Content Marketing

Why You Should Write Blog Posts On A Regular Basis

If you are a blog owner, you should post articles and other content on your blog regularly. How often you should post depends on your niche and your following.

Of course, this doesn’t mean substituting quantity for quality; your content should always be top notch and be useful to your readers. Ideally this content should be something they would be willing to pay for!

You need to keep track of your visitors, where they are navigating to on your blog and how often they return. You do this by getting subscribers. Keep track of the percentage of subscribers and un-subscribers and this will be an indicator of how often to post to your blog.

If you notice there are a lot of people who unsubscribe from your blog on a daily basis, this is usually an indicator you are posting too much.

Keep an eye on this for a while and change the frequency at which you post to your blog. Not posting often enough is usually the problem blog owners have though.

By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.

Another problem bloggers run into is creating content that is intriguing and “draws a reader in” to want to read more. Sometimes it is hard to think of ways to do this and bloggers continue to just post information about their niche, products, or services.

You are supposed to do this, but there are other techniques to grab a reader’s attention. For instance, you want the blog to be personable and write in such a way it is like you are talking to the reader.

Tell A Story

You can write a story of something that happens to you each day, or a current event that is happening in the world.

These stories are great to add to your blog but do remember you want the content to be evergreen. If you are not sure what that means, you create content without mentioning specific dates.

You also write it as if it just happened. This will make the content seem very current.

All you really need to do at this point is create a bunch of stories of events in your life and have them scheduled to post on your blog.

You can also schedule them to be announced on your social media accounts.

Schedule Your Content

The best results come from having your content scheduled a week or more ahead of time. It is recommended to create about seven to ten articles beforehand.

Then when you are ready and have content prepared and edited, schedule the dates they should be posted. WordPress has a feature where you can do this.

Now as your content gets published, it will post at the selected date and time you scheduled it to. When your readers look at it, they will see content being frequently posted and know you are constantly updating your blog.

But just posting to one blog may limit your audience. There are many other people who use other blog software such as Blogger. It is a good idea if you only have WordPress to have a blogger account.

Having more than one blog can seem like a chore; however, there are a variety of tools out there to help you keep both filled with content.

You will find some tools that can be set up to post to each blog simultaneously. You also have plugins in WordPress that will allow you to do this as well. It cuts down the time it takes to post to all of your accounts separately.

Spread The Word

Now that you have this established and set up, you will find you need to let people know you are posting to your blog and also let some people know that you have a blog in the first place.

Using tools and plugins available on the web and on WordPress can do this. There are tools when you make a blog post, it will automatically Tweet the announcement or update your status on Facebook.

Nothing is exactly automatic, but there are tools out there, which allow you to schedule your posts ahead of time. So as you plan your business and what you are going to write, you can add these posts to a tool and schedule the date and time you want people to see it.

On a side note, you want to schedule the times to reflect the time of day at which most people will see your posts.

Always remember, people want instant gratification. Depending on your view, some people believe there is no way to have it while others know there is.

You want to be the person who always finds a way to satisfy this part of our nature as humans. Those are the people who see much success as in sales increases, more fans, and even more ideas.

Initially, everything you do to keep your blogs and social media current is a lot of work. Once you have a system going and have all your tools are set up you will then be able to spend less time on your blog and social media as the tools will work for you and not against you.

You will also notice you have more time on your hands to create awesome content your fans will love.

Remember that planning ahead of the game will allow for the smoothest experience running your own business.

Being consistent and updating everything from your blog to your social media accounts on a regular basis pays off handsomely in the end.

You will shortly begin to realize how often to post to your account by the number of fans you gain and even the amount you lose. And once everything is set up to work for you, you will see how well it pays off.

Use Blog Challenges To Coach New Online Marketers

If you’re an Internet marketer who teaches Internet marketing to others, it’s important to help the readers of your blog learn how to adapt to a blogging ritual seamlessly.

Blogging is one of those tasks that many new marketers jump into without understanding how it works. They know they need to blog (because all of the top successful marketers do), and maybe for a few days – or even weeks – they stick to it religiously.

