp’s blog.

If that sounds a bit too complicated, don’t worry! Freebies by themselves work as great promoters for people to follow you, so even by sharing a few freebies you are bound to gain more subscribers.

However, there is a way to greatly leverage your freebies: make people share your website in order to get them!

You may have heard of the service PayWithATweet, but there is a much better option that I’d like to show you called CloudFlood. What this service allows you to do is share anything you’d like to give away for free, but your viewers have to send out a tweet (that you generate) in order to gain access to it.

So if I’m sharing a new pack of icons for web design, and I want to give it away for free, I can set up my CloudFlood button and whenever someone wants to access the free download, all they have to do is send out the automatic tweet that I made, and they get instant access.

I could make the tweet link back to my username on Twitter, and have it say something like “Free icon pack for web designers up for grabs, download it now! bit.ly/SomeLinkHere.”

So, I get to give away free content that is useful to people, and they share my website to their Twitter followers … sounds like a win-win!

If there is one thing you should take away from any place giving blog advice, it’s this: your blog is nothing without loyal subscribers or followers.

Thus, it is very important to convert people from the get-go, and making it easy to follow your blog is something that is of utmost importance.

Creattica has some great, free pre-made PSD buttons that are easily edited (you don’t need to be a designer, it’s very simple) so you can add whatever text you want. You can also get some great buttons at Graphic River, such as these.

The link above takes you to an example button that you can edit if you have the PSD files (which are included on the Creattica buttons as well as on Graphic River). So you could easily edit the text to say something like “Follow Me For Updates” or “Get Updates From My Blog” or whatever you think will encourage your subscribers to click on the button.

Eye-catching buttons that stand out and complement your blog are guaranteed to make those who come across your content more likely to subscribe. Copywriters and bloggers alike know that big, beautiful buttons are just calling to be clicked. Are there any on your page?

As you can see there are a lot of things that you can do (for free!) to reduce your blog’s bounce rate, and in the end, grow your blog’s subscribers.

Even if you only drop your bounce rate by a few percentage points, think about how many visitors that will mean in the long run, over your blog’s life.

Capturing a visitor when they land is the starting point for any visitor to become a new subscriber to your blog. You need to do all you can to make sure things start off on the right foot.

How do you plan on dropping your blog’s bounce rate?

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The Science of Blogging

The word “science” comes from the Latin root “scientia,” which means knowledge. This is the reason why the word science is attached to many “non scientific” terms like “the science of theology.”

A blog is defined as follows:

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent “post” (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.—Darren Rowse, What is a Blog?

Most websites are intended to acquire or spread knowledge, hence science and blogs have a lot to do with each other.

The following scientists’ quotes do not refer specifically to blogging, but I think they can teach us a lot about it.

I am sure that I am not smarter than other scientists. Psychologists have said that my IQ is about 160, I recognize that there are one hundred thousand or more people in the United States that have IQs higher than that.—Linus Pauling; Nobel Laureate of Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962), in an interview to the site Academy of Achievement, Nov 11, 1990.

An authority on blogging, Darren Rowse said in Blogging Takes Super Human Effort vs Blogging is Easy [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #1]:

“Before I started blogging I had had 20 jobs in ten years, none of which were in anything to do with the online space and most of which were fairly manual/physical jobs.“My only qualifications were half a degree in Marketing (which I failed half of the subjects in) and a Bachelor of Theology.“I’d received a ‘C’ in English in my final year of high school.“I was incapable of making text bold on my first blog for several weeks—I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to anything technical!”

Some people think that only people with exceptionally brilliant minds can become good bloggers (or good in anything). This is nonsense. Just work hard with devotion. You will make it. There are no magic people.

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.—Sir Isaac Newton; English physicist and mathematician, in a letter to Robert Hooke, 5 Feb. 1675 or 1676

There are always good resources available on any niche you choose, and there are always some people who are “giants” (authorities) in that field. By “resources” I don’t only mean blogs. There will always be excellent books, magazines, videos, and so on in your niche. Utilize them.  I don’t mean copy their content. I mean learn from them, put your own voice in it, and produce fresh content. If you can do your own research and take the current material a step ahead, even better.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.—Albert Einstein; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1921)

To make a blog successful you must keep working on it regularly.

Despite the fact that there are thousands of articles on ProBlogger, I keep returning to this site to read the new ones. Though sometimes I read some old articles, mainly I concentrate on the latest material. I think most readers do the same, as the latest post’s comments are the most frequented.

