We’re all communicators. That’s what we do. Some of us love the feel of pen in hand. Others find joy as the fingers hit the key pad. But for me, the magic is in the communion that occurs in front of a live audience, a place where I feel more at home than any other.

Like you, I’m a blogger. I’m also a business owner. In fact, I own a swimming pool company. Ten years ago, I started the business with my two partners. The challenges of entrepreneurship were satisfying for the first seven years, but three years ago I knew my time of being a “pool guy” was coming to an end and the next phase of my life would soon begin.

Although I wasn’t exactly clear where I was headed, I knew I wanted to be a professional speaker, and I also knew I wanted to help as many people and businesses as possible to reach their potential.

But to be a professional speaker, it has to start somewhere. You can’t just say, “I’m a speaker” and then boom!—all of the sudden you’re booked up for months and months.

So that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to share my journey and it is my hope that you’ll find some lessons here that you might also apply to your life, and ultimately reach the goals you currently envision.

Phase 1: Kicking down the first door

Often times, the hardest step in professional speaking is getting the initial opportunity. In my case, being in the swimming pool industry, there was one main event held each year at the National Pool/Spa Convention in Las Vegas. But to speak there, I had a few cards stacked against me. The first of which was the fact that I was only 30 years old (meaning I’d be far and away the youngest speaker). The second was the fact that I had very few connections in the industry.

Notwithstanding my low chances of entry, I decided to find out who the head of the event was, and soon learned it was a lady named Tracy. Therefore, when the show came around a little over three years ago and I attended, I found out where Tracy’s office was and, tossing all fear aside, I decided to approach her. Walking straight into her office at the show, I had the following conversation with her:

Me: Hello, you must be Tracy.
Tracy: Yes, that’d be me. And who are you?
Me: My name is Marcus Sheridan, and I’m the best speaker you’ve never had. (With a big, big smile.)
Tracy: (laughing) Really now? And tell me Marcus, what can you speak about?
Me: I’ll speak on anything you want—Sales, Marketing, I’m ready.
Tracy: How about a hot tub sales class?
Me: I’ll give the best Hot tub sales class you’ve ever had. (Again, with a big smile.)
Tracy: Hmmm, and how can I be sure you’re good?
Me: I’ve got a DVD of some videos I’ve made for my company in the past. (I hand it to her.) I think if you watch them, you’ll see I’ll be a good fit.
Tracy: What’s your price?
Me: I’m just asking for a chance. That’s all. If I’m good, then we’ll talk price for next year when you bring me back. (Again, with a big smile.)
Tracy: Okay, I’ll let you know, Marcus.

About a week later, Tracy emailed me and let me know that she was inviting me to speak at the convention. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Since that time, I’ve spoken at all the events for the National Pool/Spa Conference, and I get paid well to do so.

Lesson one: Getting in your first door sometime takes guts. I approached Tracy the way I did because I knew the cards were stacked against me. So dare to be different. Be original. By so doing, you may be very surprised to hear that magic phrase: “You’re in!”

Phase 2: Pushing harder, building momentum

Just a little over two years ago, I started blogging about content and inbound marketing for business, as well as personal development principles on my blog, The Sales Lion. Knowing that I wanted to again break into the speaking realm of my new industry, I did two key things:

1. I produced helpful and powerful content at least two times a week, without fail, for over a year.
2. I took the video recordings of the events I’d done in the swimming pool industry and placed them on my site so others could see me in action.

Upon doing this, slowly folks in the blogging and marketing realm started seeing me as a fresh voice and also noticed from the videos that speaking was my passion.

Wanting badly to speak at an industry event, in January of last year, I submitted a speaking application to Blog World to speak at their New York event. As many of you might know, they get hundreds upon hundreds of applications, and have to turn away a very high majority of these applicants.

In my case, it was no different: Blog World turned me down. Instead of speaking, I hopped in the plane and went to listen instead.

Like everything in life, though, things happen for a reason, and I didn’t allow the rejection of my proposal to deter the enjoyment I had for the event, and my continued vision of what was still possible.

In March of last year, I finally got my first break. Within the course of two weeks, I was asked to speak at two industry events.

The first was the MarketingSherpa SEO conference in Atlanta, Georgia. They had heard my success story of using content marketing with my pool company and asked if I’d be willing to share my message. Just as had happened two years before, they could not pay me for the event, nor could they pay my plane ticket, but it was an opportunity, and I took it.

The other invitation was from another person who had noticed my blog and read about my success as a “pool guy.” His name was Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Junta42, and he was gathering speakers for his inaugural event—Content Marketing World.

Never having seen me speak, Joe told me he could give me 25 minutes to share my message. I knew it wasn’t much time, but it was better than nothing. Once again, I had to pay my way and all of my expenses.

Lesson two: Sometimes you’ve just got to get your foot in the door, even if it costs you money. If you’re good at speaking, it will be more than worth the time and investment, as you’ll now see.

Phase 3: The moment of truth

To make a long story short, the event at MarketingSherpa was a hit. My unique story and presentation style made quite an impression, and a few weeks later the event coordinator asked me to speak at their 2012 Email Marketing Summit in Las Vegas. This time, though, I would be paid, and would also be one of the keynotes, along with Brian Solis.

Although the Sherpa conference was great, Content Marketing World was even better. The event was this past September and I knew going in that many folks I highly, highly respect in the industry would be in attendance.

Just as with the MarketingSherpa presentation, my session went very, very well. In fact, as soon as I was done with speaking, I was immediately approached by Deb Ng, who coordinates all the speakers for Blog World. On the spot, she asked me if I’d be willing to present at their Los Angeles event this past November. As you might imagine, I happily accepted, and was speaking in LA a couple of months later.

But Deb wasn’t the only one who was in the audience listening. That same day, the founder of Social Media Examiner, Michael Stelzner, asked me to speak at his online small business summit in February of 2012. This also led to guest posts on his incredible site and loads of exposure I otherwise never would have received.

Furthermore, another gentleman in the audience who was listening asked me to speak at the MeshMarketing conference in Toronto a few months later, which wound up being the first time I’d ever done an event outside of the United States.

Literally, with these two events alone, my entire career started to snowball. Now, as I look ahead to all the events planned for 2012, I can only smile.

Lesson three: Carpe diem! When the moment arrives, seize it.

Endless possibilities

This year I’ll be speaking at both Blog Worlds, and Content Marketing World as a keynote, as well as multiple other summits and conventions.

That’s the thing about speaking—once the snowball gets rolling, it will roll very, very fast, as one event will open up the door to three or four others. Unfortunately, most folks simply don’t hang around long enough to watch this snowball grow and pick up speed.

I’m not here to say that becoming a professional speaker from your blog is easy. Without question, it’s going to require guts, persistence, and an iron will. But it is possible.

So if this is a dream you have, my suggestion is you go out there and get it. Don’t wait for it to pass on by. Will your future. Walk into the office of your target event and tell the person you’re awesome.

And then, when the moment of truth comes, give the best dang presentation you’ve ever given.

If you liked this article, you’ll love Marcus Sheridan’s site, The Sale Lion. And while there, don’t miss the opportunity to download his FREE, 230-page eBook: Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

From Small-time Blogger to Professional Paid Speaker: My Journey

In this post, I’m going to show you the exact steps one blogger used to earn over $1 million.

Not long ago, I interviewed Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. If you’re serious about making money blogging, then you need to read this interview.

But a heads-up: this post is long and extremely detailed. It took me over 20 hours to write. It will take you about 15 minutes to read. If you like, you can download a PDF of the entire article here.

I know you may be skeptical about the $1 million, so let’s start by looking at the facts.

Ramit Sethi and I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Ramit’s advice on money has been featured on CNN, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, FOX Business, PBS, The New York Times, CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, npr, REUTERS, and most recently in a major feature in Fortune Magazine.

His personal finance book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is a New York Times bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

IWTYTBR is ranked 19,466 on Alexa. It hosts over 250,000 monthly readers, and has 30,000+ newsletter subscribers. Prices of IWTYTBR products range from $4.95 to $12,000. But most importantly, Ramit’s tactics get his readers results. See this post, where over 500 readers wrote 54,818 words that say so. That’s as long as a novel!

Impressive, right?

Now, let’s break down Ramit’s sic-step system for creating and earning immense value.

1. Do Research That Gets Inside Your Readers Head
• Examples of research insights for IWTYTBR
• Use surveys to uncover the words readers use
• Collect words from your email subscribers
• When to ignore your readers
• Don’t refer to comments on other blogs
• Collect all the testimonials you will ever need
• It’s your birthday: ask for feedback
2. Target your customers closely
3. Write a sales page that makes your fortune
• Naming your product
• Answer objections before your customers even have them
• Don’t waste time A/B testing: it’s about the offer
• Understand the taxonomy of pricing
• Write Super Specific Headlines
• Give Your Product An Unbeatable Guarantee
4. What to do right after the customer buys
5. Using ethical persuasion

1. Do research that gets inside your reader’s head

When you can truly deeply understand people, even in fact better than they understand themselves, then your sales skyrocket.—Ramit Sethi

There are two reasons getting inside a readers head will skyrocket your sales.

First, you will use the information to create a product or service that matches their wants and needs.

Second, you can use their exact language in your copywriting to reach them at a deeper level.

A big part of selling a product is being able to understand your reader’s barriers. What’s holding them back from their goals? In terms of money, people already know they need to manage and invest it. In terms of weight loss, people already know they need to lose weight and eat better. And in blogging, you know it’s offering immense value to your readers that will make you a problogger.

But they aren’t doing it. There is something much deeper than this goal, which is the barrier to achieving it. You’ll only discover that by doing enough research.

Maybe you’ll find out that in finance, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I really need to study a compound interest chart and start investing!” Nobody. They say, “this year I am going to try harder,” or “yeah, I should probably do that, but first I need to figure it out.”

When you know that language, you are inside your reader’s head.

Imagine you are a weight loss blogger. I want you to write a headline for a coaching session on losing weight. Go!

Wait. You don’t have enough information to write an effective headline. The best you can do is generic stuff like, “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days with our experienced coach!”

“Weight loss” is too broad a topic. Maybe your reader wants to lose fat from a specific area. Or perhaps they want to lose weight for a specific reason. A 50-year-old mother of two will have different reasons than a 28-year-old guy living in Manhattan.

So, you do some research and find out your target customer is a single woman who wants to lose weight from her thighs. You could write a killer headline pretty quick, right?

Soon, you’ll be able to truly understand your reader’s hopes, fears and dreams—and articulate them even better than they can. That’s the power of research.

Examples of research insights for IWTYTBR

During our interview, I asked Ramit to share some of the specific insights he has applied from his research. Here’s a big one.

A couple of years ago Ramit was doing a book tour, and he’d ask readers what they really want to learn. Everywhere he went, people were telling him they want to earn more money. That’s why he decided to create his flagship course, Earn 1k On The Side.

But just like “I want to lose weight” is too generic, so is “I want to earn more money.” Here’s what Ramit thought: “I’m so smart. I know my audience so well! They want to live a better lifestyle—fly to Vegas for the weekend and drop a couple grand.”

Then he did his research.

It turned out the real reason his readers wanted to earn more money was so they’d have the option of quitting their jobs. Yeah, just the option. This insight profoundly changed how Ramit created and positioned his course.

By the way, take a look at the signup page for Earn 1k. How much do you want to bet “I can’t freelance … I don’t even have an idea” was one of the objections Ramit was hearing over and over?

So, how do you go about doing research that gets you inside your reader’s head?

Use surveys to uncover the words readers use

The beautiful part is that because so few people are doing this, if you do even a small amount – you completely stand out. You don’t need 25,000 data points. That’s ridiculous. It took me years to be able to get to that. If you have 20 qualitative responses to one survey question, that’s pretty informative.—Ramit Sethi

Before launching Earn1k, Ramit collected 25,000 data points, and then over 50,000 for version 2.0. He calls this his “secret sauce,” which allows him to be the “wife who knows her husband better than he knows himself.” Most of that data came from surveys.

He says that a lot of people don’t use surveys at all, so they come up with useless advice like “keep a budget.” So if you survey even a little bit, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

Ramit starts with really broad surveys, and narrows the questions down over time. He asks the questions four or five times until he really gets at the truth. Sometimes it takes Ramit four months and 6,000 answers to get at a single nugget of truth. You don’t need that many responses, though: even 20 qualitative responses to one survey question can be extremely informative.

Preparing your survey

1. Sign up for a free or $20 account at Survey Monkey
2. Ask open-ended essay-style questions. You aren’t aiming for statistical validity here.
3. Ask five questions. Keep them short and specific.
4. Include examples of the kinds of answers you want: really long, detailed responses, not one-liners.
5. The two most important questions are “What is it you’ve tried and failed at?” and “What do you want?”

Here’s an example of a question from one of Ramit’s surveys:

“In your own words, what skill would you use to earn more $ on the side? (For example, “I’m good at writing, but I just don’t know how to earn $1,000 using my writing skills…”)”

Download copies of Ramit’s surveys—and an audio case study that walks through an example step by step: here .

Never do this on your survey

I asked Ramit if there was anything we shouldn’t ask on a survey. Here’s what he said.

Don’t ask them what they would be willing to pay. They don’t know. They will tell you an untruthful answer, and it’s pointless to ask them. Okay. People don’t know how to do pricing, so they get lazy and they are like “hey, what would you pay for this special mastermind ebook bootcamp” and you get the worst answers in the world. By the way they are total lies. People aren’t intentionally lying, they just don’t actually know what they would pay for something.—Ramit Sethi

Another thing you shouldn’t do is try to sell. You are doing research. How do these two research questions make you feel?

1. If I told you I had an eight-week course that was guaranteed to make you 1k a month on the side, would that interest you?
2. Have you ever tried earning money on the side? What happened?

Aim for the second option. It’s like my mom always said: “treat people how you want to be treated.”

Getting people to take your survey

You write great material, you are adding value for your readers. They love you. They wake up in the morning and see you in their reader, or come to your website or see you on Twitter. They like you.—Ramit Sethi

The key to getting readers to take your surveys is that they have to like you.

If you don’t have a good relationship with your readers, then none of this stuff matters. You can stop reading this post and go read How To Build The Relationship With Your Readers instead.

But if your readers like you, you are set. You don’t need thousands of them either.

Step two is to reach out to your readers via email and social media, saying something like this: “Hey guys, I’m looking for some help here. I’m trying to figure out how I can help you best. Would you mind taking like 5 minutes to give me your thoughts?”

That’s enough. You are set to start getting in your readers’ heads via surveys. But there’s another way you can do it.

Collect words from your email subscribers

You can also use email to better understand your readers.

Here’s what Ramit does.

