BloggWP

Posted: 02 May 2011 06:09 AM PDT

This guest post is by Goddess Leonie of GoddessGuidebook.com.

In blogging years, I’m approaching my mid-life. Instead of having a crisis though, there’s life (and new tricks) in this ole goddess dog yet! In the last three months I’ve increased my subscribers by a whopping 50%. All with three simple changes. Because simple is fun and good, and really, it’s the best way to do things.

Are you ready to hear them? Hurrah!

1. Getting people in

I’ve SEO’ed the heck out of my website. I’ve commented like a fiend on all my favorite blogs. I’m aTwittering and FriendFace-ing with the best of them (a li’l “IT Crowd” joke in there for those playing at home). Want to know the thing that’s lovingly ushered people through the doors into my blog?

Guest blogging.

I had it on my to-do list for a bazillion years. “Yus yus yus, sooo important. OMG must be all ova dat! But mmm, can’t be bovered.” Every week, I put it off. Until I kicked my own butt (somewhat lovingly) into guest blog town.

• I asked all my affiliates if I could guest blog for them.
• I popped an “Interview me!” button on my blog.
• I contacted all the places I knew that accepted guest blog submissions.
• And I asked all my favorite blog peoples if I could write for them.

Whenever I wrote the guest blogs, I made sure I infused as much of my trademark ridunkulous silly and soppy language in them. Just to shoot up a little beacon of a freak flag so my right people knew I was a ginormous raving hippy, and that I was one of their kind.

And people spilled through the doors, and it was grand.

Mission Getting People In a success! Hurrah!

2. Making them welcome

But the next mission is just as important, and it’s one that we totally ignore.

We all know that the bounce rate on our websites is super-high. When you jump on a blog for the first time, it’s hard to know where to begin, or if you belong. We need a better doormat, people. And a lounge room to welcome them into. We need to help them recognize instantly that our blog is a home for them.

Some ways we can do that:

• Add a New Here page to your blog introducing yourself, explaining what your blog’s about, and sharing some of your best posts to get them started.
• Add a YouTube video to your sidebar welcoming new readers, and introducing yourself and your blog.
• Do some brainstorming. If your blog was a magazine, what themes would it cover? Then make those themes prominent on your blog—whether that’s written in your banner, or as an image.

Here’s the one I popped together:

Mission Make Them Comfy complete! *confetti*

3. Helping them stay

How do we get our guests to become regular drop-in-aholics?

The best way I know is the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin. It appears the first five times a new friend visits your blog, and asks them if they’d like to subscribe by RSS or email.

Since using it, I’ve noticed a 20% increase in subscribers alone. Happy days!

Mission: Stay foreva, my one true reader-love = done.

3 simple changes = 50% more delight

It’s been dang glorious. And I’m pretty sure it’s been way more fun than having an existential blogging mid-life crisis!

Let us know your secrets for upping subscribers in the comments.

Goddess Leonie is the creator of GoddessGuidebook.com, a popular creativity and spirituality blog for women. She’s also the creator of the upcoming Become a Business Goddess ecourse.

Posted: 24 Apr 2011 06:08 AM PDT

This guest post is by Jeff Domansky of The PR Coach.

Your blog is a very important part of your personal image or company brand. While you’ve invested time in its development, have you ever thought about how you could use your blog to manage a crisis?

A blog offers several advantages compared to news releases, websites, or other social media channels.

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Posted: 18 Apr 2011 06:09 AM PDT

This guest post is by Ray Maker of DCRainmaker.com.

Product review posts are in many ways the core of what blogging is about—the ability for all of us regular folks to express an opinion about a product, be it good or bad.  Every day, tens of thousands of product reviews are written on blogs across the world, and often, on just one product alone, hundreds of new opinion/review posts are written each week.

The goal of most folks when they write a review post is to share their opinion with the world about the product.  But how do you differentiate writing a review post that only sees a handful of eyeballs, from ones that see thousands of readers every day—and in some cases ranks even higher than the manufacturer’s own product page?

Know the product like nobody else

The single biggest difference between writing a product review that’s just so-so, and writing one that kicks butt is demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of the product.  A product review that is written by someone who understands the product inside-out will organically attract more attention than one written by someone who’s just stumbling around.

If you understand the product inside and out, show off that knowledge.  If you don’t, then learn it quick!  When people search the Internet for a review of a specific product, they’re looking for detail and coverage of the product.  What they aren’t looking for is a short blurb with a few “Four out of Five Stars!” icons tossed in.  If they were looking for that, they’d just check the ratings on their favorite online retailer’s site instead.

No, when they look for a product review, they’re looking for unbiased feedback from knowledgeable experts in that field.  The most popular product review sites for any niche are written by folks that understand the product and every little detail about it.  While short “I just opened up the box”-type reviews have their place, one has to realistically understand that place won’t be at the top of search engine results.

Speak from the perspective of someone new to the product…

If you review products often, you can easily get into the rut of thinking “my readers already know what I’m talking about.”  And while this may actually be true, you have to step back and look at what your end-state target audience is.

In many cases, it’s not only your regular readers, but also everyday people searching the wild blue yonder trying to find information about that specific product.  And in many cases, they know nothing about that product or its genre.  If I were to go out and buy a new camcorder today, I’d likely be starting from scratch to find out what’s a normal feature, and what’s a totally cool unique feature.

In thinking about it from that angle, you should always introduce functionality within a product as if the person never knew it existed. The benefit to doing this is that you not only explain that piece of functionality, but also teach your reader something new.  This is critical.  Users who find blogs educational will almost always stay around for more.  If they don’t learn anything new, they’ll simply wander elsewhere and not come back.

…And from the perspective of a longtime user

In addition to approaching a product from the newbies’ standpoint, it’s also important to delve into subjects that long-time users of the product or product series will find useful or educational.  You can do this in a number of ways, but I find the easiest way is to simply talk about the evolution of a given feature from product to product.  By doing so you illustrate not only your understanding of the product, but also your understanding of past products within the same line/genre/niche.
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Posted: 06 Apr 2011 06:07 AM PDT

This guest post was written by Mark Pollard of MarkPollard.net.