If you make a blog and update it once in two months, it will collapse. Readers usually want new content on the latest happenings in your niche. Also, readers want regular replies from you. If they are taking the trouble of sparing some time and commenting on your blog, they want the favor to be reciprocated.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.—Albert Einstein; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1921)

To be a good blogger, you need to know a good deal about blogging. For example you need to know which is a good blogging platform, the methods of monetization, how to set up an email newsletter, how to use sites like Facebook and Twitter to your maximum advantage, and more.

The rest is mind game and hard work. Keep blogging diligently. You’ll learn many things practically that you will not learn by referring to blogging resources. Use this information to create better blogs than your competitors.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.—Galileo Galilei; Italian physicist

Do you think visiting “bad” blogs is a waste of time? Not at all! By visiting them you can learn why that blog didn’t do well. What mistakes did the blogger make? Pay attention to those mistakes so that you may not make them.

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.—Richard Feynman; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1965) in a letter to Koichi Mano, February 3, 1966

Though there are thousands of problems that humanity is facing today, you should select a niche of which you have a good knowledge. Then, write posts that can really help people live better lives by solving their problems. If you can solve their problems, they will visit your blog.

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.—Michael Faraday; English physicist, as quoted in A Random Walk in Science (1973) by Robert L. Weber, p. 76

Give your readers the true impression that you really care for them and you have put up a lot of energy and hard work into your blog. Don’t try to fake yourself.  You must really make all attempts to please your audience.  If you yourself won’t take your blog seriously, don’t expect your readers to take it seriously.

Do you know quotes from other scientists that reflect and fit with blogging? Share yours in the comments!

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Guest Posting: Link Building VS Familiarity

I enjoy guest posting when I find the time as it allows me to write about subjects I can’t cover on my own websites. More importantly, it’s a great way of raising my profile, pushing traffic towards my websites and connecting with an audience that I have not had any dealings with as yet.

I’m sure you are all aware of the benefits of guest posting so I won’t speaking about that too much today. What I would like to do is compare the benefits of guest posting on a small selection of blogs and websites regularly against guest posting on new websites every week.

Obviously, it benefits you more to write on large traffic websites that have a large audience. That’s a no brainer. For the sake of argument though let’s assume that all websites you will be writing for will have the same traffic and give you and your website the same level of exposure.

So which do you think is better: Guest posting on a regular basis on 3 or 4 websites or writing a guest post every week for a new website (remember that we are assuming all websites have similar traffic levels etc)?

From a traffic point of view, guest posting on different URLs is better. It will increase your authority on search engines and raise awareness of you, your website or brand, as they will be exposed to a larger audience. The main objective with guest posting is primarily promoting yourself and your website so guest posting on a large number of websites is surely better, isn’t it?

My answer to that question would gear more towards yes. If I was employed by company to guest post online so that traffic was pushed to their new website then publishing 20 articles across 20 websites would likely bring more traffic than publishing them across 3 or 4 websites. However, there are benefits to guest posting regularly over a small number of websites and it’s something you should bear in mind when planning out your guest posting strategy.

Currently I guest post semi regularly for Blogging Tips, John Chow, ProBlogger and Noupe. I have guest posted on many other blogs over the last year or so but those are the websites I have published several articles on.

There are many reasons why I enjoy writing for a small selection of blogs:

I don’t waste a lot of time arranging guest posts

Arranging guest posts on new websites regularly can be time consuming. You need to email the owner, introduce yourself and explain why they should let you guest post. This process can involve a lot of back and fourths. Time is something I hold with high esteem when working online so I don’t take this added work lightly.

I have a good relationship with the owners and editors of the blogs I write for regularly. They are happy with the articles I write and publish them without modifying what I wrote. They are also very professional and quick to respond to my emails. When I want to write an article I email them with a suggestion, they usually email back quickly saying that they are happy with the article topic and then I email them the article. The process is painless.

I know the audience

When you write for a new blog you need to spend some time reading older articles on the site to get a feel for the type of content they publish and the type of content that gets a response. I have been a subscriber for the blogs I guest post regularly on for a long time so I know what type of article is suitable and what isn’t.

The audiance knows me

Guest posting isn’t all about getting a link back to your website at the end of an article. You need to connect with the readers of the blog you are writing for. By doing so they will be much more likely to visit your own blog and much more likely to subscribe.

One of the best ways of connecting with readers is by building familiarity. By posting on a regular basis they will get to know the type of person you are, the type of articles you write and find out more about the websites you run. A one off guest post can be a hit or a miss but if you write regularly for a blog you will be able to engage with readers. They might not agree with your viewpoint on one subject but they may on another.

