It involves a large lattè (everything else hinges on this) and some delving into my blogs metrics to see how they’ve been performing.

While I do keep track of the traffic stats of my blogs each day I like to set aside an hour or two at the start of each month to go a little deeper and do some more analysis of trends on my blogs – I find that when I do this I notice things that I can build on to continue momentum on my blogs.

This morning as I was looking at the type of posts that had done well in the last few weeks on my blogs I noticed an interesting trend – many of them were ‘story‘ type posts.

• The Power of Being Personal on Your Blog – the hottest post on ProBlogger last week – a post where I tell the story of being jumped on/hugged by a reader who I’d never met before.
• The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business – the hottest post on ProBlogger in the last month - the story of my wife giving me a 6 month deadline to get my blogging to a full time level – or go get a ‘real job’.

Both posts got a lot of traffic, were linked to by numerous other blogs and were re-tweeted more than normal.

I’ve always known how powerful ‘story posts‘ can be on a blog but I decided to dig a little further to see whether this continued deeper than just the last month.

What I discovered was that story posts have been among the most popular posts on this blog over the last 5 years time and time again. They’re not the only type of post that does well (there are a few other types of posts that do well – we might explore these in a later post) but they certainly have performed very well for me.

Here’s a few more examples of popular story posts:

• The Day 250,000 People Showed Up at My Blog – a case study that recorded my experience of a successful post.
• 9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers – a post introduced very quickly with the analogy of my son’s first steps (and a picture of him).
• Learn from My Mistake – Don’t Leave Money on the Table – a story of where I failed – shared as a warning to others.
• Becoming a ProBlogger – a Story in Many Parts – my full story of going full time as a blogger – a mini biography.
• Lessons from an Umbrella Salesman – not a personal story but an analogy type post from my early days of blogging.
• Another Day in the Life of a ProBlogger – a post from a few years back which outlined a typical day of mine.

I could go on…. and on! Each month that I looked back on through my blog here at ProBlogger a story type post featured in the top 2 or three posts.

Why are Stories Effective?

A lot could be said about the reasons why stories tend to do well on blogs but here’s a few reasons that I’ve seen in my own experience:

• Stories engage the imagination of readers
• Stories go beyond facts and theories
• Stories reveal something about yourself as a blogger (they’re personal)
• Stories trigger emotions and the senses
• Stories are conversational - they stimulate others to react and tell their stories
• Stories provide hooks for readers to latch onto in your blogging (they’re relatable)
• Stories grab and hold the attention of readers
• Stories are memorable – while people don’t always latch onto facts and figures – a good story can be remembered for years
• Stories illustrate your points in ways that can be much more convincing (and convicting) than other types of information

The key with stories on blogs is making them tie into the rest of your blog – ie make them relevant and ensure that they have some point to them that is useful to your readers on some level. While telling the story of how your dog dug up your vegetable patch might interest you, the readers of your blog about (insert your blogs topic here) may not be quite as fascinated – unless you use the story to illustrate something about your topic.

Now that we’ve looked as some of the reasons stories are effective on blogs – in my next post I want to extend the idea of story telling with a 2nd post that explores some of the types’ of stories that you might like to use on your blog.

This post is another part of the Principles of Successful Blogs series. Previous principles explored are Listening, Trust, Usefulness, Community and being Personal.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

'You've got 6 months to make blogging full time.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That moment changed everything.

That was the day I....

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

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

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

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

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business

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Because it’s a private, walled community it can be a little difficult for those not on the inside to assess whether it’s something for them – so I thought today I’d highlight some of what’s going on inside:

1. Community Challenges

Something that we’re going to run this week is a ProBlogger Community Challenge. In the challenge I nominate a type of post for our members to go away and write up and then everyone shares their links to those posts over the coming days. Then members are encouraged to surf through the list, comment, give feedback and then share those links that they resonated most with their own network.