1. He writes a big, detailed email with a story about something that happened to himself or to a friend.
2. He finishes it with a call to action, “Hey, I’d love to hear your story. Please email me back, I read every one.”
3. He responds to some of the replies. The recipients of those personal responses think, “Wow, this dude actually reads his emails and he cares”.

That last point is pretty good for relationship building, too. These are the little things you can do that will bring you disproportionate results.

When to ignore your readers

Sometimes you’ll get reader feedback that you disagree with. Over time, you will develop a filter for what to listen to and what to discard.

Here’s a way to start developing your filter. When you get a good response, try to find out a little more about the person who wrote it. If everyone who buys from you is a 26-year-old man living in the USA, then listen to them. Ignore the 72-year-old grandma who’s complaining your font size is too small.

If you haven’t made sales yet, focus on getting to know your target audience. As Ramit advised in a previous interview, don’t write for everybody. For Ramit, IWTYTBR isn’t just another blog, so he isn’t interested in people reading just for intellectual entertainment. He wants people who will take action.

Don’t refer to comments on other blogs

You’ve probably heard this advice before: look at comments on other blogs in your niche, then blog about the questions they ask. Ramit says there is no value in this kind of research.

Why? Because audiences on different sites are so profoundly different.

Ramit recently wrote a post called The worst career advice in the world. It received over 200 long comments and was very well regarded. The article was syndicated by another site where the audience didn’t know him at all. On that site, the article got 24 comments, most of which were super-negative.

Your audience is unique and special—that’s why they are your audience.

Collect all the testimonials you will ever need

Another part of your research and development should involve collecting testimonials. We’ve all seen those generic testimonials that are totally contrived: “Oh wow, this is the best product I ever bought and it changed my life forever!”

You need real testimonials, and the best source is people that have bought your products. Send them an email that says, “Hey, hope things are going well. So happy to see how everyone is doing.” Then tell them to click the appropriate link: “If you accomplished x in 5 hours a week, click here. If you did y, but you were skeptical, click here.” This gives you testimonials for all those options.

Here’s another tip for getting rock-solid testimonials. As readers are going through you course, get them to fill out progress reports. That way, feedback is part of the funnel. Believe it or not, Ramit gets so much feedback this way he hired a guy whose sole job is to manage them.

And if you’re developing your first product, Ramit suggests two ways to get testimonials.

First, you may have some respondents you’ve never engaged with before. In your survey, include a comment like, “Hey, if you’ve used any of my free material for x/y/z, I’d love to hear your story. Please be specific”. All of a sudden you have 20 testimonials!

Another way is to offer free trials for your product. So, find five to ten friends or readers. Tell them “Guys, I’m planning to release this thing. It will be about $100. I’m looking for ten people to go through it and give me feedback. If you agree to fill out three surveys, you get this trial for free—and the final product as well.”

It’s your birthday: ask for feedback

During our interview, I asked Ramit about one other way I’ve seen him get people to leave feedback at IWTYTBR.

On his birthday this year, Ramit wrote a post and included this call to action at the bottom: “Nothing could be better than hearing how my material has helped you. Just leave a comment on this post. Or, upload a video to YouTube and tag it “iwillteachyoutoberich.”

“The more specific, the better Share a story. Tell us how IWT helped you hit a goal, pay off debt, earn more, get a better job — whatever. Provide specific, concrete #’s. Tell me what it meant to you. It would make my day.”

You know how many responses he got? Over 500. Check the post out at It’s my birthday today. Will you do me a favor?

The comments are people saying things like “I’m earning $70k more than I was before”, “I was able to quit my job and move across the country” and “I was earning $10 an hour, now I’m earning $40″.

These comments weren’t destined to be testimonials, but here’s one way Ramit uses them. When he makes a post about how he’s able to charge 100x what others do, and why his students are delighted to pay it, he includes the link. It proves that he’s not just providing information, but is also delivering actual results.

Target your customers closely

We saw earlier that Ramit targets his customers closely. He targets people who take action. He says it’s better to have a small core audience that takes action, respects what you have to say and gets results from your material, than a massive audience that doesn’t open your emails.

Here is a way to filter them out. Don’t sell via a squeeze page. Ramit sends subscribers through weeks of free material before giving them a chance to buy. If people complain, he unsubscribes them.

Then he tells the subscribers who can and can’t buy the course. For example, people with credit card debt are prohibited from buying his courses. If he finds out they bought it, he will ban them for life. Why? For one, Ramit doesn’t believe it’s right to take that money when he knows it will end up costing the customer twice as much. Second: it sends a message to the other readers.

Write a sales page that makes your fortune

We’ve had pages that convert at 68.7%, which in the online world is unheard of.—Ramit Sethi

Ramit spends months (or even years) doing research and development. He spends a lot of time crafting his product and offer, and he has converted as high as 68.7%. In our industry the average is 2-4%.

Realistically, you won’t get conversions that high. But could you improve your sales? Of course. If you don’t you are leaving a ton of value on the table—not just money—but value that users aren’t receiving because you aren’t messaging correctly.

Your blog doesn’t need as big a following as IWTYTBR to implement this. The basic patterns Ramit uses are modeled by people in businesses much larger and smaller. To succeed, you need to deeply understand your readers, then spend time on stuff that matters, and avoid what doesn’t.

Naming your product

Naming your product is some of the most important language on your sales page. If you want inspiration, check out Chris Guillebeau’s work at The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris names products like The Travel Hacking Cartel, Empire Building Kit and A Brief Guide To World Domination.

Let’s look more closely at how Ramit names his products. Why did he call his earning money course Earn 1k on the side? Because $1000 is an achievable figure. A lot of students go on to earn much more. But Ramit says if you tell them they will earn $10,000 they go “I don’t believe you, I’m not the kind of person”. Earning an extra $1,000 a month is life changing for most people. And it’s “on the side” because to become richer, people tend to think that they have to quit their job and start the next Google. The vast majority will not and cannot. But anyone can do five to ten hours a week on the side.

For Ramit’s new Find Your Dream Job course the naming process was similar. Even though the long-term goal is to help people find their dream career, he is using their language. If you are sitting around with your buddies, what you actually say is “I wish I could find a new…” What?

“Job”.

And “dream job” is what people are thinking.

Answer objections before customers even have them

Remember all those testimonials you collected? Now it is time to use them, and they are very strategic.

Imagine you find in your research that people don’t believe they have enough time to implement your advice. Great. Now you go to customers who are really happy and say “Hey, I’m looking for anyone who thought they wouldn’t have time to complete this program, but now you’ve achieved x results.”

Add that testimonial to your sales page, and when the reader’s there, they’ll find an answer to their objection before they even had it.

Don’t waste your time A/B testing: it’s about the offer

So few of us are even spending time on language. We are spending time on things that give us a shiny pop. You know you might be able to measure an increase in conversion by 1.6%. But when you do can things like this you can increase every other conceivable measure. Revenues up 500%. Engagement up 750%. Because you are actually speaking to people in the language that works with them, and not at them.—Ramit Sethi

Ramit really emphasizes how you should spend your time on the things that matter. “My point is, focus on the stuff that matters and is going to make the biggest most valuable gain for you… don’t get caught up in this microtesting world. It’s sexy. It’s fun. We see a 1.3% increase in open rates because we tweaked our subject lines. Or, you can get a 500% increase in revenue because you came up with a better offer,” he says.

Why all the hate? Two reasons. One is that even if you change the color of your button and improve opt-ins by 24%, it doesn’t mean you are going to convert any more sales. Second, even if you do increase the conversions to opt-in, they will eventually regress to the mean. You know who actually gets results from testing button color? Amazon.com.

Ramit says one area to test that can skyrocket your sales is your offers. Do your research and find out what people want. Do they want a standalone ebook? Maybe, and they’ll be happy to pay $97 for it. Or if someone doesn’t want a full video course, maybe they do want transcripts at a lower price. Others want accountability, like live calls every week or even a one-on-one call. Ramit warns that people might say they want an ebook but they may really need someone to check in.

One way to craft your offers is to study people you admire in both the online and offline worlds. What do they offer and how do they offer it?

McDonald’s created the kids’ meal. That’s an offer. They packaged up certain things in a certain way. Offered bonuses. Changed pricing. And the kids’ meal is one of the most successful packages ever created in the history of business.

When I interviewed Neil Patel of Quicksprout he told me about a $199 traffic generation system he offered. He also gave buyers a 30-minute phone call, and after hundreds of sales, is buried in scheduled calls. Ramit says Neil learned two things: that he will never do it again, and that people want his time. That’s very valuable.

Understand the taxonomy of pricing

There is a taxonomy of pricing that is well understood in the information product world.

It goes like this:

• blog post: no one will pay for
• PDF/ebook: $27-$97
• audio/video course: $497-$997
• must have video or live component: $997+
• in person, ome-on-one: the most

If you are putting out a book, and all the others in the store sell for $10 or $15, it’s going to be awfully difficult to roll in and get $200 for yours. Stick to the taxonomy.

Write super-specific headlines

There are plenty of great posts on writing headlines, so I won’t dwell on it here. Check out Copyblogger’s How to Write Headlines That Work instead.

I will note that Ramit says headlines matter profoundly. So spend 50% of your time on them and get super-specific. Doing this, you might decrease conversions, but the people that come through are worth so much more—not just in terms of money, but also in terms of the value you offer them.

Then you want to start thinking about your guarantee.

Give your product an unbeatable guarantee

Offering a money-back guarantee forces you to step up your game, because if your product isn’t good, you don’t get food on the table. I think all of us in this market need that, because there have been so many sleazy people that released substandard products. So I’d like all those people to go out of business, and I’d like the best people, the ones who say “look, my product is so good you try the entire thing and if you don’t like it I’ll send all your money back, even the credit card processing fees.” I want more people like that, because that is a product with integrity versus a fly by night product.—Ramit Sethi.

A big barrier for business people who want to offer guarantees is that they are afraid people will rip them off. Guess what? Some people probably will. But the ability to get a refund will drive more revenue and expose you to many more great people than the few bad apples acting illegitimately.

People expect the opportunity to get 100% of their money back. If your product is good enough, why not let people try the whole thing and get their money back? You have nothing to worry about.

But you should monitor your percentages. On a $97 product you can expect a return rate of about 10%. If you are getting 40% of sales returned, your product is not good. If you are getting 2% returned, that’s a problem too. Why? You probably aren’t selling to enough people. Generally the higher the price, the more refunds are requested.

Ramit offered some tips on creating an unbeatable guarantee. First, the more powerful you can make your guarantee, the better. In Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris talks about offering a 110% money back guarantee.

Second, the best guarantees are very specific. So don’t just write, “if you are not satisfied for any reason, we’ll give your money back.” Instead try something like, “if you don’t get three paying clients within 60 days, then write me and I’ll send all your money back.”

Third, take as much risk as possible onto yourself. That means offering refunds greater than 100%, paying for shipping, whatever—as much as is economically feasible.

Neil Patel says you can reduce refunds by sending people free stuff you didn’t tell them about during the sale. Just before the refund period is up, send them an email that says, “Hey, next week I’ll be sending you a document that breaks all this down.” Or, “I’ve got a special bonus for you that I’ll be sending along next week,” for example.

So you’ve created a sales page that converts like crazy. But what do you do after your reader buys?

What to do right after the customer buys

When they buy, think through their experience. What are they feeling? Nervous. Don’t want to have gotten ripped off. Don’t want to have been taken advantage of. Don’t want their friends to think they bought a weird internet course.—Ramit Sethi

If you told your friends you bought a $2000 video course, they would probably say you got scammed. Normal people don’t buy stuff online, right?

So your newly acquired purchaser is nervous. And after you ease those nerves, they’ll be excited. They can’t wait. Where do they start?

Welcome your customers with a video—Ramit recorded his first one with his MacBook. Tell them something like, “You made a great decision. This is what you are going to get. If you ever have problems, contact us at…” Then give them the material.

It’s important to curate the material your customers see. If you ask people do they want all the information up front, they say “yes.” But if you give it all at once they will be overwhelmed and more likely to cancel or ask for a refund. So tell them, “Here’s why I’m not giving you everything—trust me, and take these action steps.”

I recently watched a Mixergy Master Class called Grow Your Recurring Revenue. It was about how to keep customers that signup for your membership site or courses.

Noah Fleming led the course and said there are three essential C’s: Charater, Content and Community.

In the case of IWTYTBR, the character is Ramit. He’s the personality that readers buy from. The content is what you offer—Noah also emphasized not dumping it all on new buyers all at once.

Community is the elements of your product that let buyers interact with each other. Noah says this is a great way to keep people around, and suggested the idea of forming small groups and giving them tasks: like creating a product together, or developing a landing page.

Ramit tried community by including a forum for Earn1K buyers. He took it down when he found people were spending more time on that than doing work. People still ask him for a forum. It’s what people want—but not what they need.

Using ethical persuasion

Life is not just about more conversions. You want to be classy. You want to be respectful. Yeah, you could make more money, but that’s not the goal—the goal is to help them make an informed decision.—Ramit Sethi

Why is ethical persuasion so important? Because now that you know Ramit’s techniques and frameworks for sales, you’d find it just as easy to implement them on the dark side. There are many ways you can use persuasion nefariously, like to convince people to buy things they don’t really need. Ramit says he knows of hucksters who find out how much money their leads have available on their credit cards, then charge that.

Here’s Ramit’s framework for knowing who to sell to.

rational (information + motivation) = decision?

• Rational requires that the potential buyer is in a sound state of mind and able to make their decision. Someone in desperate financial circumstances might not be.
• Information assumes the potential buyer has all the information in the world about Ramit’s product.
• And motivation means it is something they want.

If those three criteria are met, and the lead would buy the product, then Ramit has the privilege to persuade them to buy.

For example, take someone who’s earning $60,000, has $25,000 in the bank and works 9-5 but really wants to earn more. The person has the time, energy, and no credit card debt. If they took the time to go through Ramit’s program, and they trust him, would they buy it? If the answer’s “yes,” it’s a sale.

If someone makes $30,000, has $20,000 in debt, and is looking for a magic bullet, Ramit won’t let the person make the decision to buy.

So, I asked Ramit about those guys who run sites like www.SuperInstantMoneyMakingMachine.com. You know the kind—the ones where they tell you about their life on the beach, drinking margaritas, and chasing women. And there’s a picture of the guy in front of a jet. There is always a jet shot.

Ramit says if that guy has a product that would genuinely change a customer’s life, and gives them an out in the form of a full refund period, then it’s ethical to aggressively pursue the sale. He warns that many pages of long copy, flashing icons, the jet shot, and highlights are scams. Those guys do it because it works, and there are deep psychological reasons for it.

Click here to listen to Ramit’s final thoughts from our interview. Thanks so much for reading through. I know this article was long and I hope you got a ton of value from it.

