Guest Blogger : @ProBlogger

Written on 9/27/2011 at 12:04 am by Guest Blogger

7 Powerful Reasons Why Companies Will Pay for You to Blog

This guest post is by Lina Nguyen of Words That Influence.

Influential bloggers are being paid top dollar to write sponsored posts (thousands of dollars per post is not unheard of). They’re gifted with luxury items, cars and overseas trips, and invited to events previously exclusive to A-List celebrities and long-established journalists.

Bloggers worldwide are proving to be fierce competition for mainstream media, as companies decide how to get the best return on investment for their marketing buck.

If you have the following seven things, then your blog and social media networks will be highly valuable digital assets, sought after by major companies.

Even if you don’t quite have the same reach and clout as some of these bloggers, you can still apply these principles to negotiate your own deals with smaller businesses in your niche.

ProBlogger Training Day event speakers Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace are travel bloggers who landed a corporate sponsorship deal with a major airline, to cover a high profile international sporting event. At the end of this post, we’ll see these seven points in action, as we take a look at their success in attracting sponsorship from a major brand.

1. Your audience is a profitable niche market

The people in a profitable niche for major companies tend to be decision makers, consumers or influencers in the buying process, for either highly priced items (like cars, technology, travel or finance), or highly consumed items (like food, health products, household goods).

How do you know if your niche is profitable? Just take a look around in mainstream media. If companies are already paying big bucks to advertise to your audience on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers, then you’re in a profitable niche.

2. You’ve built a community

If you’ve created a group of people who gather on your blog and social media networks, then what you’ve created has the potential to be extremely financially valuable.

Companies always want to know where their target market is hanging out and get in front of them. Trouble is, as outsiders, whose primary motivation is to sell, they’re not exactly welcomed.

That’s why they’re willing to pay to get access to your tightly formed online community, which has its very own culture, rules and etiquette. Your intimate knowledge of how your community thinks and behaves has a valuable price tag on it.

3. You have reach

Being in a commercially attractive niche and having impressive reach in numbers (in terms of blog traffic, subscribers and social media followers) makes your community really valuable. A big corporate client will be after the exposure you can give them.

What kind of numbers are valuable? That all depends.

Essentially, it comes down to the demand to reach your niche, how targeted your audience is and what other advertising avenues are available to the company to reach that specific audience.

The more profitable the niche, and the harder those communities are to access, the more money a company will be willing to pay you to get in front of them.

4. Your community is highly engaged

This is what makes a blogger much more appealing to companies for advertising potential than say, television, print media, billboards and flyers.

Bloggers engage with their audience, who eagerly share their thoughts and feelings. In addition, they actively give bloggers permission to communicate with them, by following or subscribing.

Engaged communities also show clear signs of activity, through comments, posts and tweets. This is valuable in the eyes of a potential marketer, because an active community gives the company a way to evaluate and measure a campaign’s success.

An indicator of a successful marketing campaign is one where the target market responds to it, hopefully positively (although a highly engaged negative response can also be seen as successful, depending on the company’s objectives).

5. You have influence

A blogger with a highly engaged and active community is more likely to have influence, which is what’s really going to make a company take notice.

A company will pay for your ability to help get the word out, your referral or your endorsement.

If you can do all three, to an audience who will listen to you and believe you, then you are in a very strong negotiating position to command a price.

A bigger company with a large marketing budget is most likely interested in building brand awareness, exposure and chipping away at a longer-term objective to improve market perception.

The good news for a blogger is that they’re unlikely to expect a huge spike in sales from working on a one-off campaign with you. This eases the pressure off you, relieving expectation that you’ll influence your readers to rush out and buy the product.

Having said that, if you do have the clout to change attitudes, beliefs and market perception about a particular product or service—or you can get people to buy in noticeable numbers—then that will clearly make you extremely valuable in the corporate marketplace.

6. Your brand is strong and clear

If you have all of the above advantages, then what a company wants is to align with your brand. You’re obviously credible and your brand says something that they want to be perceived as being.

They want your audience to think they’re worthy of attention, too.

7. Your prices are competitive

Is your going rate less than the cost of advertising with traditional media power houses, or a celebrity endorsement? Most bloggers are. You’re instantly more appealing, price-wise—especially if you’re willing to accept non-cash payments which the company can offer you at low cost to them.

More importantly, if a major company is willing to do business with you, then they see you as a profitable return on investment.

To demonstrate these seven points, let’s take a look at a blog that’s had success in attracting big-brand sponsorship.

Case study: the yTravel blog’s and Qantas sponsorship deal

yTravel Blog's Caz and Craig Makepeace

After blogging for a little over a year, Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace secured a sponsorship deal with Australia’s leading international and domestic airline, Qantas, to travel around New Zealand and cover the Rugby World Cup.

If you would like to hear more about the specific steps they took to secure this sponsorship, you can listen to my exclusive interview with Caz on my blog, Mother’s Love Letters.