The idea is that we all do something together, there’s opportunity to learn from how others approach the task and of course there’s opportunity for extra traffic both from other members and from where they share the links that they like.

Update: I’ve just launched the first community challenge – it’s now live.

2. Blog Critiques

We’ve set up a specific area of the forum where any member can share a link to their blog and ask others to give feedback on it.

Members putting their heads together on this means that people asking for critiques are getting a variety of responses on their blogs from a community with diverse experiences, skills and ideas. There’s also the opportunity to learn by watching critiques of other blogs.

3. Opportunities for Collaboration

The collaboration area of the community is one of the most active. This is one of the key reasons I wanted to start the forum – putting bloggers together to work together for mutual benefit can lead to wonderful outcomes.

We’re still only seeing the beginnings of where these collaborations will lead but to this point we’re already seeing some creative ideas. Bloggers are hooking up with other bloggers in their niches to work together, we’re seeing bloggers working together on social media campaigns in groups, bloggers are helping one another with content creation and more.

The effectiveness of this area will only grow as more bloggers join which will open up possibilities to work together with other bloggers in similar niches and locations.

4. Secondary Connections

One of the cool things that I’ve already seen start to happen is people making connections with other bloggers outside of the community. For example in a thread where I invited members to share their Twitter ID’s we’ve had hundreds of people share them and people reporting seeing marked increases in their follower numbers.

While having more followers is nice – the real benefit of this is that these connections have the potential to build the depth of interaction between bloggers, strengthening networks and opening opportunities for fruitful interactions.

Another example of this is groups of bloggers already planning to meet in person at different blogging events. For example there’s a group going to get together at Blog World Expo and a few people asking if there are bloggers in their local areas who might like to have a meet up.

Member Tutorials

Yesterday I added a new area to ProBlogger.com – one for ‘Tutorials’.

There are two main reasons I wanted this area – firstly I’ve already seen a couple of really excellent posts by members exploring different topics. I want to highlight this type of content as I think there’s a lot we can learn from it. Secondly I’d like to give community members the opportunity to have some of their ideas featured here on ProBlogger.net occasionally as guest posts. I won’t use all tutorials submitted here on ProBlogger – but from time to time will use the best and most interesting submissions with the permission and credit to the author.

6. Our Members

1300+ members in less than a week isn’t a bad result if you’re thinking purely about numbers, but what I’m thankful for and excited about is the quality of those who’ve joined.

Members come from all parts of the world, all levels and with an amazing variety of experiences. Already there have been numerous threads where bloggers have shared different opinions on topics in a way that doesn’t tear anyone down but instead where the diversity of opinion and experiences help facilitate learning.

What our 6 of our Members Say about ProBlogger.com

On that note – let me share 6 testimonials from these very same members to finish off this post:

“After recently rebranding my blog and website, I’ve felt as if my blogging attempts have been floundering, and with no support and no one to lean on, I’ve had difficulty finding the inspiration and focus to write. Since joining the ProBlogger Community just a few days ago, I now feel like I’m part of a family who has already supported, encouraged, and helped me to get my focus and determination back! Thanks for creating this community, Darren – I’m truly excited to see it evolve in the coming months!” – Ursula Comeau from UCWebCreations.com

“Without doubt, the new home of bloggers. In less than a week it has established a community spirit that most forums can only dream of.” - Kevin Muldoon from Blogging Tips

“The thing that I’ve really gained from the forums is motivation! Most forums tend to suck up my time, I think I’m barely on ProBlogger.com for more than ten minute before I have to go and write a post, go searching for inspiration or look into a new form of monetisation. Within the first week it’s impressive to see that there’s already a strong sense of community among the members and it’s great to see everyone so willing to help other bloggers reach their goal.” – fern from Craft Blog

“After signing up for Problogger.Community I submitted Summer Tomato to the critique section. I’d never had anyone but friends and family give me their thoughts on my design, and I’ve always been curious what “real” bloggers might think. Within a couple hours of signing up I had wonderful positive and constructive advice on my blog from experienced bloggers, and even a few new readers! As far as I’m concerned this subscription has paid for itself already.” - darya from Summer Tomato