Can you do me a favor and leave a comment sharing the most important insight you got from hearing what Ramit has to say? Be specific—tell us a story, please.

I’m Michael Alexis and I interview the world’s top bloggers at WriterViews. Check out this ProBlogger article from the last time I interviewed Ramit.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Ramit Sethi Exposed: How He Earns Millions Blogging

Would you let Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube and other sites control your online business? Or would you like to control it yourself?

Would you want to be in a position to lose your online income suddenly because Google decides to drop your rankings, or because Facebook shuts down your fan page or YouTube shuts down your channel? Of course, you’d like to control your own business and not be at the mercy of other sites.

To run a sustainable business online you need to create a marketing funnel where you siphon traffic from sources like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into your funnel, and create your own traffic source.

Creating a traffic-siphoning funnel

Before you start creating your traffic-siphoning marketing funnel, you need to ask yourself one question:

What is the one important thing that’s needed to make money online?

An obvious answer would be people, right? In fact it’s not just people, traffic, or visitors that make you money online. It’s the relationship and trust you build with your visitors that will make you money online.

Relationships cannot be developed with your visitors in just one or two visits to your site. Therefore it is important you capture the names and email addresses of as many visitors as you can, so you can give yourself a chance to build a relationship with them.

To get their names and email addresses, you need to have a really good lead magnet. A lead magnet is a good piece of content like a video, PDF report, or a case study that will help your potential subscriber and will entice him to give you his or her name and email address.

Once your visitor enters their details into your site, they’ll get into you funnel—and that’s where you will begin the process of building a relationship and trust with them. And then, you can recommend products to them.

The traffic-siphoning funnel process in action

Here’s a process map that shows how the traffic-siphoning funnel works.

Firstly, your need to have three lead hunters to convert your visitors into subscribers and put them into the funnel.

Step 1: Create a blog lead hunter

Your niche blog is a lead hunter that should focus on two things. One is providing valuable and fresh content to your visitors; the other is capturing the names and email addresses of your visitors.

With fresh and valuable content rolling in regularly, your first-time visitor will make return visits to your blog, and they might even like share or tweet your content.

Make sure your blog has your best content on it. For that, you need to prepare a three-month content creation strategy; here’s what you need to do.

1. You need to identify ten low-competition keywords with a decent search volume.
2. You then need to write at least one 600- to 800-word articles for each of the keywords.
3. These will be the ten pages on your blog that you will work on getting search engine traffic to, by raking on the search engines.
4. Each of these pages will have a resource box that will send people to your lead capture page.
5. You will then have to write a 300-word post every other day for the next 90 days and link each of these posts to the ten pages you have created.

This tactic will create a strong internal linking structure that will help with your SEO efforts.

Step 2: Create a squeeze page lead hunter

The sole purpose of this page, which I call a lead magnet, is to capture names and email addresses of visitors.

• Make sure you have an eye-catching header.
• Mention all the benefits of the free offer you’re giving away.
• Make sure to tell your visitors exactly what to do to get the free offer.
• Have the opt-in box above the fold of the page.

Step 3: Create a Facebook fan page lead hunter

The fan page will be a replication of your squeeze page, but it will be on Facebook, allowing you to collect names and email addresses of people visiting your fan page. The main idea of the fan page is to get as many people to opt-in or like the page.

Step 4: Driving traffic to the lead hunter pages

Here’s how to drive traffic from each of your lead hunters.

Blog traffic sources

These sources will send visitors to you blog and siphon subscribers to your funnel.

1. Search engine traffic
2. Guest blogging
3. Twitter
4. YouTube

You can try other traffic sources as well, but I usually start with these.

Lead magnet traffic sources

These sources will send visitors to you squeeze page and siphon subscribers to your funnel.

1. From your blog
2. Warrior special offers (Note: this is a paid service.)
3. Solo ads (Also a paid service.)
4. Youtube
5. Twitter.

Facebook Fan page traffic sources

These sources will siphon send visitors to your fan page, and siphon subscribers to your funnel.

1. Facebook PPC (A paid service)
2. From your blog
3. YouTube
4. Twitter

Step 5: What happens in the funnel?

Now, as you get a steady flow of subscribers from your lead hunters, you need to set your autoresponder with some killer content. This content can be articles, videos, PDF reports—or you can even send subscribers back to your blog pages where you have already published good content.

Get your subscribers involved. Ask them to tweet, share, or Like the page you sent them. Also ask them to comment and ask questions, as this will help you build a good relationship with your list. They will feel like they know you not only because you send them quality emails, but because they interact with you on your blog and other places as well.

You also have to make sure you are honest with your subscribers from the beginning. Tell them that, apart from the great content, you are also going to recommend good products to them that will help them. Also be clear that you will make a commission when they purchase the recommended product using your link.

To summarize, in the first part of the funnel you need to focus on providing great content with incredible value to your subscribers. Be honest from the first email about what your intentions are. This combination of honesty and great content will build a strong relationship of trust with your subscribers.

Step 6: Promoting the right product

Relationships, trust, and honesty will go a long way in making your subscribers loyal to you. To keep up this loyalty, make sure you recommend good products to your list.

Research the product you are going to promote well—including, of course, trying it for yourself—so you can answer any question that are asked. Try getting a discount for the product you are promoting too, as this will increase conversions with your list. Also try giving subscribers a bonus, depending on the price of the product.

Make sure you treat your subscribers like friends, and recommend only products or services you think will genuinely help them. Remember, it will take you some time to develop a relationship and build trust with your list, yet it can all be lost with one bad recommendation. Be choosy with what you recommend.

If you are promoting your own product, make sure you over-deliver with that product. Go all-out to see that your product will really help them—this will only build credibility and your buyers will love you for it.

People who buy your products should get on your buyers’ list—and you have to take very good care of them! The people who have not yet bought from you can still enjoy the free content you provide.

Step 7: Back in the funnel

After you have finished promoting an affiliate offer or you own product, make sure you start the process of sending free content and start building up to the next promotion.

Conclusion

You have to have a business to make money! But you also have to remember that your business has to be built on a foundation of honesty, trust, and good relationships with your subscribers. That’s what will make you money consistently for years: a source of customers who trust you.

Herman Dias likes writing about SEO Tips, blogging, list building, traffic strategies and other Internet Marketing Topics, He also recently completed a Free Live Case Study on How to Rank on Page One of The Search Engines in 15 days for 55 keywords.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Build a Traffic-siphoning Marketing Funnel

Could you get 872 new subscribers in just 24 hours?

Have 1,587 subscribers by the third day?

And 3,381 within three weeks?

I didn’t think I could do it either, but I did, and in this post, I’ll show you how you can do it too.

Those first 24 hours happened on November 29th…

November 29 was launch day

November 29 was the day that my new book Engagement from Scratch! officially launched to the public, in a massive, frenetic frenzy of launch promotion activities:

• I had built relationships with all the major players that I could find…
• Studied the successes (and failures) of the book launches of big name authors like Tim Ferriss, Guy Kawasaki, Jonathan Fields, and Seth Godin…
• Built a mini-site and two video trailers to promote the book…
• Wrote 28 guest posts about anything and everything relating to the book (including one right here on Problogger called Why I Wrote the Kind of Book That I Hate)…
• Ran a “nominate your engagement superstar” contest on the blog, that attracted dozens of nominations for the position (Adrienne Smith was the winner)…
• Spent over $2,000 on postage to mail out hundreds of review copies of the book…
• And then, to top it all off, I wrote the ultimate book marketing guide documenting everything that I had done for anyone who was interested.

The results were impressive; 872 people downloaded the book in the first 24 hours, 1,587 had downloaded it by the third day, and the book keeps getting downloaded (on days with zero special promotion, I’m averaging 30-50 new subscribers).

So, am I telling you that to get tons of subscribers you need to write a book and have a huge, fancy launch?

No, not necessarily.

You see, the truth is that it wasn’t really the launch itself that made it all happen…

It’s about doing it fully baked (and then some!)

The real lesson that I learned from the book, from my co-authors, and from the launch, is that it really doesn’t matter what your particular tactics are; whether it’s a book, or a launch, or a contest, or a round-up of expert opinions, or a video series, or whatever – what makes all the difference is whether you’re doing it all half-baked, or fully, beautifully baked to perfection.

Here’s what I mean—these are some examples of half-baked ways of doing things:

• Releasing a book: Outlining and writing it over the course of a month, getting a cover designed, turning it into an ebook, putting it on your site, maybe making it available on Kindle, emailing your list about it, and maybe writing a handful of guest posts.
• Doing a round-up post: Sending an email to a few dozen industry experts asking them for their number one tip on your subject area, pulling it all together into a post, and publishing it.
• Running a contest: Writing a post with a question, and asking people to leave a comment answering it, with the best comment winning a prize.
• Writing guest posts: Committing to write one guest post per week, and really writing two or three posts per month (about 30 posts per year).
• Doing a survey: Outlining a survey, plugging it into SurveyMonkey, writing a blog post about it, emailing your list about it, sharing it on social media, and then writing a post about the results.
• Creating a video series: Making a list of things that your audience would be interested in, turning on a flip camera and recording yourself answering the questions.

Do these descriptions sound like viable strategies to you? Well, they aren’t—not even close. Here’s the fully baked way of getting it done:

• Releasing a book: Research exactly what angle will most interest your audience, then do the work to create the best possible book that you can (reaching out to 30 industry experts and soliciting chapters from them if necessary). Get the cover designed, do the typesetting, get the book edited, and have it produced in paperback, PDF, and for the Kindle. Do an elaborate book launch with a minisite, two trailers, a contest, and dozens of guest posts.
• Doing a round-up post: Spend hours coming up with three questions that your audience would just love to have an answer to, and will really get the contributors thinking. Then reach out to the experts with personalized emails explaining why you picked them for the project, and why their answers will help your readers. Assembling the answers into a series of posts, releasing them with as much promotion as you can manage, and sending personalized thank you emails to all of the contributors when the posts go live.
• Running a contest: Choose a premise for the contest that will be valuable to contestants and to your audience, and come up with prizes that will be attractive and appealing. Put out and publicize a call for contestants, and then correspond with contestants over the course of a month and a half to get the best entries you can ready for show-time. Then display the entrants to your audience over the course of a month, and let them vote on the winners.
• Writing guest posts: Committing to write an average of five guest posts per month, sticking to it, and ramping up to as many as 20 or 30 posts per month when you’ve got something big to promote, or that you want to spread the word about (writing more than 80 posts in a year).
• Doing a survey: Come up with a series of questions to which data-driven answers would be valuable to your audience, and then crafting a detailed survey to gather that information. Then find over a dozen partners to help you spread the word about the survey, collect the data over the course of a week, do the statistical analysis to extract the results (or hire someone to do it for you), and create a report sharing those results with everyone who participated.
• Creating a video series: Spend a month mapping out a detailed curriculum for your video series, and then scripting each of the videos. Carefully record and edit the videos, add music and effects, and create worksheets and resources to go with each and every one. Then show them to people to get feedback, and make them better before releasing them to your audience.

Do you see the difference? It’s the difference between doing just the bare-boned necessities of the strategy, and going all out, above and beyond to make it as much of a success as it possibly can be.

Half-baked implementations rarely work (believe me, I’ve tried), but fully baked implementations often do. Which begs the question…

Why is there so much half-baked stuff out there?

Near as I can figure, there are four big reasons why there’s such a huge amount of half-baked garbage circling around the interwebs and blogosphere, and those four reasons are laziness, lack of passion, bad advice, and fear…

The first reason is laziness

This is the guy (or gal) who’s bought the “internet lifestyle” routine hook, line, and sinker. They want to make tons of money without doing any work, and cycle through one short-cut scheme after another that doesn’t create value for anybody (except, they hope, for themselves).

This is the only reason for half-baked implementation that I have no respect for, and I wish the people who fit into this category would get out of the game, because they give the rest of us a bad name.

The good news is that there aren’t a lot of people like this, though—most of the people who might seem to be lazy are actually suffering from either lack of passion, or bad advice…

Then there’s lack of passion

This is much more common than actual laziness, because a lot of people confuse passion for their outcome with passion for the path that will bring them there.

In other words, they’re passionate about the lifestyle that their online business will create, but they aren’t passionate about the actual business—it’s just a means to an end, and they’re following it because they’ve been sold on the idea that it’s incredibly easy (which it isn’t). Unfortunately, if you aren’t passionate about the work that you’re actually doing, then you aren’t going to go all-out to make it all spectacular.

The solution to this is to find something that you really are passionate, and make your work all about that—because if it isn’t, you won’t be motivated enough to do the work that needs to be done.

There’s just plain bad advice

Yes, let’s face it, the internet is full of bad advice, and the particular piece of bad advice that I’m talking about here is the “don’t worry about making it good, just get something out there” idea that is flung around in action-oriented productivity circles.

The logic driving this advice is that doing something is better than doing nothing, but the truth is that if you’re doing something mediocre, it isn’t all that much better than doing nothing at all.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that you should do nothing—I’m saying that you should brace yourself, take the plunge, and do something truly awesome. At this point, there’s usually one reason why people still don’t do it, and that reason is fear…

And then there’s fear

There are all manners of fear that keep us in the world of half-bakedness (to coin a new word):

• The fear of failure (“What if I blow it?”)
• The fear of success (“If this actually works, will I be able to handle it?”)
• The fear of being judged (“Who am I to take on something like that?”)
• The fear of being accountable and overwhelmed (“What if I tell everyone that I’ll do this, and then blow it?”)

These are all legitimate, serious fears that keep people from achieving greatness (or even taking the chance that they might achieve it) every single day.

A lot of people aren’t going to like my solution to this particular problem, but here it is:

Suck it up, and do it anyway.

Yes, we all feel fear. A week before my book launched, I was terrified, thinking “What if it bombs? The book is about building engagement—I’ll have zero credibility left!”

Well, that’s just tough—without taking risks, nothing of significance is ever achieved. And taking risks means that every so often, life is going to kick you in the teeth. When that happens, we nurse our wounds, pick ourselves off the ground, dust ourselves off, and try again.

So are you afraid? Probably.

Was I afraid? Definitely.

But I sucked it up, and so can you.

What about time? Isn’t that a reason, too?

The other excuse that people sometimes hide behind is time.

You’re working a full-time job, and doing your business on the side. You have a spouse, kids, parents, in-laws, and friends who complain that they don’t see you anymore.

In light of all that, is it fair to say that half-baked may be the most you have time to do?

Sorry, but no.

In the last year, I released a book, ran two contests, wrote 80+ guest posts, did a survey campaign, and created several video series… in addition to running my business, and planning a wedding.

Do you have to do all that to be successful? No, you don’t.

But can you pick JUST ONE campaign and throw yourself into it?

Yes, you can.

What will you throw yourself into?

Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration—in other words, the ideas are easy, but then it’s the work that separates the successes from the wannabes.

It’s throwing myself into the work that got those 80+ guest posts written.

It’s throwing myself into the work that grew Firepole Marketing into a recognized brand in just a year.

And it’s throwing myself into the work that got me 872 subscribers in 24 hours.

So if you were looking for overnight success, as in 24 hours’ worth of work that would get you a giant number of subscribers, traction, and money, then I’m sorry to disappoint.

But if you’re looking for the real secret to true success in business, life, and everything else, that you’re willing to put the time and energy into applying for real over the course of the coming year, then there you have it.

So what are you going to throw yourself into this year? What project will you take on, plan, work at, and build into something truly spectacular, and truly awesome? How are you going to change the world?

Find and answer to that question, and then get started.

Good luck, and godspeed. I’ll see you at the finish line.

Leave a comment and answer this question: what will you throw yourself into?

Danny Iny (@DannyIny), a.k.a. the “Freddy Krueger of Blogging”, teaches marketing that works at Firepole Marketing. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark and Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on building engaged audiences from scratch (available on Amazon, or as a free download).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

872 Subscribers in 24 Hours?!

So you started blogging to make some money. Adsense, advertising, and affiliate sales looked like a pretty good way to make a living. You thought you could make money while you slept at night.

Sounded good at the time, right?

But where’s the money?

You set up your Adsense account but you’ve only got pennies trickling in. No one wants to buy your banner ads. And the only affiliate sales you’ve landed are a few Amazon books that earned you $1.13. You’ve slaved on your blog for months, years even, working for a pittance. You thought it was going to be easy making money online.

Now you’re wondering if you wasted your time.

This is where I was a few months ago. And then something happened that changed my blogging strategy forever. Someone offered me a job.

Your blog is your resume

Pretend you’re an employer, a marketing firm with 100 employees, and you’re looking to hire the 101^st.

Who are you going to choose? All the candidates look the same: similar educationa; backgrounds, similar experience. But one of them has a blog with 500 subscribers, a Twitter account with 1,000 followers, and is already an expert with Google+. The other candidates don’t. Who are you going to hire?

Here is a strange but true thing I heard an actual employer say:

“The blog is the new resume.”

Resumes are outdated and growing irrelevant to today’s employers. Your blog gives a much fuller picture of your identity and your expertise. Nowhere else can you so quickly get a sense of a person’s skill, experience, and ability to engage others around what they know.

The other model for making money online

In only six months, I got two job offers, three requests for consulting work (one for over $200 an hour), and was asked to work on three paid projects. On top of that, I generated hundreds of leads for high-priced, hourly work.

How?

Just by blogging to a group of people who needed services, in my case, to creative writers. The best part is that you can do this, too. Anyone can. It’s very simple.

1. Who: Define your audience

Who is your audience? You need to know who your audience is because you need to figure out what services they need. Define their:

• career
• hobbies and interests
• age
• demographics
• annual income.

If you’ve been blogging long with any success, you probably have a fairly good idea of this already. I didn’t need to do a survey to realize most of my readers were over 30, well educated, and wrote novels and creative non-fiction as a hobby.

If you don’t know this yet, make it your top priority. If you can figure out how they think, you can sell to them (and in this business model, what you are selling is yourself).

The best way to define your audience, in my opinion, is simply by meeting them. When someone begins to comment regularly, email him. Ask to chat over the phone; if you live nearby, meet for coffee. By interacting with your fans you solve two problems at once, you get to know your audience and you turn them into friends. Once they become your friends, you get the opportunity to make them into your customers.

2. What: Identify what they need

If you don’t know your audience, you won’t understand what they need.

My audience is creative writers, so I developed a site that I thought would interest them. Slowly, as I began to understand who was reading my blog, I realized there was a huge need for editing. My readers liked to write, but they didn’t like to edit. I found my opportunity.

As you get to know your audience, identify what they like to do and what they hate. What are they good at? What are they terrible at? And how can you help them be better?

As you do this, you’ll begin to spot opportunities for your services. They might need:

• Education: You could develop a course teaching them what they don’t know.
• Consulting: You could sell your time and expertise helping them solve their problems.
• Complimentary services: You could sell services that your audience needs.

Let’s break down the complimentary services section a bit more because I think this is where this blogging model becomes really interesting. For example, I realized my audience—creative writers—needed editing services. So I began to pitch this to some of my friends and they loved it. Some of them even approached me!

If marketers are your audience, on the other hand, offer design or copywriting services. If homebuyers are your audience, offer listing services. If your audience needs a lawyer, then offer your legal services. If your audience blogs, you could offer ghost-blogging, design, editing, or copywriting services.

3. How: What if you don’t have any skills to offer?

Now, let’s say you’re writing to people who want to get better at internet marketing. You think your audience needs help writing copy, but you don’t have any experience in copywriting.

I had this problem. I knew my readers needed editing help. I had some expertise with editing, but I didn’t feel comfortable selling my services to the guy who comments on my blog every day. What if I do a bad job and he gets upset and leaves?

So I started reaching out to editors, asking their advice on how to be a better editor. I emailed, called, and met face to face with them. This is when the most surprising thing happened.

One of them, an editor who has worked with bestselling authors, offered me a job. So not only did I get some practical knowledge to help (and sell to) my readers, I had his name to back me up. And one of the reasons he hired me was because my blog was my resume. He saw I was already passionate and talented. It was an easy decision.

After that, selling my services became much easier. And a much better way to earn money with my blog than selling Adsense.

This is a very quick overview. Do you have any questions about how to sell your services and use your blog as a resume? Have you done this with your own business?

Joe Bunting is a professional writer, fiction editor, and platform consultant. You can follow Joe on Twitter and download a copy of his eBook, 14 Prompts, for free.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Got Two Job Offers and a $200-an-Hour Consulting Gig from Blogging

Some bloggers don’t start a blog to make money. They start blogging, because they have a message that the world needs to hear. In other words:

Some bloggers blog to get published.

Recently, I signed a contract with a book publisher. I had always hoped to one day publish a book, but I never thought it would happen in a few months.

What made this possible? In a word: blogging.

Image copyright Lasse Kristensen - Fotolia.com

Why you should publish a book

With the rising popularity of ebooks and self-publishing, why should you go with a traditional publisher?

Why even write a book at all? Doesn’t a blog suffice?

Well, no. Not always. In some cases, self-publishing (especially your first book) may not be a good idea.

Reasons to work with a publisher

Although self-publishing can work just fine, there are still some legitimate reasons to go traditional:

• Marketing: A publisher will offer its resources and knowledge to help you not only promote your book, but consider the marketability of it before it’s published.
• Editing: A publisher will help you with the actual writing, as well as proofreading and copyediting. Normally, you would have to pay someone to do this or do it yourself.
• Authority: There is still a great deal of social clout when it comes to having a published book from a reputable publisher. Publishing a book will make you more of an authority in your niche.

Of course, some authors make good money off ebooks without ever going through a publisher. So this may not be for everyone. But it’s at least worth considering. (Even Darren and Chris G. released their Problogger book through Wiley. It’s not about money as much as it’s about influence.)

If you’re interested in becoming a published author, there are the three steps you’ll need in your path to publishing.

Step 1: Build a platform

All publishers want to know the same thing: Do you have a platform?

In other words, are you “legit”? Do you have the audience and authority to speak on a particular topic? Money is so tight in publishing that if authors don’t bring their own marketing chops, they have little hope of succeeding.

A platform can range from a podcast to a television program; however, in our case, we’re going to assume it’s a blog.

Why a blog is a great platform

Blogs are great for authors, because of the following reasons:

• A blog allows you to practice writing.
• A blog allows you to capture email addresses (with a service like Feedburner or Aweber).
• A blog allows you to communicate a core message over time.

My blog has been instrumental in helping me find my voice as an author, as well as providing some content that I’m actually re-purposing for my upcoming book.

Step 2: Release a manifesto

Once you’ve built a blog and starting building a decent audience, you can now work on something that articulates your core beliefs: a manifesto.

A manifesto is a short, actionable ebook that you give away for free. The point of it is to spread idea and help you connect with your tribe (i.e. people who share your beliefs).

This can also be a great way to capture attention, by exchanging the ebook for people’s email addresses. I grew my email list from 75 to 1000 subscribers in a week, thanks to a manifesto. And it also caught the attention of my publisher. It works.

If writing a manifesto sounds hard or overwhelming to you, don’t worry. It’s not.

The DIY way to publish a manifesto

• Find the content. Dig up an old blog post or series of posts that resonated with your readers.
• Develop it. Build upon your original idea and edit out what’s irrelevant.
• Finish writing. Shoot for 1000-10,000 words long. It needs to clearly communicate one, important idea. The shorter you can make it, the better.
• Create it. You can do this through a program like Word or Pages (for Mac), or you can use a slide presentation program like PowerPoint or Keynote and export as a PDF. Michael Hyatt also has a great seven-step tutorial for how to do this. (Note: This may create a huge file, depending on the length of your e-book. If you get something that’s over 10 MB, you can use the program PDFshrink to make it smaller.)

Alternatives

If you’re looking to spread an idea quickly, you can even publish the manifesto through a site like ChangeThis.com. Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, and Guy Kawasaki have all done this. Only the best ones make it, though, so this doesn’t guarantee you’ll get an ebook published through them. (See mine here.)

You can also hire someone to do it for you, if you have the budget.

Step 3: Connect with people through social media

Social media is a great way to find fans and create advocates that will spread your work for you.

The great thing about social media is that it’s social (obviously), which means it can lead to other meaningful interactions, including real-life relationships.

From follower to friend

I’ve connected with more people through Twitter than any other way. This has led to grabbing coffee with other writers, picking up freelance gigs, and even getting to meet some of my heroes. It’s the best networking resource I’ve found.

Starting a Facebook page for my blog has also been a great way to share content and connect with my audience.

The people you connect with through social media may begin as followers, but they can quickly become friends and even patrons of your work. If you do it right—by adding value to your readers and followers—these people can become life-long supporters of you.

What better asset to have before publishing your first book than an already large and growing fan base? The publishers will be fighting over you.

Step 4: Establish your brand by adding value

Every author needs a brand—an established voice that makes his or her content unique.

Blogging can help you do this, because it allows you to practice in public. It also attracts an audience, which can help you in defining (and building) your personal brand as a writer.

Serve your way into influence

The best way to earn trust and establish a brand is to serve people.

Do the grunt work. Hustle to help people, and you will get noticed. In a world full of self-promoting sleaze bags, if you add value to people’s lives, you will never have a marketing. People will come find you.

This is a great way to brand yourself as an author, too. Someone who serves others doesn’t have a hard time selling books. People know you’re going to help them, so they’re eager to pay money to hear what you have to say.

And if you can demonstrate that, a publisher will be honored to work with you.

Interview experts

Another way to do this is by interviewing experts. You can seek out other authors and bloggers in your niche and ask to interview them. Do this over time and you’ll not only deliver value to your readers, you’ll also build relationships with influential people.

Pretty soon, people will come to think of you as the expert—which is exactly what publishers are looking for.

All of these relationships (if founded on serving others) will come back to help you. It’s true what they say: what goes around comes around.

You’ll be publishing a book in no time.

Jeff Goins is a soon-to-be-published author, blogger, and nonprofit marketer. You can connect with him on Twitter @jeffgoins and Facebook and get his free, weekly newsletter. You can also find out more about his path from blogging to book contract by getting his eBook Every Writer’s Dream: How to Never Pitch Your Writing Again, which is free for a limited time.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

From Blogger to Book Author: The 4-Step Guide

When I first started my blog, I wrote a series of posts I was sure would resonate with thousands all over the world, create a movement, and bring massive traffic over to my site.

Except when I published the posts, they went to the black hole of the Internet.

No one heard them. No one saw them. Just a couple Facebook friends and maybe my mom.

Image copyright Renee Jansoa - Fotolia.com

A model for making money

Just as you need to have a serious game plan to ensure your success blogging, including a master plan and many smaller plans, you need to have a model to work with for monetization.

You need a simple path that gives you a general idea of where to go and what to do, and in what order.

Following the next six points will ensure you’ll be six months ahead of where I was when I started, and you’ll no longer be writing for “someone”. You’ll be writing for your future massive, engaged audience willing to buy your products.

1. Create a list and engage your audience

This is blogging 101 to most bloggers now—especially those who are planning to release a product or course to their audience. But it wasn’t to me. I mean, I figured I would just write some good stuff, and maybe some advertisers would contact me, and then I’d somehow end up making $2,00 or $3,000 a month from advertisements.

Rookie mistake.

Make an email list as soon as you start your blog, and start collecting subscribers. But unless you have an established reputation people most likely will have a hard time forking over their email address to you, so what do you do?

Give them a reason to subscribe, like a free ebook or a mini course. The sooner you start building your email list, the better. Because the sooner you have a list the sooner you can start building trust with your audience and establish yourself as having expertise in some area.

What I did: waited until month three to make an email sign up list, and offered no incentive to subscribe.

What I should’ve done: I should have signed up on day one with an email subscription service like Aweber, and offered an ebook or mini course for subscribers.

2. Fine-tune your content

Sometimes your niche is pretty clear—blogging, marketing, or running, for example. But sometimes it’s not and covers a wide range of things—lifestyle design, location-independent work, or self-help.

Assuming you fall into the latter categories, you are probably going to need to do some content fine-tuning. That means testing a variety of closely related topics and seeing which ones resonate best content-wise and message-wise with your audience. You can test those qualities based on re-tweets, views, shares, and comments, although these metrics alone should not be the be-all end-all.

Just remember that in the beginning it’s going to be harder to work out what your audience likes and doesn’t like, because you may not have an audience yet! Just have fun at the beginning and experiment a lot.

What I did: Wrote about a variety of topics, and kept no analytics on what was popular or why.

What I should have done: I should have deliberately tested various types of content with my audience and used those results (Google Analytics) to hone in on what I should’ve written more of in the future. It also gives you potential product niches.

3. Show some link love

One of the worst, most sinful mistakes I made was not reaching out and trying to connect with others in my niche, not trying to follow people who had already achieved the goals I wanted, and not establishing other relationships with people in the online world.

It goes pretty much without saying that you can’t make it alone in the blogosphere—and that nurturing genuine relationships will be the single most beneficial thing you can do to help your business take off.

The following three types of people you should make a list of and establish friendships with:

• people in a niche somewhat similar to your own (peers)
• people who are doing what you hope to be doing one day (mentors)
• people who you see will be up and coming and need to be heard (pupils)

What I did: Believed I could succeed alone, and made no effort to connect with others.

What I should have done: I should have networked until my eyeballs hurt, shared as much as possible with my peers, share posts by people whose mission I believed in, and established several people as mentors who have attained the goals I am striving for.