I’ve not yet directly compared the benefits of guest posting on many websites against posting on a select few. Perhaps the best solution for those of you who do guest post a lot is to guest post on a small selection of blogs regularly in addition to guest posting on new blogs every now and then. Traffic is something that you will be able to monitor accurately though it would be interesting to see if you get more comments or tweets on the articles that are published on your ‘regular blogs’.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Writing and Become a Better Blogger

When it comes to being a better blogger and building a successful blog it is important for you to realize that your communications skills matter a lot. Working on improving your writing as a blogger can result in great rewards for you since writing is one of the major modes of communication for bloggers.

Whether you like it or not as a blogger you have to write everyday. Your writing can be in the form of articles on your blog, it can be in the forms of guest posts on other blogs, it can be in the form of your contribution on forums and it can be in the form of comments on other blogs. This article will be giving you a few tips to help you improve your writing and make you a better blogger.

1. Write Everyday

This can be something extremely difficult to do but is something that can help improve your writing significantly. While reading is one of the best ways to improve your writing skills it is very important for you to know that practice makes perfect, and no amount of reading will help make you better unless you start writing regularly.

Try to write at least one article everyday, no matter how short. You don’t need to publish that article, you don’t need to submit it as a guest post to another blog but writing constantly makes it easy for you to see what you’re doing wrong and as a result work on improving on it.

2. Read Everyday

Another way you can improve your writing as a blogger is by reading everyday. It doesn’t matter if it is a book, if it is a top blog in your niche or if it is comment made by your readers. You will be able to notice a significant improvement in your writing skills if you are able to read any good thing you lay your hands on. You shouldn’t be restricted to books or blogs in your niche alone, but anything that is written in the English language, and anything that is written by an author you trust.

3. Learn from the Leaders in Your Field

It is also very important for you to realize that, as a blogger, while reading a lot of great books and articles in magazines can help improve your writing, learning from the leaders in your industry can also have a significant impact on the results you get. The leaders in your niche have been blogging for years now, they have experience with writing for your field and they have improved their skills over time. By observing how they write and why they do so you’ll be able to develop your skills and write perfectly for your audience.

It is important to realize that you don’t just have to copy them blatantly though. The best way to build a successful blog is by being unique. Don’t try to be what you are not but make effective use of every opportunity to learn from others.

4. Write Your Mind

Another thing you should realize as a blogger is that the best way to succeed isn’t just to write, but to write well. Learning to write well isn’t just enough, but learning to write your mind might make a whole lot of difference.

In most cases a lot of people who read books today do so because it is necessary and in most cases it isn’t necessary for your readers to read your blog so don’t write like you are writing their next school book. One of the key to writing content that gets results as a blogger is by connecting to your readers emotions, and the best way to do this isn’t by trying  to write the next perfect article but by writing exactly what is on your mind.

The key to writing content that gets results isn’t to write the perfect content but to write to your true self. I have seen bloggers without perfect English get great results and I have seen people write posts with perfect grammar that goes nowhere. The reality is that if you learn to write your mind and do it regularly (tip #1), and you also follow the second tip in this article you will be able to improve your writing skills significantly.

5. Get Feedback

As bloggers and writers it can be quite easy to deceive ourselves with the hope that our writing is great when it indeed isn’t, it can also be easy for us to believe our writing sucks when it really doesn’t. When you do the same thing over and over again you get used to it and hardly notice the changes and writing shouldn’t be any different. The only way to know if your writing is improving isn’t just by writing and telling yourself it is, the best way to know if your writing is improving is by getting feedback. Try to get your readers to give you feedback about your writing. Try to get them to give your suggestions and over time work on writing the perfect article.

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At the End of the Day, It’s Still About People

Sure, you want to make money. You want to make a lot of money. Maybe you’re doing all of these things to help you make money. But, you know what? Without people, there is no money. You absolutely cannot make money without people, unless you’re a bank robber, and I don’t suggest that.

Your online business is about people. It doesn’t matter how great your report is or your new product or your blog, if there’s no people, there’s no sales. You have to cater to the people. It doesn’t matter if you sell information, offer a service or even what niche you’re in. It ALL revolves around people–the consumer.

You’re told to build traffic so your site will be a success. You need traffic or it will fail. What is traffic? Yep, people.

You’re told you need a list so you can promote your products to. Without a list it will fail. What is a list? Right again, it’s people.

In reality, you are not generating traffic or building a list. You are attracting people.

No people, no traffic, no list, no money.

The best way to make money online? Attract people.

What do you do with them after you attract them? Build a relationship. Sure, you can have crappy products and no people skills and not build a relationship, but that will only last so long. Building a business that way is equivalent to the life cycle of a fly. It’s very short-lived.