Blog: y Travel Blog
Niche and Community: Travelers, world-wide.
Sub-niches: Independent world travel, working holidays, family travel.
Reach:

50,000+ visitors a month
70,000+ Page Views per month
3,000+ Facebook fans
5,000+ Twitter followers
1,200+ subscribers

Level of engagement: Average 15-20 comments per blog post. Daily social media interaction. Reply to almost every blog comment. 12,000+ Tweets to date. Facebook fan page is the most interactive and engaged in this niche.
Influence: Klout Score: 70

Brand: Fun-loving, friendly travellers who are about making your life a story to tell. They believe life is all about the memories, so they make sure they live their life in a way that creates many memories through travel. Their goal is to help people get inspired, get informed and get going.

The deal: All expenses paid 12 day tour of New Zealand, doing activities and attending Rugby World Cup matches. Qantas will also be promoting the bloggers. In return, all Craig and Caz have to do, is have fun, blog, Facebook, and Tweet!

What impressed Qantas most: The bloggers’ level of engagement with their active community.

A key secret to their success: Guest posting. This was key to growing traffic.

Their top tips: Be clear about your brand and make it authentic. Network and build relationships in order to build your community. Social media is crucial, but look at offline networking opportunities, too. Value yourself. Consider how short-term income opportunities for advertising and sponsored posts that compromise content quality may affect your blog perception and brand in the long term. Learn how to write a sponsorship proposal. Don’t be limited by the fact that you’re a new blogger. Every big blogger starts off by being a new blogger.

Is corporate sponsorship for bloggers something that’s common in your niche? Are you looking at aligning yourself with a company, as a monetization strategy?

Lina Nguyen is a blogger in the Australian Mummy Bloggers niche. She is also a copywriter, digital media consultant and online communications expert at Words That Influence.

Written on 9/26/2011 at 6:06 am by Guest Blogger

How the Power of One Can Take Your Blog to Many

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

This guest post is by Barb Sawyers of Sticky Communication.

Changing the world, one person at a time. I first heard this expression back in the eighties as the tagline for Apple Computers. Since then, it’s been borrowed my thousands of causes and brands. It’s that good.

But still, people are appealing to market segments, stakeholders and other big-box groups. Bloggers are often advised to know their niches. Though smaller, a niche is still an impersonal group.

Flip your model

If you’re not getting the results you deserve, try flipping your relationship model from many to one. After all, that’s how you make friends.

This individual should be the person you most want to connect with. Not your happy fans, customers or followers, nor the people whose minds are firmly shut to you. Pick the people who are sitting on the fence, just waiting for a gentle push to your side.

Just one

Actually, I should say person, not people, because I want you to think about one person who represents those fence sitters. Maybe this person resembles someone you know fairly well, from personal experience, market research or whatever. Probably you to have to use some imagination to fill in the gaps.

Now ask yourself: What gets this person up in the morning? What keeps him awake at night? Answer those two questions and you can tap into these deep passions and fears that nudge the fence sitter to your side.

For example

Let me use a cause blogger as an example. You blog because you are passionate about helping starving children. That gets you up in the morning. But you wake up in the middle of the night worried that you aren’t conveying the passion or knowledge that will persuade people to donate.

Normally you write for your niche, well-educated, well-off people in urban centres and a list of other stakeholders. Today talk to one person who you have invented, based partly on the woman you enjoyed chatting to at a recent event.

You know that this person, Mary let’s call her, is genuinely concerned about a lot of causes. She enjoys working as a family lawyer, but she loves doing what’s right for her clients’ children. She loses sleep when these kids get caught in tough situations and because her grown children no longer need her. Now write for Mary.

You will not only connect with Mary, but you will attract people like Mary. Your tribe will grow.

Let’s take another example, the blogger selling search engine optimization services. Make me your fence sitter.

I get up every morning excited about what I’m going to blog about, how to connect with more people through writing. But I ‘m often lying awake after midnight, worried I’m not getting enough page views but afraid of choosing an SEO dude who will rip me off or, worse still, incur the wrath of the algorithm gods.

You need to reassure me with examples of real people just like me who you’ve helped. You need to explain, in non-nerd terms, why the search engines are cool with your approach.

That said, I don’t expect any quality improvements in my SEO spam. Although they pretend, the spammers don’t read my posts, let alone think deeply about people like me.

Catch the best

Sure, there wouldn’t be so many spammers and other blind mass marketers if it didn’t work. If you cast a wide enough net, you will haul in some stupid or desperate fish.

But if you want me, Mary or other smart, nice people to jump over to your side, start with just one.

Take a bite of the apple in the knowledge that everything starts with one person.

Barb Sawyers writes, blogs, teaches, talks and plays in Toronto, Canada. Her book Write Like You Talk—Only Better, available soon in print and for e-readers, can be previewed here.

Written on 9/26/2011 at 12:07 am by Guest Blogger

How to Get More Eyeballs on Your Affiliate Links

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars, Writing Content

This guest post is by Peter Lawlor of B2Web.

The more articles I publish on my niche websites, the more knowledgeable I become about keywords, and more importantly, the search habits of my target audience.