4. Consciously build your audience and list

There are three ways you can deliberately build your list and audience more rapidly than letting them organically grow:

1. getting better exposure via guest posting
2. holding a webinar where people need to subscribe to participate and get more information
3. offer exclusive content or a free additional course that requires a sign up. For example, on your products page you can have a “free marketing 101 course.” You could then have a ten-part auto-responder course (or ebook) that gives great content, for free. And in return you get someone’s email address added to your list.

What I did: Thought that the “crawlers” would just find my content and it would go mainstream.

What I should have done: I should have guest posted as much as humanly possible, combined efforts with other bloggers to hold webinars, and given away tons of free, extremely valuable content (in various forms).

5. Do some spy work (probe your audience members’ brains)

At this point you should be asking yourself, “What am I doing with all these people? I have been giving them great content, building relationships with others around me, and now have a list of quite a few people. What’s next?”

Here’s one of the next steps to take: find out what specifics your audience wants and what problem of theirs you can solve.

I’m going to work with the assumption that you don’t have three to six months of free time to make a product that flops, so here is one way to test for demand. Offer free or paid consulting. At this point, your audience hopefully respects you and sees you as somewhat of an authority. So why consult for free?

• You will acquire some experience which you can later use to transfer into paid consulting.
• You’ll realize patterns of problems that your audience has, and you can begin to develop a product tailored directly to their needs.

What I did: Assumed I knew what my audience wanted.

What I should have done: I should have done a number of things: given out a questionnaire, consulted (free/paid), asked directly (via a blog post), or researched what other people are selling in the same niche.

6. Make a product or promote a product

As far as products go, the historic route that people have taken is to make an ebook. Ebooks work well and lend themselves to automation, but there is one other product recommendation that tends to work better for some others.

Launch a limited-time program or online course, for example, once every four months. The reason I suggest making an online course is that it helps you jump exponentially over time (both in terms of influence as well as financially).

Every time you launch your course, you build your email list, you get feedback, and you find out what updates your audience wants. And then you can launch the course again—and, assuming you have received feedback, you can update it. And, assuming you did a good job developing your product, you now have a bigger list, more exposure, and a larger audience. The benefits grow over time.

The other option is to promote someone else’s product. I know quite a few people who made their first dollar online by promoting a product they tried and thought their audience would like.

If you know of a product (ideally that you have tried) that genuinely provides a solution to a problem your audience has, write a post reviewing it. State clearly what your audience will get from the product, let them know that you’ve tried it, and keep your promise. Afterwards, you can keep a smaller banner advertisement or list it on your products or resources page.

What I did: Got half way through an ebook, realized it probably wasn’t going to sell as much as I wanted, and went back to the drawing board.

What I should have done: I should have #1 followed through, because even if your product only makes five sales, you are getting some feedback and now have experience making a product.

I should also have decided if I wanted to make this an ongoing product with support and feedback options. If you want a product that requires no updating and support, go with an ebook. If you want a product that has much more potential for growth but will require a larger time investment, go with an online course.

What next?

So why go through all these steps? Why bother with an elaborate checklist of things to go through?

The reason is because if you don’t have a model, you’ll be taking shots in the dark. Your work is going to be all guesswork, and guesswork is going to lead to disappointment. You’ll be running your blog with the same intentions I had: “Do a couple posts here, a couple posts there, maybe get some ads on there, write an ebook, and then I’ll be making $5,000 a month.”

Save yourself from the same silly assumption I made: otherwise you’ll end up like me—never making a dime from my blog.

Milk the pigeon is about killing that lost feeling, standing out in the crowd, and living a life of greatness.  Download a free copy of Milk the Pigeon’s manifesto here: Killing Your Old life and Living the Dream

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why I Haven’t Made a Dime From My Blog—and How You Can

One of the main benefits of being a blogger has always been that you could work from anywhere in the world—whether you are surrounded by the hustle and bustle of New York City, or sitting in a quiet, secluded beach hut somewhere in Thailand.

Provided you have good internet access and a computer, you can be based anywhere. It’s one of the key factors why so many of us become bloggers in the first place—to travel or be based anywhere, and earn a living at the same time.

Image copyright Dudarev Mikhail - Fotolia.com

If you’re taking your blog seriously, and treating it as a business, then your accounts are something you need to be on top of. But when your “office” is basically anywhere with free wifi, how do you store, back-up, keep track of, and effectively sort out your affairs, so that when it’s time to fill in your tax return, everything’s in order?

Back up everything

Every receipt you get for anything, take a picture of it with your camera. Things like scanners are not always available on the road, or when you need them, but if you’re traveling, you’ll no doubt have a camera.

When you’re moving from one place to another, with no real filing system like you may have in an office, receipts can get lost or damaged to the point where you can’t read them any more. Having pictures of everything saves that problem. Also, if you can pull them all up on your computer screen, it just makes creating a spread sheet easier than having to sift through real paper documents to create your accounts.

Make sure you have copies of all important documents in at least three different locations, plus a hard copy kept somewhere at home if possible. Your computer will be 1 location, possibly a memory stick, or extra hard drive could be another twp. Alternatively, if it’s pictures you have taken of receipts then your memory card could act as another storage location.

Use programs to make it easier

Microsoft Excel, or open source, free programs such as Open Office provide fantastic spreadsheet services. If you want Excel in particular, but don’t want to pay for it, if you have a Windows Live email account, then you can use Excel on the Sky Drive there without having to bother with risky illegal downloads.

Another useful program is Xpenser, a free expense accounting program. You can update it via the Web, by voice, by text, by email, and by Twitter! Probably the most useful aspect of using Xpenser, however, is that you can attach a digital photo of the receipt to the updated expense.

Dealing with exchange rates

If you’re travellng to a variety of countries throughout the year as you are blogging, then like me, you will probably find that when it’s time to do your taxes, you have various receipts in various currencies which you then have to convert into whatever your home currency is.

The main problem with this is that currencies can change drastically over the course of a year. To be sure you have your accounts as accurate as possible, you have to find the local exchange rate on the day of purchase so you can convert it into your home currency and add it to your total expenses.

Most currency exchange sites will have an archives section that gives you exchange rates for at least the last 12 months, and sometimes a lot longer. Check the date of your receipt, and then enter it onto the site to find out the rate on that day.

I personally use the historical exchange rates on Oanda, but there is no reason why you couldn’t use another exchange rate website.

Alternatively, use a foreign currency card while traveling. When I’m in Europe I use a Euro card most of the time. I transfer all or part of my money for the trip onto the card, and it is all converted to Euros based on the exchange rate of that date.

Therefore, when you spend money, you only have to work with one exchange rate per currency, regardless of the date you spend it on, because it’s been converted into Euros before you use it rather than at the time of each transaction or withdrawal.

Stay on top of your blog finances

Filling your taxes, and doing your accounts can be a headache even for stationary bloggers situated in one place all the time. So when you are moving from country to country without a real office, it becomes even more important to keep everything in order, and have everything backed up.

The other important factor to keep in mind is to not let yourself get behind with things. Keeping track of your expenses should be as important as writing your next blog post. Schedule in time for it. If for nothing else, it lets you know if you are actually making a profit from your blogging activities, and if not, makes you stand up and look at how you can move forward.

Jane has been blogging since January 2010 from her flagship travel blog RunawayJane.com. She travels full-time using nothing but the earnings from her blogs. Such resulting travels have included learning Spanish in Spain for 3 months, and learning about the history of the former Yugoslavia in Serbia, to name just a few trips she has been on. None of this would have been possible had she had not set up her blog back in 2010.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Keep Track of Your Accounts as a Remote Blogger

There’s really too much to say about the benefit of a good blog for your business. A well done blog can bring in new customers, establish yourself as an expert in your field, open up communication with your clients, and support your SEO and marketing.

Recently I discovered that the blog I write for fun about body image issues has a higher Google page rank than my company’s blog! Of course, we get a fraction of the web views, but without pointed effort, I managed to make my personal blog keyword rich, get lots of backlinks, and ranked high in Google’s page rankings. Now that I’m writing for my company’s blog, here are the lessons I’m taking with me:

Pick a specific topic

Be specific. Want to be a catch-all related to everything about your industry? Great. But you’re going to have a lot of competition, and major competitors with more resources and established viewers. Instead, focus on what you do best, the niche area that you have a unique perspective. What is the blog that only your company could write?

Establish your credentials. Let your readers know why they would want to hear from you about the topic. Just the fact that you are selling the product or service is not necessarily enough to gain your reader’s trust. Sharing your education or career path is a quick way to add credibility; but it’s not the only one. I never got a degree in “Body Image Sciences”, but my genuine interest in the topic makes me a credible source to readers.

Collaborate with other blogs

Know your part in the blogosphere. Read other blogs on your topic! Getting to know what’s already out there helps you establish where your niche will be. You also get a feel for what readers on the topic are interested in and can borrow some tricks on what works.

Comment and share. Guest post, link back, comment on other blogs. All these actions convey your interest in the topic and establish your unique point of view. Blogs can act as a community of learners, experts and interested parties. Join in enthusiastically!

Interact with readers

Let your readers know what they can expect. Doing a series is a great way to get readers coming back for more. Or pick a day when you write on a certain topic, or have a certain type of post. Personally, I do a body positive music post every Friday, featuring a song or two I enjoy. I have been linked back to as a place where you can consistently check out body positive music.

Encourage and ask for feedback. Trying to get commenters on your blog can be really frustrating at first—it normally doesn’t happen automatically, but keep at it! At the end of every post ask questions or encourage them to give you feedback on the topic. Respond to comments right away with a real response, rather than just a thank you. Readers are a great resource for your blog, so let them know they are valued.

Now get writing!

Becky Canary-King is an Account Manager and Press Contact at Direct Incorporation, a company focused on providing a more economical and efficient alternative to using a law firm for common legal/entrepreneurial issues. She is passionate about women’s empowerment and blogs for personally for Happy Bodies, and professionally for Direct Incorporation’s Blog, offering tips for the first 6 months of your small business.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Blogging for Fun Taught Me About Blogging for Profit

It’s that festive time of the year again: the holidays will soon be at our doorsteps. While many will be celebrating the holidays, us bloggers have to work hard to reach our sales goals.

Hopefully we can celebrate this season in a different manner: by improving our sales and boosting our profits. With competition always around the corner, it’s vital to formulate and apply solid strategies that get real results. Here are my favorite ways to boost sales over the festive season.

1. Create attractive landing pages

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a product or a service. In order to really convert plain traffic to a final transaction, you must create effective landing pages that list all the benefits of whatever it is you’re offering.

For a landing page to produce good results, it must have a purpose and a goal. What’s your target revenue? Set a time frame, aim high, and work towards your goal.

More importantly, the page must emphasize the ultimate advantage of your offer while stimulating the prospect’s mind. Get in the reader’s head—what are they thinking? To earn the visitor’s trust, link or quote authority figures and websites. Offer your product to a few individuals for free to create buzz and so you can get persuasive testimonials. Feedback is potent and cannot be underestimated. With a little bit of tweaking, landing pages are simply the best way to boost your offer’s sales numbers.

2. Offer incentives to improve sales

There are plenty of incentives to consider.

Free shipping

In the event that your website is promoting a tangible product such as a book, for the buyer, your offer of free shipping can be the deciding factor between making the purchase or ditching the product altogether.

Believe it or not, offering free shipping can actually make you more money. To qualify for delivery that’s free of charge, websites usually require a minimum order. That way, the buyer purchases at least one fairly expensive product or two products at a regular price. How many times did you visit an online store to buy one thing but then bought something else as well just to qualify for free shipping? I know I’ve done it plenty of times.

Slick promotions

Who doesn’t love the buy-one-get-one-50%-off deal? How about buy one, get one free? If you slightly raise the price of the first item and include a separate shipping and handling charge for the second, you could be earning almost the same profit you would by selling both items at the regular price!

How about promoting the older ebook that’s been sitting on your blog’s shelf for quite some time? Maybe throw it in as a free bonus to guarantee the sale. If you’re advertising a valuable service such as blog consultation, how about offering 25% off your first lesson to get things rolling?

Many thriving blogging mentors such as Jon Morrow offer package deals such as “sign up for five classes and get one free,” which can help achieve promotional goals. This is smart because it doesn’t cost you anything and creates more value for your buyers.

Other techniques

Other proven techniques to consider are cross-selling and up-selling. Have you ever bought a shirt and shoes from the same website at the same time? That’s like buying a theme framework and a skin for the design.

The point I’m trying to make is that you can convert sales to even more sales if you address the customer’s needs. The best way to do that is by dedicating a section on your website that links to related products. Placement is important so the related product(s) should be displayed in a highly visible area, preferably on the sidebar or right below your current product.

These are some powerful tips to think about. Keep in mind that there’s no right or wrong incentive that can make or break your sales this holiday. Your success will be mostly measured by the effort you put in and the strategies you apply. It is, however, possible to determine the most ideal incentive for your operation through continuous testing (shifting things around).

3. Rely heavily on email marketing

Email marketing is so powerful because it’s right in your face. When I get an email from ProBlogger’s newsletter, 95% of the time I click on it and read it thoroughly. Why? It’s simple, I’ve been sold on Darren’s ideas as he gained my trust and loyalty as a reader.

I wanted to know this is true for sure so last week I emailed a few successful bloggers and asked about their experience with email marketing. Every single one of them responded with truly positive comments and one person mentioned that it’s beneficial to any web campaign.

I agree—in fact many web gurus have said that a large percentage of their sales come from email advertising. It works because it’s a direct form of sales that builds relationships based on trust. Most importantly, it’s targeted towards a crowd that’s already following your lead, which makes it easier to convert the sale.

Take into consideration that it’s not always just about making the sale. It’s imperative that your value your loyal readers and offer them substantial value in return. Sometimes it’s enough to just get more downloads, views, or subscriptions.

4. Shoot for repeat business through social media

The people who are already following your moves on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are usually the first ones to know when you release a new product, run a promotion, or publish a new post. Connect with people you’ve already convinced in the past. Make them feel at home by dressing up the design of your social network page to a holiday related theme.

Doing this will naturally encourage holiday shoppers to pick up the book you recently published on your website for their family or friends. Maybe they’ll even purchase a service you offer on their behalf. Guess what? You just sold two people without even knowing it.

5. Test your website early and frequently

If you’re expecting a serious wave of traffic for the holidays, the last thing you want is to have any errors such as broken links or pages on your website. If your planning is poor and your website is not fully functional, you could be losing substantial revenue.

Proof read as many pages as you can to check for grammar mistakes, especially the pages where an offer is based on visitor action. The images on your site should load quickly to avoid the visitor from exiting your page.

Your page shouldn’t take more than two to three seconds to load for the same reason. It may also be a good idea to go through a test transaction to make sure that your order link is working properly. This way, if there are any issues, you’ll be the first one to know.

