Browsing Category: "Blogging"
Healthy Habits for Becoming a Successful Blogger
These days it seems like just about everyone has a blog, and thanks to content management systems like WordPress, it is easier than ever to get started blogging. Most new bloggers and internet marketers have the misguided idea that building a successful blog is easy, especially if you are already an expert on a specific niche. However, the vast majority of new blogs receive very little traffic and getting it can actually be quite difficult. In fact, building a following to your blog and making money from them is the hardest part of being a blogger.
In the past it was relatively easy to start a blog and build a successful internet business around it fairly quickly. Those days are long gone! There are simply too many blogs out there in pretty much every niche imaginable for everyone to attract an audience without a lot of time and hard work. Professional bloggers these days must work at lot harder to get readers, keep them coming back regularly, and earn money off them.
Getting visitors and building a successful blog depends greatly on how well you write, what kind of content you are producing, the internet marketing strategies you use, and what type of blogger you are. A unique, entertaining and informative writing style will certainly go a long way towards getting readers and keeping them coming back for more. However, that’s not the only way you can build a loyal following. There are some healthy habits that will help any blogger keep readers interested and content fresh.
You will quickly discover that members of the blogosphere do not like copycats and posers. Dishonest bloggers who plagiarize or rehash other people’s posts will get found out sooner or later, so it’s very important to be original. If even one reader figures out that you’re not legitimate they will tell others and it will ruin your entire online reputation before you get anywhere. That’s why the most successful bloggers are those who are honest and open.
Along the same lines of being honest, the best bloggers will also admit when they are wrong and don’t pretend to know everything. They often give credit to other pro bloggers and internet marketing experts when it is due. Newbie’s tend to worry that linking to other bloggers in their niche or crediting them some other way is bad because it is helping their competition. But top bloggers know that building a successful blogging business is all about networking and creating strong relationships by sharing information with others and linking to them.
Another great habit that successful bloggers get into, which also relates to transparency and honesty, is doing legitimate product reviews. If you have ever tried to find reviews about something then you have probably come across many blog posts with fake reviews designed to do nothing more than gain affiliate commissions for the owner. Those are not real reviews and they are easy to spot after a while.
People appreciate when a blog review is fair and balanced. That means giving the positives as well as the negatives about the product or service. Otherwise it will soon become clear that the reviews are for your own benefit in the form of earning affiliate sales, rather than helping your readers make an informed decision.
Being honest with your readers goes a very long way towards build up a great reputation on the internet, which in turn builds your following and increases your earnings. You need to form these healthy habits if you want to be a successful blogger in the long run.
Are Pictures Monetizable (Part 2)? Find out in Future of Publishing!
Last week’s Future of Publishing was the first part of an interview dedicated to how to monetize pictures. This week’s episode is part 2 of that interview:
Highlights:
- Banner ads don’t make as much money as they used to…
- A large part of this is because today’s internet users are blind to banner ads…
- The solution is to embed ads within the content, like monetized images and in-content links…
Future of Publishing brought to you by BlogWorld and sponsored by VigLink.
Are pictures monetizable? Find out in this Future of Publishing episode!
Traditionally, there have been two avenues of monetization: Monetizing space nearby the content, and monetizing outside of the content. With the advent of in-content links and image monetization, publishers now have the ability to make money within the content itself. In this Future of Publishing episode, VigLink CEO Oliver Roup and Influence People CEO Murray Newlands explore how to monetize images with Rey Flemings and Chas Edwards.
Highlights
- Almost all images are monetizable…
- But they must be well-directed toward their intended audience…
- Thus, image monetization, like most other forms of advertising, works well on niche sites…
Future of Publishing brought to you by BlogWorld and sponsored by VigLink.
Blogger Relations: Learn how to market to other bloggers in Future of Publishing
IntMktr.com is proud to be an Official Media Partner with Future of Publishing, an American TV show hosted by Murray Newlands. In this week’s episode, Murray interviews Darren Rowse of Digital Photography School and ProBlogger. Darren talks about blogger relations and how good relationships with other bloggers can be pretty profitable. What he says might shock you:
Highlights:
- Make friends with other bloggers and online marketers…
- And market products to these friends.