During the early days of my affiliate marketing business, I would write a post promoting a particular product or service as an affiliate and move on. That was a big mistake, but one that is easily solved.

My “Aha” moment as an affiliate marketer

As I dug deeper into my niches, I realized that people use different search phrases and terms when looking for the same solution.

This was a major eye-opener to me and presented a profitable “aha” moment. I discovered in one instant how to leverage my existing content and get far more eyeballs on my affiliate links. The result was a more revenue from my blogs.

Affiliate marketing is a numbers game. The more people who see your affiliate links, the more clicks you’ll garner and the more commissions you’ll earn. Granted, your pre-selling must be up to snuff as well.

One simple technique to increase the number of eyeballs on your affiliate links is to write a series of posts segmenting your target audience.

Segmenting your target audience

No matter how narrow or broad your niche, your audience can be further broken down into groups.

It’s a no-brainer that exhausting the keywords in your niche is a good idea. However, there may be more keywords when you segment your audience. If you get creative, you’ll be able to expand the profitable keywords you can target with audience segmenting.

How do you segment your target audience?

You can segment your target audience by:

solution sought
price
best of…

1. Solution sought

Segmenting by solution sought means thinking about the different uses or purposes the product you promote can meet.

For example, if you promote washing machines, people look for different types of washing machine such as “washing machines for apartments” or “small washing machines” or “stackable washing machines.”

Voila, you have three new ways to promote a washing machine or a product line of washing machines. In fact, you can create posts that feature the “top 5 washing machines for apartments”, “top 5 small washing machines”, and “top 5 stackable washing machines.”

2. Price

Segmenting by price is particularly effective if you promote big ticket physical products. Many consumers search for big ticket items by price. Returning to the washing machine example, there are sufficient monthly searches to warrant a “washing machines under $500″ post. In the post you feature washing machines under $500.

3. Best of …

Many consumers begin a search with the word “best.” So why not create “best” of articles with your affiliate promotions? The post could feature a single product or several products you deem to be the best.

Combine segmenting techniques

You can often combine the “best of” segmenting technique with “price” and “solution sought” techniques. For example, you could create a web page targeting “best stackable washing machines.” This keyword is actually a combination of two decently searched keywords being “best stackable washing machines” and “stackable washing machines.”

Taking it further…

The aim of any blogger should be first and foremost to provide valuable information for readers. One way to do this is to link to other resources, including other posts on your site.

In your segmented posts, you can link to individual reviews or posts profiling a particular product.

For example, if you have a post featuring “washing machines for apartments” and list ten washing machines, why not link from each featured washing machine to a dedicated profile or review?

This way you:

enhance the readers’ visit
keep them on your site longer
build credibility with your knowledge of washing machines
improve the odds visitors will click your affiliate links.

The result: you leverage your affiliate promotions

If you are an affiliate marketer, you know it takes time to become familiar with a product or product line and publish quality content. When you segment your audience with multiple posts as set out above, you leverage your existing content resulting in more eyeballs on your affiliate links.

Do you segment your audience with multiple posts? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Peter Lawlor is a contributor to B2Web which is a site all about using WordPress which includes video tutorials, in-depth video-based reviews and theme recommendations such as the Genesis Theme by StudioPress.

Written on 9/25/2011 at 12:03 am by Guest Blogger

Action! Can Our Hollywood Experiment Help You Make Money Blogging?

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars

This is a guest post by Joke and Biagio of JokeAndBiagio.com

Setting: a busy production office in Hollywood, California. Joke stares at her husband Biagio in disbelief.

Joke: You bought another book from Darren Rowse?

Biagio: Well, uh, no…this one’s actually by the Web Marketing Ninja…

Her face goes blank.

Joke: Did you just say…Ninja?

Blogging for business: benefits not always obvious

ProBlogger, Joke and Biagio

That kind of back-and-forth’s been typical ever since we tip-toed into blogging in 2009.

Sure, it’s always fun to think about monetizing the blog or read about ways to get big traffic.

But realistically, our blog for filmmakers who want to break into Hollywood has been more of a fun distraction than a tool to make us money.

Maybe you’ve felt the same about your own blog? Wondered if banging away on your laptop at 2am would have any (positive) effect on your business? Questioned if the “standard” ways to make money blogging were right for you?

We’ve had those doubts over the past few years.

Then the blogging money muse came along…

An idea struck. A new approach to cashing in on our blog that seemed obvious and frightening all at once.

In fact, just saying it out loud freaked out our friends and colleagues.

But we really believe this idea is a win-win scenario for both our readers and our company. It’s a concept that just might work for you, too.

More on that in a minute. First, some background…

We make film and TV

As working producers and directors in Los Angeles, blogging was not high on our “to do” checklist for Hollywood success. But we had a personal reason for writing: to create the film and TV blog we wished existed when we were starting out.

You know, back when we were banging our heads against Hollywood’s closed doors, trying to get noticed by anyone in “the game.”

Two-hundred posts and 2500 Twitter followers later, we found ourselves with a small but engaged group of readers who wanted to succeed in film and TV.

And no idea how we were going to monetize our blog.