So, how exactly do you improve sales through your website during the holiday season? By implementing the above strategies to your website and making buying easier, more comfortable, and rewarding. Share your extra tips in the comments, so we can try them too!

Isaac Atia writes about blogging tips, SEO advice, and other closely related topics. The goal of his blog is to help other bloggers improve their overall blogging knowledge. You can subscribe to his blog for more posts.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

5 Tips to Improve Your Web Sales During the Holiday Season

I started blogging because I caught a glimpse of its potential to give something back to me.

Can you relate? Sure, that “something” is sometimes money. But, as we all know, there’s got to be more driving us to the keyboard, or we’ll lose our enthusiasm. Blogging requires a ton of work, and if it doesn’t offer a sweet return, we get stressed out, our writing grows thin, and our impact weakens.

Though a nice deposit in the old bank account feels terrific, money can’t motivate us to love our work or grow in our craft. We humans need something more than money to be truly excellent, and truly happy. I don’t want to divert you from your financial efforts or goals; I just want to point you towards the thing that will keep you motivated long after the money is invested, gifted, or spent.

I want to remind you of the far greater reward that could actually increase your likelihood for making money: personal growth.

Think about the last time you shook off a bad habit or muscled your way into greater maturity: it rocked, didn’t it? Unlike money, the pay-off of personal growth is a permanent, deeply felt reward that will keep our affection over the long-haul.

At the end of this article, I’ll ask for your input about ways in which we bloggers can grow in our personal lives and in our craft. But for now, sit back and consider my top three ways to ensure that I’m getting the best possible reward from my blog.

1. Write a blog vision statement

In our home, we have a Family Vision Statement that helps each member—from the biggest to the littlest—join together in achieving the same daily goals. That’s what inspired my Blog Vision Statements, which help me to define what my blog looks like, where it’s heading, and the type of content I will keep.

My vision statement is a brief description of what my blog is all about. It helps me stay focused and not compromise for every passing whim and tempting online offer.  I use it to evaluate what I write about, the amount of time I take to write it, and the ambitions I have for my public platform. It’s the permission I need to say, “yes” to beneficial opportunities and “no” to everything else.

Here’s how it works: my newest blog, TheHomeschoolBaby.com exists to “equip homeschooling families with wisdom, practical application, and personal encouragement for their children from birth to five-years old”.

So if I’m suddenly over-dosing on giveaways or product reviews, I’ll know I’m working outside of my vision statement and possibly jeopardizing the value of my blog. The hope is that I like my vision statement so much, I think long and hard before breaking it.

2. Keep an online budget

“Time is money,” isn’t it? We need to be very discerning about the amount of time we are investing in our blogs: does it cross the line into costing us more than it’s worth? For example, as a “mommy blogger” I must be vigilant about my time online. Though adding one more affiliate link might put twelve bucks in my PayPal account, taking the extra fifteen minutes away from my children is not worth it to me.

I evaluate the hours in my day and all of the things that are worth my attention. If I only have one hour available for blogging, so be it. My blog will be a one-hour-a-day blog. It might not pay off the mortgage or catch the eye of thousands of readers, but it’ll be as top-notch as I can make it within that time frame. I’ll divide that hour up into portions so that I can write posts, respond to comments, solicit guest posts, and work on other projects. When the online stopwatch buzzes, my time is up.

Sometimes the sacrifices sting and I wish I had more time to accomplish all of my online dreams, but I’m confident that I will not regret my choices in the long run. To tell you the truth, I’ve found that when I keep healthy parameters on my blogging time, I have much more to offer—even if I only have twenty minutes to think smart and type fast.

3. Write tough yet reasonable expectations

My second-grade teacher was so demanding that I saved almost all of my work from that year in a big trunk. I was so proud of my accomplishments! She had high expectations, and we children were delighted to meet them.

I think about her when it comes to blogging. Thanks to Miss C, I know now to keep my blog in line by asserting some high standards for it. For example, I expect my blog to improve my writing skills, develop my voice, and make me a more honest person. I expect it to help me think twice about my opinions, and five times about my facts. I expect that the feedback from my family, friends, and enemies makes me confess, buck up, or move on.

I expect my blog to influence, help, and encourage other people whom I’d never be able to influence otherwise. I expect it to stretch me out of my comfort zone, increase my compassion for other people, and spur me on into other worthwhile projects.

Over time, I’ve received every item on my list. Gaining so many personally enriching treasures keeps me positive about blogging. It also keeps me in control of my blog, and not the other way around. If I didn’t benefit from my blog on a regular basis, I sure hope I’d stop blogging.

If you find that the motivation to make money just isn’t enough for you, consider writing a vision statement, an online budget, and a list of expectations for your blog. Once you have these in place, you’ll find yourself looking for ways to grow in those areas. You’ll reach out for advice, insights, and opportunities that will help you to grow as a person, not just a blogger-with-a-bank-account. You’ll love the sweet return.

Now it’s your turn to be the wind beneath the wings of bloggers like me. How can we grow in our personal lives and in our craft so that we get the most out of our blogs?

Laura Booz is the author of the new eBook Blogger Behave: Make your blog benefit your life so you can love both!. She writes at http://www.10millionmiles.com about homesteading, homeschooling, faith, and other things that fascinate her along the way.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Get the Best Return on Your Blog

Making money online is no different than making money from any other type of business in that you have to abide by the same laws and regulations as any other business or citizen.

Many internet entrepreneurs fail to consider this and are later faced with severe fines and penalties from relevant governing authorities. Others face even more severe repercussions.

How do I know? I’ve had to help many get out from their terrible situations! See, I have a slight advantage. Not only am I a successful internet entrepreneur today, but I was also a CPA and financial consultant in my past life.

Copyright Christopher Meder - Fotolia.com

Although I have no data to prove it, my theory is that many young entrepreneurs enter the online business space without fully understanding its nature and the laws and regulations one must adhere to in any for-profit activity.

The lack of awareness and knowledge is what leads most people to unforeseen unfortunate circumstances with the legal authorities.

Below are a handful of legalities to consider as you embark and progress in your journey of making money online. These are some of the most financially impactful in terms of fines, penalties, liability exposure, and money left on the table, yet they’re ones that are most commonly overlooked by bloggers and internet marketers.

Note that this post focuses on regulatory obligations under United States law.

Note: None of this should be construed as legal or tax advice. Consult your personal and paid accountants and attorneys before implementing any part of this discussion.

Legal incorporation

A business online is a business nonetheless. And any business can be sued for anything.  At the very least, it’s a good idea to ensure your personal assets are protected and “separated” from your business assets.

One way to do this by incorporating your business under a formal legalized structured such as a limited liability company (LLC).

Contractor pay compliance

In the United States, you are required to timely complete and file Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1099 for each contractor hired if you paid them at least $600.

This is how the government tracks who is earning money from freelance labor. This is also how the government tracks whether expenses claimed as deductions are being claimed as income elsewhere. For example, when you claim a $600 business deduction, that is $600 less the government can tax you with. But they will expect someone else to claim the $600 so they can collect their fair share of tax revenue.

Quarterly Tax Installments

When you’re self-employed, the Government expects you to remit your anticipated self-employment taxes on a quarterly basis so that it can operate within its budget.

Rather than paying a lump sum tax amount at the end of the year, you are expected to pay taxes in four installments (one each quarter). The idea is to pay all your tax liability by the time year-end comes around.

It is always a good idea to overpay and then claim a refund rather than underpaying and having to pay fines and penalties. You don’t want to mess with rude Uncle Sam.

Business losses

If your online business generates a loss and you happen to have a full-time job and therefore get a W2 form at the end of the year, you may be able to deduct your losses from your wage income to reduce your overall tax burden.

For example, if you made $40,000 working in a job and lost $2,000 in your online business due to expenses such as paying someone to design a website, domain, hosting, email newsletters, etc., you can deduct the $2,000 from the $40,000, netting you a total of $38,000 in taxable income. This essentially reduces your effective tax rate.

Now you won’t get into trouble if you don’t do this, but it is to your benefit to claim your business losses as a deduction against your wage income. The IRS will not remind you of this, so be sure to capitalize on what you deserve.

NOL carry-forward

If you don’t have a full-time job, and your online company is all you’ve got, providing you have it incorporated appropriately, you can carry over losses from one year to another, future year, to offset your earnings.

This is called a net operating loss deduction in more technical terms. There are certain rules around how much you can deduct, when and how long you can carry over a balance in the future. Speak to your accountant for more information.

When must you consider these income tax legalities?

These legalities collectively can sound overwhelming, especially if you haven’t had to consider them before. That said, these are not prerequisites by any means to start blogging or an internet-based business.

You can wait until your online ventures become profitable before considering the legalities involved. It makes sense. Why go through all that planning, work and possible hassle for nothing? After all, a very small minority of online businesses make money and survive in the long term.

That said, it can’t hurt to meet with a tax professional and get familiarized with the law and your obligations when you decide you want to monetize your online ventures. In fact, I highly recommend that approach. At the very least, spend some time reading about the law and your responsibilities to avoid any surprises in the long term.

Subsequent to all that, it is important to stay organized and keep track of all income and expenditures from your online endeavors. Many bloggers scramble at the last minute to obtain this information when their ventures turn profitable and they have to pay taxes on those profits.

Staying prepared and organized ensures that you can comply with tax laws if and when you have to cross that line (when you become profitable).

And while the above considerations are the most impactful and commonly overlooked, the tax law is broader and varies from one jurisdiction to another. Therefore there may be nuances unique to each blogger’s home base or jurisdiction.  For these reasons collectively, it may be best for a professional blogger or internet marketer to consult with a tax accountant who is familiar with this industry when your online endeavors start turning profit.

Conclusion

Although these points specifically apply to the United States legal system, the general premise underlying this discussion is broad. In other words, every jurisdiction has its set of legalities, and it is important to understand what you are expected to comply with as an individual earning income in that jurisdiction.

Knowledge is power, so make sure you are equipped with the right information before you start any worthwhile endeavor, whether online or off, and avoid potential legal liabilities that may come your way.

You can prepare yourself by initially learning about tax laws and your responsibilities, and subsequently consulting with a tax professional when it comes time to pay Uncle Sam.

Did you think about these things before you dove into blogging for profit? What did or do you do to prepare yourself for tax compliance?

Sunil owns over a dozen profitable niche websites and is the author of “How to Go from $0 to $1,000 a month in Passive and Residual Income in Under 180 Days All in Your Spare Time“, a FREE report you can download instantly from his Extra Money Blog, where he discusses how to create multiple streams of passive and residual income, entrepreneurship, internet marketing, blogging and personal finance. In 2007, he sold his ecommerce website for $250,000 to a top Ebay Power Seller and since then has sold several niche sites for five figures each. You can read more about him and his work on his blog

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Avoid Legal Trouble, Income Tax Fines, and Penalties as a Blogger

The biggest insecurity we bloggers face is the question of whether anybody is actually going to buy our product. We can’t give away our content forever, and those Google ads are hardly going to pay the bills.

That’s why every blogger should offer his or her own product. You can recommend other products without seeing a noticeable return. The biggest return on effort is from your own product, whether it’s an ebook, a service, or a piece of software. But the creation of your own product creates a different kind of fear.

Ever look at those snazzy movie trailers Hollywood puts out for their latest blockbusters and wonder how you could make one of your own?

Maybe you’re starting a new blog, and you want to launch with a bang. Or maybe you’re coming out with a new book, and you want to create some prelaunch buzz. Or maybe you’re even launching a new online course, and you want to build anticipation up to a fevered pitch in preparation for launch day.

Whatever the case, creating a trailer seems like a good way to do it. There’s only one problem:

You can’t possibly afford it, right?

Image copyright Deklofenak - Fotolia.com

Hollywood routinely spends $50,000 or more putting together their movie trailers. They assemble crackerjack teams of animators, story borders, musicians, video editors, and directors, all of whom work for weeks on the trailer alone.

These aren’t folks aren’t exactly begging for work, either. If you want a great trailer, you have to hire the best, and the best comes at a premium price.

So, you’re screwed, right? I mean, maybe you could scrounge around in the couch cushions to find a few bucks, but that’s not going to get you very far, now is it?

Actually … you might be surprised.

How I created a jaw-dropping movie trailer for under $50

Yep, it’s true. The movie trailer I created for my blog launch only cost me a grand total of … wait for it…

$34 US.

Granted, I already had a copy of Adobe After Effects, which saved a few thousand bucks. I’m also an exceptionally geeky dude, so I figured out how to do all the necessary work on my own.

But it’s easier than you might think.

You see, I bought this template from VideoHive for $20. It’s basically a ready-made movie trailer, where all you have to do is fill in the text.

From there, I bought this music for $14, which was actually recommended by the designer who created the After Effects template. So I bought a license, added it to the trailer, and then exported the whole thing to a movie file.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Don’t believe me?

Well then, let’s take a step-by-step walk-through of how to do it for yourself.

Step one: choose your Adobe After Effects template

Before you do anything else, head on over to VideoHive and browse through the trailers. There are several ways to do it:

1. Just type “trailer” in the search box, and then look through everything that comes up.
2. Browse category by category, starting with “After Effects Project Files,” and then drilling down to exactly what you want.
3. Click “After Effects Project Files,” and then sort by “Sales,” showing you all the most popular templates on the site.

The third option is my personal preference, because it allows you to familiarize yourself with all the different types of templates and start thinking about what might work for you. When I first started working on my trailer, I spent hours and hours looking through them, dreaming about what I could do, and it took me weeks to finally settle on one.

The reason I finally chose Ivory is because it has an epic feel, but it’s not an overly complicated trailer, so it was really easy to modify. All I had to do was change the text, slip in my own videos, and it was ready to go.

That’s important, because if you’re doing it yourself, you should know Adobe After Affects is one of the most complicated pieces of consumer software in existence. I’m a technical dude, and it still took me hours to figure out how to change the text. If I’d used anything more complicated, I probably would have been tinkering with it for weeks.

That’s not to say you can’t use a more complicated template, of course. If you do, you probably just want to hire a professional to edit it for you, which we’ll get to in a minute.

But if you do want to do it yourself, stick to the ones with quotes. You can find them by searching for “quotes” or “text.”

Whatever you decide though, you’ll soon discover that none of the templates come with music. They often provide recommendations, but you have to license and integrate it on your own.

Let’s talk about that next…

Step two: license the music for your trailer

There are lots of different places you can license music online, but most or all of the templates on VideoHive use music from another site in the Envato network, AudioJungle. You can use any music you want, of course, but the selection at AudioJungle really is quite awesome, and the licenses allow for trailers (I’m not a lawyer, so consult one, if there’s any doubt).

