BloggWP

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: 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: 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: 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.

Posted: 20 Sep 2009 07:11 AM PDT

This is a guest-post from AdesBlog.com. Follow Ades on twitter @ades.

We all know that content is king and that if you keep blogging… if you keep doing what you love… the traffic and the money will follow suit. While that’s partially true, there is also things that you can do to:

• Index your newly launched blog fast by major Search Engines
• Increase traffic to your blog
• Improve your SERPs (Search Engine Result Positions)

Why wait right? Content can be king but waiting around for traffic to come by itself is not a good way to start blogging. So let’s start…

Getting Indexed

Let’s say you launched a blog today and want it on Google’s results tomorrow. Can this be done? Yes.

Easiest way to get indexed by major Search Engines is to get mentioned by established blogs. This usually will get your blog indexed within 24 hours. But since we are new (i.e the newly launched blog of ours) I don’t think any blogger want to mention it. So instead of begging other bloggers to notice your newly launched blog, you just have to figure out other ways of getting indexed by Google fast. Can it be done? Absolutely! (All it takes a little effort on your side).

1. Blog Communities

There are few blog related community portals that have a very good rankings in Google and other Major Search Engines Results, they are: MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Blogged and NetworkedBlogs, particularly MyBlogLog. This means that if you get your blog on these blog communities, Google will have no other choice but to index your blog. So, go ahead and register for an account on these communities and list your blog on it. Once you are done you will have a page like this, this and this.

What to pay attention: Your blog’s description (have a proper write-up), keywords & tags (add related keywords and tags to your listing, this will be used by other members to find your blog), branding (put your logo, avatars, screenshots etc. have a consistent branding everywhere), and list your blog in the correct category.

2. Site Valuation & Stats Sites

Some of those How Much Your Site Worth? sites have a good ranking in Search Engines. All you need to do is to go there and check how much your site worth. This would create a special page for your blog (like this) and consecutively it would be indexed by Google. Here is a list of worthy sites: WebsiteOutlook, StatBrain, CubeStat, WebTrafficAgents, BuiltWith, WhoIs, QuarkBase, URLfan and AboutTheDomain.

3. Feed Aggregators

List your blog’s feed in these feed aggregators Feed-Squirrel, OctoFinder, FeedAdage. Once you have submitted your feed to these sites, they will keep track of your newly published posts and index them in their site. Whenever someone clicks on the blog post title, he/she will be redirected to your original blog post sending you free traffic and getting your latest posts indexed by Google.

4. Social Sites

Registering account on Social Sites with the same username as your blog’s URL is very effective in getting your blog indexed by Search Engines. Especially for those targeted keywords.

For example, if your blog’s name is WhiteElephant, it’s a good practice to register the same username at twitter as @WhiteElephant, and to create a page in Facebook at www.facebook.com/WhiteElephant. Having a consistent keyword-username on all major Social Sites will help get your blog indexed faster, and at a later stage it will also help build a “brand” for your blog.

So, get account on major Social Sites for your newly launched blog, namely: Twitter, Facebook (create a page for your blog), Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious etc. By the way, it’s a good pratice to create a separate Social Sites account for each of your projects. This way you can stay focused and post messages that are related to your project. In the long run, this will help build a community that are like-minded around your project.

Note from Darren: it’s worth nothing that many social media sites (like Twitter) use no follow tags on links which means the links don’t really help with SEO. Having said this - it’s still worth getting pages for your keywords/brand as these pages can rank in and of themselves in Google and can help you to have control over numerous search results for the same keyword.

5. Misc Sites

Squidoo is a community website that allows people to create pages (called “lenses”) on various topics. Creating a topic that is related to your blog and then including your feed in that page would help your blog get indexed by Search Engines. Squidoo used to have a really good ranking in Google results, but not so much today. But it’s still ranks well and it shouldn’t be neglected.

ChangeDetection is a website that monitors sites for changes. When you monitor a particular site using ChangeDetection, it will ask you whether you want the notices to be public or private. If you say public, it will be published in their news section. For example; AdesBlog.com got an update today, type of update: text additions etc. This of course will get picked up by Search Engines and Search Engines in return will index your blog.

Technorati is a search engine for searching blogs. According to Wikipedia, as of June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. It’s a dying breed, but not just dead yet. You have to definitely register for an account and get your blog listed on Technorati.