A better way to earn money from readers?

Other than a few affiliate banners and the occasional Adword, we never embraced “selling” to a community largely made up of struggling artists (an accurate description of us just a few years ago.)

And, since blogging will never be our main income stream (we make a decent living in film and TV) the thought of turning our filmmaking blog into a six-figure sensation seemed pretty silly.

While the notion of being “top bloggers” was romantic, were we really going to:

create e-books?
promote affiliate programs?
find joint venture partners?

Or were we gonna’ keep chasing OscarsÂ® and EmmysÂ®?

Then, the crazy idea came along.

Provide readers with what they want most

The number one rule of a blog is to provide value, right?

We asked ourselves, “What’s the ultimate value we can provide to our readers? What do they want more than anything?”

In our hearts, we knew the answer: the same thing we wanted while living in our shoe-box, one-bedroom apartment not so long ago.

Access to Hollywood.

So after spending two years educating our readers on what it takes to make it in this business, we’re now opening the same doors that were closed to us for so long.

We’ve invited them to pitch TV shows to us.

When we do sell a project with an aspiring filmmaker (like we just did with our upcoming documentary series Caged on MTV) that person will be paid to work on the show, receive a producer credit, and take a giant leap forward in their careers.

Plus, selling just one series with a reader will instantly make us “six-figure bloggers.”

But wait, there’s more…

As a bonus for both us and our readers, anyone who submits a show must join our newsletter. We send out tips and tricks on turning ideas into concrete Hollywood pitches, as well as up-to-the-second info about the kinds of shows we think we can sell at any given moment.

When the day comes that we do take a little time off from making film and TV, that list will prove invaluable should we want to write a book or put up speaking events on working in Hollywood.

Make big money blogging by partnering with readers

How about you? Have you spent years educating your readers on a particular topic? Why not tap into the pool of experts you’ve created?

Most bloggers see readers as potential customers. Maybe it’s time to see them as potential partners instead. Are you:

An independent software developer kicking out posts on the Objective-C language? How about taking pitches from up-and-coming coders on new iPhone apps?
Blogging how-to posts about the furniture you craft by hand? Why not expand your line by accepting product concepts from your most accomplished readers?
Writing about designing and selling great widgets? Let your fans bring you valuable ideas for better widgets.

Just think: one great idea from a reader could be worth a lot more than your commission on that “weird old trick” affiliate product you’ve been eyeing.

Always use protection!

Of course, we had to have our lawyer draw up a proper submission agreement, and anyone wishing to pitch TV show ideas to us will have to go through a formal process. Before you open yourself up to pitches, make sure you’re not open to potential lawsuits. Consult your lawyer.

Back at the pffice…

Biagio: Not bad, right?

Joke nods. Her expression…a glimmer of hope?

Joke: Does this mean you’ll stop shopping at ProBlogger now?

Biagio: Well, uh, no…

Joke sighs.

Joke: Better sell some more shows quick!

Joke and Biagio are a married filmmaking team (Joke’s the wife, Biagio’s the hubby.) Their goal is to help aspiring filmmakers and TV producers break in to Hollywood by providing real-world filmmaking advice and taking TV show pitches from talented, hard-working dreamers. Their current film Dying to do Letterman has been invited by the International Documentary Association to qualify for 2012 Academy Award® Consideration, and they have numerous unscripted TV shows to their credit. Keep in touch with them on Facebook and Twitter.

Written on 9/24/2011 at 6:07 am by Guest Blogger

The Science of Blogging

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips

This guest post is by Farhan Syed of www.writeregion.com.

The word “science” comes from the Latin root “scientia,” which means knowledge. This is the reason why the word science is attached to many “non scientific” terms like “the science of theology.”

A blog is defined as follows:

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent “post” (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.—Darren Rowse, What is a Blog?

Most websites are intended to acquire or spread knowledge, hence science and blogs have a lot to do with each other.

The following scientists’ quotes do not refer specifically to blogging, but I think they can teach us a lot about it.

I am sure that I am not smarter than other scientists. Psychologists have said that my IQ is about 160, I recognize that there are one hundred thousand or more people in the United States that have IQs higher than that.—Linus Pauling; Nobel Laureate of Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962), in an interview to the site Academy of Achievement, Nov 11, 1990.

An authority on blogging, Darren Rowse said in Blogging Takes Super Human Effort vs Blogging is Easy [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #1]:

“Before I started blogging I had had 20 jobs in ten years, none of which were in anything to do with the online space and most of which were fairly manual/physical jobs.
“My only qualifications were half a degree in Marketing (which I failed half of the subjects in) and a Bachelor of Theology.
“I’d received a ‘C’ in English in my final year of high school.
“I was incapable of making text bold on my first blog for several weeks—I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to anything technical!”

Some people think that only people with exceptionally brilliant minds can become good bloggers (or good in anything). This is nonsense. Just work hard with devotion. You will make it. There are no magic people.