You can search it the same ways you searched VideoHive, and if you’re looking for a few hours to kill, it’s a good way to do it, but you could also argue it’s a waste of time. Here’s why:

Changing the music will skyrocket the cost.

The majority of the templates are created with a certain piece of music in mind. The animation changes with music, and key ideas pop up at just the right time to create a dramatic effect. If you change the music, everything will be out of sync, and so you will have to redo the timing of the animation.

Unless you’re an Adobe After Effects guru, that means hiring a pro to do it for you, and I would guess the change of music, along with the necessary changes to the animation, would cost you anywhere between $500-$1,000. If you’re working on a big product launch, it might be worth it, but for a blog or book or any other project where you’re not making lots of money, you probably want to keep it cheap.

It’s up to you, but my advice: stick with the music the template creator recommends.

From there, all you have to do is…

Step three: assemble and render your movie trailer

Here, you have to make a decision, and it will dramatically affect the cost of your trailer, as well as the time it takes you to create. You can either:

1. Assemble and render your movie trailer all by yourself.
2. Pay a professional to render and assemble it for you.

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to do myself, but … well … I’m a weirdo. I actually enjoy learning new software and tinkering with it days on end, and so the 20+ hours it took me was, in a word, fun, where most normal people would’ve already turned their computer into a flying projectile.

Maybe you’re a weirdo too, though. If you are, you can absolutely do it. Buy or borrow a copy of Adobe After Affects, pray your computer is powerful enough to run it (hint: 4 GB of RAM, bare minimum), Google up some After Effects tutorials, and start working.

On the other hand, maybe you would rather be water boarded than try to do it yourself. If that’s the case, cough up a few more bucks, and hire a pro.

It’s not as expensive as you might think.

Most of the uber-talented designers on VideoHive will put everything together for you for $250-$500. You don’t get any changes to the template, and they are probably not going to do multiple revisions, but if you hand over your text, music, and any photos or videos, they’ll put them in and send you a completed trailer.

If that’s too much money, you can also go the cheapskate route and post the job on a freelance site like oDesk. You can probably get it done by somebody in India, China, or Eastern Europe for $100 or less.

And if you think about it, that’s still pretty cheap. Sure, it’s a lot more at than the skimpy $34 I shelled out, but it’s also a lot cheaper than the $50,000 or more Hollywood movie studios spend.

It also makes you look like a rockstar. So if that’s all that’s standing in your way, don’t cheap out, here. Save up a few hundred bucks, and get yourself a nice trailer for your launch.

It’s totally worth it

No, you probably won’t pick up 1740 subscribers in a week like I did, because that takes some killer connections, but what if you get a couple hundred? Or what if it convinces a major TV or radio show to interview you? Or what if it sells just one more copy of your $500 course?

You don’t have to blow the doors off for your trailer to pay for itself. Truth be told, you can probably screw about 90% of it up, and it will still beat any other type of launch lead in you could do.

Next week, I’ll have another post here on ProBlogger giving you some strategies on how to get the most out of your trailer. In the meantime, start digging through VideoHive, get some different ideas rattling around in your head, and let your subconscious do its work.

All the technical tomfoolery in the world is no substitute for creativity. And really, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re packaging up our ideas into a 30-180 second trailer, but the strength of that trailer isn’t the animation or the music or even the video itself. It’s the ideas.

So get thinking.

Be creative.

And more than anything, believe in yourself. Yes, you might be an upstart blogger, scrounging around the couch cushions to pay for your trailer, but you can do this.

And you know what I think?

It’s gonna be huge.

Jon Morrow is also on a mission to help good writers get traffic they deserve. If you’re one of them, check out his upcoming blog about (surprise!) blogging.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Everything You Need to Know About Creating a Jaw-Dropping Movie Trailer on the Cheap

The pitches go like this: turn your archived content into an ebook that will rake in bucks while you sleep. Invest a weekend, maybe a few weeks, and you’ll have a book that will establish you as a thought leader and open the flood gates to new revenue streams.

But as my 85-year-old Dad asked when I told him I was writing an ebook: “Why would you write a book, now that everyone with a computer can?”

You’ve got to admit, that’s a good point from my 85-year-old Dad, who still makes money on his investments but sometimes can’t find his slippers.

Because everyone can now publish a book, lots more will. So your book has to be great. Make that spectacular. And don’t forget that you’re not only the source of the expertise and probably the writing. You will also be responsible for editing, page formatting, cover design, sales and much more.

Depending on your skill set and budget, you can pay for help from Createspace and other self-publishers, people you stumble across on the Internet or a marble-lobby public relations firm.

But for more of the work and most of the decisions, you are on your own.

Don’t get me wrong. I am tickled pink that more people can share their wisdom or art through ebooks and on-demand print. I’m simply advising you to go in with your eyes wide open, avoid the sleazier pitches, and think about some of these questions my Dad would ask.

• Are your goals achievable? If you want a book that makes money, it has to be good enough to compete with traditional publishers and the coming flood of self-published ebooks. If you are only interested in raising your prestige among a smaller group of people, you may set the bar a little, but not much, lower.
• Are you an expert? Ideally, you’ve been accumulating knowledge for years and updating your wisdom daily. If you’re not already passionate about a specific topic, don’t charge in.
• Do you have a unique approach? Like a product, your book has to offer something people can’t get anywhere else. In a world of countless niches, that might be relatively easy for you.
• Are you willing to invest time? If you are smart enough to have the expertise that makes a book worthwhile, likely you are not going to fall for the get-rich-quick charlatans.
• Can you write well? If you want to sharpen your skills, you can learn from many blogs, courses and books, including mine, Write Like You Talk—Only Better. If you’re a blogger, figure at least 30 to 50 quality posts on your theme that will then need to be edited, packaged, and sold.
• If your writing doesn’t measure up, are you prepared to spend the money and time on someone whose does? Most successful nonfiction authors who don’t eat, sleep, and breath writing pay big bucks to professional ghost writers, not a stranger whose site trumpets their rock-bottom prices. You get what you pay for, as my Dad would say. Unless you can find a 24/7 psychic ghost writer, you’ll also spend lots of time thinking about the theme and feeding your ghost writer your knowledge and revisions.
• Can you design the pages, cover and marketing collateral? Again, be prepared to pay for the kind of quality that will compete or at least spend the time to find the right online sources. Yes, templates are available, but much of what I viewed were woodlands or other looks that do not work for my cover. Right again, Dad. People do judge a book by its cover.
• Do you have a content marketing machine? You’ll need to spend lots more time feeding and building your social networks, courting legacy media and pursuing other strategies for marketing your book. Competition is stiff and getting stiffer. You have to do a lot more than sneeze in an elevator to go viral.

If there’s an ebook in your soul, go for it. I’m thrilled that the doors have opened. Just be prepared to pour in years of learning, months of prep time and days of fretting.

It has to be your best, not something you knocked off over a rainy weekend.

That’s how real money is made. Just ask my Dad.

Barb Sawyers, who blogs at Sticky Communication, is almost ready to publish in print and for ereaders the second edition of Write Like You Talk—Only Better. Preview it here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Questions My Dad Would Ask Before You Started that Ebook

I’ve published seven books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), and the last two I’ve self-published.

In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers.

Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Man Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See (the latter was just published last month and is #2 for Motivation on Amazon’s Kindle store as I write this), I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books published with traditional publishers, combined.

Image copyright photogl - Fotolia.com

1. Why self-publish, rather than use a traditional publisher?
2. Why bloggers should self-publish.
3. How to go about self-publishing.

Why self-publish?

• Advances are going to zero: Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because there’s so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.
• Lag time: When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback, and Kindle within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it’s a grueling process—book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs—that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.
• Marketing: Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific example. After I published with Penguin, they met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com.” Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I wrote my own review. As a joke. I also had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt from the book. In other words, I felt the publisher did nothing, but took credit for eveything. Ultimately, authors (unless you are, for example, Stephen King) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.
• Better royalties: When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I made with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights, instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights to my work, and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).
• More control over content and design: Look at this cover, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous. Now look at the cover for my last book. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate. Also, when you self-publish, you don’t have any teenage interns sending back editorial comments that you completely disagree with. You control your own content.

Why should bloggers self-publish?

• You have content: I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder, which has 47 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts.
• You have more to say. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that.
  1. So what? It’s okay if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.
  2. Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words, but usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words long. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain why this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog. With my last book, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.
• Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog: Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer when you go out there now to syndicate your blog elsewhere, or to get speaking engagements. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.
• Nobody cares: Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher.
• How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, traditional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

Okay, I’m convinced. How do I self-publish?

There’s lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

First, write the book

For my last two self-published books, as I mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the book was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts.

But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

Use Createspace.com

I used Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon and has excellent customer service. The team at Creatspace let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within.

For my first book I did this by myself. For my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on fonts (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

Upload the PDF

Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

Within days your book is available on Amazon

All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used one of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free.

Go to Kindle

With Kindle, Createspace charges $70—and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now your book is available in paperback and Kindle versions!

Marketing

• Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.
• I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around ten speaking engagements, handing my latest book out.
• I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.
• Writing guests posts for blogs like ProBlogger helps, too, and I’m very grateful.
• Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

Promotions

You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to having a book publisher handling them for you). For instance, n a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion that lets readers get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) free.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me.

You can do this also. And you should do it. There are no more excuses in this environment. Do you have questions about self-publishing? Let us know in the comments!

James Altucher has written 7 books, has started and sold 3 businesses, and has blogged successfully this past year at jamesaltucher.com. He also writes for the WSJ and other media outlets. He exposes himself way too much on his blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/18/why-bloggers-should-self-publish/feed/ 47 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/17/why-similar-blogs-sell-for-different-prices/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/17/why-similar-blogs-sell-for-different-prices/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:06:09 +0000 Guest Blogger http://www.problogger.net/?p=18098 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices

]]> This guest post is by Jock Purtle of brokercorp.com.

If you are selling your blog, the first thing you will want to know is how much it is worth. You type into Google is something like “what is my website worth?” What you will get is a whole lot of free website valuation tools. If you use something like www.mywebsiteworth.com and type in “google.com” you get an arbitrary value of 1 billion dollars.

Now we all know these tools are can’t be right. So we might then type into Google “what factors determine a website’s value?” and when we collate all the information. we are going to get a long list of different things to look for when valuing a website. Things like domain age, PageRank, Google rankings, and so on.

But what these articles fail to identify is the single most important factor in valuing a website, and that is the future maintainable earnings of the site.

What needs to be understood is that the assets of the business are only indicators of future maintainable earnings, and do not add any extra value to the site. Value is determined by whether the site will make money in the future, and what level of risk the potential buyer is willing to take.

Let’s take the example of company A and company B. Each company has the same income and same net profit for the year. However, as we will find, their value differs completely.

How values can differ

	Company A	Company B
Business Type	Advertising	Advertising
Annual Sales	$200,000	$200,000
Annual Profit	$100,000	$100,000
Trends	Flat	Room for growth
High Margins	No	Yes
Recurring Clients	No	No
Largest Customer List	No	Yes
Traffic	Heavily reliant on SEO	Multiple Source
Income Source	1 Source	3 Sources
Complex To Operate	Yes	No
Low Barrier To Entry	Yes	No
Business Level	Mature	Growth Stage
Staff	High Turnover	Stable
Accounts	Messy	Neat
Owner Help after Sale	No	Yes
Owner Financing	No	Yes
Owner Non-compete	No	Yes
Brandable Domain	No	Yes
Old Site with unbroken Whois	No	Yes
Quality and diverse Links	No	Yes
Repeat & Direct Traffic	No	Yes
Solid Page Rank	No	Yes
High Levels of Traffic	No	Yes
Commercial Target Audience	No	Yes
Quality Content	No	Yes
Partnerships and JV’s	No	Yes
Solid Sales Presentation	No	Yes
Directories (Yahoo and DMOZ)	No	Yes
Strong Alexa and Compete rank	No	Yes
Easily Transferable	No	Yes
Press Coverage	No	Yes
Affiliate Program	No	Yes
Synergistic Purchase	No	Yes
FINAL SALE PRICE:	$100,000	$400,0000

How value differs

The market has a strong opinion on what a site is worth. Buyers are looking for a good return on investment and the value is based on what they are willing to pay. That is why valuation is really only educated guess-work about what a site will sell for.

From the above example you may think that your blog meets all the criteria of company B, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to sell it for that amount.

The reason company B is deemed more valuable is because, from the information available, the site looks like it will continue to increase in revenue every year and there is a lower risk that the site will fail. Thus there is less risk for a potential buyer, and they would be willing to pay more to acquire it.

The table represents a rule of thumb that you can apply to any website. The factors listed represent the variables that should be considered in any valuation. There may be some outlying factors that skew the data if either site were to be purchased and that is why true valuation is only represented by the final sale price and the money has been exchanged.

An explanation of valuation: How to determine risk

The risk a buyer is willing to take in purchasing a website will determine the multiple of earnings that they’re willing to pay.

The general rule you will find in valuation follows something like this:

Net Income x Some Multiplier = Your Website Value

Here is a breakdown of those two factors.

Net Income

Net income is represented by a company’s total profit for the year and is calculated by taking revenues and adjusting for the cost of doing business, depreciation, interest, taxes and other expenses, or in accounting speak, EBITDA (earning before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization).

A web business normally doesn’t have the usual expenses that an offline business has, like rent, office space, and so on, and this is reflected in the financials.

A multiplier

A simple multiplier will be based on an expected Rate of Return. This is used to calculate the final sale price and is reflective of the risk that the purchaser is willing to take.

Consider these multipliers:

• 12 times Monthly Multiple = 100% return (your money back in one year)
• 24 time Monthly Multiple = 50% return (your money back in two years)
• 36 times Monthly Multiple = 33% return (your money back in three years).

You are beginning to see why Internet businesses are a good investment. With low staff and expenses and less hassle than a traditional business, they can offer much better value than putting your money in the bank and getting 1-5% interest.

What doesn’t count as value?

“But what about the value of my domain, and the rankings in Google, and the cost of the web development? Why isn’t that included in the site?” you may be thinking.

Unfortunately, the market doesn’t look at your site as a sum of all its parts. So even if you site cost you $15k to develop, and the domain cost $12k, if it only makes $10k per year, you are only likely to get $10k—$30k for the site, even though it cost you $27k to develop.

The assets of the business (content, rankings, domain, and so on) add no more value than what has already been calculated. The assets of the business simply form the structure for its revenue-generating capabilities.

It is important to understand this principle when valuing your site. Even though it might have cost you $27k to get the site up and running, your blog is no more valuable than the income a potential buyer can see the site making in the future.