That’s it. Once you are done with creating accounts and submitting your newly launched blog in the above mentioned sites, you should see your blog in Google’s Search Results within 24 hours. Most of the time it will appear within the next few hours only.

Lastly, getting indexed is one thing but sustaining that traffic is another. And this is where the Content is King phrase should truly be emphasized. Because, without a good and valuable content, all your effort will be just wasted.

I hope you have found this post useful.

Abdylas Tynyshov (Ades) is a full-time blogger based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He blogs at http://www.adesblog.com and is the creator of a great freeware color picker tool. You can follow him on twitter at @ades.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 28 Jan 2010 06:07 AM PST

This post continues my series exploring

Have you ever seen a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and momentum and growing in size as it rolls until it gets to a size that will destroy anything and anyone in its path???  

Me neither…. not outside of cartoons anyway….

While the image may not be one too many of us have seen in reality – it is a great metaphor for what seems to happen to many successful blogs.

They start small (like any other blog) but gradually (at first) grow (a reader at a time) into blogs with more and more loyal readers. Along the way events (some lucky and some strategic) happen that make the blog grow and roll faster down the slope.

In time momentum grows and it seems that the blog can’t help but grow as it rolls on and gathers new readers, builds its brand, expands with new features…. in time people start referring to it as an A-List blog and what was once a simple blog with no readers has ‘made it’.

How do successful blogs grow?

There are many reasons that successful blogs grow bigger and bigger over time but one principle that I observe in many such blogs is that they use the power of leverage to grow what they have to the next level.

The principle is simple yet it can be applied in many different ways and levels to blogging. It revolves around this question:

“what do you have now that you can use to help you get a step closer to where you want to be?”

Leverage: “the mechanical advantage gained by being in a position to use a lever” (source).

Another way to ask the question – what ‘lever’ do you have at your disposal that might help you to lift your blog to its next level.

Illustrating Leverage – an Example

Most readers of ProBlogger will pretty familiar with my photography site. I call it a site and not a blog because today it has a forum, 3 blog areas, strong Twitter and Facebook presence, 2 E-Books (portraits and Photo Nuts and Bolts) and continues to expand. It is read by 3 million or so visitors a month and generates some decent income.

However it wasn’t always what you see today. In fact when I started it in April 2006 it was a simple blog with a free template design that had 3-4 new posts a week and that made less than a few cents a day.

The last 4 years of building dPS have seen many many points of leverage. Let me highlight a few:

1. My previous photography blog – before dPS I had a small photography blog (now inactive) that aggregated camera reviews from around the web. The traffic wasn’t massive but it was enough that I had a nice little community of readers (mainly Australians as it was on a .au domain). When I launched dPS I was able to kick start it by letting my current readers of my original photography blog know about it. It didn’t generate a rush of traffic, but it meant that in week 1 it had some readers. Similarly i promoted dPS here on ProBlogger in that first week. I don’t think it drove too many new readers directly but know quite a few ProBlogger readers recommended dPS to family and friends. Point of Leverage: traffic/brand from a previous blog to launch a new one.
2. Profile/Network – because I had been blogging in the niche for a while I knew a number of other photography bloggers. I was able to pull in a few favours and get some promotion from these blogs to help drive a little more traffic (the links would have helped with SEO also).  Point of Leverage: relationships from credible people in the industry to help launch the blog.
3. Flickr – I had a very basic presence on Flickr when I started dPS. I used it purely to share photos with my family and friends and to host the occasional image for my blog. As a result I had a network of 40-50 people on Flickr that I was able to promote dPS to. I also started a Flickr ‘group’ on at that time and promoted it to my network of 40-50 people.  Point of Leverage: using a presence on a social media site to drive traffic to a new blog.
4. Flickr Group – the Flickr group grew quite organically. I did promote it to a few people but they invited their friends who invited theirs… it had a life of its own (today it has over 10,000 members). After 6 months I took the energy of that Flickr group and started a forum on the dPS domain. I exclusively invited members of the Flickr group to join the forum.  Point of Leverage: using a presence on a social media site to launch a new feature on a site.
5. Social Media – traffic to the blog and forum continued to grow. I had never really done anything on Twitter or Facebook with dPS until about 18 months ago but decided to test what would happen if we started to promote our Twitter and Facebook pages from the dPS site. Doing so helped us to grow solid followings on those networks. Point of Leverage: using established traffic on a site to recruit followers on social media.
6. Expansion of Topics – when I first started dPS I dreamed of a site that not only did tips on how to use cameras but one that was wider in terms of topics and covered cameras and post production (and more). However I decided not to launch with this wide focus but rather just to focus upon beginner tips. Last year we rolled out two new areas (cameras/gear and post production). I’m glad I waited – having an established audience on related topics enabled us to kick start these new areas. Point of Leverage: using established traffic to launch new areas of the site.
7. E-Books – having built an audience, brand and community I was able to launch E-Books that were guaranteed of at least some level of success. We had traffic (and more importantly credibility, goodwill and trust with our readers), community, multiple ways of connecting with our audience and relationships with other sites – all of this was leveraged to help launch our E-Books. After we had launched the first we also had a database of buyers which helped launch the 2nd E-Book.