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.—Sir Isaac Newton; English physicist and mathematician, in a letter to Robert Hooke, 5 Feb. 1675 or 1676

There are always good resources available on any niche you choose, and there are always some people who are “giants” (authorities) in that field. By “resources” I don’t only mean blogs. There will always be excellent books, magazines, videos, and so on in your niche. Utilize them. I don’t mean copy their content. I mean learn from them, put your own voice in it, and produce fresh content. If you can do your own research and take the current material a step ahead, even better.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.—Albert Einstein; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1921)

To make a blog successful you must keep working on it regularly.

Despite the fact that there are thousands of articles on ProBlogger, I keep returning to this site to read the new ones. Though sometimes I read some old articles, mainly I concentrate on the latest material. I think most readers do the same, as the latest post’s comments are the most frequented.

If you make a blog and update it once in two months, it will collapse. Readers usually want new content on the latest happenings in your niche. Also, readers want regular replies from you. If they are taking the trouble of sparing some time and commenting on your blog, they want the favor to be reciprocated.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.—Albert Einstein; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1921)

To be a good blogger, you need to know a good deal about blogging. For example you need to know which is a good blogging platform, the methods of monetization, how to set up an email newsletter, how to use sites like Facebook and Twitter to your maximum advantage, and more.

The rest is mind game and hard work. Keep blogging diligently. You’ll learn many things practically that you will not learn by referring to blogging resources. Use this information to create better blogs than your competitors.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.—Galileo Galilei; Italian physicist

Do you think visiting “bad” blogs is a waste of time? Not at all! By visiting them you can learn why that blog didn’t do well. What mistakes did the blogger make? Pay attention to those mistakes so that you may not make them.

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.—Richard Feynman; Nobel Laureate of Physics (1965) in a letter to Koichi Mano, February 3, 1966

Though there are thousands of problems that humanity is facing today, you should select a niche of which you have a good knowledge. Then, write posts that can really help people live better lives by solving their problems. If you can solve their problems, they will visit your blog.

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.—Michael Faraday; English physicist, as quoted in A Random Walk in Science (1973) by Robert L. Weber, p. 76

Give your readers the true impression that you really care for them and you have put up a lot of energy and hard work into your blog. Don’t try to fake yourself. You must really make all attempts to please your audience. If you yourself won’t take your blog seriously, don’t expect your readers to take it seriously.

Do you know quotes from other scientists that reflect and fit with blogging? Share yours in the comments!

Farhan Syed is a freelance writer who blogs on www.writeregion.com

Written on 9/23/2011 at 7:00 am by Guest Blogger

7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog

Filed Under: General

This guest post is by Peter G. James Sinclair of Motivational Memo.

Before I aggressively started to build my Motivational Memo blog at the beginning of this year I had already owned a web design company for over seven years.

During that time I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in web design, and now that I have entered the blogging industry I continue to see the same mistakes being made by many bloggers.

So use this quick checklist to analyze your own blog.

1. How well is your blog structured?

Have you clearly identified your audience?
What’s in it for the client when they come to your blog?
Do you have a call to action?
Is your blog outstanding? What do you do differently from others?
Do you sell the right things—most profitable and easiest to deliver?
What are the best things you are doing in your niche?
Have you a clear purpose for each web page?
What action do you want your visitors to take?
Do you provide quality information?
Are you building a list?
Are you selling a product or service?
Are you gathering referrals?
Are you building a relationship with your readers?
Have you built credibility and authority in your niche?
Have you promoted your success through a Press, Awards, or Featured-in page?
Do you realize that you are building an asset that you can sell?
Do you know that you need more than one website if you want to make money from blogging?

2. How good is your written copy?

Do you write headlines that are benefit driven?
Does your writing stand out amongst the crowd?
Do you provide proof either through testimonials, comments, featured articles, endorsements, and statistics—in text, audio, and video format?
Is your call to action clear?
Does your offer provide great value?
Does every page have a benefit-laden headline?
Do you demonstrate how you stand out in your niche?
Do you use proof of claims you make about products/services?
Do you provide one call to action with clear instructions per web page above the fold?
Do you make no-brainer offers even for opt-in?
Are you enthusiastic without hype, but rather provide enthusiasm with substance?
Do you write the way you speak?
Do you avoid jargon?
Do you use a double-readership path—provide headlines and sub headlines that make it easy for readers to skim your piece before reading the entire article?

3. How descriptive is your domain name?

Is your domain name clever, quirky, or meaningless?
Have you used your business name, unless you are well known?
Have you used your personal name, unless you are well recognized?
Have you used a .net where there’s a .com site available?
Have you used the Google Keyword tool to identify some of the keywords people are searching for on the Internet in your niche?
Have you chosen a domain name that grabs your attention through clear communication?

4. How professional is your layout and formatting of graphics?

Do you use white writing on black or colored background that makes it hard for people to read?
Do you have a cluttered or confusing layout?
Is your top banner large or complex and slow to load?
Do you use big blocks of text?
Do you write text in all-capitals?
Do you provide captions (where appropriate) on photos that are keyword rich and benefit-driven?
Do you use too many fonts, colors, and sizes?
Is your blog quick to load?
Do you have a clean, simple, narrow banner at the top of your blog that creates the right feeling on your site?
Do you break up text with sub headings, bullet points, and photos?
Do you have a white background and use colored headlines and black text?

