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.

What is OIOpublisher?OIOpublisher is an ad manager that focuses on maximising your revenue, saving you time, and keeping you in complete control of ad sales on your website or blog.

Written in php, this ad management script can be used to sell and serve ads on any website. It can even be used as a Wordpress plugin right out of the box!

Now is the time to stop giving other people a share of the profits generated by your websites!

Why use OIOpublisher?

• Complete control over your advertising, with fully automated sales
• Make money from your websites whilst saving valuable time
• Keep 100% of your revenue, forget middleman commission
• Sell all forms of ads, and even your own digital products
• Run 3rd party ad networks alongside your own ads
• Gain exposure through our free ad marketplace

for details info at :

http://sales.oiopublisher.com/clickbank/?hop=dejavu9172

Today, Amir Helzer from WPML (WordPress Multilingual) shares his experience building a custom WordPress theme.

When you’re designing your blog all sorts of options are open to you - starting with a free theme (that you can later edit), through a premium customizable theme (like Thesis or Revolution2) and ending with a custom theme, created just for your site.

In January, Web Designer Matt Brett talked here about how to redesign a blog (and part 2). These posts covered the design goals, functionality and implementation. I’d like to talk about the process of working with the designer - the person who’s going to create your theme.

If you’re thinking about getting a custom theme, following these steps can make the process shorter, more productive and more enjoyable for both you and the designer.

1) State what you need and define the scope of the work

We’ll start with a list of everything that we need from this design:

A WordPress theme - sounds obvious, but you don’t want the designer to supply you just the PSD files, or a HTML file that you can turn into a theme yourself, right? Specify which version of WordPress you’re going to use it with.

Logo - a professionally designed logo can be expensive by itself, so make sure it’s included. When you ask for a logo, remember that you’ll also want to use it in printed material (like business cards or in magazines). This means asking for a high resolution version of your logo with transparent background.

Copyright - make sure it’s crystal clear that you have full copyright and exclusivity. This implies that the designer cannot use anything that violates the rights of others.

The discussion about copyright should clearly mention back-links. Web designers often give away free themes in exchange for credit links. If you want to link back to your designer’s site, that’s great, but you should decide that. You can instruct the designer to get your approval for any outgoing link placed in the theme.

Testing - ask the designers to supply a preview of your theme on their server. Normally, you can’t test their work on your live site. You might need to supply contents for this, or just do with the standard Lorem Ipsum.

2) WordPress theme basics - which elements to ask for

WordPress is evolving and theme design is more than just putting HTML in pages. You need to specify what kind of functionality you expect to get from your website.

List everything that you know you need. Here is what I told my designer when we started:

My design should include:

• Front page
• ‘Regular’ internal pages - for general purpose texts.
• ‘Features’ internal pages - these pages should have a unique template that lets me highlight special features.
• Posts (with threaded comments)
• Category pages
• Search

The design should have site-wide navigation including top tabs with drop-down menus, breadcrumbs trail navigation and context-dependent sidebar navigation. There should also be room reserved for the language switcher (inside the header).

The sidebar should be widget ready. Comments in posts and pages must support threading. Every page in the website must be HTML clean (pass HTML validation).

This list doesn’t tell the designer how I want the site to look, it just lists which things I need. Since she was doing a redesign for an existing site, I didn’t need to explain much about the contents for each page. If you’re getting a theme for a new site, there’s more explaining to do.

3) Prototypes come before the design

Even though you’ve chosen great designers, they’re not mind-readers. Ask the designer to provide prototypes before building any HTML or coding the theme. This way, you can approve the design concept before too much work has been put into it.

A prototype is normally delivered as an image (JPEG or PNG). During your work on the prototype, you need to take care of all the design issues. This includes the color scheme, look and feel, layout and content arrangement.

When you’ve accepted the prototype, know that this is how your site will appear. There’s not much room for design changes later on in the process. The designer’s job changes from design to implementation.

4) Payment and delivery terms

Last, but not least, before the project kicks off, you should agree on both payment and delivery terms.

Design work is not like building a railroad. You can’t pay per mile. However, there are some checkpoint on the way:

• Prototype / wireframe design
• Working draft
• Completed and polished design

Both you and the designer would feel better if payment is split per delivery. You can make an initial payment, release payment when each milestone is met and the final payment is left for when the work completes and is fully reviewed.