Let’s face it, how you make money from blogging is in serious flux right now. The thing is, flux brings opportunity. If you’re thinking differently enough to everybody else, chances are you can stand out. That’s what this article is about. How to get you standing out in front of brands and agencies, and find new ways to make money from your blogging pedigree along the way.

Old models are struggling

It’s not just “heritage media” that’s trying to work it all out right now. Bloggers everywhere need to rethink their approaches:

• display advertising needs reinvention: who’s it working for?
• Google just downgraded content farms
• guest posting is the new content marketing
• selling ebooks is a hit-and-miss affair for most
• affiliate marketing: how do you pick a product and make it worthwhile?

Establishing an audience and then releasing a book as your monetization tactic is challenging when such a small percentage of books are actually profitable. So, do you make an app? Do you go Kindle? Do you put on a conference? Should your revenue come from the very content that you pour your soul into or from something else, like a better salary, fees for speaking at events or a new business venture?

Just where will the money come from?

As a blogger, you need to make some serious strategic calls on where to put your focus because content-making is heavy going.

Why listen to me?

I work in advertising. It took me a long time to be able to say that. It’s not something I identify with—”advertising,” that is. I’m in it to disrupt it for the better. I’ve been publishing content online since around 1997, since the days of Angelfire, Tripod, and Geocities; since the client request of “Can we have an animated .gif on our homepage?” To which one would reply: “I’m not sure the modems will be able to handle it.”

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Posted: 06 Feb 2011 08:04 AM PST

This guest post is by Lea Woodward of www.DotNetConnector.com.

Did you know that the second place many new readers go after hitting the home page of your blog is your About page? Go and check your stats and you’ll probably see that if it’s not up there at #2, it’s probably still pretty high up on the list of “most viewed” links. Chris Brogan noticed this, so it must be true!

This isn’t really a surprise—most people are curious to find out more about who writes the blog they’ve just landed on. While they’re looking for this information, they’re probably thinking three things:

• Who is this guy or girl telling me all about how to make money blogging?
• Should I stick around and read more?
• Is it worth me bookmarking or subscribing to this site and coming back again?

If you don’t lose readers at the home page (which you can avoid by compelling headlines and killer content to browse around), the second most common place to lose them is at your About page.

Here’s how to avoid that—and how to ensure your About page makes your blog, rather than breaks it.

Introduce yourself

Tell us what your name is, and include a photo. This sounds simple but I can’t tell you how many About pages I’ve read where the blogger frequently mentions “I” and “me”, or “we” and “us”, where the username is “admin” and there’s no mention of a name (or names) anywhere on the site—not even the About page.

The exception of course is if you’re blogging anonymously, but even so, it’s nice to give yourself (or your alter ego) a pen name. People like names and they like to put a face to a name, even if it’s cartoon one.

Remember the mantra: WIIFM?

Somewhere up near the top of your About page, it’s a good idea to tell readers what’s in it for them if they stick around on your site and even subscribe. They’ll be scanning your page thinking, “What’s in it for me? Should I stick around?” If you can answer that succinctly early on, you’ll save them time and attract the kind of audience you’re actually looking for.

About them

If your blog covers a wide range of topics and it’s not super-targeted, it can be useful to actually state who your blog is for. You can even be as obvious as to include a “Who this blog is for” section listing a few items describing your ideal readers. It’s a fast, simple way to help readers figure out whether they want to stick around or not.

Be personal, but not too personal

It depends upon the topic of your blog, but it’s usually a good idea to share your credentials or expertise in the topic you’re blogging about. If you don’t have any, and you’re writing more of a “share your journey” blog, then say this. It helps people figure out where you are on the path in relation to them, and whether they’ll get something from sticking around.

The depth and level of personal information you share will depend upon the type of blog you’re writing—whether it’s a topic-focused blog or more of a personality-based blog.

Determine the goal of your About page

As you’ve probably gathered by now, your About page isn’t just a place to tell people more about you: it can be so much more. You need to determine the goal(s) of your About page, and then make sure that your page achieves those goals. For example, your About page can:

• be an ideal place to highlight your best content, allowing you to share links to deeper content within your site
• encourage people to sign up to your newsletter—which works especially well for “behind the scenes” newsletters and those which are used to share more personal information from the blogger
• give readers other ways to connect with you, by sharing links to your social media profiles and encouraging readers to connect with you there, too
• provide readers with social proof and testimonials, helping to establish your credibility and authority from the start.

Always end with a call to action

Your About page is a great place to encourage those who’ve stuck with you until the end of the page, to keep going … but you do need to give them some direction. This goes hand in hand with the point above: once you’ve determined what you’d like your About page to do for your site and your readers, make sure you end strongly by giving readers pointers about the next steps to take, should they be interested.

The above advice can be summarized in the following three points. Your About page should, at the very least, achieve the following:

• Introduce the person and personality behind the blog.
• Help new readers easily identify whether your blog is for them.
• Direct them to do something specific once they’ve read it (whatever it is you’d ideally like them to do next).

Take advantage of this golden opportunity to make another great impression on new readers and create an About page that helps your blog stand out from the others.

What does your About page say about you?

Lea Woodward helps bloggers and online entrepreneurs craft About pages that make stronger, deeper, longer-lasting connections with readers at www.DotNetConnector.com. You can connect with her on Twitter @leawoodward or on her personal blog, www.LeaWoodward.com.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Posted: 04 Feb 2011 05:03 AM PST

This guest post is by Onibalusi Bamidele of YoungPrePro.com.

Getting traffic to a blog is the major challenge a blogger faces. Many have read about various traffic generation strategies, but they find it difficult to get traffic to their blogs because these tips are no longer as effective as they once were. For example, guest blogging used to be very effective, but now that a lot of people are doing it and talking about it, it’s no longer as effective as it used to be.

Here are ten little-known tips to get traffic that I’ve discovered from my own experience. Implementing all ten tactics at the same time isn’t that effective; the way to get the best from these tactics is to choose two or three tactics that you think you like, and focus all your efforts on them for a period of time. You will be amazed at the results you will get.

