Blogging has been a widely known concept for quite some time now. While they may not know the technical ins and outs of how it works, many men and women have heard about blogging in pop culture.
Julie and Julia is a good example of this. It’s a movie that originated from a true-life tale of Julie Powell, who set out to blog about her experiences cooking each of Julia Child’s 524 recipes from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just 365 days.
The benefits of blogging are huge; it is free or cheap to start so the risk-reward benefits are huge. Starting a blog is simple; you can start with a WordPress blog for free if you want to, but I would suggest paying a few bucks for a domain name and hosting if you want to take the whole thing seriously and really want to make money blogging.
Looking for “blog jobs” online is something many people do these days. They know they love to post on Facebook, and they hate their current 9-5 job, so they think they’d love to get hired as an official blogger for a company.
But you have to understand that when a company sets out to attract a blogger to represent their business online, they don’t want an amateur blogger. They want someone who knows how blogging works and understands the business side of blogging – because when you’re a blogger, you’re building a brand (or destroying it, in some unfortunate cases).
When you start looking at professional blogger-for-hire jobs, you’ll see that they want you to understand online marketing fully, they want you to deliver a certain number of blog posts per week (usually five), and sometimes want you to go out and find guest blogging opportunities where you can blog elsewhere and link back to their main blog.
It’s not a good career for someone who is new to blogging and thinks it “might be fun.” This is for seasoned professionals – and sometimes the company will even want to investigate to see what kind of current reach you have with your own content in the social media world.
If you’re already at a company that doesn’t have an online presence, then maybe you can make a suggestion that they allow you to head up that operation. This would give you a little experience so that you could then go out and brag about launching and generating a good buzz for your current company.
The do-it-yourself blogging to make money route is far more rewarding. It’s something you can do anytime – in the morning before work, on your lunch hour, after work and on the weekends.
Then when it becomes profitable, you can use it to replace your current income and begin blogging fulltime. When you choose this path, you have much more personal satisfaction in your blogging career.
If you want to learn more about monetizing your blog, check out this post here.
You have to treat this like a business from the very start. If you start blogging haphazardly, then your readers will recognize that it’s an amateur site. Yes, some will become fans anyway – but others want to know they’re following a leader in whatever niche you choose to blog about.
How do you pick a niche for your blog? Some blogs have a multitude of topics – from entertainment to fashion to business to health. You can do that, but unless you have a team of contributors, it’s hard to maintain the momentum needed for a broad blog like this.
A better option might be to narrow down your focus into something that you really love. It can still be broad – like a women’s health blog for example. But it’s not as narrow as “everything” or “health in general” (including both genders).
You can even drill down more and go with one form of women’s health, like menopause or pregnancy. You don’t even need to be an expert in it – it’s all about sharing information and as you learn, you can share!
If you dread it because it bores you or it’s depressing, then you won’t help your readers and the blog won’t become profitable for you.
Aside from the overall slant, you get to choose what each individual entry on your blog is all about. If you were blogging for another company, they might tell you what to blog about each day – even if you found it mundane.
You can set an entire editorial calendar for your blog where you choose which topics are presented to your readers. You also get to pick the tone for the blog pieces.
For example, let’s take the diet niche. You could be a fad and trend diet blogger who emphasizes fast weight loss – or someone who harps on the fact that weight loss should just be the adoption of better nutrition and exercise and the pounds should come off slowly.
Having a relationship with your readers means they value your blog, and they share the link to it with other people. You want that type of connection because as a professional, the traffic and branding that you gain will be priceless.
When blogs have a loyal readership, they enjoy a fantastic word of mouth traffic flow. While many bloggers are out there buying links back to their site and paying people to help them get traffic, you can do it all for free.
Do some preliminary keyword research to find out what people want to know in your niche. Using the menopause example, you could go to UberSuggest.org and type in what are menopause.