If you want to build a successful business online, you need to set aside the money issue and focus on people. Put your focus on serving them and helping them solve their problems. Then, and only then will the money come. People will want to buy from you and they will be loyal customers if you give them value and solutions to their problems.

Keep people in the forefront of your business and at the end of the day your bottom line will be a reflection of how well you served people.

Take care of people and they will take care of your business.

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The Importance Of Scheduling Your Blog Posts

One of the most important responsibilities of running a popular blog such as Blogging Tips is scheduling posts. This is particularly true for blogs in which the blog owner doesn’t write every day themselves. That is, they just need to organise the articles written by staff and guest posters.

Scheduling is just as important for blog owners who write the majority of their content (this is perhaps less true if your posting frequency is irregular or you only publish an article once a week). One of the most important lessons I have learned over the last 4 or 5 years of running blogs that publish articles daily is that it is vital to schedule posts in advance. You never know when something unexpected will come up that will take away time from your usual working routine. Sickness and family emergencies can never be planned.

I try my best to always have around a weeks worth of posts written in advance when possible, more if I am planning a holiday. This week I was reminded of the benefits of doing this.

One month ago I fulfilled a dream of mine and came to South America. Unfortunately, I have an allergy to something in the apartment I’m staying in. Back home I suffer from the same problem when exposed to dust or animal hair from cats and dogs. My nose runs constantly, my eyes get red and sore and I generally just feel run down.

Fortunately, I brought Loratadine tablets with me just incase I was exposed to any animals but they haven’t completely stopped the symptoms. The most pressing thing for me is to find out what’s causing the allergy. The apartment has laminate flooring so there’s very little dust gathering, I’ve replaced the feather pillows with anti-allergy pillows and there are no pets allowed in the entire apartment complex. This has all left me baffled as to as to what is causing me so much grief. For my last roll of the dice I am going to buy an anti-allergy duvet to replace the cotton and polyester blankets that I’m currently using, though as I have used similar blankets back home with no problems I predict I’ll have to see the doctor next week.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Bogota. I had an amazing day but forgot to take my tablet in the morning so I awoke yesterday morning feeling terrible. I generally work between 9 to 6 during the week but after a small article that should have took me 15 minutes to write took me over 2 hours, I switched the computer off and relaxed. Thankfully, I had articles scheduled in advance so I could afford to take time off to get myself better.

If your blog only posts about the latest news, you may find scheduling in advance isn’t really an option. News posts can’t be really written in advance as you need to publish the article when the news is still fresh and relevant, therefore the majority of news posts are written the day the article is published or the day before.

Most blogs contain a mixture of news, reviews and opinion type articles so what you should do is schedule posts that will be as relevant in a few weeks time as they are today. When the opportunity to write a news related post comes up you simply have to reschedule the scheduled post for another time.

Here are three WordPress plugins that you should all find useful when scheduling your posts:

Editorial Calendar – My favourite plugin for scheduling posts. The plugin adds an easy to read calendar page to your WordPress admin area. It’s a quick and easy way to see what days have posts and what days don’t. To move posts to a different day you simply have to drag and drop the article to the selected day.Future Posts Calendar – Adds a calendar to the top of your post editor sidebar that quickly see what days have posts scheduled on them.Auto Schedule Posts – The perfect plugin for blogs where the date the content is published isn’t really important. The plugin lets you set parameters for when you want articles posted online. If the plugin finds a day without a post it automatically schedules one of your completed posts for it.

I’m sure you are away of the limitations of writing articles too much in advance. In an ideal situation all content would be written on the say it published so that your blog remains relevant by reacting to popular trends. In reality, I think it’s best to plan ahead as if a ‘sick day’ could turn up at any time.

Be a smart blogger and run your blog just like any other business. Prepare for the unexpected and your readers will rarely see any irregularity in your posting frequency.

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How PPC Campaign Works to Get Traffic for your Website

Pay per click (PPC) is an internet marketing campaign that is designed to attract targeted customers to your website. There are various other techniques that plays important roles in the vast field of internet marketing but PPC is one that I know well! Some people feel that running a PPC campaign alone is enough to get users to their website and have a successful business. I personally think it is a bad idea to just run PPC. People should start running other campaigns such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, etc to get good rankings and have a successful website.  Here is a little teaser on getting PPC traffic to your website.  Also, top comment below will receive a code for $100 if free Google Adwords PPC traffic to your site.