1. Secret blogging clubs

A major and underutilized way to get traffic to a blog is by joining secret blogging groups or clubs. Very few people are using this particular method, but it can be very effective if you focus your efforts on it.

Secret blogging clubs consists of a group of bloggers with one aim: to help each other spread the word about their blogs with a view to generating traffic for each others’ blogs. The concept is simple: you join a club with around 50 members, share each others’ post with your fans and followers (around once a week), and this will generate more traffic, since it exposes your blog to a wider audience.

You dont need to worry about spamming and the likes, because groups like these are heavily moderated. Also, it is not necessary to share every link that is posted to the group—you only need to share the links related to your niche, that you feel are valuable.

A great example of an effective secret blogging club is the DailyBlogTips Retweet Club by Daniel Scocco. A post of mine that went viral through a secret blogging club was my guest post on getting more blog comments—it presently has 97 comments and 87 retweets on a site that averages 15 retweets and 40 comments per post.

2. Social blogmarking sites

Another underutilized but effective way to get traffic to your blog is by making use of social blogmarking sites. Even though this concept looks similar to social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit, it operates differently.

A social blogmarking site can be useful irrespective of whom you are and your status on the network. All you need to do is write your best post and give it the best title. Submit it to your favorite social blogmarking site and, if it’s voted onto the site’s homepage, it will send a stream of traffic to your blog. The articles that make it to the front page are not determined by the authors who submit them, or dependent on the domain name of the author’s site. The quality and title of the article is all that matters.

I also respect social blogmarking because of the quality of traffic it sends. The visitors that come from the blogmarking site I’m involved with (Blokube) spend an average of ten minutes on my blog. Presently, this is one of my best traffic sources, as far as traffic quality is concerned.

3. Ning communities

Getting traffic to your blog through Ning communities is a great way to get traffic to your blog, yet few bloggers use this method. I learned this formula from Kim Roach and it keeps on sending me traffic, even months after I use it.

Like blogging, a lot of people have a version of themselves or their business on Ning.com. You can create a portal in the form of yourusername.ning.com, which can also be a great way to get traffic to your blog.

All you need to do is help community members with their questions, and reference your blog if necessary. There is also a place where you can submit your blog posts for the whole community to see—another great traffic source. If you plan on doing this, you don’t necessarily need to write new posts: you can submit some of your old posts with a link back to your blog.
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Posted: 27 Jan 2011 05:02 AM PST

This is a guest post by Devesh of Blokube.

What is “blogmarking”? Many of us already use and understand social media, but very few of us tap into the great and growing potential of social blogmarking sites.

Blogmarking is the process of you bookmarking your blog post on a blog bookmarking site. Blogmarking can also be referred to as blog bookmarking.

How blogmarking works

The blogmarking process involves you writing a post on your blog, looking for a great and active blogmarking site, and then submitting your post to the blogmarking site.

Your post will be ranked on the site based on the number of votes it gets from users. If your post has a great title there is every chance that it will get a lot of eyeballs. If it’s good, it’ll likely get a lot of votes, and moved to the front page of the blogmarking site.

While blogmarking works just like social bookmarking, the concept is different. A social bookmarking site is highly influenced by power users who determine which posts can be promoted to the homepage. Most of these power users have been on the site since its inception, and they read and work on the site rigorously. It’s not easy for just anybody to become a power user.

The concept of a social blogmarking site is different from this, as any post can be promoted to the front page on the basis of the votes it receives from site users. If you’re not familiar with blogmarking, here are a few blogmarking sites:

• Blogengage.com
• DesignFloat.com (focuses on design news only)
• BizSugar.com
• Blokube.com (disclaimer—this is my own site)

Social media … or social blogmarking?

There are many ways to spread the word about your blog while building stronger relationships online. Currently, the key most popular options are social media sites. So let’s look more closely at the pros and cons of social media sites in comparison to social blogmarking sites.

Social media sites

You’re undoubtedly familiar with social media sites and are using them to promote your blog. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and so on, allow users to create a profile, providing photos, website links, biography information, and a host of other personal details.

To get solid traffic from social media sites, you usually have to be very active on those sites, and that can take lot of time.

Advantages of social media sites

First, let’s look at some advantages of social media sites.

They’re open to anyone: A major advantage of social media sites is that they’re open to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new blogger or you’re already established, you can easily open an account on any social media site you love, and you can begin to interact with others immediately.
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Posted: 20 Dec 2010 11:06 AM PST

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Does great writing matter in blogging?

It’s a debate that isn’t over—yet. But it’s one where more and more blogging experts are emphasizing that your writing does matter, and that readers are drawn in by a strong, engaging voice.

Great writing will:

• encourage people to share your content
• persuade readers to subscribe for more of the same
• get a powerful response—like comments or sales
• make you look like a big player in the blogosphere, even if you’re just starting out.

You might not think of yourself as a writer, but your writing skills will make or break your blogging career. Here are five ways to improve.

1. Blog regularly

If you talk to any writer, they’ll tell you that you need to write regularly. We bloggers, of course, have an advantage here; there are a bunch of good reasons to produce frequent posts (encouraging search engine traffic, and keeping readers engaged, for instance).

Blogging regularly doesn’t necessarily mean daily. In fact, you’ll almost certainly do better by writing slightly less often and putting more time and effort into your posts: after all, wouldn’t you rather your readers were eagerly looking forward to your next in-depth post, instead of skipping past yet another mediocre 300 word piece that you’ve churned out?

To get into a regular blogging habit, try setting up a blogging calendar. Once you’ve found a comfortable routine, it’s easy to keep going.

2. Learn actively

Just writing regularly won’t get you far. It’s also important to actively learn about writing—to look for areas where you want to improve.

You need to slow down when you write. You need to think about what you’re writing, and how it works to capture reader attention. You need to devote conscious attention to improving your work to make it more effective. More readable. More captivating and compelling.

—James Chartrand, Why You Shouldn’t Write Often, Men with Pens

So how do you give your writing that “conscious attention” which James is talking about?

• Read writing blogs. Ideally, subscribe to them so you get daily tips and inspiration. I’d recommend Daily Writing Tips, Copyblogger, and Men with Pens, for starters.
• Invest in great ebooks. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers is a fantastic resource to have to hand. And if your grammar and spelling could use a bit of work, get 100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid (from Daily Writing Tips).
• Read brilliantly-written blogs, and learn from them. All the writing blogs are great examples, but it’s also a good idea to find blogs in your own niche. If you come across a particularly engaging or well-written post, print it out and go through line-by-line to see how it works.
• Go to a writing class or course. Try your local college, or look online—for instance, Darren and Chris run Creating Killer Content.
• Form a writing circle with blogger friends. You might not be experts, but you’ll probably be able to point out the potential flaws or trouble spots in one another’s work.
• Get one-to-one support from a writing coach. Although this isn’t cheap, it’s an incredibly effective way to get advice specific to you and your writing.

3. Read widely

How much reading do you do outside the blogosphere? When did you last read a book?

Although blogging is a particular form of writing, you can learn a lot from other mediums and styles. You might find a great technique in an advert in a newspaper, for instance, or you could use a brilliant headline that you took from a magazine.

Most books have been through a number of gatekeepers before being published—agents, editors, marketing boards, and so on. Not all books are well written, but many are, and they can give you a sense of what’s possible. Try out some novels (ask friends for recommendations)—novelists have the toughest job of all writers, because they have to convince us to care about imaginary people in made-up situations.

Look for good non-fiction books too—I particularly like the writing style of Richard Wiseman (Quirkology and 59 Seconds) and Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick and Switch).

4. Write creatively

As well as reading outside the blogosphere, try writing outside it. Okay, you may not have any ambitions to be the next J.K. Rowling, but by trying out different writing styles, you’ll find yourself becoming more comfortable and fluent in your blogging.

A great place to start is with the Creative Copy Challenge, run on Mondays and Thursdays. You’re given ten words or phrases as prompts, and you have to work them into one short piece of writing on any topic you like.

You could also try these ideas:

• Write short pieces of fiction. These can work incredibly well on blogs, particularly when they offer a different way of looking at your usual topic. A couple of examples are How to Attract The Most Awesome People Into Your Life by Vlad Dolezal and What Hope Really Means by Alex Blackwell.
• Write poetry. I’m really not a good poet (I wrote such awful poetry as a teen that I swore off it for life!), but occasionally I’ll try out poetry because it encourages me to focus on the full value of each word.
• Write the same post or page in several different styles. This is a great exercise if you’re struggling with how best to write something. Your “About” page is a good one to try this with. How about:
  • turning it into a story (not your whole life story, but the story which matters to you)
  • using a question and answer format
  • writing it from an unusual perspective, like Darren’s piece from his son’s point of view.

5. Use feedback

I’ve touched on feedback above, suggesting that great ways to learn are by working with friends or by hiring a coach. But you’re probably already getting plenty of feedback on your writing.

This feedback might come through:

• Tweets (either directly at you, about you, or retweets of what you’ve said): what gets a great response on Twitter? Look at the way you phrased things, and the content, and see if you can figure out why it engaged others.
• Comments on your blog: which posts get the most comments? What do readers seem to particularly like? If you’re experimenting with different styles—maybe writing a short story with a point, like Alex and Vlad did in the examples above—then pay attention to the comments and see what’s resonating with your readers.
• Emails that you receive: these may give you ideas of particular topics to write on (and choosing the right subject for your post is an important part of writing well). In some cases, they may also indicate when your writing has touched someone deeply.

Want to get more in-depth feedback on a particular post? You could ask on Twitter—making it clear that criticism is welcome—or ask on a forum. If I’m working on a high-impact piece of writing, like a sales page, I often ask in the Third Tribe for feedback and suggestions—and I’ve seen lots of other bloggers do the same.

How are you going to take your writing forwards, today?

Ali Luke blogs about writing and the writing life at Aliventures, covering topics like Finding Your Writing Voice. You can grab the Aliventures RSS feed here.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Posted: 19 Jan 2011 11:02 AM PST

This guest post is by Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog.

Earlier this year, I launched a challenge called 30 Days To Live a Better Life (30DLBL) on my blog. This is a 30-day challenge where participants complete one task a day, for 30 days in the month, that will help them live a better life. When I created 30DLBL, it was breath of fresh air—I’d not seen any such personal development challenges around at the time, and it was fun to do something different rather than just write articles every week. I was very excited about my challenge, and thought I’d probably get about 100 people joining in, or 200 people max.

I was proven wrong. The minute the post went live, there were already a handful of participants. By the end of the day, there were over 100 participants. The number slowly exploded to 200, 300, 500, 800 … to over 1,200 excited participants all over the world, all ready to transform their lives in the next 30 days! Not only that, but people were tweeting about 30DLBL, blogging about it, sharing it on Facebook, and telling all their friends about it. Some readers even specially created new blogs just to blog about their 30DLBL experience. Needless to say, the response totally blew me away!

The 30-day challenge was extremely successful, and many participants’ lives changed in unimaginable ways that month. Many of them rediscovered themselves on a whole new level, set new goals, and created new plans for their future. It was so successful that I later launched a guidebook and a workbook on the upgraded version of 30DLBL. The book sold over 200 copies in less than two weeks of launch, and last month I did a second run of the challenge, with many more runs planned in the future.

Some bloggers have also been inspired by the success of 30DLBL and are launching their own 30/31-day challenges, and it’s great to see them getting down to engage their communities.

Why run a challenge?

First off, you might wonder, why run a challenge? There are four key reasons:

1. Create a breath of fresh air: At that time I launched the challenge, I’d already been running The Personal Excellence Blog for about 1.5 years. After 1.5 years of writing article after article, I wanted to have a 30-day challenge as a breath of fresh air, as Darren did with his challenge, 31 Days To Build a Better Blog. The challenge was designed to complement what I write at the site. It was very much welcomed by the readers.
2. Help readers apply what you teach: Even while we may be writing down the most important insights in our articles, it’s a whole different thing altogether to apply that advice to real life. Some readers may not fully comprehend what you’re writing, while some readers may not know how to apply your insights. A challenge helps them take action.
3. Engage readers: A challenge lets readers become involved. It makes them feel like they’re a part of your site. Launching 30DLBL helped me get up close and personal with my readers in a completely new way. At the end of the 30 days, I’d developed a very close bond with many of my readers.
4. Form a community: With the launch of 30DLBL, I saw the first signs of a true community forming around my blog—a community where readers interact with each other, care for one another, and really help each other grow. This made me very excited about what’s ahead.

Eight tips for running a successful challenge

Here, I’ll share with you eight tips to help you run a successful challenge on your blog.

1. Evaluate the role of a challenge in your blog

Some bloggers may prefer to write articles, which is totally fine. Challenges are not necessarily for everyone. Figure out whether you do want to run challenges as part of your blog, and how regularly you want to do them. It can be a once-in-a-while project—for example, Darren runs 31DBBB at Problogger about once every few years. Or it can be a regular affair, which is what I’m planning for my blog.
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Posted: 12 Jan 2011 02:37 PM PST

Welcome to the 2011 list of bloggers to watch. A few caveats before we launch into the list:

• This is my own list of the people I’m watching. I was approached to do this list because of my work as a professional connector. These are the people that have stood out to me, or my network.
• Your niche is different from mine, and that’s a given. My goal was to find the people whose tips and stories can be applied to your own niche.
• Like last year, we will be creating a post collecting all of the watch lists ProBlogger readers create. The details for this appear at the end of this post.

Many thanks to Ali Luke, Jonathan Wondrusch, Allison Boyer, Andy Dolph, and Srinivas Rao for their help with background research.

Discovered at BlogWorld

BlogWorld is the social hub of this industry. It was where thousands of the world’s best bloggers met to network and learn. I recommend that bloggers of any niche attend conferences such as this to check out the rising stars. Based on many conversations over coffee, fries, and ice-cream, I was able to ascertain that the following people will have a lot to contribute to the wider blogging community.

Jaime Tardy

Blog |  Twitter

I almost missed meeting Jaime Tardy. She was this lovely, quiet girl that I met just a few times, which I sincerely regretted when I checked visited Eventual Millionare. Jaime is a fiercely talented blogger, but what I liked was how she approached the topic of personal finance.

Most people tend to go one of two ways: they blog about their journey to riches, or blog about their frugal lifestyle. Jamie was well on her way to becoming a millionaire; she was earning six figures at just 22. However, she decided that “instead of just a million dollars, I wanted to find work I loved, and the life I loved, and THEN make my million.”

I’m a huge fan of her because she has an authentic blogging persona, despite her recent success. She has been able to leverage her blog to get significant media attention—a goal most of us dream of. I think she’ll be taking her efforts up a notch this year.

Matt Kimberley

Blog |  Twitter

Matt Kimberley is just like his blog: suave, intriguing, and powerful with words. He is a fascinating case study of how you can leverage your blog to achieve personal and business goals.

He blogs at How to Get a Grip, which is “largely a rehashing of common sense, with a couple of practical tips for manning up and getting things done.” Biography jargon aside, he is one of my favorite examples of someone that combines personality marketing and no-nonsense advice to create a compelling blog.

His story is one that fascinated me, and many of my peers. He:

• got a book deal when his blog had just six readers
• polarizes his interviewees: check out Don’t Be Afraid Of Strangers to see how
• writes the content that his audience needs to hear, rather than wants to hear.

Blog lessons aside, I believe that How to Get a Grip should be required reading for everyone wanting to focus on the important stuff in 2011.

Jordan Cooper

Blog |  Twitter

Jordan Cooper is a blogger that I highly respect. He positions himself as a comedian who has an irreverent outlook at blogging, social media, and marketing. While he acts like the comedic anti-hero, he is this incredibly savvy guy who intuitively gets this industry. I love him because he is modest about his talents and success.

Last year, he became community manager of the Beyond Blogging Project and moderated the Treating Your Blog Like a Business panel at BlogWorld. He also has enjoyed considerable success with two video game-related fan sites he manages: FM-Britain and Gameworld One.

I suspect that he may be the silent success story of this year. He’s gotten the trust and attention of the many top bloggers he has worked with. He has all the resources at his disposal. He just has to choose his path.

Matt Gartland

Blog |  Twitter

I count Matt Gartland among one of my closest blogging friends. He has spent most of this year focusing on his Healthy Lifestyle Design blog. After meeting at BlogWorld, I got him on the phone and we chatted about his 2011 plans. Boy, is this guy going to shake things up. There are two things that I’m really looking forward to:

• Modern Audacity. This is his blog “about bold ideas for brave adventurers hell-bent on living above expectations.” His content is looking to be challenging in a similar vein to Matthew Kimberly’s and is something that I’m really looking forward to reading.
• Random Acts of Greatness. This blog aims to chronicle 10,000 acts of greatness over a five-year period. One trend that I’ve noticed is how many bloggers are leveraging their audience to deliver widespread social good. Johnny B Truant was among with first with his Bad Ass Project. I can see Matt’s project having a much wider reach.

His blog has gotten so many of my friends excited. His branding is something that many people, including myself, can learn from. His theme is inspired by comic books, which he leverages to tell a story. It is impractical for most bloggers to replicate this, however everyone is capable of telling a story via their words and visual elements. Excelsior!

Farnoosh Brock

Blog |  Twitter

Farnoosh impressed many with her positive energy during Blogworld. She was constantly engaging with people and showed how to make a solid impression in a short period of time. What was surprising is that she is just as active on social media and her blog.

• She uses only images that she takes on her blog. This, along with her video and podcasts, allows her readers to join her on her journey.
• She wrote an ebook about her BlogWorld 2010 experience. This was a great way to get more exposure, as she was subsequently featured on the BlogWorld blog.

Her blog aims to teach you smart habits for rich living. However, I feel that she has a lot of potential and that she has so much more to bring to her audience. I’m genuinely excited to see how she grows this year.

Srinivas Rao

Blog |  Twitter

I truly believe that Srini is going to become one of the major success stories of 2011. He is constantly applying what he has learned through the interviews he has conducted on BlogcastFM.

I was friends with Srini long before we went to BlogWorld, and meeting him only increased my admiration. He genuinely cares about improving his blog and connecting with others. He leveraged his connections to successfully launch BlogcastFM Premium, grow his personal blog, and expand Flightster’s social media presence.

If there is someone you think should be on this list, tell him. It’s likely they’ll be interviewed on a future podcast.

Karol Gadja

Blog |  Twitter

Karol got the attention of everyone at Blogworld. Part of it was due to his height—he was considerably taller most people he spoke to—but mostly it was because of his friendliness.

It was such an honor to get to know him because he was so laid back and genuinely interested in his community. He was incredibly generous with his knowledge despite the massive success of the past year.

His blog, Ridiculously Extraordinary, is an example of how to stand out in a crowded niche. He also showed how you can run a successful blog and leverage that to support business ventures. He has been able to grow his business so much in the last quarter thanks to the 72 hour niche sales he runs with Adam Baker.

I believe that he will continue to impact people in 2011.

Benny

Blog |  Twitter

I barely talked to Benny at BlogWorld. I had just enough time to ascertain his Irish accent before he got whisked away to a neighboring table. Fortunately, I hung out with some of the most connected people in the industry, who quickly informed me that Benny is someone worth paying attention to.

He is the Irish Polyglot behind Fluent In 3 Months: a how-to guide and story of becoming fluent in any language quickly. His story has attracted many but what I love is how the story extends to all facets of his blog. He:

• encourages his readers to comment in the languages he is fluent in, and will respond in the same language
• posts his videos in multiple languages—including his welcome video—to demonstrate his skills
• maintains multiple Twitter accounts for his followers in other languages.

I believe that having your content available in multiple languages will become more relevant in 2011, and Benny is in the prime position to help people do this.

Heather Solos

Blog |  Twitter

I never met Heather. I came across her thanks to the recommendation of several friends and, after checking out her main blog, I could see why. See, she doesn’t fit the profile of your typical successful blogger. Her bio states that she is a “32-year-old professional blogger and author”. I see her as a master of leveraging communities.

Her profile has grown organically over the course of five years. She co-founded Home-Ec101.com, “a site designed to teach real people, real skills, as they apply to real lives.” In addition to this, she has gotten a book deal, leveraged in-person meetings to get great results, and has achieved multiple writing spots in newspapers. You can learn more about how she did this in her interview on BlogcastFM.

What I like about her is how she is shaping her content to her audience. In her sidebar she has a link to a feedback form to get more information about her readers, a note saying that her articles are print-friendly, and a phone number for questions that may get featured on her podcast. She is inviting audience engagement before readers even view her content, rather than taking the path of most bloggers and just targeting social media users. I’m fascinated to see where she takes this in 2011.

Pace Smith

Blog |  Twitter

Pace Smith is one of my favourite BlogWorld buddies. She is an extremely talented individual who brings a lot to the social media community. She is an amazing collaborator and business mind, but is very down to earth and friendly. She has tried to avoid the expert/guru scene and, by doing so, has enriched the wider community.

What’s resonated with me is how she’s evolved over the past year. Pace and her business-and-life-partner Kyeli rebranded “The Freak Revolution” to “The Connection Revolution”—a change that I believe suits them better. They wrote about the reasons why. They’ve also intentionally tried to avoid creating metablogging products and instead released two useful courses: 52 Weeks to Awesome and Engaging ECourses.

I’ll be watching to see how Pace develops the connection revolution. She intuitively understands the relationship side of blogging and I believe her impact will grow significantly this year.

Suggested by readers

Last year’s post got a lot of feedback. Many people felt that their niche or passion was excluded. For this edition, we scoured the comments to find the bloggers who you wanted to be highlighted.

Pat Flynn

Blog |  Twitter

I’m blog crushing on Pat. He was suggested so many times in last year’s list that Darren snagged him for an interview shortly after.

He is the type of blogger that everyone can learn from. He loves his readers to death and focuses on providing massive value. You can:

• learn about transparency via his income reports
• watch how he applies his knowledge via the niche site duel with Tyrone Shum
• access his network of experts via his podcasts.

He is someone I believe every ProBlogger reader should watch. He is a talented marketer and mentor, and someone that is passionate about growing his community.

Brett McKay

Blog |  Twitter

Nate, from Practical Manliness, recommended Brett as a blogger to watch in 2010. He said “He did quite a bit in 2009 (book launch, hundreds of thousands of monthly visits, etc.), and I don’t expect him to slow down.”

Brett has shown how you can take your business beyond a blog. He has converted his blog into a community complete with forums and profiles for members, and introduced interesting concepts such as the Library of Random Man Knowledge and the Art of Manliness Trunk. He also created a mobile version of his website. I was part of a mastermind session with some pretty influential bloggers late this year and one thing we all identified was the role smartphones would play with our blogs.

He has also worked to grow his brand off the blog. He has released a book, and has a second out in 2011. He’s released themed posters and calling cards, as well as a t-shirt collection. I expect him to grow his brand further this year.

Lynn Terry

Blog |  Twitter

I included Lynn Terry thanks to the recommendation of Adriana, who said “she always puts out excellent information, and replies to just about every comment on her blog.” I’ve come across Lynn numerous times and loved her classy approach in a crowded and much-hyped niche.

She blogs at Click Newz, which has “internet marketing ideas, tips, and reviews to help you succeed.” She is a super-affiliate, and was involved in Internet marketing before social media became trendy.

One thing that intrigued me was Lynn’s Hot Topics page. Most people have a page, or sidebar plugin, that directs people to the best content. This technique takes the readers to the best tutorials. This is something that may be more useful to readers than a post that received a lot of traffic from social media sites.

Lynn has been in this business for 14 years. Her inclusion wasn’t based on anticipated success this year; rather, she is someone that I believe we all can learn from. If she, or any other person on this list, has helped you, I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Wil Wheaton

Blog |  Twitter

My dad would say that Wil Wheaton’s character Wesley Crusher is one of the most-hated characters in Star Trek. I, along with Slimeface, who recommended him, would disagree. I reckon that he is one of the coolest people I know.

The short version is that most people would consider him to be celebrity—ya know, except for Sheldon Cooper, who’s often mentioned as Wil Wheaton’s nemesis in “Big Bang Theory.” Jokes aside, he is one to watch is because he is a celebrity who’s using social media in the way it was intended.

A lot of bloggers struggle with scalability when it comes to managing relationships. Wil faces that on a much larger scale. His Twitter landing page is truthful and amusing. He doesn’t cater to popular opinion. Instead, he just acts like himself and attracts thousands of readers in the process. His success isn’t replicable for most of us, but his approach is.

In his post celebrating the new year, he said “2010 was easily the best year I’ve had in a decade, and 2011 is looking like it’s going to be pretty amazing, too.” I’m looking forward to following his journey.

Henri Juntilla

Blog |  Twitter

Henri first attracted widespread attention when he got over 1000 subscribers in three months. He was able to achieve this via two main methods: article marketing and guest posting. His content on Wake Up Cloud is mixture of metablogging and personal development.

Henri is currently in the transition stage. During 2010, he was able to gain a lot of attention for his work. The thing is, social proof doesn’t necessarily equal a successful business. Henri has earned a nice income from his affiliate efforts and product sales but is yet to turn his blog into a true business.

I believe he is one to watch as he makes this transition from blogger to entrepreneur. I’ve watched many people give up their blog or get burnt out. I think Henri will shine as he progresses on his entrepreneurial journey.

Daniel Scocco

Blog |  Twitter

Daniel Scocco has been someone I’ve been learning from for a while. I didn’t include him in the previous list because I assumed his prominence didn’t need mentioning, but you guys corrected me pretty quickly!

2010 saw Daniel reopen his membership site Online Profits. He offered the course for free (with the caveat that members need to sign up for an $8.95/month hosting plan with HostGator), posting Online Profits Is Open, And Now It Is Free!

This membership site has made for a fascinating case study. He was able to leverage the content of others to create a comprehensive product that covers more information than just blogging. He was one of the first people to make money from a course via affiliate commissions for other products. This is an underutilized technique and it will be fascinating to see if other people apply it to their own niche.

I know that he will keep challenging the status quo in 2011 and continuing to create useful content. I can’t say too much, but I can share that there are rumors of a new product released via Daily Writing Tips in early 2011.

Jean-Baptiste Jung

Blog |  Twitter

Jean-Baptiste Jung is “a 27-year-old blogger, web developer and web designer from the French-speaking part of Belgium”. He started out with a successful blog, Cats Who Code, and soon grew his business to include a portfolio of web development-related websites.

The past few years have seen him launched additional sites such as WpRecipes, PsdVibe and Cats Who Blog. In addition he has written for WpHacks, ProBlogDesign and Smashing Magazine, and released his first book, WordPress CookBook.

I’ll be frank—I’m not familiar enough with the WordPress community to discuss why Jean-Baptiste is worth watching. I’m relying on the many readers and friends who told me of his talents. However, I can tell you that his portfolio of WordPress and blogging sites will be a valuable resource for ProBlogger readers over the coming year.

Potts Weinstein

Blog |  Twitter

Elizabeth’s bio states that “I’m a woman who is on a continuing adventure of living my truth. And I’m inviting you to come along.” A consistent theme with many people on this list is that they have created a blog that is a natural expression of who they are. Elizabeth is no exception.

She explains, “Living your truth finds the nexus of your passions, your skills, everything that is unique and amazing about you, with practical, smart, efficient business strategies and systems and marketing and relationship building.” She has been a mentor to many of my good friends and accomplished a lot despite a tumultuous 2010.

Her personal and business theme for 2011 is “Creating Space for Ecstasy via Boundaries and Self Care.” This is a theme that a lot of people will resonate with in the coming year. It may take longer than one year for her to achieve true greatness but hers is such a fascinating journey to watch.

Chris Owyoung

Blog |  Twitter

Chris is a freelance music photographer based in New York City. He was included thanks to the recommendation of Greg Taylor. Chris blogs in a niche that most wouldn’t pay attention to. His target readers are potential clients rather than tutorial seekers. He approaches his blog differently from most ProBlogger readers.

A lot of the focus is on the visual experience. His sidebar comprises images rather than text—a technique that compliments his photography. He also invites the readers to view images from a shoot by telling a story and capturing the reader’s attention. Both techniques are common, but it’s worth seeing how it’s applied to a different niche.

His blog is a solid case study and it will be interesting to check if he changes his approach over the course of the year. I think he’s onto a winning formula.

Jade Craven

Blog |  Twitter

Yeah, I’m totally cheating by putting myself on this list. I was going to include Anne Jackson from Flowerdust.net, but she recently wrote a post discussing the end of her blogging. Long story short, I went through the comments again and after going through the joke suggestions, my name came up twice. So I snagged rising star Allison Boyer to write a bio for me:

Even if you don’t know Jade Craven yet, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ve been affected by her work. Jade is of course the author of this list, but she’s everywhere, working with people such as Dave Navarro, Jonathan Fields, and Johnny B. Truant. Regardless of her work with high-profile people, Jade always also has time for interesting up-and-comers who haven’t yet made a name for themselves. If you’re someone with passion and dedication, Jade wants to know you—and she will make good things happen for you without asking for anything in return.

I’m officially dubbing 2011 “The Year of Jade Craven”—she’s got some super-exciting secret plans for awesomeness that you don’t want to miss. Get Jade Craven on your radar if she’s not already, and you can be part of that awesomeness.

New talent

Sometimes it seems like a success story comes from nowhere. You’ll briefly see someone on Twitter, and then Bang! Their work is everywhere. This section deals with some of the success stories of the past year. These are the people who will be profoundly growing their profile in the coming months.

Jonathan Wondrusch

Blog |  Twitter

Jonathan is a paragon of blogging awesomeness. He is co-founder of By Bloggers and is working with Lavonne Ellis on the upcoming Customer Love Challenge. His profile has grown quickly over the four months—and for good reason.

His stand-out resource is By Bloggers, which is a site for ambitions webpreneurs creating incredible eproducts. His content is very high quality—Epic Ebook Creation is one of the best free books I’ve read—and has been able to attract a lot of attention in a short period of time.

I’m confident that he will rock it in 2011. He’s found a gap in a market targeting infoproduct creators, and has some some killer plans to help bloggers. You can see them taking shape with the new Blogging Bootstrappers community, along with the continually growing Bootstrapper’s Toolkit—a resource that adds new free worksheets and ebooklets every month.

Johnathan also is a talented relationship marketer and it’ll be worth watching to see where he takes his audience. It’s most likely to be silly (this man sported a half beard—a beard on one side of his face, but not the other—for a week), nerdy, and absolutely inspiring.

Peter Shallard

Blog |  Twitter

Peter is an example of someone who launched with a bang. See, Peter isn’t like us bloggers. He has a strong corporate background and he’s one of the people who understands relationship marketing and sales—something that many people find difficult.

He launched strongly by making a number of smart decisions, such as hiring 2010-blogger-to-watch James Chartrand for website design and copywriting. This allowed him to focus on what he did best: engaging with people via social media and empowering his clients.

He is a fascinating example of how a suit can dive into the world of social media and enjoy massive success. He is also someone that is laid back and a lot of fun to get to know. Even if you aren’t interested in his blog, hit him up on Twitter. Tell him Jade sent you!

Scott McIntyre

Blog |  Twitter
More →

Posted: 03 Jan 2011 05:01 AM PST

This guest post is by Devesh of WP Kube.

If you’re regular reader, you know that how much time problogger.net takes to load. Would you like to make your blog load faster than ProBlogger? Today I’m going to share eight simple tips to increase your blog speed. But first, you’ll need to know how quickly your blog is loading right now.

How to test your blog’s speed

So you can do a before-and-after comparison, take a moment to check how quickly your blog is loading now.

There are many tools online that let you test load speed, but I prefer to compare the loading speed of my blog against others—after all, that’s what your users will do.

One of my favorite tools for loading comparisons between two sites is WhichloadsFaster. To check your blog’s loading speed against a competing blog or a major website that’s used by readers in your niche, enter your site’s URL and that of the other site into the two boxes provided. Simple!
More →

Posted: 24 Dec 2010 07:14 AM PST

All right folks, it’s Christmas eve here in Bali and we’re set to spend some quality time with our friends and family. But first we’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and we hope your Christmas this year is filled with loads of gadgets love.

We’ll see you at the flip of the year or when we run out of booze and fireworks (whichever comes first). Cheers!

Christmas is coming and you might be interested in dressing up your blog with a new Christmas free wordpress themes .In this post I’ve selected 15 interesting Christmas WordPress themes.

Happy new year!

1- Christmas Days

Christmas Days WordPress theme from Design Disease look very professional with touch of Christmas spirit splashed with lot of color.

2- Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Theme from BOB has been personal favorite. It looks very simple and classic – you need to check the falling snow on each page, check preview and get amazed.

3- Christmas Gift (3-Column)

Give christmas look on your website, well designed unique yet elegant christmas wordpress theme. Impress your readers with christmas celebration on your weblog.

4- Vermilion Christmas

Vermilion Christmas is a widget-ready theme designed for WordPress 2.6+.

With it’s attractive Christmas design and SE-friendly structure, it’s an excellent solution for bloggers and webmasters in need of a Christmas WordPress theme.

Vermilion Christmas uses valid XHTML & CSS and has been tested in multiple browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

5- Christmas bells

Beautiful Christmas WordPress theme which will keep your heart warm.

6- Winter Christmas

Three columns WordPress theme for winter or Christmas

7- Christmas Spirit

This is a funny Christmas theme for WordPress. The theme is widget ready and has 3 columns. Merry Christmas!

8- Christmas is Near

Christmas is Near theme also has dynamic snow fall effect. This 2 column theme look clean and focussed along with Christmas color splash.

9- Blue Christmas Theme

A fun and blueish Christmas theme. Last tested on WordPress v2.6.3 with artwork by Masaki Hoshino, snow by Scott Schiller and icons by N.Design Studio.

10- Christmas Time

11- Happy Christmas

12- Bobek’s WordPress Themes

Beautiful 2 columns Christmas WordPress theme with shiny christmas tree.

13- Iceburgg

14- Christmas Gifts

15- Christmas Night WordPress Theme

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 11:06 AM PST

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Does great writing matter in blogging?

It’s a debate that isn’t over—yet. But it’s one where more and more blogging experts are emphasizing that your writing does matter, and that readers are drawn in by a strong, engaging voice.

Great writing will:

• encourage people to share your content
• persuade readers to subscribe for more of the same
• get a powerful response—like comments or sales
• make you look like a big player in the blogosphere, even if you’re just starting out.

You might not think of yourself as a writer, but your writing skills will make or break your blogging career. Here are five ways to improve. More →

Posted: 13 Dec 2010 05:02 AM PST

This guest post is by Andrew Knibbe of Flippa.

When most of us think of blogging, we think about starting from the ground up. Having researched a niche, we search for a good domain, choose a blogging platform, apply a template, and prepare our first post…

But there are other options for the beginning blogger. One of the least talked about, and most often overlooked, is to buy an existing blog.

This post isn’t intended as a prescriptive how-to: what I’d like to do is introduce the idea of buying a blog, and talk about the key considerations that bloggers and would-be bloggers might address before they go down this path.

Why buy a blog?

There are plenty of reasons why you’d consider buying an existing blog:

• it will already have been populated with content
• if it’s a known blog with valuable information, it’ll have attracted backlinks, and should have search engine presence
• it may come with a ready-made audience—hopefully, a loyal one
• it may have a great domain name and/or a strong unique brand
• it may already be generating an income
• it’s all set up: rather than starting from scratch, you can simply tweak or amend the blog’s layout and design to suit your needs.

The thing to realize about buying a blog is that you’re unlikely to find a blog that perfectly suits all your needs from the get-go. The blogs you consider probably won’t offer you all of the benefits listed above, and they may offer these advantages to varying degrees.

In short: buying a blog isn’t an instant solution for those who want to start a blog, but if you choose the blog well, it can offer a number of advantages over starting a new blog from scratch. More →