This is known as a sentence starter – and it gives you some insight into what type of blog post you might want to do, such as:
A good keyword tool gives you help on what to blog about. But there’s more that you can do to find topics. You can look in forum threads and see what people are asking.
You can also simply invite your readers to submit questions to you. You can do this on your email autoresponder opt in form, or have a special contact form on your blog where people can engage with you that way.
Whenever someone emails you with a question, you can assume there are more people out there who are wondering the same thing. Use those questions as fodder for your blog topics.
When you start blogging about all of these things, it makes the audience feel like you’ve really got your finger on the pulse of the marketplace – like you have great instincts.
Next, write in a highly conversational style and end each blog with an invitation to connect. People need to feel like you’re speaking just to them – even if you’re not.
When you end a blog post, you can ask a question or invite people to share their own $0.02 about the topic in the comments. Make sure that whatever comment system you’re using, it’s easy to find – because some are almost hidden.
Participate in the conversation that goes on in your blog comments. If people are kind enough to take you up on your invitation, then make an effort to have a dialogue with them.
Thank them for their comment, call them by name, and open up a discussion about what they had to say. You can use a plugin to help the comments become “threaded,” which helps all of your readers see who was responding to who.
When you start blogging for profit, you should be consistent with your efforts. You should blog regularly – daily if possible, but at least several times a week. There are a few ways you can make money as a blogger.
Build a list from your blog so that whenever you have a new blog post, you can notify people about it. Also have an RSS system set up for people who use RSS feed readers to get notified of your new content.
Whenever you have a list, it gives you a certain amount of power – the power to instantly communicate with your target audience when you are selling or promoting products.
Sell ad space for a certain amount of profits. You can arrange a specific area of your blog for ad space that people rent on a monthly basis, paying the ad revenue to you directly.
If you go this route, make sure you have specifics in place to control what kinds of ads can get placed on your blog – all the way down to the colors and animation of it if you want.
Sign up for AdSense, too. This can help you get clicks and revenue. You can put different sized ad banners on your blog, from buttons to skyscraper ads. You can include images or go with just text.
One thing you have to remember whenever you place any ads on your blog is that yes, it gives you some money when people leave your site for somewhere else – but in leaving, it also means someone else is capturing their name and email address and selling something to them, not you.
Promote tangible products as an affiliate. You can sign up as an Amazon Associate and promote anything they sell there that they offer a commission on. Using our menopause example, if you promoted a chilled pillow, you could earn a percentage of each sale from your blog post.
Promote digital products as an affiliate. Digital products can be found at sites like ClickBank.com. You can sign up for free and get a hoplink (affiliate link) where you earn around 50% for each sale.
Offer services from your blog. Freelancing like writing, graphics, or other services can be offered right from your blog. Coaching is something you can offer. Many people pay top dollar for one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype or even email!
Blogging can be a very fun and very profitable venture if you approach it correctly. Don’t make the mistake of flying by the seat of your pants. If you do this, your blog will be scattered with topics, have no set monetization plan, and you’ll end up unhappy with the effort you’ve put in.
With proper planning and enthusiasm, you’ll never need to look for “blogging jobs” again – in fact, you might be the one putting out feelers for a professional blogger to come onboard and help you with your content needs! Being in a position of power makes a world of difference.
And remember, if you want a premium training on blogging the right way, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint which includes over the shoulder training on blogging the right way.
Or, if you just want some more basics to see whether blogging is right for you, check out the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊
Have you ever asked yourself these types of questions: “Can habits change your life?” or “What are the benefits of good habits?”
If you are like most success hungry entrepreneurs, then I guess the answer is a resounding “Yes!” We all want to be more successful and developing positive habits can help us to achieve that success.
So, why are habits important to your success in life?
If these highflyers are using the power of habits, don’t you think you should do too?
Of course you should! Habits give you structure and can help you to keep going when things get tough. They can become so ingrained that nothing will stop you from completing certain habits.