- Make sure you’re only selling them good products or else you’ll ruin the relationship.
Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. Be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!
Motivating Yourself to Build an Online Business that Can Buy Your Freedom
This is a guest post by Patrick Meninga of Make Money With No Work. He recently sold one of his websites for a whopping 200,000 dollars!
What are you going to be doing over the next year or two that has a significant impact on your life?
Would you like to build a business, one that helps you to buy your freedom, such that you no longer have to work at a regular job?
What if you could work on such a business in your spare time, and that business was paying you $1,000/month at the end of two years?
What if you quit your day job, put only 20 hours each week into your business, and then grew it to $2,000/month in income?
What would your life be like if you could earn several thousand dollars per month with only an investment of an hour or two each day?
I can tell you what your life would be like, because I have achieved the legendary four hour work week.
Life is awesome when you own a lean online business. It is almost like being on a permanent vacation, where you only work on something when it gets you excited to do so.
That may sound like a completely impossible fantasy, but it is actually not that complicated to achieve.
While the plan to build passive income is relatively simple, that does not mean it is easy to execute. There is a difference. However, let me show you just how simple it can be to achieve the four hour week and thus buy your freedom back from society.
A simple business plan
Create a single website. Just one.
Oh, I know…. conventional wisdom dictates that everyone needs to diversify, lest they risk losing their online income that they have worked so hard to achieve.
Let me tell you a secret though: Building authority and link juice for a website is tough.
It’s so tough, in fact, that I strongly urge you to only try to do it once. You’ll understand why when we look at the promotional strategy.
I would also urge you to choose a topic for your website in which:
* You have at least some working knowledge or expertise.
* The products or services being advertised around your topic cost over $100.
In other words, choose a profitable topic for your website that you can write about with real authority.
You can determine profitability by looking at existing websites based on your topic. What are they advertising? How much does it cost? If the cost is very low, move on and find another topic.
If you have a team of writers working for you, by all means, start several websites. But if you are going to be the only one publishing content on your website, I would urge you to just start a single site and put all of your energy into it.
A simple content strategy
Create articles for your website that are:
* Detailed, in-depth, and insightful.
* Original, with a depth of knowledge that goes beyond what is already available on the web.
* Useful to the audience in a specific way. Consider including action items that the reader can implement directly.
Thoroughly research the internet regarding your content and identify the absolute best information currently available. Your job is to create a website that is superior to what you find.
Each article you publish should explore slightly different ideas and concepts regarding your topic. Each article should target unique long tail keyword phrases in the post title.
Quality of content must remain extremely high. That said, volume matters as well, and publishing three articles daily is ideal.
Balancing volume and quality is tough. Publishing one quality article per day will result in slow growth. Publishing three per day will result in exciting growth within a year or two.
A simple promotional strategy
Build relationships with other website owners in your niche, with the goal of landing a guest post some day.
That’s it. That is the entire promotional strategy. Very difficult to do in high volume, but take your time and keep plugging away at it. Websites need time to age anyway.
There are dozens of ways to manufacture cheap links and give your website a quick boost in the search engines. All of these “cheap” methods are losing their effectiveness over time because the search engines are always improving at measuring real trust and authority.
The simple way to promote your website is to build real trust and authority. You can do that by building real relationships and creating amazing content.
Your promotional strategy hinges on having premium content. No one wants to link to a poor quality website. No one wants to publish a guest post that is anything less than premium quality. Therefore, an important part of your promotional effort is to focus on creating amazing content–both on and off-site.
Simple but not easy
I built a profitable website and sold it for six figures by:
* Building a single website in a profitable niche.
* Publishing lots of quality content–around 1,500 articles total.
* Promoted the site with real relationship building and guest posting.
Looking back, it was dead simple. I published helpful articles every day and did a bit of promotional work. The promotional work was probably only five percent of the effort, while creating the website itself was ninety five percent.
Anyone can do this with almost zero overhead and only a consistent time investment on their part. The question is, who will do it, given that it is so difficult?
What about you? Are you motivated to purchase your freedom by building a simple internet business?