5. How easy is it for your potential customers to buy?

For blogs to make money, there is usually an attached web page that will promote products, courses, etc. So you might need to analyze these pages as well.

Do you provide an obvious way to buy online?
Do you use a secure payment processor?
Do you provide a number of ways for people to purchase—credit card, ClickBank, PayPal, or even for some an printable form, depending on your demographics?
Do you provide a money-back guarantee?
Do you allow for payments in customers’ local currencies?
Is your offer obvious, providing clear instruction for buying above the fold?
Do you use a recognized payment processer?

6. Are your visitor details being collected?

Is your opt-in above the fold?
Do you provide an incentive for visitors to provide their name and email?
Do you ask for too much information?
Do you have our opt-in on your sales pages, and did you know that if you do this you could reduce sales by up to 75%?
Do you communicate regularly with those who opt-in to your blog or newsletter, and did you know that responsiveness will halve after each three months of no communication?
Do you get at least a 25% opt-in result?
Do you offer something customers desperately want in return for their name and email?
Do you make it easy and obvious to opt in above the fold—a single opt in requiring minimal details?
Do you use an automated way to follow up?
Do you make offers to your list—your own products/services or others in return for an affiliate commission?
Do you give twice as much as you ask by providing good value?

7. How well are you marketing your blog?

Do you believe in the concept of “build it and they will come”?
Do you only using one or two marketing methods?
Do you only use online-to-online marketing?
Do you outsource the marketing or manage the outsourcing properly?
Do you test, monitor, and fine-tune?
Do you use out of date marketing methods or only use the latest craze in marketing?
Do you use multiple marketing methods—free and paid, tried and tested, and new?
Do you use offline-to-online marketing?
Do you understand your marketing strategy well enough to train others to help you?
Do you collect stats on results weekly, or per campaign?
Are you marketing to your existing list—email, social media, sms, hard mail, etc.?
Do you use SEO, Google Adwords, Google Places?
Do you use paid traffic, Facebook PPC, banner ads?
Do you build or buy lists in your niche or even pursue joint ventures?
Have you ever thought of buying an offline list and developing an online list?
Do you write guest articles for other blogs in your niche and even other niches?
Do you submit articles to directories?
Have you used offline free publicity?
Do you seek out referrals?
Do you interact regularly through social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn?
Do you run competitions?
Do you give things away to your database?
Do you conduct surveys?
Do you partner with online thought leaders in your niche?
Do you help your readers to engage one with another?

So there you have it. Tick off all the things that you are doing well, and then begin to implement all the things that you could do better. You will be amazed at the results.

Peter G. James Sinclair is in the ‘heart to heart’ resuscitation business and inspires, motivates and equips others to be all that they’ve been created to become. Receive your free copy of his latest eBook Personal Success Blueprint at http://www.selfdevelopmentmastermind.com and add him on Twitter @PeterGJSinclair—today!

Written on 9/23/2011 at 12:09 am by Guest Blogger

Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars, Writing Content

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

I tweeted a couple of days ago how wonderfully evolutionary sales page copy can be as it passes between the different people who are working on it. At the time, I likened it to Chinese whispers with a happy ending.

It’s a tweet that culminated from the copywriting process for Darren’s brand new book on DPS, Click! How to take Gorgeous Photos of your Kids. The book’s sales page presented some interesting challenges for me and reminded me of some important lessons that I thought would be good to share with you all.

The process

This is how the sales page for Click! came into being.

1. Thinking before writing

All of Darren’s sales page start with a semi-workshop, usually with Darren, Jasmin, and myself. We’re not at this stage thinking about the specific words we’ll use—we’re thinking about the core message we’re hoping to convey and how we’ll present it. We weigh up the core benefits of the product and pick which one we’re going to lead with. It normally starts with a bit of a brain dump and ends with us exploring more specific personas—the ones for which we created the product in the first place.

With Click!, we started with a simple audience definition: “those who wanted to take photos of kids,” but soon realized that it needed to run a little deeper than that. We came up with four target personas: moms, dads, grandparents, and pro photographers. Whilst the book is perfect for all of them, the key benefits of buying the book were distinctly different for each group. We discussed options to create a page that conveyed a message to all, but settled for focusing on moms. We felt they were more likely to respond emotionally to the sales page.

2. Engaging the word nerds

Often the hardest part in the copywriting process is to draw a line in the sand and put an initial draft into play. It can be quite daunting but among the team at ProBlogger we have a Georgina, and that always gets us off to a good start.

From a short brief from Jasmine, Georgina provided the first draft. This was always going to be a tricky one for her, as there was a strong emotional entanglement in the messages (Moms and capturing the memories of their kids), and that meant we’d need to tread a fine line between making an emotional connection and looking shallow. I think Georgina did a great job, and we could have run with this version right out of the box, however Darren and I always like to take things a little further.