That being said, it is pretty obvious that you need to create simple, daily habits that will impact you positively. And if you have any negative habits, you need to recognise them and eliminate them from your life.
But what exactly is a habit? Well, a habit is something you do daily without thinking much about it. You probably have a habit of waking at a certain time, brushing your teeth a certain way, and perhaps calling your parents once a week on a Thursday evening.
And the good news is that you can change your habits or create new ones. It must be said that it can be very difficult to break old habits, especially if you have been doing them for years, but if they aren’t doing you any good, it is time to ditch them!
Good habits will help you to achieve more in life and to reach your goals, so let’s look at building and stacking a daily routine that will fire you up and help you to achieve more in your life!
There are morning routines and evening routines that perhaps are habit-based already for you. You may get up, eat breakfast, shower, brush your teeth, and depending on how early you get up; exercise may be in the morning routine as well.
In creating daily routines, you identify what you already do that is good and then attach a tiny habit to it. For example, if you do a few minutes of yoga in the morning, you can stay on the mat and do five minutes of meditation. After that is complete, you can do four minutes of visualization, and to finish it up, do three minutes of deep breathing.
This is very similar to Tony Robbins’ 4-part morning routine, which is four tiny habits, one right after the other.
To create a habit-stacking routine, Steve Scott advises that you look at your day and come up with times and locations as your prompts. It would like this:
– Once I wake up, I will…
– Once I start work, I will…
– Once I have a break or lunch, I will…
– Once my work is complete, I will…
– Once I finish dinner, I will…
– Once I hit the gym, I will…
– If I travel, I will…
These are examples and adjustable as not everyone goes to the gym or travels for work or vacation.
Make sure to have a good reason why you want to stack the habits you have picked out. A big why is essential for any habit or goal, or you will not put in the necessary time to do it.
Steve Scott believes that you should only work on one routine because of the willpower required to do it. It is easy to get distracted, and working on two or three routines at once, would require more focus and willpower than the average person can truly say they have.
As mentioned, Steve Scott came up with 97 tiny habits you can stack into different areas. He broke down the areas of your life to focus on like this:
– Leisure (Your days off and your vacation time)
– Organization (Keeping the house clean, organized, and decluttered, along with your workspace)
– Finances (Making and saving money. Reducing debt)
– Productivity (Finding your best working hours and getting tasks done on time)
– Spirituality (Connecting with the earth and your Creator)
– Health and Fitness (Your mental and physical well-being, including what you eat and how you exercise)
– Relationships (Developing loving relationships with family and friends. Getting along with co-workers)
Let’s look at a daily routine for relationships using habits stacking.
We will use the dinner hour as our example.
– When we prepare dinner, I will ask about their day.
– When we sit down to eat, I will say how grateful I am for not only the food but having them in my life
– During the dinner, I will put away my cell phone and focus on what they say
During clean-up, I will touch my partners’ lower back to make a physical and emotional connection.
– After dinner, I will take their hand, and we will walk around the block while I express my love
Creating habits requires self-discipline and many people do lack in this area. If you want to gain more self-discipline, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about the Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
If you are going to be successful with any type of online business, then you need to have a great website. This may seem obvious to some of you but there are some really terrible websites out there and I am sure the owners are not as profitable as they could be!
However, the majority of people get put off by the technical aspects of setting up a website and there are a lot of mistakes that you can make. And this is why I wrote this article covering 7 of the most common (and most serious) problems that you may come across when building your website.
Hopefully this article will help you to avoid them and get a great looking website up and running with as little drama as possible, so without further ado, let’s get started…
The first website stumbling block is… BAD HOSTING
Oh yes, I’ve seen bad web hosting happen to good people. Don’t let it happen to you!
Website Hosting Quality
There’s a level of quality you must expect from a web hosting company and there are some very popular programs out there that don’t live up to that quality. Just because everyone registers their domain name at GoDaddy, it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for hosting your website!