They blog like clockwork, logging in every day, knowing just what they want to say. And then the day comes when it all fizzles out. One day they log in and they’re stumped.

They sit there staring at the screen, unable to decide what they’re going to blog about. Sometimes they start swiping other people’s content because they don’t want to lose the momentum of posting daily.

They might grab something from an article directory or buy some PLR content and use it as is. This is where they start getting lazy, not because they want to be, but because they’re simply lost on what topic to discuss.

Others don’t want to neglect their blog – but the formidable task of trying to juggle a myriad of Internet marketing items on their to do list prevents them from getting to their blog – they’ve backburnered it and soon it’s forgotten and stagnant.

You can host a blog challenge for your readers that will help them in any niche! Whether they’re marketing bloggers, or they have a blog on gardens, insomnia, or dating – your challenge will help them take action, stay committed and view you as a leader.

OK, let’s crack on…

What Blogging Challenges Do Your Readers Suffer From?

You should be able to listen to your subscribers and see some common themes among them when they come to you with blog problems. If you don’t have subscribers yet (that you know of since many are lurkers), then you might have to read other blog comments or look in forums to see what issues people have.

Finding topics is a common problem for many bloggers. People sit there staring at their screen, or they go to someone else’s blog to see what they’re talking about.

They key is to help them learn how to find topics – how to dig up new slants and fresh ideas and give commentary on them.

Understanding how to review products is another basic issue for marketers who are inexperienced with blogging. They don’t know how to review products so that they will be interesting to blog readers.

Making an engaging connection is a big deal – and so many marketers falter with this. Everyone wants to see blog comments or get emails about how amazing their blog post was!

Monetizing their blog post could be an issue. You wouldn’t believe how many bloggers are sitting there wondering why their blog isn’t making money, when the only problem is, they forgot to add links!

Consistency is probably the number one problem, though. People get sidetracked and for some reason, their blog – what should be their “home on the ‘net” – is what usually suffers.

Preparing Your Blog Challenge Ahead Of Time

Hosting a blog challenge is a great way to get a ton of branding for your blog, as well as traffic and comments for it, too. You want to go into this well-prepared, not floundering right alongside your readers – they’re expecting you to guide them!

First, announce the date ahead of time. Get everyone geared up to participate. Have them sign up – either simply by announcing their participation in the comments section of your blog, or by having them sign up to your email autoresponder list.

You should give them approximately two to three weeks’ notice so that they can wrap up their projects or get organized. Sometimes they simply want to motivate themselves to participate, or be talked into it by fellow marketers.

Let them know what the basic challenge will be. Create a list of rules, but don’t make it so stringent that people feel like labeling themselves failures. You want to inspire them and encourage them to keep going even if they miss a blog post.

Map out your helpful blog posts that you’re going to create along the way. You will be blogging daily to give tips and ideas, share your own entry to the challenge, and create a space for them to discuss it and encourage each other.

Some people might want you to create a forum for the discussions. Keep it on your blog. As the host of the challenge, your blog will benefit from the traffic and conversations taking place.

Give them any tools and tutorials you think they’ll need. If your blog challenge is to have them get comments, then you might steer them towards something like Disqus and give a tutorial on how that works.

This is not only a good way to be a leader, but it can help you make affiliate sales of certain links for people’s blogs, like paid plugins or WordPress themes, for example.

Supporting Your Challengers

As the host, it’s your job to support the people who are following you and participating in your challenge. Now if you have hundreds of people, it might be more difficult – in that case, you can just encourage people to support each other.

Allow them to share their blog post link. You can let them leave it in the actual comment as a live link, use a tool like Disqus, or just have their name hyperlinked to their website.

Visit their blog post and see how they’re doing. If you have tips, you might provide those to them, but not in the blog comments – do it privately using their contact form or email.

Leave a comment for them to show them they have traffic and encourage comments and sharing by others. By the time the challenge is over, they will have a thriving community – many will stay and at the very least, it shows search engines and new visitors that this person has an active blog!

