Posted: 09 Mar 2010 05:54 AM PST

While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘how to blog‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘WHAT will I blog about?’

There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision).

Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog

Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include:

1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers

My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone.

Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’.

When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog.

In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in.

2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better

I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things.

What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend?

Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page.

The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser.

When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy.

3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines

It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc.

There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go.

4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile

One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic.

The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’.

For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries.

Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful.

Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related

Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic.

So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in.

Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy.

How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog

Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche.

Posted: 02 Mar 2010 05:44 AM PST

ChatRoulette (warning: this is often NSFW) is a site that has caused a lot of buzz over the last week or so.

It’s a webcam site where you login to chat with complete strangers – you are randomly matched with a stranger and you both have the opportunity to find a new person to chat with at anytime.

People tend to quickly click, click, click through the people that they find matched with them until they find someone that they find ‘interesting’. Unless you do something a little interesting, wacky or happen to be an amazingly beautiful person – you tend to get passed over very quickly.

While much has been written about ChatRoulette and whether it is offensive, dangerous and moral – as I was spending a few minutes on it earlier in the week (where I must have been having a bad hair day because I was ignored by 99.9% of people I was matched with) it struck me that what I was watching was a visual of how people increasingly use the web.

Click, click, click.

• They don’t stay till long – they’re always clicking
• They are always looking for the next best thing
• They only pause if they see something that is interesting, intriguing or completely relevant to them
• They are ruthless
• They are impulsive
• They will judge what they see within a split second of arriving on a site
• They rely upon instinct and first impressions

As bloggers – the reality is that people are making these kinds of calls about our blogs every day as they click through to them from different sources. The blank faces that you see scrolling past on ChatRoulette could be the faces of your readers – clicking onto your site, making a quick judgement about your site and what its worth and then in many cases moving on.

PS: after 3 minutes on ChatRoulette and being ignored by 100+ people I decided to experiment. I put on a clown wig, I stuck two CDs to my glasses and put on some 70’s disco music (hopefully no one took a screen shot of me doing this).

The rotation of people I was being matched with slowed down – one in 5 waved – one in 10 even chatted with me.

The take home lesson

• do something different
• be unique and original
• make people look twice
• snap people out of their ‘click click click’ stupor

Do this and you might just make people pause long enough to connect (or you could just make a fool of yourself).

Further Reading: The Power of Uniqueness – 19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:56 AM PST

Incase you haven’t noticed yet.. your favorite site has a make-over today! Hope you like the new, improved look of BloggerTricks

Also, I’m proud to announce the launch of our new bloggertricks addition “Blogger Templates Gallery/Showcase” website. (templates.bloggertricks.com).

It is a blogger templates directory where we showcase some of the best blogger templates on the net by various famous designers.

So, if you are looking for a new template for your blog, instead of searching tons of websites in vain,you can simply visit our site to download hundreds of new, unique and amazing templates on the net for Free. We arrange them in categories, so you can quickly browse through them and select the best template that fits your blog.

To make it easy for you to decide on a template that suits your blog the best, we have also included a “Live demo” feature. All you need to do is simply browse through the template demos and download the ones you like. No more do you need to waste your time about downloading an inappropriate template; with the ‘live demo’,you make the right choice.

We are open to feedback and constructive criticism

To Your Blogging Success!!

-Kranthi.

Posted: 12 Feb 2010 09:56 AM PST

guest post by Kelly Diels

I have been blogging for almost ten months. I quit my job – a really, really good job – last week. Today, I made $10,600.

In one day.

(Okay, not really in one day, but today I collected two cheques for writing projects that I secured because the clients saw my pieces at ProBlogger and hired me. True story.)

How did I use my blog to launch a business?

1. I didn’t know anything about blogging except that I wanted to do it, so I googled “how to blog” and landed on ProBlogger. Thank goodness. So I learned how to blog on ProBlogger. I literally started with a piece from the archives about what to include in your first post.
2. I started reading the blogs of people who were commenting at ProBlogger. I wrote a couple of adoring e-mails. Josh Hanagarne might know what I’m talking about. He’s easily flattered.
3. Then, as I gained confidence – in part because I read the trial-and-error stories of other bloggers, here –  I started guest posting on ProBlogger. I sent Darren Rowse a whole whack of wacky pieces.
4. Darren said, and I quote very loosely because I’m pretty sure he used proper grammar, hey I like your stuff, wanna write weekly?
5. I said, umm, let me think about it. (Don’t believe that ostentatious lie. I didn’t say that. Instead, I said  ”YES!!!!” and I launched (unbeknownst to him) into The Happy Shimmy wherein one drops it like it is lukewarm. And my awkward-girl-dance still looked better than this one. Maybe. Probably not. Shout out to bloggers: that’s a challenge. Let’s see your dance moves.)
6. My blog traffic exploded. I didn’t mind this, at all.
7. People started asking me to write for them. They’re even paying me. Lots.
8. I have true, passionate friends – other bloggers – who are part of my heart, now, in real life (such a thing actually exists) whom I met because of ProBlogger (see #2). Either I saw their piece and stalked them until they relented and befriended me, or vice versa.
9. A white hot meta-entrepreneur, and one of the people I admire most in this world, asked me to co-author a book with her.
10. Yes, I am TOTALLY FREAKING OUT. ProBlogger, lots of love, some dancing and a little effort (ok, a LOT of effort) changed my life.