I know when you’re new to this whole process it’s hard to know what companies to trust and who to bring your business too. That’s why it’s so important to education yourself. I recommend a combination of self-education and looking for recommendations from trusted colleagues to decide on a website host for your small business.
Of course it’s a good idea to know what you’re looking for, so here’s a checklist of website hosting features.
IMPORTANT TIP – Over the years I’ve set up more websites than I can count for clients. One of the biggest self-created problems I’ve seen is website owners not knowing their own hosting and domain registration information.
If you get only one thing from this lesson get this –>>> Make sure you know your website hosting information. Save it somewhere safe!
If you’re reading through the checklist above and finding that your current host is a sorry excuse for a hosting company then it’s probably time to switch. The first question you’re probably going to ask is whether this is difficult.
What to Do Next – Step Over That BLOCK
So now that you’re equipped with some knowledge it’s time to take action. Don’t let your hosting be a stumbling block for long… it’s time to step right over it.
Don’t have website hosting? It’s time to go sign up for one!
Remember I said to take recommendations from trusted colleagues? Well I hope by now you’ve realized that my goal is to be a trusted colleague to YOU and provide you with valuable resources for your business.
My hosting company of choice is A2 Hosting. Of course they provide all the features I suggest you look for above. If you want to check them out, you can do so here: A2 Hosting.
The second website stumbling block is… CONTENT THAT’S HARD TO READ
Make Your Website Easy To Read
Nothing turns a new visitor away faster than having to work hard to figure out what you’re trying to tell them. There are a lot of ways you can actually mess up your content’s readability, so let’s do the run-down of things not to do when designing a website you want people to read:
The most important thing to remember above the extra details and the fancy fonts is that your readers don’t really care all that much.
Mostly your readers want the content they’re looking for and if you can deliver that to them, you are doing a good job.
The third website stumbling block is… MAKING A WEBSITE FOR YOU AND NOT YOUR MARKET
Mark My Words – Your Website is NOT For You…
I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen websites built purely to fulfil a need to make something awesome for the person who’s building it.
Let me not mince words here: Your website is NOT FOR YOU, it’s for your visitors.
Sure you might like your black background and white font because it’s cool, but is it easy to READ?? Not likely. So are you trying to turn people away or do you just not care if you get visitors who like your site?
Don’t assume everyone who knows your business will know who you are or what your business is, assume they know nothing about you and don’t really care anyway… assume they’re asking themselves ‘What’s in it for ME?’… because they ARE asking themselves that.
Here are some tips to make sure you flip that thinking around and start building your site for your visitors, not yourself:
The fourth website stumbling block is… SITES THAT MAKE IT HARD TO FIND STUFF
Website Navigation is VERY Important
Have you ever looked at a great big corn maze and thought: “No, Not Today!” That’s just what many of your website visitors are going to say if you make them work through a maze of information to find what they’re looking for. They’ll fast-track it out of there before you can convince them it’s worth the effort.
If you WANT them to see your important pages, don’t assume they’re scouring every word on your site; assume they WON’T and put links in multiple spots, so they’ll come across them as they scan.
In terms of making your site easy to get through here are some ways to do that:
Overall you want your visitors to be able to easily navigate your site, consume the content and then either become a lead or buy from you.
We’ll talk about these important pieces in our remaining stumbling blocks so check them out in the navigation to the right (see what I did there)
The fifth website stumbling block is… THINKING “If your build it, they will come” WORKS FOR WEBSITES (it doesn’t!)
Traffic Must Be Funnelled to Your Website!
Let’s say you’ve built your site and it’s ready for visitors. Now you sit and wait for them to start filing in, right? WRONG!
There are plenty of ways to do this so you can pick your favorites. They include:
I know you want your website to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible so get on out there and promote that baby!
Good luck and happy traffic building.
The sixth website stumbling block is… becoming trapped with a website you can never update or edit.