Check in with those who stray. When everyone signs up, make a list of the name and email of the people participating. If you notice someone falling by the wayside, shoot them a friendly email of support. Sometimes they just need to be nudged.

Challenge Idea #1: Encourage New Media Formats

Blogging isn’t just about text blog content, although that is the most prevalent for of blogging that there is.

You can host a challenge that urges participants to get used to multiple media formats.

You always want them to have text as a staple, but you might make an “Audio Blogging Challenge” or a “Video Blogging Challenge.”

This will get people out of their comfort zones, but it will help them learn how to cater to many of their subscribers across the board. When the challenge is finished, they’ll be able to use more than one format and switch things up for their audience.

Challenge Idea #2: 1-A-Day Affiliate Marketing Reviews

Because affiliate marketing can be so profitable through the use of a blog platform, it’s important that you help your readers learn how to master this.

When you review a product, you should personalize the review, share the specifications of the product, and add some consumer commentary.

For your affiliate blogging challenge, have some guideline steps like this:

Pick one product over $25 (or $50 or $100 or whatever)
Make sure it’s rated at least 4 stars
Write a review of at least 500 words per blog post
Each blog post should have specs, pros, cons, and consumer insight
Blog posts should have at least 2 hyperlinks to product (*Optional – 1 hyperlink to a top competitor product)

These kinds of details will help them from getting stuck trying to decide between one product and another. It also gives them guidance on the structure of the blog post.

Challenge Idea #3: Thought-Provoking Shareable Content

These are fantastic challenges to do on your blog. The concept of this challenge is pure 100% quality. You’re asking your readers to create blog posts that knock the socks off of their readers.

This isn’t about monetizing the exact blog post – but it can result in increased income because they gain a loyal following. This is definitely one you’ll want to give them time to map out a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

This should be their very best work. It can be a combination of media formats, any length – or a length you require – but it should definitely provide lots of value for their own readers.

The goal here is to make sure they have their social networking buttons working. You want their visitors Tweeting, Google + sharing and Facebook sharing these blog posts because they’re that good.

Challenge Idea #4: Curated Blog Content

Curation is a buzzword in marketing circles, but it’s a fantastic way to build a blog readership! First, you need to explain to your readers what curation means. You don’t want them getting confused and swiping other people’s content and plagiarizing it.

Curation is when you act similar to how a museum curator acts – gathering pieces to represent a concept as a whole. The curator then provides commentary about the pieces to pull it all together.

Your blog curators won’t be lifting entire pieces from other bloggers. They’ll be taking one or two sentences as quotes and linking back to the original blogger. It doesn’t have to be a blog post that they’re curating, either.

They can curate a video from YouTube, a news story, or an audio file quote. Make sure they understand that it’s not about sharing someone else’s work – it’s about adding their own insight about that work and giving the original creator credit with a link.

Curation doesn’t always have to be positive. It can be a negative curation, where they’re showing poor examples of something. Just make sure they understand they might get some heat for this from the first author.

Challenge Idea #5: One Idea Fits Everyone

This is a good twist, but only if everyone is in the same niche. If you’re teaching other marketers, then this would be a viable possibility. If you have one in the gardening niche, another in dating and one in smoking cessation, this won’t work.

So let’s say you’re teaching the marketing niche. You would want to create an editorial calendar for the challenge. One each day (actually the day before), you would announce the topic for the next day.

Everyone in the challenge would write about that topic. It’s interesting to see what slants people have on issues. So for instance, you might have these on your list:

Top 5 Conversion Tips
Review of the Plugin ThriveLeads
Is JVZoo Better Than ClickBank?

Whatever topic you want to choose – see what the slants turn out to be after they are published. Don’t tell them what to write, just give them the basics. Your group will love being in these blog challenges and seeing their productivity soar!

By the way, if you want to know more about blogging the right way, why not check out the featured resource below for a free blogging report. Download, read it and take action 😊

Discover Why Content Will Make Or Break Your Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing and content marketing are joined at the hip. If you want to be a good affiliate marketer, you need to put out good content. There’s no other way around that.

Even if you’re using paid advertising, you’ll be trying to get people on your email list. The emails that you send are content. There may be links to your blogs, reviews, etc.

The crux of the matter is that most people online come looking for either information or entertainment. Only a small percentage are ready to buy. This applies to anything from booking hotel rooms in a foreign country to buying a gun safe.

Before the purchase, these potential buyers will do their research online. They’ll want to know if the hotel they’re staying in has all the amenities they need. They’ll want to see reviews, etc.

If you have a website that shows up when they search for the hotel reviews and you mention how the proximity of the hotel to the local watering holes is a plus point, or you show all the different activities they can engage in that’s just a stone’s throw away from the hotel – the visitor will read the content on your site eagerly because it pertains to them.

In most cases, they’ll click on your affiliate links and book the rooms. Now you’d have made an affiliate commission by providing content that the visitor was looking for. That’s how it works.

There are 5 pointers to note when creating content. Failure to adhere to the tips below will mean that your content marketing falls flat, and you’ll not see much affiliate sales.

Must Be Relevant

Your content must be relevant to the products you’re promoting. If you’re promoting an outdoor grill, you may wish to have content on what to look out for when purchasing grills.

Or how to clean grills… or even easy grilling techniques to prevent a mess. Whatever the content may be, it must be relevant.

When writing content and thinking about SEO, try to think like a buyer and the sort of things that they will be typing into Google.

What do they need help with? Write an article helping them and then link to the appropriate affiliate product you are promoting.

By targeting longtail keywords, you know that whoever comes to your content is a red-hot lead. Yes, the amount of traffic you will get will be less but it is highly targeted and much more likely to buy something you recommend if your content is informative and helpful.

Must Be Interesting

Your content must be interesting enough to hook the readers by the eyeballs and keep them reading to the last word. If your content is vapid and dull, the reader will yawn and click off the page. There goes your sale.

Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse. When visitors leave your site quickly, Google will notice this, and you’ll rank poorly in the search engines because your site has a high bounce rate and is deemed not ‘user-friendly’… So, have interesting content.

And, don’t be too formal and stuffy unless your niche expects that. Most niches don’t and readers will appreciate you trying to make the content interesting as well as useful.

Must Be Engaging

Facebook posts on your fan page are content too. So are the videos on your YouTube channel. But here’s what makes them so powerful – the engagement in the comments section.

Look at the comments and engage with your audience. The more you get to know them and respond to them, the more they’ll like and trust you. Engagement counts too.

Ask questions that encourage people to comment. Believe me, people are much more likely to comment if you simply ask them to.

Inject humour and your own personality into your social media content and don’t be afraid to be a little controversial now and again.

You ultimately want to attract the people that “get” you and repel those that don’t.

This way you will be much more likely to see visitors to your blog content click through your links as they like what you have to say and trust you and your recommendations; just don’t let them down!

Must Be New

Your content needs to be new. You’ll have to keep publishing content to stay up-to-date.

There’s no point in having a hotel review on your website that’s 8 years old when the hotel has already been torn down to make way for a shopping mall.

Always have a content publishing strategy and stay relevant with the times.

Yes, there are types of content which are classed as evergreen but even though they are evergreen, some of the details may change so you need to keep up to date with your market.

You can either update existing content which means you won’t lose any of the SEO juice for that particular post, or you can write a completely new post; both options have pros and cons so choose which way you want to go and do it.

Must Be Reliable

Whatever content you publish must be reliable too. The term ‘fake news’ is being tossed about everywhere these days. You want content that is trustworthy.

Readers can sense hype and drivel. So, make your content useful and it will help to sell your affiliate products too.

If you are teaching strategies and/or tactics, make sure that you know what you are talking about. It is a good idea to always practice what you preach because at least you know what you are talking about works.

If you are teaching erroneous tactics you will get found out and this can completely ruin your reputation in that niche, so always ensure that whatever content you create is accurate and as reliable as possible.

Stick to the 5 content creation and marketing tips above and you should see your content work better for you and increase clicks and ultimately, sales.

Many marketers are so focused on sales, traffic, and conversions that they neglect the content… which can make or break them. Don’t make this mistake.

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis, Author

If you want to know more about affiliate marketing then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it read it and take action 🙂

Monetize Your Blog Using These 5 Proven Strategies

If there’s one mantra that every beginner marketer needs to repeat every single day, it’s this – “I only make money when I sell!”

It’s a simple truth, and yet, it’s often forgotten by marketers who miss the point as they bog themselves down with a myriad of inane details which are part and parcel of running an online business – but are not the MAIN THING.

They do their best to overdeliver insane value in an attempt to build trust and credibility with their audience. They’re in a constant content creation race as they try to outdo the competition.

They check off all the required boxes except the one which puts money in their pockets – selling.

They fail to keep ‘selling’ at the forefront of their minds and end up failing miserably at it. Now what they have are blogs with lots of content, but which are about as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Why are blogs an effective way to get started online anyway? Well, they are easy to set up and cheap. All you need is a domain name (use Namecheap) and hosting (use A2 or Siteground)

The secret to avoiding this problem will be to monetize your blog effectively. You have to sell, sell and sell some more to be profitable. How else will you make money?

Even if you’re displaying sponsored content on your blog, you’re still selling space on it for ads to appear.

Now, there are many monetization methods with varying degrees of efficacy. But ultimately, someone has to buy something (or click on an ad) for you to actually see money landing in your bank account.

And that’s what this article is all about. You’re going to learn 5 ways to transform your blog into a money-making machine with traffic pulling content that works round the clock for you.

Selling Products As An Affiliate

This is probably the easiest monetization method of the lot because all you’ll be doing is selling other people’s products and collecting commissions from the sales you generate.

You don’t need to worry about the tech details or customer service. Your focus is only on pre-selling and creating persuasive reviews.

There are several platforms that allow affiliates to promote products. The most common ones are Amazon, ClickBank, ShareASale, Rakuten and so on.

Once you’re registered with these platforms, it’s just a matter of adding your affiliate links (on your blog) to RELEVANT products in your niche.

There must be congruence with your niche and the products you’re recommending. You wouldn’t want to promote a herpes cream on a toy blog just because the cream has a high pay-out.

Ideally, you should promote a mix of both tangible and digital products. It’ll also be wise to promote products on different platforms. This will ensure that all your eggs are not in one basket.

Far too many bloggers rely entirely on Amazon Associates (with its paltry commission rates). Then they see their earnings dry up overnight if Amazon bans them from the platform.

Unfortunately, this happens all the time and the affiliates are not even given a reason as to why they were banned. The sheer indignity of it all.

Your takeaway?

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Sell Your Own Digital Products

This is a highly lucrative way to generate an income from your blog. It’s more technical because you’ll need to set up a sales page, funnel, etc. You’ll also need to create a product and have good sales copy so that your sales conversions are high.

All this may seem like a lot of work… and it is… but the rewards are great.

You could do a lot of it yourself by using page/funnel builders such as Thrive Themes (now part of Thrive Suite), ClickFunnels, Optimizepress, Convertri etc. These types of software will help you immensely because they’re relatively simple and intuitive to use.

The truth is that you don’t need to do it all. The good news is that you can outsource the different parts of the process to freelancers on sites like Fiverr and/or Freelancer… while you only focus on what you’re good at…

… and when it’s all completed, you just put the moving parts together and VOILA! Your very own Frankenproduct that you can sell on your blog.

After all, with all the content you’re posting and the credibility/authority you’ve built, it’ll be much easier to sell a product created by you than by someone else, because your audience likes and trusts you.

When you’re creating and selling your own products, you’ll have a lot more flexibility and be in control of:

Product pricing
If it’s a one-time fee or a recurring monthly/yearly membership
The depth of the sales funnel (upgrades, downsells, etc.)
What the product will be about
Customer service

It’s more work, but it’s also more freedom from a business standpoint… and exponentially more profit, if you’re good at it.

Selling Physical Products

This is similar to the earlier point, but now you’re selling physical products. You’ll need a store with a shopping cart that calculates shipping and so on. This is slightly more complicated because you’ll need to fulfil the orders.

You’ll have to decide if you’re selling print-on-demand products or dropshipping which are relatively hands-off processes… or will you be maintaining inventory and mailing the products yourself? Or will you use Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA).

There are several options here and you’ll need to do your research and see which method is best for your business. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you’re making lots of sales but the post office has become your second home.

Email Marketing

It looks like no online marketing article can ever be complete without paying homage to email marketing – and that’s because it really does work. Unlike social media marketing which can be blocked by your audience, most people check their emails – and you want to show up there… to sell!

Yes! Don’t forget the selling… but always remember to deliver value in your emails. You’ll have to find the right balance here.

But first things first – you need to build a list from your blog.

The easiest way to do this will be to use software like Thrive Leads (now part of Thrive Suite) or Conversion Gorilla to display opt in forms, pop ups, scroll mats and so on. This is a fantastic software that most marketers will benefit from.

Another excellent plugin is Post Gopher. It allows your site visitors to download your blog posts as PDFs which they can read later – in exchange for their emails.

Now it’s just a matter of connecting your opt in form to a reliable autoresponder platform like Active Campaign and you’re good to go.

Active Campaign is one of the best autoresponders in the business and is one of the most powerful autoresponders out there for the price, and has powerful tagging and automation tools. As an alternative you could also check out Aweber.

All tech talk aside, just ensure that you have a way to collect emails on your blog and you have an autoresponder sequence in place to nurture the audience on your list.

Do remember to promote your own products (if you have any) or affiliate products in your emails.

Why?

Because you need to sell, sell, sell! That’s why!

Sell Your Own Skills As A Service

This point was saved for last because it has one downside.

As long as you’re providing a service which requires your direct involvement, you’ll be trading your time for money… which in itself places an invisible ceiling on your earnings, unless you have special royalty/commission arrangements in place with those who hire you.

Common examples of services are content writing, copywriting, graphic design, video creation and so on. These are time-consuming tasks. You could make top dollar, but ultimately, it’s still a job and not passive. But it’s your call.

You could also provide software as a service and still make a hefty chunk of change without much involvement.

Alternatively, you could be a middleman and use service arbitrage to sell services that others deliver. You’ll charge a higher rate and hire a cheaper freelancer to do the job for you.

You’ll then deliver that job to the person who hired you and you’ll pocket the difference. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the freelancer did a good job before delivering the work, so that your reputation is intact.

Arbitrage is perfectly legal and people do it all the time.

In conclusion, the 5 methods above are really ALL you need to make six or even seven figures with your blog/s. You can apply 2 or 3 of the methods above and skyrocket your income in a couple of months.

Start working on them today… and remember to… SELL SELL SELL!

An Online Business Model Any New Marketer Can Succeed In

You don’t have to have any experience to be successful with an online business. Anyone can succeed – even if you’re brand new to working at home because you can learn as you go along.

There are many different avenues you can choose to take to get started. Much of your decision will be based on personal preferences, time available to implement it, and tools you need to launch it.

In this post we are going to cover 1 of the best (and simplest) business models to get started online.

By the way, if you are serious about having your own online business, check out Online Business Models For New Marketers . This is a free training that expands on this post and takes you through 4 more business models for you to try so you will have 5 models in total. You can check it out here.

Are you ready? Ok, let’s get started…

Service Provider

A great online business that you can choose is to become a service provider. A service provider is someone who offers his or her services to those who are seeking help.

There are many different types of service providers, and you choose one based on your skills and this is why it is so easy to start as you can build upon the skills you already have.

Are you a good writer? If the answer is yes, you can become a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter is a person who writes for someone else. The type of material that you might write can also vary. Some ghostwriters write blog posts, speeches, press releases or info products.

Some write fiction or non-fiction books for others. As a ghostwriter, unless the contract specifically states otherwise, you don’t get to claim the words that you write. You’re the unseen, unknown writer for someone else unless you have a prior arrangement.

Many celebrities and other public figures hire ghostwriters. You’ll need to have the ability to write in the language you were hired and set a competitive price so people will want to outsource to you.

You might choose to become an affiliate manager. This is a job in which you would oversee the core operations for someone who is selling their own info products. This can be an individual or a business.

The type of tasks that you would do might change day to day. For example, you might be responsible for making sure that the people who wanted to become an affiliate were top quality as well as check out their ability to promote and their promotion site.

This could help prevent the individual or business from being associated with a potential affiliate that was spammy or a scam. As an affiliate manager, you might be tasked with responding to emails and sending out information to potential affiliate recruits.

You might also have to monitor affiliates to make sure that all the promotions are being handled correctly.

Sometimes affiliate managers are paid a salary, and sometimes they earn a percentage of the money the launch brings in.

Another area for a service provider is a VA. This is a virtual assistant, which means you basically help individuals or businesses remotely. So, you might have a client in California while you live in Wyoming.

The type of work that you do as a VA will be determined by the field that you’re in as well as what the client needs.

Sometimes it’s posting articles on a blog. Other times it’s answering emails in a customer service manner.

You could also become a site builder if you want to be a service provider. This is someone who builds an online site for clients.

The skills that you would need in order to this include knowledge of web design language, some graphic design skills (but this isn’t a requirement because you can outsource this task), and communication skills so that you understand the client’s vision.

Becoming an SEO (search engine optimization) expert is a great job for a newbie. You would have to learn how to find the right keywords for the site that you’re working on so that it increases traffic for the client.

You would need to stay abreast of changes within various search engines to see what best practices allow site owners to rise to a page 1 listing on their search engine. It’s more than just knowing keyword phrases.

You’d need to know both onsite and offsite search engine optimization strategies. Learning SEO isn’t difficult. There are courses, both free and paid, video as well as eBooks and other reading material that can teach you.

You might like becoming a service provider because you can choose the type of work that you do and can set your own hours. The amount of income that you can earn is up to you and you can also make money fast as a service provider because the client will often pay upfront or at least half now, half later.

To get started in any service provider area, you would want to make sure that whatever you choose is something that you do enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy it, the work will make you miserable.

You also want to make sure that you either have the skills or can develop the skills that will match the type of work you choose to do. For example, if you’re already good with PhotoShop, you might find that doing graphic design type work is a good fit.

You could create banners, eBooks, images for websites, custom designs for clients and more. If you know that you like to write and you have a good grasp on grammar and punctuation, then you would most likely find copywriting or ghostwriting enjoyable.

Once you choose a niche and learn the skills needed, then put together a portfolio. Some newbies say that this part is a catch 22. They need experience to get the jobs but can’t get the jobs without the experience.

What you can do is showcase work that you’ve done for family, friends or for a charity or cause. For example, if you want to get into providing design services, but you don’t have any previous work that you can show potential clients, you can create a flyer for the local animal shelter – or even make something up just to show samples of your abilities.

You can donate some time and skill to a cause that you believe in and use what you’ve created or done in your portfolio. It doesn’t matter whether the work you’re showing was something that you were hired to do or if it was just a freebie because potential clients just want to see how you compare to other providers in terms of quality and value.

You may want to create a website offering your services. This way, potential clients can look you up and have quick access to your online portfolio. You can create a blog using WordPress for around $10 plus hosting. For great, affordable hosting, go here.

Don’t use a website that makes you use their ads because that looks unprofessional. Make sure you put your site links up on your social media to link back to your website. In your bio, be sure that you mention what you do and that you’re available.

For example, “Graphic Designer (or whatever it is that you do) for Hire” because when people are searching for a service provider, they’ll use the keywords describing the service they’re looking for.

If you want to land clients now, you can start on sites like Freelancer and Fiverr, but the pay as a beginner, especially in the beginning, may be pretty low unless you have specialty skills that are highly sought after.

The advantage of using sites like these is that they do have clients already looking for freelancers and you wouldn’t have to build a site of your own. Whenever you land a job, always have a contract to protect yourself and the client.

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