Have you had your blog valued? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Jock Purtle is a Senior Broker at Brokercorp.com. They are a full-service website brokerage specializing in website sales and acquisitions. Jock is currently offering a free website valuation at http://brokercorp.com/sell/.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Why Similar Blogs Sell for Different Prices

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/17/why-similar-blogs-sell-for-different-prices/feed/ 13 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/16/four-tips-for-bloggers-who-want-to-work-with-the-travel-industry/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/16/four-tips-for-bloggers-who-want-to-work-with-the-travel-industry/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:02:49 +0000 Guest Blogger http://www.problogger.net/?p=18108 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Four Tips for Bloggers Who Want to Work with the Travel Industry

]]> This guest post is by Matt Long of LandLopers.com.

People are attracted to travel blogging for a lot of reasons.

For some, they are doing a year-long trip and simply want an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family. Still others are attracted to the niche travel blogoshpere for the sheer love of travel, and any partnerships with the travel industry are a bonus.



Image is author's own

While it is possible for a successful travel blogger to participate in media trips, the way we interact with the travel industry is key to our long-term success. After all, many of us operate our travel blog just like any other blog: it’s a business and the relationships we make with industry are not just important, they’re vital.

Before seeking out opportunities though, bloggers should keep in mind the following key points.

1. Don’t take advantage

There is a fairly low barrier to entry to become a blogger. For little or no money, just about anyone can hang out their blog shingle and announce to the world that they are now A Blogger.

Yet for many people, particularly those in the travel PR and marketing worlds, this is a new and slightly frightening universe. Visions of bad TripAdvisor reviews fill their thoughts and they fear any bad press on web sites that can spread virally.

The blogger’s ability to write online and share information with people around the planet gives us power, and we must be mindful of that and not take advantage.

Don’t bully people into giving you things for free. Most destinations and large PR companies will see through this, but not so local sites of interest. For example, let’s imagine Sally Smith has a travel blog that attracts ten unique readers a month, mostly her family members. But she is a travel blogger! She has power!

With this power she decides that when she visits Bangkok, she will ask museums and tourist sites around the city to give her free access in exchange for a review on her blog.These organizations have no idea that she only has ten readers a month and would never think to ask. Instead they see the title Travel Blogger and get scared. The result is that Sally saves a lot of money and the destination gets nothing in return.

It’s easy to be attracted to the bright lights of travel blogging, but just like any other niche blog, it takes a lot of work and perseverance to be successful. Part of that success lies in not taking advantage of current and future partners. Ultimately, it’s all about providing great content for our readers, but first you need to make sure you have enough readers to make it worthwhile for others to work with you.

2. It’s not me, me, me—it’s them, them, them

Whether a country-specific tourism board, or a PR firm representing a client, wants to work with you, your must remember that these organizations have one goal in mind: to promote their destination or property and get more people to visit. Period. The End. Fin. This fact has to be kept in mind from pitch to post-trip blog posts, or mistakes will happen.

It’s up to the blogger to make sure that the trips or products make sense to their readers. The PR people pitching to you may not always have a strong grasp on what your site is all about, but you certainly do.

Similarly, bloggers must not lose sight of the focus of the trip, because there always is one.  If a hotel invites you to visit their property in a fantastic locale, it may be tempting to write heavily about the locale, but that wasn’t the point of your trip. The hotel invited you down to write about them. It’s of course possible to marry the two, to describe the great activities found in the area if you stay at John Doe’s Hotel.

But at no point during your partnership can you forget that this is a business relationship with specific returns on investment expected.

3. Understand expectations

Before agreeing to anything, whether it be a travel product review or a trip to New Zealand, both parties must ensure that they understand each other’s expectations.

This is the time to be frank and honest. Let them know that you aren’t interested in running advertorials and will be fair and honest in your blog writing. Most destinations love this; it adds credibility to the coverage. However, some who are new to the social media world may be surprised at first, so it’s better to make it clear from the beginning.

Also be sure to ask if they expect Twitter, Google+ and Facebook coverage in addition to blog posts, and how many posts they are expecting. It’s equally important to ask about anything in particular they want to have highlighted. On a trip to a specific country, the tourist board asked that I investigate the culinary side to the destination, as it sometimes gets overlooked. Doing so didn’t threaten my integrity as a writer, it just gave me better focus and made sure I covered the areas my sponsor wanted me to cover.

4. Be honest

Honesty is important with any relationship, but especially so when it comes to travel PR. If you are a budget travel blogger and are approached by a high-end resort property, don’t say yes to their invitation to visit! Kindly let them know that you probably aren’t the best match for them.

Travel bloggers of course need to take care of themselves first, but we also have to safeguard the integrity of the community as a whole. If you promise something you can’t deliver, it makes every travel blogger look bad.

Similarly, be honest with your readers. Don’t hide the fact that you’re going on a press trip, highlight it—promote it! You’ll find that readers really enjoy the concept of traveling along with you as you travel, so don’t shy away from it. Weave into your narrative the fact that you’re going on a sponsored trip and explain why. Tell your readers how it will benefit them and you’ll not only keep readers, you’ll gain many new ones.

Travel blogging is a niche market that is still learning the nuances of the mainstream travel industry, and vice versa. But through smart and productive relationships, both blogger and PR pros can only flourish in this brave new world of travel promotion.

Matt Long, travel writer, blogger, photographer and world traveler is the Editor-in-Chief of LandLopers.com, a top travel blogthat caters to the “normal” traveler who wants to get out there and experience the best the world has to offer.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Four Tips for Bloggers Who Want to Work with the Travel Industry

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/16/four-tips-for-bloggers-who-want-to-work-with-the-travel-industry/feed/ 27 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/05/how-to-attract-your-perfect-reader/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/05/how-to-attract-your-perfect-reader/#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:09:48 +0000 Guest Blogger http://www.problogger.net/?p=17936 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


How to Attract Your Perfect Reader

]]> This guest post is by James Chartrand is the owner of Men with Pens.

One of the greatest challenges of writing for your business is figuring out your ideal reader.

It’s tempting to think that everyone will read your work—and that creates a problem, because your mindset shifts to thinking that everyone is your audience. After all, you reason, everyone is a potential customer, right?

Nope. Not even close.

Let’s say I started writing exclusively about training horses. Now, you might like horses. You might enjoy riding them.

But unless you’re intensely interested in the actual training of horses, my words and my business aren’t for you.



Image copyright Ron Rowan - Fotolia.com

The same is true in any industry, and especially so for any niche. Only a select group of people will care about what you write, simply because it directly applies to their interests.

No one else gives a damn.

This is a very good thing.

What would you rather have? 500 loyal customers constantly spreading the word about you, your products and your business because they love what you write?

Or two million faceless consumers who show up to your website, read what you have to say and realize it doesn’t concern them?

Think further. What would you rather have? Customers who rave about your business after buying your products because it was exactly what they expected and needed?

Or people who buy and then demand a refund because your content wasn’t supposed to loop them in and this was the wrong product for their needs?

If you’re thinking, “Hey, but at least I got sales!” then you’re clearly missing the point.

Building a successful, sustainable business isn’t about scooping as many random people as you can into a giant net. It’s about targeting a specific group of consumers at the intersection of their problems and your solutions.

And your writing is the key to unlocking that place.

How to unlock the intersection

To help you unlock that mystical intersection, you need to figure out the exact type of potential customer you’d love to meet there.

• Go through a list of your best customers—the people you loved working with, the ones you can’t wait to do business with again.
• Write down what you liked about working with them. Why are they your best clients?
• Write down commonalities—are these people all in a specific industry? Do they come from the same age group?
• Write down similar traits these people share. Do they all act a certain way? Carry a similar tone of voice? Behave in common ways?

Figure out as many similarities as you can. Figure out what you liked about these people and working with them.

Maybe they have go-getter attitudes and make decisions quickly. Maybe they give you clear instructions and pay on time. Maybe they’re friendly and warm, or helpful and forgiving. Maybe they’re Baby Boomers. Or Gen Xers. Or work in a field you find interesting and challenging.

List it out. Build a portrait of your ideal customer, the type of person you wish all your customers would resemble.

This is your ideal reader—the person your content should attract.

The list you’re building can be as long as you want, but the key is to learn what you love about these people so that you can decide how to write in a way that pulls in more potential customers just like the ones you love working with.

For example, writing in a bold, authoritative style might attract the go-getters… and turn off the simpering, unsure customers you dislike dealing with. Or maybe writing in a warm, friendly way pulls in kind, caring souls that make you feel good about your job and wards off the authoritative, pushy types.

List in hand, you’ll be able to formulate a very accurate portrait of your best possible reader—and your most ideal customer.

Then you can begin writing in a way that appeals to them, reaches them, and attracts them closer to you—and to your business.

James Chartrand is the owner of Men with Pens, and the writer making waves at Damn Fine Words, the most innovative writing course completely designed to help bring you business results. Sign up now for the DFW newsletter for more writing, blogging and content creation tips and techniques.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


How to Attract Your Perfect Reader

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/05/how-to-attract-your-perfect-reader/feed/ 39 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/03/10-of-the-webs-best-sidebars/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/03/10-of-the-webs-best-sidebars/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:29:49 +0000 Guest Blogger http://www.problogger.net/?p=18113 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


10 Of The Web’s Best Sidebars

]]> This guest post is by the Blog Tyrant.

The sidebar is the second most important place on your site. It is where, after engaging with your content, people head over to subscribe to your list, follow you on Twitter, or buy your product.

It is vital that you get it right.

In this post I am going to show you some of the web’s best sidebars, and then talk about how you can improve yours with a goal to get more subscribers and conversions, and make more money.

NOTE: You might also like the best About Us pages and the best Contact Us pages.

Criteria for a great sidebar

So what makes a sidebar great? Well, I have come up with a few criteria over the years but, of course, I would love to hear if you can think of any others.

• Above the fold: Do you know what I mean by above the fold? It’s everything you see before you scroll. Good sidebars have good stuff above the fold.
• Eye-catching, but not distracting: The sidebar needs to be eye-catching in that it gets people to interact, but not so much that people forget about your content.
• Takes readers deeper: The sidebar should take people deeper into your blog or site. It should get them to subscribe or convert them in some other way. That is the purpose of true navigation.

Of course there are more but these are the ones that really do it for me. After all, the whole purpose of the blog’s sidebar is to increase conversions.

The 10 best sidebars on the Web

Okay so let’s get into those sidebars. Here are the ones that I thought ticked the most boxes and really helped their users navigate their way towards a sale or a conversion, while still providing a fantastic user experience.

1. Tumblr Staff Blog

The Tumblr Staff blog is really cool because they show you the faces and personalities of everyone who works there.




Tumblr staff sidebar

Their sidebar is particularly useful because it advertises their product: Tumblr Blogs themselves. They give you a little form to start your own blog right there in the sidebar and then underneath have a very eye catching graphic on 30 reasons you will love their site.

This is a great combination—a sign up form and a list of reasons for why you should act. Might be a good idea for all blogs to explain to readers what they will get from signing up.

2. Copyblogger

Brian Clark of Copyblogger has totally redesigned his blog to appear more like a landing page that sends you off to his other products. The result? No sidebar. And that is something really brave and something that I had to include in this list



Copyblogger sidebar

Sometimes the best thing you can do with a sidebar is get rid of it. If you are building a landing page that serves to get people to a sign up or purchase area, then a sidebar might just be distracting. Have a look at the way Copyblogger does things. It’s making money.

3. ViperChill

Pretty much everything that Glen does is amazing. He is a very talented guy. And his sidebars are simple but extremely effective.




Viperchill sidebar

The thing he does that I haven’t seen anyone else do is add testimonials from big players like newspapers and Fortune 500 companies talking about how good he is at what he does. This type of social proof really serves to solidify his brand and make him appear more authoritative.

4. Huffington Post

Huffington Post is the world’s most successful blog—it’s even listed on the Stock Exchange now. So following their lead is a very good idea.




Huffington Post sidebar

In my previous post on the best comment areas we saw that they used badges and rewards to “level up” their readers and make them feel invested in the site.

The sidebar takes that idea further by showing readers what’s hot on Twitter, Facebook, and in other sections of the site itself. The net result would be that they get more social shares and a lot deeper user interaction with their content.

5. Mashable

Mashable is the biggest social media news site online. And they get that part of it really right.




Mashable sidebar

One of the best things you can do with your sidebar is get your readers to engage with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and Mashable does this by getting people to log in with their accounts. Then, they show those users which topics are trending. It is a very clever way to mix both the social outlets as well as the site’s content. The result? They get a lot of viral content.

6. Smart Passive Income

Pat is a super-nice guy, and his sidebar lets you know right away. The first thing you see is a picture of him with his young son.




Smart Passive Income sidebar

This instantly builds trust with the new readers and, aside from building his personal brand equity, it makes you feel at home and in a very personal space. Pat then follows up by offering his free ebook below, as a natural progression from his little introduction.

7. Digital Photography School

Digital Photography School, Darren Rowse’s other blog, is a gold mine of “how to do it right” information. It is one of the best blogs for user engagement and has a wonderfully successful and active community.




dPS sidebar

The sidebar is perfectly done for encouraging users to get involved—how to make money, how to write guest posts, how to start a weekly assignment, etc. Useing your sidebar as an advertisement for different areas and functions of your site is very important.

8. Youtube

YouTube, after Facebook, has the highest page views of any site in the world. Last estimates I heard were around 30 pageviews per person. That means that, on average, every time someone visits YouTube they end up watching 30 videos! The reason? It’s the sidebar.




YouTube sidebar

By showing people related content with enticing screen shots from the videos, YouTube gets users to dig deeper and stick around longer than they normally would. All this browsing makes it more likely users will see an advert and interact with it.

9. Facebook

For some reason people always overlook Facebook when it comes to discussing excellent website and blog ideas. I think it is because it just seems to big and impossible to mimic. But the way they have designed sidebars is extremely indicative of what we as bloggers should be doing on our blogs.




YouTube sidebar

It shows insights into the page, what your friends are doing, and any important notifications. All of these things, when applied to a blog, can serve to really make your readers more addicted to your site. And aren’t we all addicted to Facebook?

10. Men with Pens

Like some of the others, Men With Pens uses its sidebar to promote the variety of services on offer.




Men With Pens sidebar


One thing I really like about this sidebar is that it is totally consistent with the rest of the design. It goes a long way towards keeping the site true to its brand. But, as always, the best thing about James’s work here is the copy. The way the calls to action are written in this sidebar are second to none.

Which is your favorite?

Leave a comment and let me know which sidebar is your favorite. It doesn’t have to be one on this list, either; if you know a good sidebar that I’ve missed, please drop the URL below. Lastly, will you be changing anything in your sidebar as a result of this post? Let us know.

The Blog Tyrant is a 26 year old Australian guy who plays video games at lunch time and sells blogs for $20,000 a pop.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


10 Of The Web’s Best Sidebars

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/11/03/10-of-the-webs-best-sidebars/feed/ 52