When Hiring a Website Designer, Be Smart, PLEASE!
I’ve seen it far too often with my customers and clients. They’ve hiring a website designer to build a fantastic site and the site looks awesome.
But what now? They have NO way to update it, NO idea how to do it and NO clue what to do next. So what they end up doing in many cases is starting over and using WordPress so they have a website they can actually use.
In the worst of these cases a website design company uses ‘proprietary’ software to build your website and you are completely trapped into staying with them or losing your website all together.
One of the smartest things you can do for your online business is to learn how to control your own website. I firmly believe if you have that full control over your web presence you will be MUCH more successful.
Running a business requires you to react and respond quickly. Maintaining your own website will keep you on top of the market you’ve chosen to serve.
Another important reason to at LEAST know how to USE your site is that you can hire the right people for the job. Let’s say you’re not the DIY type (and that’s OK) and you really need to hire a website designer.
It is a smart idea for you to first learn the basics of building a website so that you know how to spot trouble before you hire it!
The seventh website stumbling block is… not giving your visitors (and the search engines) enough content to decide they want to do business with you.
Content is Your #1 Tool For Getting Leads & Sales
There are many types of content you can use to grow your business, including:
You might be wondering how you’ll make money if you decide to give away tons of content for free. It’s a great question and the answer is that people will NOT buy from you at all if they can’t see the value in what they offer.
They can get that value from the free content you give away and they are more likely than not to be impressed to know where they can find more, learn more, hear more.
The key to giving away free content is to always have something to follow it. Some people might tell you to never give away your best stuff but I don’t agree. Sometimes you want to give away the very best of what you have so you can really impress your potential market.
If you only give away mediocre stuff, do you really expect they’ll be overjoyed and wondering where they can get more?
Throughout this training I have told you about using WordPress for your website and its many benefits. As a content manager, WordPress is known as one of the very best available. Let me tell you what WordPress can do for your content:
I’ve dedicated a large chunk of my time to helping small business owners like you learn how to use WordPress to grow their business.
I hope it will help you avoid many of the mistakes that I and many others have made along the way to building a successful online business.
If you want to know more about increasing conversions in your business, check out the featured resource below to grab a free report which will teach you how to boost your conversion rate. Download, read it, and take action 🙂
You may have heard before that some people use meditation to increase their focus and to help them clear their minds. This is true, it does work well for a lot of people.
However, if you’re trying to do something specific with your focus or creativity, you probably won’t benefit as much from a random generic meditation class. You may need something a little more purposeful or specific to assist the creative process!
You shouldn’t be thinking about anything whatsoever during it, allowing your mind to go entirely blank. This helps people destress and relax, because they’re not thinking about all the things they have to worry about.
However, while this is helpful for that, it might not be as conducive to helping you focus or figure out a project. You should instead try more purposeful meditation, where instead of having your mind go blank, you focus on one thing and one thing only.
By clearing your mind of all other distractions, except for the project at hand, you’re going to be able to completely focus on that and come up with much better solutions.
Ideally, this would be accomplished in a space where you’re free of any noises, obnoxious sights, or people trying to get your attention.
There aren’t many places that would fit this bill perfectly, so just work with what you’ve got. The most important thing should be to not have people interrupting you, so if you can get to a space like that, even if it does have errant sounds and sights, you should still be able to focus well.
You might end up finding that different things help you more or less while you’re meditating. Try experimenting a little bit. You might not be able to focus in dead silence, so you might have some ambient nature sounds playing through some headphones.
You might want the lights up or down, and you might want to keep your eyes open or closed. It’s different for everyone, so try a little bit of everything at first to see what helps.
For most people, this is worth a try, but don’t be upset if it doesn’t work for you. A handful of people don’t focus well under meditation conditions, so you might find it’s simply not right for you. At least with a purposeful meditation, you have something to focus on (your task) rather than just trying to clear your mind which can be very difficult for some people. Give it a try; what have you got to lose?