Of course there are many other small points of leverage along the way but hopefully you get the point. Each time I’ve launched or grown the site I’ve looked at the arsenal of what I already have and pooled those resources to help build what comes next.

Points of leverage can come in all shapes and sizes. Some might not seem that big but they can lead to things that are. For example my initial Flickr network of 40-50 people led to a Flickr group of over 10,000 which led to a forum of over 80,000!

What do You Have that You Can Leverage?

I’ve raised this topic in a number of presentations over the years and the reaction of many is ‘I don’t have anything to leverage’.

I can relate to that feeling – in 2002 when I started my very first blog I didn’t really have much either. I’d not done much online beyond using hotmail, IRC chat and an occasional search on Netscape. I didn’t have an online network, knew virtually nobody who did and had no idea where to start. I’d not had any experience in building a website or writing copy for the web – I’d only seen my first blog hours before I started my own.

So I started with what I did have – my friends and family. They were my first readers.

Interestingly one of my friends had another friend who was a blogger on a similar topic to me. That generated my first link which generated my first comment from someone I wasn’t related to (a momentous moment in the life of any blogger)!

Homework – Make an Inventory of What You Have

Here’s an exercise that could be helpful. Grab something to write/type with and start making a list of what you have at your disposal. Thing broadly – it could include almost anything:

• Current blogs/sites that you own or are involved in
• Newsletter lists
• Social Media Accounts/Presence
• Real life Relationships and Networks
• Skills
• Experiences
• Memberships in clubs/communities
• Profile
• Customer databases
• Financial resources

This list only scratches the surface – what you have will be unique to you.

Another thing you might like to add to your list is things that you don’t have but that you have the ability to have. Next step goals if you like.

• For example many bloggers have the ability to write content and could potentially guest post on other blogs. Guest posting on another blog might not be your ultimate goal as a blogger – but it could take you a step closer.
• Another example might be that you might want to get to know someone that you don’t yet know. I know one blogger who told me that they felt that they didn’t know anyone in the blogosphere so they made a list of 10 bloggers that they wanted to get to know and meet in person over 2009. They achieved their goal and now have a decent relationship with 10 pretty influential people when they need it down the track.

One Last Tip – Build It Before You Need It

As I wrote my 7 point list of points of leverage that I’ve had at dPS above it struck me that what I was writing sounded pretty strategic and as though I knew what I was doing.

The reality is that I’d say that about 20% of that was strategic and 80% of it was not. When I started out I knew I wanted to build a site that helped people grow in their photography and that would hopefully make me a decent income – but I didn’t have much idea of where it was headed. I didn’t see a forum, I had no idea about E-Books and certainly had not considered Twitter or Facebook (I’m not even sure if they existed back then).

My approach instead was to grow the site organically – to try new things and see where there was energy and to keep building upon what worked. I wanted to build a presence in any way that I could and that was relevant to my potential audience and then to see what opportunities opened up to grow things further both in terms of size and financially.

I didn’t really need to have a way to email readers in the early days because I wasn’t selling anything – but I built a newsletter list from day 1. I didn’t really have much to say on Twitter or Facebook when I started with that but decided to build that network early because I knew one day I would.

In a sense a lot of what I did in the early days was to build a network/community knowing that one day I’d need it to do more than make a few dollars from ad revenue. This of course came to be true when I launched our E-books in the last 6 months. I’m glad I didn’t wait until I needed the network to build it but instead built it well in advance.

Further Reading:

• 10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog by Leveraging Other Online Presence
• Blogs as Launching Pads
• How to Leverage Your Blog for Bigger Things – Springboard blogging Part II

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 30 Jan 2010 06:16 AM PST

The last poll here on ProBlogger examined a growing trend among bloggers trying to monetize their sites – to sell their own products from their blogs rather than just relying upon advertising and affiliate revenue.

Whether it be by selling an E-Book, training program or some other kind of learning program or whether it is selling one self as a consultant or promoting a product from a business that the blogger owns – more and more bloggers do seem to be exploring this as a way to make money.

The poll results were as follows:

I’ve not run this poll previously so have nothing to compare it to – however my gut feeling on this one is that if conducted even just a year ago the percentages would have been further apart. I suspect in the year ahead we’ll see them grow even closer.

Out of interest I thought I’d compile a list of the types of products and services that people said that they sell in the comments of the poll post. You can see that there’s a lot of variation (it’s actually a really inspiring list to me that illustrates a little of what can be done with a blog!

• Design work
• Web/Plugin Development
• Membership Site
• Coaching/Mentoring
• E-Books
• Reports
• Legal Services
• Book (hard cover)
• Software
• Speaking/Training Services
• Music Lessons
• Copy Writing Services
• SEO services
• Tutoring
• Screencast/Video Content
• Scrapbook Supplies
• Sewing Patterns
• Photographic Prints
• Excel Templates
• Music/CD
• Craft
• Flowers/Florist
• Bag Patterns
• Marketing Services
• Skincare products
• Handmade Soap
• Makeup Artist Services
• Craft Kits
• Calendars
• Vintage Clothing
• Gourmet Food Items
• Toys
• Website Templates
• Paintings/Art
• Diet Products
• Real Estate Brokerage
• Fitness Program
• Scuba Diving Education Business
• Personalised Spoof Newspaper Front Pages
• T-Shirts
• Jewellery

There are sure to be many many other examples of what can be sold off the back of a blog – feel free to add more of your experience in this in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 28 Jan 2010 06:41 AM PST

Recently, Blogger launched the much awaited Blogger Pages Feature.
So, lets see how to Create Static Pages in Blogger.

1. Sign into Blogger Draft (draft.blogger.com)

2. Click on New Post as usual.

3. Select the Edit Pages from the top menu

4. Click on ‘New Page‘ button.

5. Now, give your page a title and write the content and publish the page.

6. If you want to display the Pages list in your Blog sidebar, select the ‘Blog Sidebar’ option,or you can keep it as nav menu below header by selecting ‘Blog Tabs’ option.

Note: If You’ve Selected either ‘Blog Sidebar’ or ‘ Blog Tabs ‘ option and if you see any bx-error,.. then, come back to last page and select ‘No Gadget’ option.
This means,you have to add the links manually to your template.

Click on Edit Pages again and Right Click on View -> Copy link location (in firefox) and Add the link manually in your sidebar via Link widget or you can add the link in your navigation bar via template > edit html.

Thanks to Blogger for the Awesome feature..

The Product Library Management service offers well established and experienced service in the area of Catalog Library Management.
The service provider work for various online stores and retailer who have their products listed on their websites. Product Library management involves creating online catalog with the combined efforts of proof readers, content developers, graphic artists, data entry personnel.

Catalogs are created describing the product features, their specifications, clear descriptions about the product, pricings, color and style variants clearly mentioned, and images of the products. Only a well experienced team can bring the finer points of the catalog by mapping them correctly to right categories and sub categories.

When an online store tries to work in house on their catalog building they lack the combination of talents to bring out the most cost effective web presence for their products. Hence outsourcing the catalog library management helps the online stores to focus on the marketing and expansion of the store. Most of the online stores outsource the catalog management because it gives them cost effective and professional catalog display for their products.

The outsourcing providers with their experienced team bring out the most attractive at the same time user friendly product displays on the sites. Their experience gives them to make the pages SEO friendly by giving the right tags and keywords so that the products are highly ranked during Google search. They understand that the success of online product depends on the web positions and hence the catalogs are created to suit the search engine techniques.

Images play a vital role in product display. Only a talented graphic designer can redesign and create products which give the buyer a look and feel of the product. Product swatches are created on the site so that the buyer gets a close look at the design and the texture of the product. The ultimate aim of any catalog is to help the buyer in taking the buying decisions with the help of the information provided online.

The success of any online catalog management is also to be a catalyst to quick decisions and profession service providers help the online stores by being a partner and work towards the success of their client’s business.

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 05:50 AM PST

Last night I was chatting with a blogger who was feeling completely overwhelmed with their goal of making a living from blogging.

I asked them how much they wanted to make from blogging.

They responded that they wanted to be a full time blogger.

I pushed them for a figure – what does ‘full time’ mean for you?

They thought for a moment and said that they could live off $30,000 USD a year (note: they wouldn’t have minded earning more but would be able to quit their current job at this kind of rate).

$30,000 a year sounds like a lot to make from a blog – especially when you’re starting out and are yet to make a dollar. To this blogger it seemed so overwhelming that she had almost convinced herself that it was not possible.

Advice for Becoming a Full Time Blogger

My response was threefold:

1. Don’t Give Up Your Day Job…. Yet

It is possible to make $30,000 a year blogging, but it’s unlikely to happen over night. Keep your feet on the ground and your expectations reasonable. IF it happens (and there are no guarantees) it is almost certainly going to take some time.

2. Be Specific

Saying that you want to be full time as a blogger is a great goal – but it’s not really specific enough. This is why I wanted the blogger I was chatting with to name a figure. For her full time was $30,000 – for others it could be more or less – the amount is not the point, the point is that you need something more concrete to work towards so that you’re able to measure where you’re at.

For me when I decided I want to go full time as a blogger I decided that I wanted to aim for $50,000 (Aussie Dollars) in a year as the bench mark (at that time $50,000 was around 36,000 USD). That’s around what I would have been earning in my current main job if I had been doing that full time (I was actually working a number of part time jobs at the time as well as studying part time).

Knowing what I was aiming for helped me in a number of ways when it came to getting to that goal.

3. Break it down into something more Achievable

$30,000 USD still sounds big when you’re a new blogger – and in some ways it is. However there are different ways of thinking about that figure. Lets break it down in the way that I used to look at my target.

• $30,000 a year = $576.92 per week
• $30,000 a year = $82.19 a day
• $30,000 a year = $3.42 an hour

We could break it down on a monthly or on a minute by minute basis if we wanted to (in fact I did do it by minute from time to time for fun) – but the exercise is really about helping you to see that perhaps your big goal is a little more achievable if you are to break it down. Making $82.19 somehow seems a little bit easier to me than making $30,000 (or is that just me?).

OK – the other way that I used to break down my goal that I found really helpful to me was to do it based upon what I need to achieve to meet that target. For me I would usually look at the daily figure – in this case $82.19.

What do I need to do to make $82.19 a day ($30,000 a year)?

Well there’s a number of ways that much. Lets look at a few:

• CPC Ads – lets say we’re running mainly AdSense on our blog and that the average click is paying 5 cents. That equates to 1643 clicks on AdSense ads (note: AdSense also runs CPM ads so it’s not quite as simple as saying you need 1643 clicks… but to keep this simple lets just go with that).
• CPM Ads – lets say that we’re running CPM ads on our blog and we’re being paid $2 CPM per ad unit and we had 3 ads on each page (which is effectively $6 CPM per page). This would mean we’d need 13,000 page impressions.
• Monthly Sponsorships – one way to sell ads directly to advertisers is to sell ads on a month by month basis as a sponsorship. To make $30k in a year you need to sell $2500 a month in ads. You might have 6 ad spots on your blog so this is 6 advertisers at $416.66 per advertiser per month.
• Low Commission Affiliate Products – Lets say we were promoting affiliate products from a site like Amazon and your commissions were on average about 40 cents per sale. To earn $82.19 you’d need to sell 205 products.
• High Commission Affiliate Products – In this case you might be promoting ebooks and earning $8 a copy (that’s what you’d earn selling my 31DBBB ebook per commission). The math is simple on this one – you’d had to sell around 10 e-books a day.
• Really Big Commission Affiliate Products – of course e-books are not the biggest product out there to promote – there are products like training courses where you can earn hundreds per sale. Lets take one that might pay out $300 for a yearly membership on a bigger product. In this case you need to sell 8 of these per month.
• Selling Your Own E-book – got your own product, perhaps an e-book, to sell from your blog? At $19.95 a sale you need to sell just over 4 of these a day. You can do the sums on cheaper or more expensive products.

Of course there are many many other ways to make money from blogs. Subscriptions, donations, paid reviews, selling yourself as a consultant….. etc. You can do the sums for yourself on your own model.

I know that some of the above figures still sound out of reach for bloggers – 1643 clicks on your AdSense ads sounds massive to a new blogger…. and it is – but do keep in mind that you can combine some of the above (in fact I’d recommend you diversify your income).

You might run 2 ad networks on your site, promote Amazon affiliates, sell your own e-book and promote someone’s membership course.

Looking back on my own figures for around the time when I hit my $50,000 AUD (around $100 USD a day) goal and for me at that time my income mix looked a like this (going from memory here):

• AdSense: $35
• Chitika: $20
• Private Ad Sales: $20
• Amazon: $15
• Other Affiliate Commissions: $10

Note: I didn’t achieve this milestone until I’d been blogging for over 2 years (I blogged for the first year without trying to make money).

This didn’t happen over night (let me emphasize this – blogging for money is neither quick nor is it easy money) but I really found that breaking things down into more bite sized pieces helped me to stay motivated but also helped me to identify what I needed to work on in order to reach my goals (and for me to quite my day job).

Again – don’t quit your day job yet (in fact you may not want to quit it even when you reach your goal – it can be good to have a back up plan) but do work hard at being specific about your blogging goals and attempt to break it down in a way that helps you move towards them.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Have you ever wanted to earn more money with Google Adsense? If you write and publish content for online marketing, I’m sure you have! The question of course is “How does one effectively optimize and organize his/her website content in order to increase his/her Adsense earnings?” The answer to this question can easily be summed up in three main steps: (1) keyword research (targeting terms and keywords with high search volume, and with as little competition as possible), (2) search engine optimization for traffic, and (3) split-testing and implementation of ad layouts that are proven to result in the most conversions (clicks).

Choosing Keywords to Target
Keyword research is an important part of online marketing. Whether you want to write articles or run Google Adwords campaigns, you should always start by doing your keyword research to figure out which keyword phrases you should target the most.
In contrast to many other Adsense publishers, I don’t target high paying Adsense keywords (well, at least not the highest paying keywords). What I usually do is target small niches and focus on getting high in the searches. Nonetheless, I must admit that optimizing your content with high paying Adsense keywords is certainly one of the best approaches to make more money with Google Adsense if of course you can overcome the competition and get a constant amount of traffic (higher Adsense paying keywords = higher Pay-per-click rates).
How to Find High Paying Adsense Keywords
Google Adwords provides a free keyword research tool to help publishers find keyword ideas and check out the highest paying Cost-Per-Click Keywords for Google Adsense, allowing them to run effective Google Adwords campaigns and write content with the highest paying keywords in mind.
If you already have a website, I would recommend that you check out your current keywords, and then optimize your content using related terms that have higher Cost-Per-Click rates.
Here is how you proceed:
1. First, go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It should look like this.

2. Select Website content
3. Enter your website URL
4. Click the Get keyword ideas button
5. Click the dropdown list arrow below Choose columns to display (Group keywords terms by common terms’ box should be checked)
6. Make sure that US dollars (USD $) is selected under Calculate estimates using different maximum CPC dib:
7. Type 100 in the box next to the dropdown list box and click the recalculate button
8. Click Estimated Avg. PCP title one time to sort by price and a second time to sort from highest to lowest.
10. Now you have a detailed list of high paying Adsense keywords that you can use to re-write your website content.
Finding New High Paying Adsense Keywords
You can increase your Adsense earnings even higher by adding new keywords to your current ones. Just follow the steps listed below:
1. Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool
2. Select Descriptives words or phrases
3. Click the Use synonyms checkbox to select it if necessary
4. Type a keyword in the textbox
5. After typing in the characters in the picture, click the Get keyword ideas button
6. Click the Choose columns to display arrow and select show all in the dropdown list
7. Select US dollars (USD $) under Calculate estimates using different maximum CPC dib:
8. Type 100 in the box next to the dropdown list box and click the recalculate button
9. Click Estimated Avg. PCP title one time to sort by price and a second time to sort from highest to lowest.
10. Collect the highest paying keyword phrases, and use them when you write new content for your website.
Here are some high Cost-Per-Click keywords I’ve found using the method explained above:
school loan consolidation
school loans consolidation: $39.39
consolidate school loans: $35.02
consolidating school loan: $34.40
Domain name
available domain names: $24.60
buying a domain name: $22.25
buy domain name: $19.06
Note: Cost-Per-Click (different from Pay-Per-Click) is the amount of money an advertiser pays every time one of his/her ads is clicked. The publisher (that would be you) doesn’t get more than 60% of that amount.

I found this tip in www.dreamydonkey.com .

1.Login to your dashboard–> layout- ->Page Elements

2.Click on ‘Add a Gadget’.

3.Select ‘HTML/Javascript’ and add the code given below and click save.

No. of posts to be displayed nMaxPosts = your value
Scroll delay nScrollDelay = your value
Direction of scroll sDirection=”left” or “right”
Character after each post passing sBulletChar=”Any character”
Open link in new window sOpenLinkLocation=”N” or “Y”

Now you are done.

Posted: 10 Aug 2009 07:38 AM PDT

Today we’re examining principle #6 of creating compelling content for your blog but to be honest I feel really strange writing it - because it’s too easy and really should go without saying….

However it’s something I know most bloggers struggle with, despite knowing it - so here goes….

Creating compelling content for a blog doesn’t just happen.

Unless you’re something of a freak (or have a great gift) creating compelling content takes a lot of time and effort. Really it is the same as any creative process - it takes time.

Tangent - over the weekend just gone I had the honor to attend the world premier of an amazing (and controversial) documentary by the name of the 10 Conditions of Love (you can see a trailer for it here on YouTube). The film has been in the headlines here in Melbourne as a result of the Chinese trying to stop it being shown.

The director (Jeff Daniels) is a friend and we know he’s put a great deal of work into creating the documentary. In fact by day he works as a secondary school teacher and so his documentary work has largely been an after hours passion. This particularly film took 7 years to make!

I reflected on the way home from seeing the film to my wife that apart from it being an inspiring story that one of the things that made the biggest impact for me was Jeff’s dedication to the task. 7 years of dreaming, researching, filming, editing…. to create a 55 minute end result.

Having seen the film I feel the 7 years of crafting this film was well worth it - it’s a thought provoking and inspiring tale (can you tell I’m a fan?) - but in addition to the challenging story I was challenged by Jeff’s own incredible effort in putting the film together. I came away asking myself whether I put a similar kind of time and effort into the creation of my own content?

Great blog posts don’t just happen. However when I talk to bloggers about their blogging workflow I get the distinct impression that many of us don’t actually put a lot of time aside to develop our posts. While there are times when whipping out a quick post on a basic idea can connect with your readership I’ve found that it is when I set aside extended periods of time to work on a post that it raises in quality to the next level.

I know the pressure of feeling you have to get out a post to keep your posting schedule moving but why not commit to working on one post each week that you work on each day over the week.

Your Homework for Today:

It’s the start of another week - so today choose a larger topic that will take some thought and effort and set aside time each day over the coming week to really put some effort into the writing of the post. Set aside at least 10-15 minutes each day of this week to think about that post

• to research what others are saying on the topic
• to look at it from new angles and form a unique opinion on the topic
• to find examples and quotes to add new depth to the post
• to check it for errors
• to make it ‘look’ good (by finding pictures and taking extra time to format it well)

To help you through this process I’ve outlined 10 points in the process of writing a blog post that taking a little extra time can help you to improve your post.

You don’t need to spend 7 years on the post but see what happens when instead of whipping together a post on the run you take time to ‘craft’ it into something more.

Note: Not every blog needs to have long in depth posts to be successful. Many successful blogs take the approach of creating lots of short, sharp and ‘link’ based content - however even many of these throw in longer more thoughtful posts from time to time. If this isn’t the ’style’ of your blog then I understand your hesitation in mixing things up - but there’s no harm in trying something new on your blog from time to time. It’s all a part of experimenting with new voices and styles - you never know, you might just be surprised by the result!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Power of Taking Extra Time to Create Content