My quit-my-job-in-ten-months lessons:

• when you’re figuring it out, the guidelines and tips and case studies at ProBlogger and other how-to-blog sites make the blogging world less intimidating
• find your voice and write good stuff
• be yourself. There’s no competition for that.
• make friends
• try lots of different techniques to promote your blog. As soon as you figure one out, keep doing that, and add another. (Did you read Jade Craven’s post about landing pages? Or Josh Hanagarne’s advice abouttricking his friends having a contest to get people to buy advertising? These are live-action case studies and that’s just useful.)
• investigate – and try – lots of different models for making money: ads, products, affiliate deals, offline work.
• play nice
• prepare to be tired. Very tired. You may as well cut off your cable, now, because TV is no longer part of your daily regime. Unless you’re a TV blogger. In which case you’re just screwed.

So yep, I’ve got big love for ProBlogger (though my cable company may have other opinions) because what I learned here empowered me. I don’t mean that in just a fluffy, feel-good, girl-power kind of way; I mean, I have money in my hand. I mean, I now write for a living.  In just ten months, ProBlogger helped me change my life.

And I’m pretty sure that Darren Rowse would have offered me the weekly gig even if I hadn’t written this piece as bait.

I’m just kidding. Really. He made me the offer two months ago and unlike some people (me), he’s immune to flattery. Don’t even try it. Call me instead.

Better yet, let’s dance.

___________________________

Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She’s also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage, a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning.

Posted: 11 Feb 2010 06:45 AM PST

Over the last few weeks I’ve had three conversations with readers regarding different sources of traffic.

In each case I had a number of email exchanges with each blogger (all on the same day) and ended up laughing to myself at the common theme but extremely different opinions being expressed by each of the bloggers.

In each case the bloggers had strong opinions (and experiences to back those opinions up) on what type of traffic was ‘best’ and how to get it.

1. In one case the conversation started with a blogger telling me that I focus too much upon social media traffic and not enough on traffic from search engines. Their niche didn’t work with social traffic but with search traffic they did best.
2. In another case the blogger told me that they’d been told to forget about search traffic in their niche and work more on building traffic from other sites and to convert it into ongoing traffic with newsletters.
3. In the last case a blogger told me that in their opinion the best type of traffic was social media traffic and they didn’t see the point in newsletters.

I was reminded through these conversations just how many different valid approaches there are to blogging. I also came away with a few thoughts that I thought I’d jot down here on the topic of driving traffic to blogs.

1. There are Many Valid Sources of Traffic

The above chart shows just 8 of many sources of traffic to a blog. As I write this others are already springing to mind (for example some bloggers run paid advertising to drive traffic to their blog – others get it from banner exchange programs). The reality is that there are many potential sources of traffic.

2. The ‘Best’ Source of Traffic Varies from Niche to Niche

As I thought about the 3 bloggers I was chatting to above it struck me that each had found great sources of traffic but that they were each operating in very different niches.

The first blogger who had written off social media was in a niche that people were simply not using social media for (I won’t reveal the niche as I don’t have their permission but it was a very very niche focused blog). Perhaps they could have driven a tiny bit of traffic with social media but for them Search was a much better place for them to invest their time.

3. Different Sources of Traffic Will monetize differently

Another important factor to consider is that some sources of traffic will monetize ALOT better than others. I’ve found that search traffic can work very well with AdSense for example (it depends upon the niche and intent of the reader). People arrive on your site searching for specific information, read your content, see an ad that relates to their search term and click on it.

RSS readers on the other hand don’t tend to convert for AdSense as they tend to be loyal readers and many don’t even click through to your site to read your content. RSS readers (and social media traffic) however can convert really well for affiliate promotions or selling your own products to.

4. Traffic Patterns Change over the life cycle of a blog

As a blog matures its sources of traffic often quite naturally change.

There’s no typical one size fits all pattern to this but at first the traffic might mainly come from other blogs or forums where you comment – or blogs where you guest post – or articles that you write. In time you might start to see more traffic from RSS or newsletters as a few people subscribe. Perhaps then some traffic will come from other sites who link to you (people who subscribe via RSS might have their own blogs) and from social media. After a while your search engine ranking might kick in as a result of the links from other sites and your guest posting and article writing and you might start seeing Google traffic. Once your blog is more established you might start seeing social bookmarking viral events that spike your traffic.

Again – this is not going to be the pattern for all blogs but in time traffic will naturally start to come from different places – the key is to try to leverage it for ongoing good (trying to get your blog to be sticky rather than just having one time visitors) and to work out how to convert that traffic for the goals you have.

5. Bloggers should be open to different approaches

While each of the three bloggers had discovered great lessons and good sources of traffic for their niches and the life cycles of their blogs – I was left wondering in each case whether the bloggers were being a little too closed off to different sources of traffic that perhaps could have added to the overall mix of traffic.

I see a lot of SEO type bloggers write about the worthlessness of social traffic for instance. One common comment that I get from some SEOs (definitely not all) is that social media traffic can’t be monetized. The reality could not be further from the truth. It won’t always convert but it certainly can. For example I know in each of the E-book launches that I’ve done in two niches that I’ve seen significant conversions from Twitter traffic.

On the flip side of things I hear some social media focused bloggers write off SEO and say that it works itself out and you don’t need to optimise your blog for search if you just produce good content. While there is some truth in that (good content does tend to generate natural incoming links to some extent) with a basic understanding of principles of SEO and a few minor tweaks a blog can rank much better in search engines without compromising the integrity of the content.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you get exclusive about the type of traffic you are after you could actually be limiting the potential of your blog’s incoming traffic.

6. Too many Eggs in One Basket Can Be Dangerous

I used to be very focused upon search traffic in my early days of blogging. I worked hard to optimise my first blogs for search and got to a point where I was making a full time living from the ad revenue I was getting almost exclusively from Google. As a result I got a little lazy in some of the other areas – I didn’t work to convert readers to be loyal with newsletters or with prominent calls to subscribe to RSS, I didn’t build too many relationships with other bloggers to generate referral traffic and I was very inactive in social media (although it was much more limited back then).

As a result when Google decided to adjust their algorithm one day and my rankings dropped (and almost completely disappeared) in their results I lost almost all of my traffic – and as a result almost all of my income.

I was lucky in that Google readjusted their algorithm a couple of months later and I regained a lot of (but not all) of that traffic but in the mean time I looked for and found a ‘real job’ – and more importantly learned an important lesson about the power of having more than one source of traffic.

That experience was the beginning of me doing a few things that included working harder on capturing readers as subscribers (email and RSS), networking more with other bloggers in my niche and getting more involved in promoting my blog in other places (mainstream media, social media etc). My hope in doing all of this was to build up other sources of traffic so that if Google ever switched off my traffic again (temporarily or permanently) I’d at least have enough traffic to survive.

Google still does send me around 40-50% of my traffic (it varies a little from blog to blog) but I’m in a position now where I could survive for an extended period if it all disappeared (not that I’d like for that to happen).

7. The Importance of Personality and Being Yourself

I’m sure there are other factors that are at play that might be worth considering when looking at traffic. One of these (that I’m yet to fully think through) is personality type.

For example a lot of my my technically thinking friends seem to enjoy the challenge of SEO a little more. They love experimenting with and testing what happens when they make small tweaks to different aspects of their blogs. They’re constantly testing different setups and do quite well from it. I am not technically minded and find their attention to detail very very unusual (and so far from where that I’m at that I feel like I’m from another planet).

Other friends are perhaps a little more social by nature and as a result seem to do well on Twitter.

Others seem to do better by applying their freakish ability to write blog posts that get tonnes of links from other sites and which do brilliantly on social bookmarking sites..

Others are networkers and spend a lot of time interacting with other bloggers and site owners and tend to get links and traffic that way.

Others just seem to be brilliant at building community on their blog and as a result retain almost everyone who ever comments and build new readers from those people telling their friends.

I guess the lesson here is to be yourself and work with your strengths. Of course you don’t want to let your strengths dominate so much that you ignore or become lazy in areas that you’re not as strong in – but do follow your natural abilities and leverage them as much as you can.

Remember that there is no wrong or right way to generate traffic for a blog. If you were analyze the sources of traffic on many top blogs you’d find quite different factors at play!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 10 Feb 2010 05:44 AM PST

One of the things that first attracted me to blogging was the creative genius that I saw at work in many of the blogs going around at that time.

There was an ‘anything goes’ type attitude among bloggers who were pushing the boundaries of what could be done on a blog. Of course I look back now and much of this past creativity has become quite normal now (for example I clearly remember seeing a blogger include a short video in a post a number of years back and thinking it was cutting edge).

Another thing I loved about blogging was the humor, irreverence and fun I saw happening on blogs. Bloggers were not constrained by the editorial process, policy and standards that journalists worked with and as a result some of the content that they produced was like writing I’d not seen before (note: I’m not saying that editorial processes, policy and standards of journalism are a bad thing – but that what I saw bloggers doing was markedly different to what I saw happening in mainstream media at that time).

Blogging was an exciting genre – we were cutting new ground as a community of bloggers.

Of course this tradition of pushing boundaries and expressing ourselves creatively lives on – in fact it’s a real feature of many successful blogs.

Be a Playful Blogger

In a presentation last year on principles of successful blogging – one of the points I made that tried to get at this pushing of the boundaries and new way of writing was titled – Be Playful.

Not every successful blog is ‘playful’ but many are. Whether it be in the experimentation with new mediums, tools and ideas, or whether it be in the type of content that they produce – almost anything goes when it comes to blogging.

In fact as I look back on the most memorable posts that I’ve published on my blogs it is often the ‘playful’ ones that stick out. A few examples:

• 5 Things You Should Know about My Dad the ProBlogger (I wrote this post in the voice of my 2 year old son – the voice seemed to capture the imagination of readers)
• How to Reduce Camera Shake – 6 Techniques (the pictures in this post where the author scribbled over her butt and asked readers to ignore it (by drawing attention to it) went over so well with readers. The post went viral on Digg and many other sites.
• Does My Butt Look Big in This? – What Clothes to Wear in Portraits (the title of this one drew in a HEAP of visitors)

A few quick starting points for being playful

There are many ways to ‘be playful’ on a blog but a few starting points include:

• Experiment with your voice – it is often not ‘what’ you say but ‘how’ you say it that grabs people’s attention.
• Humor – careful use of humor can really make an impact upon readers.
• Surprise – much of what I’m trying to get at with this post is to allow yourself to do things a little different with your blog – things that surprise your readers will make them stop in their tracks a little and take a second look at what you’re doing.
• Fun Projects – pretty much any project that allows your readers to do something fun and interactive would fit into this category. On DPS this would include our Weekend Photography Challenges where we ask readers to submit an image on a theme each weekend or here on ProBlogger it’d include our group writing projects over the years. These projects are largely about fun, interacting with others and a little self promotion for readers.

How have you been playful on your blog?

Being playful is not something you can make a definitive list of how to do. Playful blogging comes in all shapes and sizes so I’d love to hear how you’ve done it on your blog (or how you’ve seen others do it). Please feel free to share a link below to your examples!

PS: playful blogging is also fun and can help you to get through tough patches where you feel like giving it.

Posted: 07 Feb 2010 06:34 AM PST

Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips.

I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.

Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.

In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.

1. I added units to my Big Websites

Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.

Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).

Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.

2. I added units to my Small Websites

As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.

I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.

Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.

3. I used the Large Units

If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.

Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.

All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.

4. I placed the Units above the Fold

My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.

I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.

5. I Focused on Organic Traffic

My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).

To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.

6. I started using AdSense for Search

I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.

Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.

7. I started using AdSense for Feeds

Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.

You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.

8. I played around with section targeting

Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.

I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.

9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts

If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.

You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.

On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.

Daniel is the owner of Daily Blog Tips. He is also the author of the Make Money Blogging ebook, which you can download for free by signing up to his newsletter.

Posted: 05 Feb 2010 06:13 AM PST

Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?

Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.

His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.

One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every ‘rule’ us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.

Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I’ve been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.

Last year I came up with a list of ‘debates’ in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of ‘debates’ to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.

All in all I’ve come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.

Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they’re in and the type of audience that they’re attempting to connect with.

29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

1. RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
2. Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
3. Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
4. How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
5. Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hypens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
6. Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
7. Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
8. Content – Link content vs Original content
9. Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
10. Design – Professional Design vs Templates
11. Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
12. Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
13. Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
14. Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
15. Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
16. Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
17. Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
18. SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
19. Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
20. Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
21. Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
22. LinkBait – Anything goes (e.g.. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn’t Acceptable
23. Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don’t Interact
24. Blog Platforms – WordPress vs ((Insert Other Platforms Here))
25. Monetization – Blogs Should Be Monetized vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetized
26. Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
27. When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
28. Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
29. Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.

Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.

I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for ‘the formula’ might see that there’s a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.

Posted: 04 Feb 2010 06:06 AM PST

Guest post by Mike CJ.

“Treat your blog like a business” is something we’re told all the time. It’s solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business.

But what does it actually mean?

Have a proper accounts system

Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.

Set objectives

The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that’s fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you’re going to earn over the next year.

Set budgets

Once you know what’s coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger? Don’t waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it’s in budget do it, if it isn’t, don’t.

Seek opinions and advice

Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don’t run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.

Produce reports

Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn’t. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it’s even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it’s your partner.

Enter into collaborations

Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.

Use professional tools

It’s too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they’re a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren’t right.

Invest in training

Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you’ll get a far greater return than the initial cost.

Treat your readers like customers

Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that’s fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.

Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike’s Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:49 AM PST

Yesterday was my first day back at blogging after a 10 day vacation with my family and on Twitter I commented that I was finding it a little hard to get my brain back into blogging mode. @Mikeachim responded by suggesting I write a post on the daily rituals that I use to get my mind into gear.

I thought I’d take his suggestion and jot down a few notes – both as a way of getting my head back into blogging but also because looking at the tweets I received this morning it’s a problem many bloggers face.

As my head is a little scattered today (as I readjust) I’m going to tackle this as a list post – here’s a few thoughts:

1. Coffee

2 lattes with a sugar in each is a fairly essential part of my blogging routine.

2. Cafes

More important than the fact that I get caffeine into my bloodstream each morning is the fact that I do it in one of 2-3 local cafes each day. I find getting out of the house (I usually walk to them so get a 10 minute walk in too) helps me to snap myself out of ‘home mode’ and into ‘working/blogging mode’. I also find that blogging in public is stimulating too – sitting in the middle of a cafe is noisy and some might find it distracting but for me I find it actually helps me generate ideas and takes me into a slightly more social space than sitting alone at home in my front room.

3. Planning

I’m a fairly impulsive guy and like to go with inspiration when it hits – but I also find it helpful to spend time thinking ahead and planning posts in advance so that I have some places to start when I have a tough day where inspiration is not coming. On my laptop’s desktop I have a number of text files which are full of topic ideas, titles of posts and even half written ideas that I pull out when I’m stuck for ideas.

4. Series of Posts

Similarly I like to have a series of posts on the go at any time so that I can always write a post that adds to something I’ve written previously. For example I’m currently working on a series of posts on Principles of Successful Blogging which I add to 1-2 times a week and will keep running over a number of months.

5. Twitter

This post is an illustration of the power of having a network of people to help you generate ideas. I didn’t ask for ideas for posts but out of a conversation I was having on Twitter someone made a suggestion that helped generate an idea for a post. While Twitter can be a distraction – it can also be an idea goldmine if you use it well.

6. Face to Face

I won’t do this today as I’m manically trying to catch up on email as well as write new posts – but I do try to schedule in face time with other bloggers, twitterers and entrepreneurs ever week or two. This is partly just because I’m an introvert and could quite easily work alone for weeks on end (and need to force myself into some social interaction) but it’s also about putting yourself into places where your ideas connect with other people’s ideas – that’s often where the magic happens.

7. Capture Ideas

Another strategy that I use is to capture as many ideas as I come AS they come into my brain. I returned home from my vacation with a notes documents on my iphone that has 6-7 post ideas that came to me over the last 10 days. Some I may never use but there are a couple that will be great posts that I’d have forgotten if I didn’t immediately capture them in some way. I used to carry a notebook for this but my iPhone now does the job.

8. Exercise

I mention that I walk to the main cafe that I work out of – in addition to that I try to walk each day for at least 15 minutes. I find that this gets the blood pumping and often gives me a burst of energy to help me through the afternoons.

9. ProBlogger.com

This might seem like pure self promotion but I’ve found the ProBlogger community to be a goldmine of ideas and inspiration. I’m increasingly finding that I come away from the forums having seen what someone else is trying with inspiration to see how their approach will work on my blogs. Whether it’s the ProBlogger forums or another one – I think putting time aside to interact with and collaborate with other bloggers is something well worth doing.

10. Mind Mapping

I’ve outlined how I do this previously in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook but using mind mapping is something I do on a weekly basis to come up with post ideas.

11. Manage Distractions

I read many articles on this type of topic that tell you to eliminate distractions. They say to get offline completely, don’t check your email, turn off Twitter etc. I’ve written about doing this previously but am starting to wonder if completely eliminating these ‘distractions’ is always a good thing. For me it’s more about ‘managing’ the distractions and setting aside time to do them rather than just ending up with a confused jumble of tasks. Instead of flipping between writing a post, email, twitter and Facebook – give yourself set times for each task. For example – in the writing of this post I’ve stopped 2 times when I’ve begun to feel my energy for the post decreasing a little. The first time I jumped on Twitter for 5 minutes, the 2nd time I cleared a few emails. Each time I gave myself 5 minutes for the other thing and was disciplined about jumping back into writing for another 10-15 minutes. Perhaps this is just my impulsive nature Attention Deficit Disorder but sometimes I find eliminating distractions can actually make it harder to work as you’re wondering about the things you’re trying to ignore.

12. Play

Related to the idea of managing distractions I recently have been rediscovering the power of letting myself ‘play’ a little each day. While many productivity experts talk about eliminating ‘playful’ activity I think it’s actually important to spend time each day doing activity that is a little mindless and fun. I can’t explain why – but often after a 10 minute burst of playing a tower defense game on my iPhone or reading a post but funny article on a humor blog I often come back to my ‘work’ feeling a little fresh and with good ideas for my blog. There’s something powerful about letting your brain relax every now and again – the key is to manage it and not let your whole day become one big playful experience.

13. Golden Hours are…. Gold!

My ‘golden hours’ are 9-11am. This is when I do my best creative work and as a result it’s when I do most of my writing. Admin tasks, Emails and other tasks can usually wait a couple of hours until I’ve cranked out a post or two!

A lot more could be said on this topic. In fact I asked my Twitter followers how they get their brains into gear after a holiday and they came up with some great suggestions too. You can read them here.

What would you add?

How do you get your brain into ‘blogging mode’ after some time away from blogging (or first thing in the morning)?

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 05:15 AM PST

By Johnny B. Truant

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. You don’t have to create a product or develop a service, you don’t need huge amounts of focused traffic the way you do with AdSense, (I started using AdSense a year ago and just recently passed the $100 minimum payout), and you don’t need to do a ton of advertising or SEO to make it work.

All you really need is an audience to whom you can refer products and services.

Of course, the above statement is true in the same way it’s true that you only need food, water, and shelter to live. It’s technically accurate — but personally, I’d like to have Netflix and a few Twix bars, too.

I made around $20,000 in my first six months from affiliate marketing, and the following are a six tips I’ve found that will take you from bare bones to a legit affiliate income.

1. Establish trust

Technically, you can make a few bucks here and there even by tossing out links to people who don’t know and/or like you. I think of these as “cookie toss” sales, because most affiliate setups dictate that each time a person clicks on an affiliate link, that affiliate’s cookie (which identifies the customer as “belonging” to that affiliate) overwrites any previous cookies on the customer’s computer. If you’re on Twitter during a launch and toss out a bunch of affiliate links for the product that everyone is promoting, there’s a chance that your link will be the last link someone uses before buying. You didn’t really refer the sale; you lucked into it.

A far better way to go is to actually have some credibility with your readers, audience, and peers. If you have a blog, work on building bulletproof trust with your readers. If you’re on Twitter, tweet with some integrity, and be a real person rather than a selling drone. If your people like and respect you, they will believe you when you say a product or service is worth buying.

2. Promote only products you honestly believe in

Don’t be a shill. Once you start promoting as an affiliate, you’ll quickly discover how many things are out there to promote. If you hop on every one, your people will turn away because they’re always being sold to. Worse, they won’t believe that your recommendations have any merit because you’ll recommend anything. There are plenty of good things out there, so be a true “raving fan” of a product you like rather than a hawker.

3. Don’t promise the moon (i.e. tell the truth)

No product or service is perfect, so don’t pretend it is. There is a strong tendency (especially in online marketing) to oversell. Everybody’s course will triple your income in two days; every program is guaranteed to whiten your teeth and wax your new Ferrari while filling your hot tub with supermodels. People are smarter than to believe the BS, so don’t feed it to them. (And as a bonus, if you tell the truth, you’ll sleep better at night.)

If you want to go really nuts with this principle, you can take the contrarian’s approach like I did when I promoted a course by pointing out its foibles and the fact that you may well totally fail online. (By the way, I ended up being the top-selling affiliate for that course.)

5. Disclose your affiliate relationships

This really isn’t a bonus item anymore, actually. The Federal Trade Commission is now saying that bloggers must disclose that they will make money if people buy through their affiliate links.

The good news is that disclosure can be a good thing if you’ve established trust already. Loyal readers won’t care that you’ll benefit if they believe that your praise of the product is honest, or if they were planning to buy anyway.

6. Offer bonuses

This is a great one. Recently, I offered to give my $297 Zero to Business program to anyone who used my affiliate links to buy Copyblogger’s Teaching Sells course, which I honestly think is spectacular. Because my course added almost $300 in value to their purchase, customers loved it. And because the commission for Teaching Sells exceeded the price of Z2B, I loved it.

I think the biggest, simplest key to affiliate marketing is honesty and integrity. If you lie, yes, you may make sales — but those people who were lied to will never buy through you again. If on the other hand you build relationships and tell the truth, affiliate marketing results in a natural synergy. You refer people to good products that they will enjoy and benefit from. When they buy, you benefit, too. And when they benefit, they come back to thank you from the referral. In all likelihood, they’ll trust your future recommendations in the future — and then everyone benefits again.

Hey, it beats a plain old “food, shelter, and water” existence, right?

——–

Johnny B. Truant writes about online business, turkeys, and occasionally SpongeBob SquarePants’ pet snail at JohnnyBTruant.com. He invites cool folks to join his laid-back Jam Sessions call series and to connect with him on Twitter @johnnybtruant.

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:02 AM PDT

Have you ever had a moment in your life where everything changed?

You might not have known it at the time - but the moment was defining, it changed the course of some area of your life in a way that turned things upside down.

I had one of those course changing moments early in my blogging. It was a moment that resulted in my blogging moving from being a hobby that generated a nice bit of secondary income into a full time business.

It was a moment that at the time didn’t feel life changing - but it was.

The funny thing about this moment is that it wasn’t a discovery of some secret way to make money blogging, it wasn’t the day I stated one of my blogs… in fact it was a moment that didn’t immediately lead to any particular change on my blogs - because it was largely something that happened in my mind - a paradigm shifting moment.

It all started with 9 words from my wife (V)

‘You’ve got 6 months to make blogging full time.’

She then told me that if I didn’t get it to this kind of level I’d have to get a ‘real job’.

Up until this point I’d been talking about how blogging could one day provide us with a full time income. I’d been showing her the growth of the earnings from the blogs so far and projecting forward to what they might be in the future if things kept going.

I’d been on about it for months and things were going OK - the earnings graphs I kept showing her were trending up - I could see the possibility of one day being a full time blogger.

But I’d been talking a lot…. dreaming a lot…. creating a lot of pretty graphs…. and not really DOING a lot.

I didn’t really see it (I was too close and too caught up in my dreams) but V knew it and so she set me an ultimatum - a deadline that changed my thinking and more importantly led to me changing the way I went about my blogging.

In the moments after V’s ultimatum I had a realization that while I dreamed that one day my blogging would become a business that I’d been treating my blogging like a hobby.

I knew that if I were to succeed in going full time in the next six months that that had to change. I needed to start looking at my blogging as a business now - even though it was only earning a day or two a week’s income.

That moment changed everything.

That was the day I….

• started putting serious time aside for blogging
• became more focused upon my core tasks of creating content
• wasted less time on distractions
• became more strategic in my thinking and set myself goals to work towards
• began to look for new income streams - beyond AdSense
• started hustling for advertisers - ringing up businesses in my niche and pitching my blog to them
• began to seek out guest writing opportunities on other blogs and even in main stream media
• started setting myself deadlines for posting a certain number of posts a day and developed an editorial calendar
• I started networking more with other bloggers
• began to invest more time and even money into my learning of different aspects of blogging
• started to look for a business coach who could teach me how to look at what I do as a business instead of a hobby

That day began the process for me of looking at what I do as a business.

While not a lot changed on my blogs that day - the impact over the last 4-5 years has been significant. I’ve not looked back and many of the things I changed back then have become patterns and a natural part of my blogging work flow.

The #1 reason my blogging grew into a business was that I began to treat it as one.

Tomorrow I want to share a free opportunity with you that I think will help many of us as bloggers to make this mind shift. You see many of us are stuck in the mindset of looking at what we do as a ‘hobby’ and need to make a shift into looking at things more as a business person.

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances I’ve pulled tomorrow’s post. I was going to promote something that I thought fit the bill but on further investigation - it doesn’t. My sincere apologies but I don’t want to promote something that doesn’t fit with my ethos.

However I do recommend people take this idea of learning how to build a successful business seriously. I did this through finding a business coach, reading books and networking with business owners (offline and online).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 08:26 AM PDT

A Guest post by Jade Craven.

Have you heard of Johnny B Truant? He started writing at ‘The Economy Isn’t Happening’ but recently, he revealed he’s made $10?000 in 3 months. In his Ittybiz column, he told how he made nearly $3?000 in one month. He’s also written a couple of guest posts here on ProBlogger here and here.

What really attracted me to him was that he didn’t earn this money by taking advantage of people or using questionable tactics. He did it by finding out what people wanted and providing them with a solution that benefited them both.

In this post, I’ll talk about how Johnny did it. I’ll provide strategies and case studies so you can apply these tips to your on blog. I’ll even talk about the tactics he used to promote his killer new ecourse, for those who are looking at selling information products from their blog.

Finally, I’ll give you an exclusive discount for that e-course Zero to Business - just skip to the bottom if you want 10% off.

4 Ways To Earn Money By Helping People

Give Free Stuff strategically

Image by Anil Jadhav

How Johnny did this:

• He released a free instructional ebook about setting up a blog.
• He did free website setups in return for testimonials

How You Can Do this

• Barter your services with other skilled bloggers
• Release an introductory report
• Do free work in return for references or exposure
• Do case studies highlighting your skills.

Case studies.

• Leo Babauta, Skellie and Chris Garret got a lot of exposure because of their guest posting.
• Neil Creek takes headshots of attendees at twitter meetups for use on their social media sites. He has received a lot of praise over this, both from the local twitter community and international photographers. He has gone on to get many more clients and enquiries.
• Darren used to do case studies on his blog as an advertisement for his consulting. He no longer offers this service.

Provide calls to action regularly

Image by kozumel

How Johnny did this:

• He would frequently have P.S at the end of his post - including a few humorous ones
• He would simply state “Call to Action”

How you can provide calls to action:

• In the conclusion of the post, tell the reader what you want them to do
• Give them an incentive to click through

Case Studies:

• Ali Hales guest post on Problogger. She talked about the topic of staff blogging before encouraging people to check out her ecourse. As an extra incentive, she gave the readers a discount code.
• Dave Navarros post on Freelance Folder, where he encouraged the readers to give an example in the comments.

Find your people.

Image by Elvire.R.

How Johnny did this:

• He got a guest posting slot of Ittybiz, offering himself as a case study
• He is on the faculty of Project Mojave
• He has guest posted on the places where his target readership hangs out

How to do this:

• Find blogs that attract the kind of people you want to target. See if you can guest post on that blog.
• Seek  work and joint venture opportunities
• Look for regular writing opportunities

Case studies.

I don’t need to offer any case studies. Look around at your favourite blogs. Do you see the same people being featured? Are the same people interacting? They are the loyal fans.

Are you a loyal fan of anyone? You’ll usually find you tend to hang out in that persons group. You may buy from more than one person. These are the people you want to connect with.

Selling something? Focus on selling solutions.

Image by Doug88888

How Johnny did this

• He offered wordpress installs at a discounted price. To compensate, he asked that people buy through his affiliate link
• He sold group coaching to those that couldn’t afford the price of individual coaching..
• When realizing that people were still needing information, he created a course that was cheaper than getting Johnny to help them through the process.

How you can do this:

• See if you can offer a service at a discounted rate in exchange for purchasing something through their affiliate link
• Find creative ways of making your products more affordable without underpricing yourself.
• Listen to your audiences needs and create products to help them.

Case Studies:

• Sarah Prout does this in her Twitter Success Blueprint. She realized that businesses needed an affordable way to learn about twitter, so she created an ebook with information catered to professionals, as well as other twitter users.
• Men with Pens do this with their blog critiques. They offer a discount for ones offered on the blog.

I know many people hate being sold too. Rather than promote his course Zero to Business, I’ll talk about what you can learn from it.

What you can learn from the course

There are three main things I loved about the promotion strategy:

• He created humorous videos with viral potential.
• He purposely  avoided hype in his sales page
• He provided real and useful bonuses

Lets discuss how you can learn from each strategy.

The Humorous videos.

• He mocked a number of the key sales tactics in the internet marketing niche
• In his letter to his affiliates, he recommended that people promote the videos rather than the product

So - how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offering a quality resource that your affiliates can promote
• Mock some of the common techniques used in product launches in your niche

Avoiding Hype

• Johnny repeated several times that this product would provide technical solutions. It not make them rich.
• He then explained the costs of learning this if you paid his normal consulting fees.

So - how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Talk about the practical reasons about how your product can help someone
• Explain to them how your solution is better value than the alternative

Cool Bonuses

• He provided individual coaching to the first five people that signed up
• He offered group coaching to those who signed up by a certain date.

So - how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offer bonuses that are exclusive and are not freely available to other marketers
• Offer bonuses that will provide real value to the majority of your buyers

My call to action:

• If you want 10% off Johnnys e-course, Zero to Business, just use the word ‘problogger‘ as the discount code. Its that easy.
• If you want to check out Johnnys blog, go on over to his fancy new site.
• If you want rants about zombies, check out his twitter feed.

Posted: 19 Sep 2009 08:37 AM PDT

A friend who knows I’m a blogger recently asked me for my blog address so she could take a look. We were chatting with instant messaging, so I sent her the link. A few minutes later, she asked me how long I’d been blogging, whether I enjoyed it, and how much I earned. I responded with the details and then asked her the obvious question: “are you considering starting a blog?”. “I want to” she replied, “but I’m not an expert on anything. I don’t know what I would blog about”.

There’s no shortage of great advice on choosing a blog topic. Among all that advice about finding a topic with sufficient audience, income opportunities, a growing market, not too much competition and enough to write about, it never says that you need to be an expert on your chosen topic. And you don’t. At least not when you start. The most important ingredient is passion. You can learn enough about your topic to become an expert, but you can’t learn passion. And without passion, you won’t be able to sustain motivation for blogging over a long period.

Sharing what you learn

I started my first blog on Microstock photography - an open market where anyone can sell photos online. I knew I wasn’t an expert, but I was already researching all the techniques, styles, agencies and superstars of the topic. I figured I might as well start sharing what I was learning anyway. With the helps of blogs like ProBlogger, the ‘learning to blog’ part was easy.

I carefully crafted my About Me page as my first line of defense. I wrote in detail about my ‘beginner’ status and that my background was in another industry. I wanted people to know that I wasn’t an expert so they didn’t think I was pretending to be one. My first few posts were about the very basics of microstock. They were my lessons as I was learning them, shared for anyone who started later than I did.

Being there for opportunities to find you

After I’d been blogging for just six months I got very lucky. I received a message via my blog’s contact page from Photo District News (PDN) asking me to call them to discuss “an opportunity”. Doing my best to sound cool and collected, I phoned immediately. They were planning a session about microstock for their annual PhotoPlus Expo, the largest photography conference & expo in the world. And they wanted me to speak!

Didn’t they realize I wasn’t an expert?? My About page was super-clear, and my blog posts were still mostly about very basic topics. But as they pointed out, nobody else was blogging specifically about microstock at the time. Even just six months of sharing what I’d learned and comparing the agencies put my level of knowledge ahead of a lot of people in the industry.

Learn from the experts and leaders in your topic

Speaking at that conference did a lot more for me than just boost my ego and give me something to boast about. It was where I met the leaders of the microstock and broader stock photo industry. I suppressed my desire to request autographs and did my best to make as many contacts as I could. I asked lots of questions and listened carefully to the answers. I knew what these people could do for my knowledge and my blogging.

Over the following year these industry leaders helped me with my education through countless emails, online chats and comments correcting my blog posts. They introduced me to other people with specialist knowledge and sent me lots of industry news. Each time I learned something new or got news, I blogged about it. I didn’t always understand what they were teaching me or recognize the company names in the news, so I had to research. The need to understand my topic in order to blog about it was forwarding my education. I was blogging to learn.

Never stop learning

It’s now two years since that conference. I still don’t refer to myself as a topic expert, but my about page no longer uses the word “beginner”. I’ve continued to blog my lessons as bigger and better opportunities keep flowing into my inbox. My network is also thriving, providing me with a broader education and access to amazing resources.

Sharing this experience with my friend completely opened up the range of topics she is considering for her blog. She is now looking at her interests rather than her expertise. She knows she doesn’t have to be an expert. At least not at the beginning.

Lee Torrens is a true fan of the blogging model and its strength as a platform for attracting and launching all sorts of entrepreneurial projects. He shares his experiences selling photos online with microstock at his blog, Microstock Diaries. He’s been blogging to learn since early 2007 and is still passionate about his topic.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use Blogger to Upload your Javascript (.js) files ? - Unlimited Bandwidth!!

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 05:36 AM PDT

This post explains how to host javascript(.js) files in blogger itself, so you don’t need to worry about bandwidth limitations,etc:-

“How to host Javascript files for Free with unlimited bandwidth ?” is one of the most frequently asked questions in the blogger community. There are tons of hosts out there who can help you host your .js files for Free, but all have some bandwidth limitations and also they are not very reliable.

My friend Switcher previously explained how to use google sites to host your javascipt files for free in his blog (you can read that post here)… I used that method to host javascript files of my previously released magazine style blogger template ‘ Falkner Press ‘… but, the problem is even google sites have bandwidth limitations. So, if the bandwidth exceeds at a particular moment, the javascript files don’t load which results in complete template mess up.

So, if you have those kind of problems, here is a simple trick.

I’ll take Falkner Press template javascript files as an example.
If you look at the top of the template code, you see something like this:

So, as you can see, there are three javascript files (highlighted with colors) in the template. The files are hosted at google sites.

2. Copy each of those three links and paste them in your browser and download all those three files.

3. Now, open each file with Wordpad (not notepad) and copy that code.

4. Now, here is the trick…
Paste the code you copied (copied from first file) in your blogger template like this.


<script type='text/javascript'>

//<![CDATA[

PASTE THE JAVASCRIPT CODE HERE

//]]>

</script>

What about if you have 2 javascript files or three (like falkner press template) ? Simple! Just repeat the process again… like this..

5. And the Final and Most Important step… SAVE THE CHANGES

Benefits of this trick:
» No file size limitations
» No bandwith limitations
» Super fast page loading (coz files are stored in blogger itself)

Like the trick ? comment..