Ready to begin your custom theme design? Here’s a quick checklist of what we talked about:

1. Project overview
2. Detailed scope of work
3. Payment and delivery terms

In the next part of this post (tomorrow), we’ll talk about how to help the design go smoothly and make sure you’re getting everything you asked for.

This post was written by Amir Helzer, founder of WPML, a mega-plugin that aims to turn WordPress into a fully featured multilingual content management system.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Designing a Custom WordPress Theme - Working with a Designer

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Attention - After you read this page you will never have to spend a dime on a professional copywriter again…

“Write A Million-Dollar Sales Letter In Under 10 Minutes By Simply Filling In The Blanks!”

Save Time And Money By Firing Your Copywriter And Start Pumping Out Order Pulling Sales Letters Instantly!

A professionally written sales letter can quickly generate thousands of dollars in sales. On the other hand, if your sales letter stinks like a wet dog you can lose thousands of dollars in potential sales regardless of how good your product is.

After creating my first website it struggled to make even 1 sale a week. I received hundreds of visitors to my site each day, but made very few sales. I decided to crawl out on a ledge financially and hire a copywriter. What happened next shocked me…

My conversion rates skyrocketed. Sales didn’t just double they flowed like an incoming ocean tide. I was generating sales daily instead of weekly. I learned the value of a professionally written sales page overnight with solid proof in my now bulging bank account.

Professional copywriters have mastered the art of getting website visitors to take their wallets out of their pockets and make the purchase. They use the hypnotic power of certain words to increase the perceived value of your product , causing people to take action.  This converts them from passive website visitors to hungry customers who cannot sleep until they have what you are offering!

“So, why not just hire a copywriter for all your websites?”

Good question…

Do you have tens of thousands of dollars laying around to hire a copywriter to write a sales letter for every product and website you build?

Copywriters are very expensive. You’re going to pay a copywriter more money then you would pay a doctor or a lawyer!  Makes you want to become a copywriter huh? Some charge up to $25,000 for one sales letter!

Making money online really comes down to two cold hard facts:

1.You will have to hire a copywriter, or…

2. You will have to spend years learning how to write effective ad copy.

I don’t know about you, but time and money are two assets that I like to hang on to!

I am a real penny pincher but without a powerful sales letters I would have no pennies to pinch. I was in a bind and, well, necessity is the mother of invention so…

 For Details SEE

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:55 AM PDT

In this post I’d like to share a simple exercise that helped me to grow ProBlogger beyond being just a simple blog {image by deserttrumpet}.

How are you planning on expanding your blog?

Yesterday as I was going through some files on an old computer I stumbled upon a brainstorming document that I’d written 4 years ago about this very site - ProBlogger. I wrote it almost exactly 1 year after I started this blog.

In the document I’d set myself the task of brainstorming a variety of ways that I could expand ProBlogger beyond being just a blog. While I knew the idea of a blog helping bloggers to make money from and improve their blogs had potential - I also knew that there was potential to build something more successful and profitable by going beyond just having a blog.

For this task I gave myself permission to dream big and to come up with things that I may never implement.

Here’s some of the possibilities that I’d jotted down:

• ProBlogger Forum/Community - where readers can interact with each other - possibly a forum
• Job Boards - a place where bloggers looking for work can find jobs and where advertisers can find bloggers
• ProBlogger Training/Speaking - develop training modules to do with groups of bloggers
• ProBlogger TV - a video section of the site
• ProBlogger Shop - selling merchandise but also tools for bloggers
• ProBlogger Services - a consulting service for bloggers
• ProBlogger Ad Network - an ad network for bloggers to join to make money from their blogs
• ProBlogger Books - self publish a book about how to blog for profit - perhaps a downloadable book.
• Start Related Blogs - starting blogs on topics related to blogging (SEO, different platforms etc)

There was a lot more in the list (in fact there were about 40 ideas) but these were the first on it. I wrote a paragraph or two on each idea - fleshing it out with extra details.

Of course there’s a variety of things that I’ve done and not done with these ideas:

• Some became a reality (Job Boards, Writing the ProBlogger book and starting TwiTIp for example)
• Some I’m still planning on doing (our Community Section will hopefully launch next week)
• Some I tried and abandoned (for example I tried a shop where I sold T-shirts for a while but it never really worked)
• Some I evolved into other things (the TV idea evolved into semi regular video posts)
• Some I plan to do in future (those ones are in my secret file)
• Some I’ve never done and probably never will try.

Whether I’ve done all of the things that I dreamt of back then doesn’t really matter….

What’s important (to me at least) is that I put some time aside in the very early days of my blog to dream, brainstorm and come up with ideas of how to take my site further than it was.

Your Homework

Today I’d like to invite you to do this type of exercise for yourself.

How might your blog look in 4-5 years time? Create a list of 10 ways that you might one day expand your blog.

OK - I know this seems like a pretty crazy task for some of you because I know for a fact that many ProBlogger readers are just starting out and are still in their launch (or even pre-launch) phase - however I do think that this type of exercise can be helpful even if you don’t do much with the ideas you come up with.

For me this type of brainstorming has not only led to concrete ideas and plans but even just the process of dreaming has inspired me to keep growing my blogs. I also think that having some bigger possibilities in mind can sometimes help you to shape your blog in the here and now.

So open up a document or grab a pen and paper or a whiteboard and start to dream and brainstorm about how you might one day expand your blog.

While I don’t want to limit your brainstorming by giving you too many ideas - you might like to think about some of these:

• different mediums you might like to add (video, forums etc)
• other related blogs you could start
• services that you could offer
• new categories that you could write about
• new sections of your site that you could add
• new features that you could offer readers

If you’d like to share some of what you come up with please feel free to share some of your thoughts in comments below.

In the coming weeks I’m going to share a variety of ways that I see blogs expanding that I hope might give you a little further inspiration on this topic - but in the mean time do the exercise for yourself and see where it might lead you!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Posted: 01 Aug 2009 07:29 AM PDT

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, and author of the best-selling book The Power of Less. Leo has just released a free report for bloggers called How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits.

One of the things I’m proudest of at Zen Habits is not that I’ve grown a large readership for my blog, but that I’ve developed a very rewarding relationship with many of my readers.

It’s nothing you might call inappropriate (or illegal), mind you, but it’s vastly rewarding.

Because of this relationship, writing for Zen Habits is an amazingly positive experience, because my readers are so encouraging. Even more importantly, they contribute to my blog with their thoughtful comments, their criticism, their experiences, in ways I never could have imagined. They make my blog what it is.

And from a blogger’s perspective, there’s no better thing. Having such a genuine, engaging relationship with my readers means that they want to help me, in any way they can — they’re willing to buy and read my books, they want to follow my updates on Twitter, they want to talk to me and ask me questions, and that leads to all kinds of interesting things. I never planned for this to happen, but now that it has, I recommend it to all bloggers.

I think it can be consciously cultivated, just like any relationship. I did it less-than-consciously, just because I enjoyed conversing with my readers and trying to be of use, and I’m a naturally positive person. But you can do it consciously if you like, and I believe if you do it genuinely, it’ll be a genuine relationship.

That’s an important point to remember: you can’t fake this stuff. If you are just pretending to care about your readers, if you don’t really want to talk to them, they’ll feel that. They’re smarter than many people give them credit for.

Here are my suggestions for building a genuine relationship with your readers, based on my experiences:

1. A genuine relationship starts with you — you have to take responsibility for it. You can’t expect your readers to automatically be encouraging, supportive, kind, positive, loyal, helpful, and generous … just because you’re the awesome person you are. So start with a positive mindset, and be willing to work on the relationship, be open to what emerges.

2. Make your posts as helpful and useful as you can. Your posts shouldn’t just be about you, and how great you are (as true as that may be), but about your readers and their problems, and how you can help them solve them. Really try to help your readers in some way in every post. They will appreciate it.

3. Be helpful and positive in all interactions. In every comment you respond to, in every email with a reader, in every interaction on forums and Twitter and other social networks, you should try to be positive, try to be helpful, and try to build your relationship in some way. It’s the same when you build a friendship or working relationship with a co-worker, isn’t it? Being online doesn’t change how relationships are built — if you are always critical, defensive, offensive, attacking, sarcastic … well, that’s the kind of relationship you’ll have. If you’re just trying to sell stuff to people all the time, it won’t be a genuine relationship.

4. Encourage discussion in comments. You aren’t the only person who has good ideas or knowledge, so ask your readers to contribute their thoughts, to share their experiences, to add tips of their own. I like to do that at the end of a post, but even if I don’t, readers understand that I want this stuff by now. When readers give comments, thank them, respond to their questions and thoughts, interact. Sometimes, it’s good to get discussions going by asking reader questions in an “Ask the Readers” post — just pose a question and ask them to respond in the comments.

5. Accept criticism with grace. Bloggers have to have a thick skin, because inevitably we will be criticized. It’s the nature of the Internet, or any discussion of ideas actually — there is always criticism, and sometimes it’s harsh. And it can hurt. You get angry, or defensive, and when you respond to criticism in this way it’s not a good thing: 1) you look immature and defensive; 2) it discourages an open and frank discussion; and 3) you harm your relationship with your readers. Instead, thank your readers for their criticism, respond positively, and sometimes, acknowledge that they may be right. Because a lot of the time, they are, but our egos are too wounded for us to admit it to ourselves. Read more: How to accept criticism with grace and appreciation.

6. Build relationships in other channels. Having discussions in blog comments is great, but there are other ways to build relationships — through email, on Twitter, on Facebook, in forums (maybe even your own forums). While I can’t possibly respond to all the email I get now, I certainly did when my blog first started out, even when I had 10K subscribers — I tried to answer every question or thank them for every kind email. I miss that level of personal interaction, but I still try to connect with readers on Twitter and in comments. It’s a great way to take the relationship to another level.

7. Give back on other blogs. Many times, readers and commenters on your site will be fellow bloggers — which is actually how blogs emerged when they went beyond a log of interesting web links: they became a way to have a larger discussion on the web, as bloggers linked to each other and commented on each other’s posts. And so as other bloggers comment on and link to your posts, do the same for them. Go to their blogs, comment on their posts, link to them now and then if it’ll be useful to your readers. Write guest posts for them and invite them to do the same. Share their posts on Twitter if you like them. Building relationships with other bloggers is a great way to become immersed in the wonderful community of bloggers, and to build a relationship with some of your most active readers.

Read more from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits, and check out his free report for bloggers called How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

7 Steps to Building a Genuine Relationship With Your Readers

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Posted: 29 Apr 2009 03:30 AM PDT

Are you looking for some fresh design, marketing and even story or headline ideas for your blog? Today’s task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge that might just help with this.

This is an off line activity - all you need to complete it is a pack of sticky notes, a notebook, pen, a magazine (or a newspaper) and an hour of time.

Your Task for Today

It’s simple really - take some time out to analyze/review a magazine with the view of learning something about how you might improve your own blog.

Which magazine do you need? Really almost any one would do - however if there’s a magazine covering the topic that your blog is on then it’s probably worth choosing it.

hint: many public libraries have back copies of magazines so you can do this for free and with lots of magazines at once there.

I do this process on a regular basis and find that it helps me in a number of ways:

• Marketing ideas - the way the magazine markets and pitches itself to readers can teach a lot - particularly what they do on the front cover which is all about convincing people to buy the magazine.
• Design ideas - some magazines do layout better than others and the web is definitely a different medium than print - but you can still learn a lot about design from reading a good magazine. Good magazines will give you an indication of what types of design/colors/layout are in vogue at the moment.
• Post Ideas - whether I choose a magazine on my blog’s topic or not - I almost always come away from this with a story for a new post. Sometimes the inspiration comes from a completely unrelated topic but an article that has a headline/title that could be applied to my niche.
• Learning about my Niche - if you choose a magazine on your topic it’ll keep you across the latest news and developments in it.
• Writing Tips - a good article on almost any topic can teach you a lot about effective communication.
• Monetization Lessons - mainstream media have been monetizing content for a long time - while the web is different some principles still apply.
• Reader Engagement - while a very different medium magazines are increasingly trying to get more interactive with readers by running competitions, setting up online areas, using reader contributions etc - I often find myself with sparks of inspiration from watching how magazines reach out to readers.
• Potential Guest Writers - magazines that do use contributions from readers will often publish the website of those that submit articles. I’ve followed up these links many times and have often approached these writers to write guest contributions for my blogs. They don’t always do it but it’s a great way to bring a fresh voice into your blog. Read more about how I do this at How to Find Fresh Expert Guest Bloggers for your Blog.

Why Analyze ‘Old Media’

I can here a few blogging evangelists asking what the point of this exercise is. Isn’t blogging ‘new’ media and why would we look to ‘old’ media like magazines to learn how to do it?

While I agree that blogging is a very different medium to magazine publishing - I don’t think that we need to throw everything that’s been learned by mainstream media out - to me that’s arrogant.

Sure we should be innovating and working with the strengths of the medium of blogging - but there are also lessons to be learned by looking at what others are doing in different mediums also. A lot has been learned over decades of magazine publishing that we as bloggers could take on board and build upon.

The Process that I Use

When I conduct this magazine review exercise I generally do it like this:

Set aside at least an hour and head to a place where you won’t be disturbed (I tend to go to a cafe)

Take with you the magazine (or more than one), a notebook, pen and a pack of sticky notes

Starting with the front cover - quickly skim through the magazine - put a sticky note on any page that catches your attention. Don’t pause to read anything yet - just take a quick flick through it to see what leaps out at you.

Once you’ve had a quick look through the magazine - make a note at what grabbed you on this first pass through. Was it a headline, picture, color, opening line of an article or something else? Attention grabbers are so important in creating an engaging blog so it’s worth noting what got your attention.

Now take a second slower read of the magazine. Start at the front cover and work your way through. As you read - ask yourself some of the following questions:

• Who is the target audience of this publication?
• What techniques are used on the front page to draw people into the magazine?
• What makes you pause to read an article? Why do you skip over other articles?
• What type of headlines are they using? How effective are they?
• How are pictures used?
• What colors are in at the moment?
• How are articles formatted (use of sub headings, bold, lists etc)?
• How does the magazine sell itself (looking forward to future issues, subscription pages etc)
• What can you learn from ad placement and design in the magazine?
• What level is this magazine pitched at? (beginners, advanced etc)
• What is the magazine doing well at - what are they not doing well at? How would you improve it?
• What are the limitations of the medium of magazines that you don’t have with a blog and how could you sell your blog on these things?

As you read through the magazine also make note of story ideas, design techniques, headline structures and other techniques that you might want to try on your blog.

I’m not saying you should copy everything you see happening in the magazine - but rather that you use it as an opportunity to learn and think about your own blog. Some of what you see will naturally lend itself to your blog - other things will not.

The value of this is in stepping away from your own blog for a little while and getting some fresh ideas and perspectives.

I’m keen to hear how you go with this exercise - feel free to share your experiences of it in comments below.

One more Tip

If you choose a magazine on a similar topic to your blog - it can sometimes be worth keeping an eye out for opportunities to directly improve your blog from it. One method I’ve mentioned above is finding guest bloggers for your blog - the other is:

Pitching yourself as a contributor to the magazine - I’ve done this a number of times with mixed success - but if the magazine strongly relates to your blog - why not contact the editor to suggest that you do something together? For example you might offer to write an article or even a regular column. I’ve seen a number of bloggers do this with some success. Alternatively you might want to pitch yourself or your blog as a potential subject for an interview or article in their magazine.

Enjoy this exercise? - this is just one of thirty one exercises in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project. Sign up for it here today.

Discuss this article in our Forum here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use a Magazine to Improve Your Blog [Day 24: 31DBBB]

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This is in no way a science or guarantee; it’s simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success.

Set your blog to Send Pings. When this setting is activated, your blog will be included in various “recently updated” lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Activate Your Navbar. Do this and you might start to see the effects right away! One of the features on the Blogger Navbar is a button called NextBlog - click it to visit the next Navbar-enabled blog.

Install Email This Post. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This may not have an immediate impact on your site stats but it enables others to publicize your blog for you.

Turn on Post Pages. By publishing every post as its very own web page with Post Pages, you ensure that your entries are way more link-able and more attractive to search engines.

Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, they’re very likely going to read your post.

Add your blog to Blogger’s listings. When you add your blog to our listings it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It’s like opting-in to traffic.

Write quality content and do it well. If your “style” is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd. But the idea here is to achieve mass appeal, so fix yourself up a bit.

Publish regular updates. Simple: the more you blog, the more traffic you’ll get.

Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to speak to one in particular. When you keep your audience in mind, your writing gains focus. Focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

Keep search engines in mind. There are a few things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly. Use post titles and post page archiving. This will automatically give each of your post pages an intelligent name based on the title of your post. Also, try to be descriptive when you blog. A well crafted post about something very specific can end up very near the top results of a search.

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on.

Put your blog URL in your email signature. Think of how many forwarded emails you’ve seen in your day, and just imagine the possibilities.

Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog’s url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, and any other site of that ilk you come across.

Link to other blogs. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking.

Install a blogroll. It’s a very simple yet effective social networking scheme and it has the same result as a simple link if not stronger: traffic! So if you don’t have one yet, sign up for a blogroll and get that link-list going.

Be an active commenter. This is in the same vein as linking. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.

Enable Following on your blog. Following a is a great way to keep your friends updated on the latest activity on your blog. New blogs will have this blog feature enabled by default, but for older blogs you will have to enable it from the Layout | Page Elements tab.