How to Set Up a Successful PPC Program

A PPC campaign is an easy way to bring targeted customers to your website. But it takes a lot of time to make the campaign a success. There is a lot of trial and error method involved in the process. It is important to optimize your content of the advertisement so that users click on it. The optimization of PPC campaign works in three distinct steps

Keywords: Firstly, you need to come up with the keywords which suit your website well and sign up for a PPC cost program. Only then your advertisements will crop up in the first page of the search engine result page. You need to keep analyzing and find out which keywords work best for you.Ad content: Each advertisement will have a unique message stated below the website name. Optimize the content well so that users get the information they need. You should try and minimize the number of words as much a possible because users do not have much time to read through lengthy content. They might be side tracked by other websites content. You only have two seconds to catch the user’s attention. So minimize the content length and explain about your website. If you are not good with content editing, you may need to recruit professionals to come up with this particular piece of information to have a successful PPC campaign.Landing page: Landing page is nothing but the web page the user lands on when they click on the advertisements. Many advertisers give their home page as landing page but creating a separate landing page is important to have a successful PPC campaign. When a user lands in the homepage, they are lost and have no clue what to do next, they may leave. It will unnecessarily increase your bounce rate. Create a landing page that gives the user some information about the website in a short and precise manner. Then give a link of your home page. This will help in reducing your bounce rate and help you in converting visitors to your customers.

How Important is PPC in Online Marketing

I believe that only 30% of your website visitors should be brought to your site through your PPC campaigns.  That being said, you shouldn’t let this deter you if you’re getting 60% of your website visitors through PPC cause it can be one of the best ways to get targeted traffic while you work on other things like SEO. PPC shouldn’t be ignored because it gives a head start in your marketing campaign. When you start a website, the ranking gained through other online marketing techniques are not enough to have decent amount of traffic. A PPC campaign will bring in target users to your website that are searching for what you have.

I’m giving away a $100 coupon to start your own campaign with Google Adwords.  Best comment below gets it!  I’d love to hear what your experience is with PPC.  If you have any questions about PPC please visit our PPC Tips page or leave a comment below.

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FREE Is The Future of Business

Right now I am reading a book by Chris Anderson called “Free – The Future of A Radical Price”.  You can find this on iTunes for FREE.  You can also search Google and find it pretty quick. Chris Anderson is Wired magazine’s editor in chief and gives us a glimpse of why the cost of doing business online is falling closer and closer to zero.  I really like how this has helped me with everything I am doing online.  The best way to get people online is to give them something free.  You see this on all the top blogs you read, top sites you visit and pretty much everywhere online.

In Free, Anderson breaks down the priceless economy into six broad categories, demonstrating how to make money in each:

- “Freemium”: Free Web software and services, and some content, to users of the basic version. (Think Flickr and the $25-a-year Flickr Pro.)

- Advertising: Free content, services, and software to an audience that advertisers will pay to reach.

- Cross-subsidies: Give away any product that entices customers to pay for something else. Example: It’s a free second-gen Wii! But only if you buy the deluxe version of Rock Band.

- Zero marginal cost: Anything that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone, like online music.

- Labor exchange: Performing tasks to gain access to “free” sites and services.

- Gift economy: From Freecycle (free secondhand goods) to Wikipedia, money isn’t the only motivator.

Always give Away Something FREE

Your readers want to know that you care about them, so why not give them something free.  Not only does this show your reader that you’re giving them something free that has taken you a lot of time and effort, you also show them that you care about them.  This will inspire trust. This will give you more credibility.  This will break down the barrier that is between you and their information to re-market to them.

How Does Free Work?

Free breaks down the barrier between you and your readers.  If you are selling an eBook and you charge even $.01 you may get a small percentage of readers to purchase your product. But if you give it away for free you will quickly see that your numbers will increase, you’ll get more subscribers, and your blog will be more popular. People love something free, they don’t even think about it.  It makes it so they don’t have to think about the decision; it’s free, why not?

What Do I Give Away For Free?

Give away anything and everything. Just kidding, don’t get yourself into trouble.  I would personally go with what Zac Johnson, John Chow, and many others have done in the blogging space and give away an eBook.  An eBook is a great way to gain your readers trust while getting them to subscribe to your blog.  Use a service like aWeber to keep track and distribute your eBook.  It will keep track of your readers and let you email market to them in the future.  This will allow you to make money off your readers in the long run and keep them coming back to your blog consistently.  Make sure when you’re giving away something free that you don’t give away crap.  Giving away something free that is horrible will cause a bad taste in your readerships mouth.  Bad press travels much more quickly then good press.  If you put something crappy together and give it away for free it will damage your reputation.

I encourage all of you to read Chris Anderson’s book “Free – The Future of A Radical Price”  It will change your world and help you to understand free a lot more than you think.  It will help you realize how Google can give away 99.999% of it’s products for FREE and still make Billions Profit each year.  Please let me know below if you have read the book or have any questions.  I would love to help you out with and Blogging Tips that I have!

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