3. The deliberation begins

I just realized something as I’m writing this post: I’ve known Georgina for over five years. She’s used to me pulling apart her copy. But all’s fair—she’s changed as many of my words in the past with her editorial hat on. So the deliberation stage usually takes place with Darren and myself shooting it our over Skype. Sometimes we’re only tweaking things here and there; other times we’re making wholesale changes. A couple of hours later, we end up with a second version of the sales copy loaded up on Darren’s blog.

With Click! I decided to re-write the whole first section, as I felt we could be a little stronger in our messaging, and a little shorter in words. I spent some time and came up with a version that Darren incorporated into the final sales page. There were a couple of things I wasn’t 100% sure about, and I was keen to see what would happen in the next phase—the field test.

4. The first field test

There is nothing scientific about our field tests. Depending on the product, we’ll usually pick a few connections from our networks, and get them to honestly tell us what they think of the sales page content. Formal tests would follow a more structured approach, with a little more thought put around specific questions, but we’re usually running out of time, and with true blogger spirit, do what we can with what we’ve got.

With Click! It was pretty easy to contact all the moms we knew that were online at the time. But that was where the easy part ended! The response we got was interesting. The couple of phrases I wasn’t sure about basically horrified every mom who saw them. It was back to the drawing board, pronto. Whilst I’d never call writing fun, all I can say is I’m glad we knew before we email a couple of hundred thousand people! Motivated by some of the suggested alternatives, we set about creating a second revision.

5. The second field test

Nine times out of ten we never get to this, however, in the case of Click! the moms had spoken, and we’d made some pretty extensive changes from their feedback—and hoped we were right. So we re-tested the copy. A few nervous minutes later, the feedback was much better and we had a sales page ready to ship.

6. Time to shine

Once we’re happy, all our sales pages go through some pre-flight checks. A final pass at the copy to make sure as many typos are corrected as possible. Then we check and double-check that all the order buttons work, and the images are in place. Once that’s done it’s off to launch we go…

Whilst the lead-up is quite extensive, it’s the result that matters. In the first nine hours of launch conversion rate of the sales page was around 10%—there’s nothing wrong with that!

The lessons

There are a few important lessons that we can take from this latest sales page evolution:

You are not your customers

I’m not a mom, and I don’t have any kids, so I need to be mindful that I’m writing a sales page for someone completely different from me. Seeing things from others’ perspectives is the key to writing sales pages that will convert more people than just yourself. If you’re ever unsure, seek feedback from others.

Small things can have a dramatic influence

Within the first version of this sales page, we included one sentence that struck the wrong chord with the reviews. There are over 500 words in this page, yet five seemingly innocent words could turn buyers away in droves. If there’s anything that can show you the power of copy, this is it.

Revisions can be a good thing … and a bad thing

Suffice it to say my initial revisions did more harm than good. But the second revision turned things around sharply. You need to be careful not make changes for their own sake, and if you do, make sure you take a step forward rather than backward.

So there you have the life and times of a team ProBlogger sales page. And we haven’t even started the A/B testing yet!

Stay tuned for more posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja — author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer for a major web brand.

Written on 9/22/2011 at 6:04 am by Guest Blogger

There Are 3 Thing’s Wrong With This Head Line

Filed Under: Writing Content

This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash

As a blogger, you expect your readers to give you their valuable time that they could be spending elsewhere. If you’re going to ask that much of them, don’t they deserve your best effort in return?

When your posts are loaded with spelling and grammar mistakes, you’re telling your readers one or both of two things:

I can’t be bothered to learn the language I’ve chosen to communicate in.
My content is so vital and compelling that its form is unimportant.

Democratization has its advantages, and alas, its drawbacks. 572 years ago, Johann Gutenberg was the only person on Earth who could have his words disseminated en masse. (And even he was but the messenger, merely spreading others’ divinely inspired works.) Today, anyone with a Return key and an opinion can search for an audience. Does that mean that you deserve one?

Look at the most popular blogs, the ones with critical acclaim, and/or a large readership. Technorati lists The Huffington Post, Hot Air, several members of the Gawker family, Mashable and TechCrunch among its top 20. Even the inane TMZ is on the list. Regardless of how you feel about left-wing politics, right-wing politics, general snarkiness, social media news, technology or the lives of celebrities, all the blogs on the list have something in common that also-ran blogs don’t.

Proper, comprehensible English, delivered in sentences that you don’t have to reread to make sense of. In 2011, with so much of the world’s knowledge available to any of us, it’s astounding that there exist bloggers who’ve advanced past adolescence yet still don’t know that plurals don’t take apostrophes.

When I decry this (I’m the kind of person who thinks that Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson deserve their own Nobel Prize category), I’m often met with the standard responses. These fall into three categories:

I didn’t have time.
Who cares?
(No response at all.)

In other words, correct English isn’t that important. My one-word response to that is: garbage.

Unlike most topics of debate, there’s no room for difference of opinion on this one. People on the other side of this issue are like those who defend flat earth theory or who argue that thiomersal causes autism. There’s no reasoning with them. To disagree here is to say that sloppiness and ignorance are of no consequence. That insulting your readers is fine. That the rules of discourse don’t apply to you.

If your defence is that you’re not some fancy-pants academic who obsesses over a set of archaic rules about how to communicate, maybe you should find something to do that doesn’t involve words.

One irony is that non-native English speakers are behind some of the most grammatically sound (and thus most readable) blogs out there. Take Aloysa of Aloysa’s Kitchen Sink. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear she’d been writing in and speaking English her whole life. English is her third language, after Lithuanian and Russian. I’d cite examples of the opposite, native English speakers who each write like a cat walking on a keyboard, but they’re easy to find. Besides, I made enough enemies with my last ProBlogger post.

My site, Control Your Cash, hosts the weekly Carnival of Wealth. It’s a blog carnival in which I showcase what are ostensibly the best and most thought-provoking personal finance articles of the prior seven days. I need about 30 entrants for the carnival to be of a decent length. If I limited entry to those who spell and punctuate correctly, even if they had nothing interesting to say about their subject of choice, I’d be lucky to run three posts a week. The carnival would be less of a carnival and more of a quiet evening playing chess at the library.

I’m not talking about being able to articulate the difference between the pluperfect progressive tense and the ablative case. I’m talking about, at a minimum, activating and using the spelling and grammar features that come with MS Word, or Apple Pages, or whichever word processor you create your magic with. If you don’t know that you need to do this, then you almost certainly do. No thought is so profound that it can’t benefit from the right presentation. If you can think it and type it out, then you can spend a few minutes making it readable before you decide to unleash it on the universe.

This isn’t about you. It almost never is. It’s about your customers, i.e. your readers. They’re literate enough to have navigated their way to your site, and deserve to be written to in a clear, syntactically correct manner. Otherwise, why should they care about what you have to say?

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

Written on 9/22/2011 at 12:03 am by Guest Blogger

Make an App to Engage Your Blog’s Readers

Filed Under: Blogging Tools and Services

This guest post is by Leah Goodman of AppsGeyser.

A few months ago, when I started working for AppsGeyser, a friend asked me if I could turn her blog into an app, to which I responded, “Yes.” Then she asked me the more important question: why would she want to do that?

There are loads of reasons. Here are just a few ways you can use an app to bring new readers to your blog and give more value to your current readers.

Raise the level of engagement

Mobile users can read your blog on a mobile RSS reader, but reading a blog through an app means that they’re coming to your blog specifically. It’s a different level of engagement. They’re looking for this blog’s icon. They’re looking to interact with this blog each time. It’s not just one of a bunch of publications.

Be found where mobile users are looking

Regular readers will have your blog in their RSS feeds on their mobile devices, but new mobile readers are much more likely to find your blog by searching for apps than by searching the Web. Having an app gives bloggers a whole additional avenue for discovery.

Form a “secret society”

Once people have downloaded the app, you can engage them in some really great ways, too. Provide unique content for app users, creating the sense that they’ve joined a “secret society,” just by downloading the app. Utilize the fact that it’s not just an RSS feed, and have them vote, fill out forms, and leave comments without having to use a different interface.

Push your message

Last, but definitely not least, is the idea of push messaging. With an app, it’s easy to send messages to people who’ve downloaded your app—even if they’re not checked in.

Push messages are just like text messages to everyone who has the app installed. For a craft blogger, this might be the way to tell people that the project everyone’s been asking about is finally completed, and the instructions are up. Are you a mommy blogger in her ninth month? Push messaging is a great way to instantly let everyone know it’s a girl! Financial blogger? This is the way to tell everyone the mortgage is finally paid off! The possibilities to connect more closely are right there, the moment a blog becomes an app.

How to make your blog into an app

There are a number of ways to make a blog into an app.

You can have an app developer create a custom app for you. This is the most expensive option, but it will give you an app that looks perfect, works beautifully, and gives you all the special features you want to offer your readers.
You can use a service that turns an RSS feed into an app, such as Android Apps Maker or Mippin.
Our recommendation (and yes, we’re slightly biased) is to use AppsGeyser, because it gives you the full power of your blog in an app.

Distributing your app

Your blog app needs to be distributed in two main ways.

The first is on the blog itself. This is achieved by taking the app’s link information and adding it to the blog. It’s important to copy the QR code to make it easy for readers to download the app easily with just a click of their phone camera.

The second avenue of distribution is the Android Market. This is how new readers will find the app and, by extension, your blog. When adding the app to the Android Market, pay special attention to the app’s name and description. The name and description are what prospective readers will search when they are looking for new apps to download. Be especially careful about the name, as it’s a problem to change it later. You can change the description later if you’re not happy with it.

Don’t skimp on your icon and screenshots, either. We’ve put together a post on making an attractive icon without hiring a designer. An attractive-looking app is an important part of reaching a wider audience.

Does your blog have an app? How has it affected your readership? Share your experiences in the comments.

Leah Goodman is a Content and Community Manager at Abel Communications, managing the blog and community for AppsGeyser.com. She believes in a t-shirt economy and is an amateur juggler.