Unless you’re particularly lucky or skilled, creative ideas probably don’t just happen on demand for you. In fact, in most cases, creativity will appear whenever it happens to, and you tend to have very little control over when it will occur.
The purposeful meditation techniques described above may help you to get yourself into creative flow so may be worth a shot.
Otherwise, creativity can come up and interrupt you at any moment, even if you’re in the middle of something important. You could be trying to focus on your normal work, trying to sleep, or in the middle of a call or meeting with someone very important.
In these cases, you have to treat it the same way you would a toddler. The first thing you should try to do is train yourself to reserve your creative thoughts for later.
If your mind wanders even a little while you’re trying to focus, you can get flooded with all these different ideas that you can get lost in.
Sometimes a creative idea will pop up that could be life changing for you, and in that case, you need to stop what you’re doing and at least write it down quickly. Don’t ignore your creativity outright if it’s something that’s a really good idea or something that you really want to work on.
If that’s the case, try to come back to it later and continue expanding on it. You just can’t let random intrusive thoughts take over your work. Focus can be extremely important while also being rather fragile.
The slightest wandering thought or break in your concentration can pull you way off track in some instances. While some people’s focus isn’t easily broken, yours might be one little distraction away from crumbling, allowing you to get fully enveloped in that distraction.
As you can appreciate, all of this purposeful meditation, creativity process and maintaining focus can take a lot of self-discipline and a positive attitude. If you don’t have this, you will probably struggle to maintain any focus and creativity, so it is well worth your while to adopt the correct mindset; I know this may sound a little cliched, but it does really work.
If you want to develop more self-discipline, click on the featured resource below to get a free report, The Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
Do you ever wonder, is blogging still profitable?
Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology.
Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.
Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging.
The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.
To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.
As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.
Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines, and once your readers know that you update frequently, they will return to your site on a regular basis.
However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so don’t skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site.
Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight. Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood, it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit.
Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.
Also, when you are writing blog posts, you need them to be focused and engaging and the best way to do that is to write it for one particular type of reader.
People end up on your blog a number of ways. They may be referred to you by friends or colleagues or reach one of your blog posts through an Internet search. However someone finds your blog, that person doesn’t care how many other people you are trying to reach.
If you receive 1000 unique visitors to your blog each month, none of those human beings is thinking about any of the others.
This is why it is extremely important to write in the second person. This means addressing your content to the words you, yourself and yours.
People love being recognized for who they are as an individual.
When you write your content as if you are speaking to that individual, a single person, that person that reads your content as if you were doing exactly that. When the human brain encounters the word “you” in communication, in print or online, in regards that communication is personal.
That person then becomes alert to the message you are sending. This sense of intimacy leads to your blog visitors reading more of your content and staying on the page longer.
This helps with search engine rankings, which means you get more generic traffic, and those additional web surfers also feel as if you are speaking to them in a one-on-one conversation.
Yes, it is true that you are marketing to more than one person. Unless you found a single client with unlimited means, you’re going to need to do business with many people for your blog to be a success. However, each one of these people is an individual, not a faceless group member.
Remember, your blog is only read by one person at a time.
This is why you should write to one individual. It is also why it is extremely important to deeply understand the needs and wants, worries and problems of your “perfect prospect”.
Consider the following two statements, as if you found them on a blog post you are reading:
“Why do people want to lose weight?”
“Why do you want to lose weight?”
Which one of those statements seems more personal to you? Which one of those questions is likely to keep you reading, and make you feel like you are important to that blog writer?
The second question is obviously more intimate and personal in nature, which shows you exactly why you should create your content as if you are delivering it to a single person in a one-to-one conversation.
If you want a premium training on blogging the right way, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint which includes over the shoulder training on blogging the right way.
Or, if you just want some basics to see whether blogging is right for you, check out the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊
