blogging

How To Make Your Blog More Appealing

Every blogger who earns income from their blog knows that the only way you can make money is by getting and keeping the traffic coming. Without your readers, you wouldn’t be making money at all.

There are lots of ways to get them there, but the question is – how do you keep them returning? If a reader isn’t impressed by your blog at all, then they’ll leave your blog, never to return again.

With them goes their blog’s traffic that you could’ve benefited from if they’d linked to you. Here are some tips to make your blog appealing enough to keep the traffic there to earn you some money.

Design

The most common mistake some bloggers make is in their blog’s design. Blog readers not only look for interesting and informative content – they also want to come to an inviting space to read it.

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.

The blog’s design needs to be inviting to them and comforting. It’s crucial not to have anything that would annoy them to the point of leaving because they can’t stand it. Make sure you’re not annoying them with colored font that’s hard to read or a bunch of graphics that are too distracting.

A few animated graphics are fine, but don’t have flashing ads and glittering graphics detracting from your blog’s message – or your strategically-placed advertisements.

It’s fine to use colored font for your posts, but make sure it’s easy to read. A pale yellow font color against a pure white background may be too difficult for the visitors to read. They shouldn’t clash with the background color either. Clashing colors can give visitors headaches, so they’ll leave your site without bookmarking it for a later visit.

Content

The other common mistake bloggers tend to make is with their content. Some bloggers don’t update very often. If you only post once a month, your readers will forget you’re there and won’t return to your site.

Post to your blog at least two to three times a week to keep human visitors and search engine spiders coming back.

Some bloggers also make the mistake of only providing text content to their blogs. Text posts are great, but mix it up a little every once in awhile with multi-media formats. Provide some interesting pictures, audio files and videos. Offer a little variety and your visitors will come back to check and see what else you’ve been up to.

It’s also important to stick to your blog’s niche topic. If you’re blogging about Homeschooling, then stick to that topic. Providing information about a celebrity’s latest excursion will turn off your readers unless it somehow relates to homeschooling.

To make your blog successful in bringing you money, make sure you make the blog appealing to your readers. If your readers keep coming back, your chances of making money from your ads and offers will increase.

Of course, having a good looking blog is only part of the puzzle. You have seen that you need great content to share with your readers but how do you go about finding and creating that content? Let’s take a closer look…

How To Find Great Content For Your Blog

In order to make your blog a successful money making entity, you’ll need to get traffic to it and keep them coming back.

The best way to do this is to provide the best content you can in your niche and make it interesting to your blog readers.

Even the most successful bloggers start to run out of their own original content to post about. Some resort to scraping the bottom of the barrel to find things to discuss, but that ultimately loses them readers, which means less money streaming in.

Ideas

Where do you find great ideas to post about? There are actually many different things to use to get you out of your stuck-in-a-rut mode. These may be simple techniques to use, but they can be effective if used right. Here are some things to try the next time you get stuck for something to write about:

Scour the news sites – Search the news sites like CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNEWS and see if you can find a top story that you can blog about. Instead of just linking to the story, add your own accounting of it.

You can post about your personal feelings toward the story or ask your readers what their thoughts are on it. Just make sure the story somehow relates to your blog’s topic.

Check out your fellow blogger’s sites and see what they’re blogging about – It may seem unethical, but as long as you’re not stealing content, it’s perfectly acceptable to see what the community is interested in.

Is there a post that catches your eye? Is there something you can add to that post? A new spin you can put on it? Media outlets always have an eye on the competition to see what others are doing – and you should, too!

Research

Internet research – Do a search on the Internet for your blog’s topic. See what information you can come up with concerning your niche.

You may become inspired by something you’ve read there or you may think of some comments to post about it.

Check the video sites – YouTube has a zillion different videos out there that you can add to your blog. See if you can find one that relates to your blog’s topic. Post the video to your blog and have your readers share their thoughts on it.

And what about podcasts or audio sites? You could try searching sites like Soundcloud to find audio to add to blog posts to enhance them for your readers.

Reviews

Consider doing reviews – Reviews can be a good filler to use while you try to get inspired again. Choose some articles, websites, books or whatever you can think of that’s related to your blog’s topic and post a review of it. If it’s a good review, add your affiliate link and make some money from your opinions!

Daily activities – Think about what happened within your day that you might be able to work into your blog as long as it’s relevant.

If your blog is about flowers and you happened to go for a walk and saw some flowers on the way, use that as your post. Let your readers know what kinds of flowers are seen in your neighborhood and if possible, take come pictures to add since visual stimulation enhances the reader’s experience.

You can easily get back your inspiration for your blog posting if you look to other sources. They can help you come up with ideas of what you can share with your readers or they can give you a nice filler until your personal inspiration comes back. Don’t lose readers just because you’ve lost your blogging muse!

If you really want to know more about the power of blogging, you can take a look at the Rapid Blogging Blueprint training course or if you just want a few pointers for now you can grab the featured resource below for a free blogging report; download, read it and take action 🙂

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 😊

Which Type Of Blog Should You Create To Make A Profit?

So, you have decided that you want to make money online and want to start with blogging. That’s great but do you know what type of blog you should be creating if you want to monetise it?

Before we begin, it is important to note that building a business around a blog is a great way to start a business and it is also very cheap to do so; all you need to start is a domain name and some web hosting so it is well worth giving it a try.

And if you have an existing business, why not incorporate a blog into that too to boost your earnings 😊

There are several different types of blogs out there. Not all will earn you money… and even those that you think will generate an income, might not – if you commit a few cardinal errors.

This article will shed light on a few types of blogs and what you can do with them. Instead of pigeonholing the blogs into specific categories, it’s important that you view them based on their income-generating possibilities rather than the purpose for which they’re built.

OK, let’s crack on…

Personal Blogs

These types of blogs have very low income-generating potential. Generally, they’re nothing more than online ramblings where you write about your thoughts and feelings on what’s going on in your life, etc.

You may have a readership that’s comprised of your friends, family and the occasional curious onlooker. Monetizing such a blog will be difficult unless you specialize in one topic and make most of your upcoming content about it.

For example, a lady who has a personal blog may decide to write about make-up tips and so on and start promoting cosmetics, skin care products, etc. It’s possible – but difficult to make money with this type of blog.

Niche-Specific Blogs

These are the most common types of blogs which are created to target a specific audience. If you wish to do affiliate marketing or sell your own products, you’ll want to create these niche blogs.

It’s important to get an umbrella domain for the market while you niche down. What does that mean?

Let’s assume you wish to create a blog on ‘homemade dog food’, buying a domain that’s too closely related to the niche such as DogFoodZone.com will stifle your growth. What if you wish to blog about dog training in future?

Instead, you may buy a domain such as HealthyPaws101.com (this domain is probably taken, but you get the idea).

By having a domain that is like an umbrella for the niche, you’ll be able to blog about other topics in the niche. After you’ve written about 200 articles on homemade dog food and you’re ranking well, what then?

Well, with the HealthyPaws101 domain, you can start blogging about puppy training. It will be a new category on your blog. As time goes by and you start going deep into each different and related category, you’ll have an authority site.

This is how authority sites are built. They’re just a niche sites that grew big.

Journey-Type Sites

These sites are similar to personal blogs, but they have a purpose here. Let’s assume you’re overweight and decide to go on a weight loss journey. So, you start a blog to journal your progress and let people know what you’re doing.

When you have progress, you can share what tools and methods you’re using. If you’re following a program such as P90X, and losing weight, you can share your affiliate link to the Beachbody website and make commissions when others sign up.

You may also have links to products on Amazon. Maybe you’re using resistance bands, push up bars, yoga blocks, etc. Whatever you’re personally using, you can promote too – because it works for you.

Herein lies the crux of this type of blog – You MUST be making progress and succeeding for people to trust you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an online marketing blog or a keto blog or even a calisthenics blog. You MUST have results for people to trust you. Your success and progress will spur them to trust your journey and do what you’re doing – and buy what you’re using.

Curation Blogs

These are blogs with different topics that you’ll curate content from different sites.

You won’t need to create much content yourself… and will make most of your money from ads and affiliates who promote your site.

Beginners would do well to steer clear of these types of sites. You’re better off targeting one niche and building a brand and an audience.

Guest Post Blogs

Similar to curation, but you’ll be vetting the different guest posts and only posting what’s relevant to your niche. This is more of a technique than a type of blog per se. Some blogs are totally made up of guest posts… while others have lots of content created by the blog owner and the guest posts are also thrown into the mix.

You’ll need to decide if you need guest posts to supplement your content marketing efforts or if you’d rather have a blog where all content is proprietary (with no need for outbound links).

Besides these types of blogs, there are blogs that are dedicated to teaching… or the pursuit of a certain lifestyle, etc.

At the end of the day, the fundamentals are the same when it comes to profitability. Your blog will need traffic… and once visitors reach the blog, it will need useful and entertaining content that promotes and sells products.

The profitability of a blog is dictated by its ability to sell. You’ll do that with affiliate links, product links, ads, and also build a list that you can re-market to in future.

While you don’t need all these components in place, you definitely need the list building and the links that translate to sales. Your blog only makes money when people buy from or through you.

Create a blog that people love because of its value… and they’ll trust you and buy whatever you recommend.

“Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time.” – David Aston

5 Simple Techniques To Build A List From Blogging

Any online marketer worth his/her salt would have heard the line, “The money is in the list.” It has been repeated ad nauseam and still thousands of beginner marketers are clueless as to how to build a list.

To make matters more burdensome, most autoresponder software companies charge a monthly fee for their services. So, this is a recurring cost that must be recouped quickly to keep the beginner marketer in the green.

When you’re first starting out on your blog, you’ll not need to build a list. You should first track the amount of traffic on your website. The moment you’re getting 50 to 100 unique visitors to your blog daily, it’ll be time to sign up for an autoresponder. This will buy you some time if your budget is tight.

Using A Freemium As An Incentive

A freemium is a gift that you’ll give away for free in exchange for an email address. The freemium could be a short report, or a 3-part video training or a checklist, etc. What you give away has to be of value and congruent to the niche you’re in.

If there’s a disconnect between your freemium and what the reader wants, very few visitors will join your list to get the free gift. Spend time crafting a good lead magnet that attracts subscribers.

You can either outsource the job or create one yourself from scratch. Alternatively, you may use private label rights (PLR) content and rebrand it. This will allow you to create a product with your branding quickly while maintaining quality.

Connecting Your Autoresponder

Once your lead magnet is ready, you’ll need to create a landing page for it. You can do a quick Google search for ‘best landing page examples’ to get an idea to model. You may wish to get a cover image done for your freemium on Fiverr.com.

After your landing page is complete and looks great, you’ll want to sign up with an autoresponder like Active Campaign or Aweber, and embed the sign up form on your landing page. Most of these software have video tutorials to guide you. So, don’t get put off by the ‘tech stuff’.

Once the form is embedded, you’re well on your way to collecting leads and building a list.

All Roads Lead To Rome

In this case, Rome will be your landing page and this is something that you own.

Whether you’re using a YouTube channel or Facebook group or Pinterest board to drive traffic to your blog – you should always be aware that you do NOT own these sites. You’re building your house on rented land, and that’s always risky.

To mitigate the risk, you’ll want links from these social media entities pointing to the landing page on your blog. In this way, you’ll be able to siphon traffic from these high traffic sites and build a list of subscribers who wanted your freemium. Now you have some degree of control and your own asset.

Opt-in Tools

One of the best tools you can use to build a list on your blog is Thrive Leads. The software has options for you to create a non-intrusive scroll mat that allows readers to sign up. Besides the scroll mat, there are also sticky bars and pop up options for you.

You may create a visual image to perk interest and spark a click through action which will trigger a 2-step opt-in. This increases the potential subscriber’s micro-commitment and is more likely to get the lead.

Thrive Leads is designed to help you get as many subscribers as possible from your blog. It’s a worthwhile investment that will reap dividends many times over.

Locking Your Content

This is one of those techniques that’s annoying to some people, but highly effective nonetheless. You’ll need to use a content locking plugin to execute this method. If you have Thrive Leads, you can use it too, with a few tweaks.

Basically, you’ll have an interesting and highly valuable blog post where you share some insider information. Somewhere around the center of the post (preferably the most interesting part), you’ll insert the content blocker.

This will hide the rest of the blog post and insert an opt in form at the chosen spot. The only way the reader can access the rest of the post will be for them to sign up to be on your list. Once they’ve signed up, the full blog post will appear and they can carry on reading.

Some readers may get put off and close the page, while others will sign up. Whatever the case, you’ll know that those who signed up are truly interested in what you have to say and you’ll be building a list of highly targeted subscribers.

By now you’ll realize that building a list on your blog is a piece of cake if you have traffic coming in. All you need to do is insert forms for them to sign up to your list (in a variety of ways). With the versatility of Thrive Leads, a good landing page and a value-driven freemium, and a solid autoresponder, you’ll be able to build a list of targeted and interested subscribers in just a matter of time.

Drops make an ocean. So, get started today and in a few months from now, you’ll have an email list that trusts you and buys the products you recommend. This is where you’ll find the money in the list i.e. the saying should more accurately be “The money is in the customer list.”

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog With Content Marketing

Blogging has truly revolutionized the way one experiences the digital age. There is apparently no limit to what you can do with the help of blogs. Even the smallest aspect of your daily personal life like recording journal entries has been given an entirely new dimension.

Going on from there, there is a lot of scope for picking up interesting debates and discussions through blogs. You can even start some of these discussions yourself.

And another great thing about running your own blog is that you can monetise it and actually make money by writing about things you are passionate about!

And it is easier to do than you might think. Honestly, it isn’t rocket science; you don’t need to be a scientist who posts revolutionary details about his latest experiments.

If you blog well, i.e. if you are engaging enough that people want to come and read it, you have a really good chance of making some money, by just going about your daily activity of posting blogs on areas that interest your readers in your niche!

Here are some of the things you can do to make sure that your blogging activities get rewarded by more than just comments and praises:

You could get yourself registered with a search engine. Doing this will virtually guarantee that your blog will get a great deal of free, organic traffic, and traffic is the lifeblood of any blog/business.

In this way, the higher the ranking your blog achieves, the more you are likely to get paid because more people will be able to find your content quickly.

While writing your blog articles you also need to keep a few things in mind. This is not only to ensure that you get a steady flow of traffic, but also for the fact that your blog readership can increase so that the ranking of your blog with search engines go higher.

Here are a few tips to help you with your blog content:

Reader Friendly Content: At all costs keep your content – articles, poems, photographs, videos – reader friendly, that is to say, it should keep more and more readers interested. Your reader must be at the center of you post in a way that your reader must feel that he is gaining something out of reading your post. This is the basic rule in marketing.
Make It Worthwhile: Never let the reader feel that he has been tricked into reading your post or clicking on your blog link. You are thwarting all your long term chances of that reader coming back to your blog, in which case your blog rankings over the long term are in a dicey position.
Check For Errors: Making grammatical and spelling errors can be a major put off for many readers. They may not visit your blog again simply because the errors that you make are too high. Always proof read your blog. A small typo here and there can be understood, but make sure you don’t make any major errors.
KISS: Or, Keep It Short and Simple. This is the thumb rule you must follow at all point. Long winding posts tend to get boring. And it may contain nothing that is interesting to the reader. Also no one has the time enough for your blog, no matter how well you write. In fact, your blog will be much more appreciated if you put your thoughts simply and shortly.
Make It Interesting: Make sure that you hold your reader’s attention by making your posts snazzy. They must not be written in a tone that is tiring to read. Write short sentences and keep then crisp and precise. Always hit the point immediately in the course of your article.
Link: Keep linking the blogs you read to yours in order to build a network those people will be in turn encouraged to link you. Remember, linking increases rankings.
Keywords: Using the keywords of your posts frequently increases the search ability of that particular article of yours which in turn leads more people to visit your blog.
Clear Thoughts: Make sure you put your thought clearly before the readers so that it does not become tedious for them to read.
Colloquialism: You can write in a friendly tone. Avoid using too many slang words, but otherwise, if your post demands it, you can be colloquial.
Post Title: A catchy post title or headline is half your business solved. It can glue a reader to your post almost immediately. However, do not put misleading post titles, or you will lose creditability.
Always Have A Call To Action: Writing an engaging blog post is great but remember that you want to make money from your content, so always have a call to action to click on a link that either goes to one of your own products or an affiliate offer where you will get a commission. You can see below that I have added several calls to action in this post, just like the one below where I am giving away a free checklist to keep you on track when setting up your blog, so click on the image below or click here if you want 🙂

So, be consistent with your blog content and watch the traffic start flowing in to your blog!