“If you want to grow your blog, you need to work with other like minded bloggers…plain and simple. Problogger.com has been an incredible avenue for blogging collaboration and it is just getting started. It is really a no-brain’er.” – Robb Sutton

“Not being much of a forum user I was a little hesitant at first to sign up at problogger.com, especially since it was going to cost a whopping $1.95 (gasp!), but I’m glad I did. Already I’ve connected with some great people and just having a more personal interaction with Darren makes the cost worth it.” - David Turnbull from Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

“I’m not the best networker in the world but problogger.com has made a massive difference. Without even asking for it, members have gone out of their way to help promote my blog further and being a member has given me so much extra motivation for blogging that my traffic has doubled in the week that I’ve been there! It’s paid for itself many times over already.” – Lee from Smash and Pees

Join us Today

If ProBlogger.com sounds like a community that you’d benefit from we’d love you to join us today. The cost is $1.95 a month (you can unsubscribe at any time) – we plan to increase this price but if you sign up at $1.95 you’ll be locked in at that price and never pay more to get access to the forum.

The process for joining is simple:

1. just head to the registration page – this registers you as a forum member (but doesn’t give you access to threads until you’ve done the next step and paid.
2. once you’ve registered and logged in head to the payment page where you select the $1.95 option and will be then taken to PayPal.

Once you’re paid – you’re in! If you have any problems along the way let us know via the contact form on the forum.

PS: I’ve set up a ProBlogger.com Twitter Account to keep people up to date on problogger.com specific news.

PS2: One thing that has naturally started happening is that groups of bloggers have been joining up together. A few bloggers told me that they felt a little overwhelmed by joining and participating in this community as they felt a little out of their league – so they convinced a friend or two to join with them.

A couple have even bought memberships for friends so that they’re entering in with someone familiar that they can buddy up with from the start.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons to Join the ProBlogger.com Community

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This is a question that has been on my mind lately – I thought it was time to find out what the answer is.

So far 800 1200+ bloggers have agreed to join me in finding out – will you join us too? We’re offering it as a special introductory price of $1.95 a month for access to the forum (once you’re in at that rate you’re locked in at it and it won’t rise).

I’ve been asked to add a forum area to ProBlogger for almost as long as this site has been live (5 years last week). It’s something I’ve been open to but never quite got around to doing – but lately a number of things have changed my mind including:

1. The success of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Forum – this temporary forum/community rocked and led to quite a few bloggers going into partnerships and collaborations with other bloggers.

2. More and more reports of bloggers forming alliances or collaborative relationships – bloggers have joined together in networks and groups for years now – but lately I’ve been hearing a lot more stories of bloggers forming alliances and collaborating.

3. The realization that while here on ProBlogger people do collaborate in comments – that a blog is really not the medium for it to go to its potential.

Out of all this – I’ve decided to finally launch ProBlogger.com in collaboration with the team at b5media who are looking after the back end of the site.

So far I’ve invited those on my email list to join and 800 1200+ have signed up. Today I’m launching it to the wider community.

Note: You can get much of the information below in a video at the bottom of this post if you prefer that format.

What is ProBlogger.com

• ProBlogger.com is all about community, collaboration and learning together.
• It is a paid forum ($1.95 USD per month subscription – more on why it’s paid below)
• It is a private and moderated forum – walled from the general public, search engines and spammers
• It’s currently in version 1.0 – a forum but we plan to add features as it grows.

Why is it a Paid Community?

I’m aware that the idea of paying to join a forum is not going to suit everyone and I don’t pretend that it will appeal to all – but there are a number of reasons I’ve taken the decision to put a $1.95 monthly subscription fee on it.

1. I want to staff the forum – there’s nothing wrong with volunteer moderation (and we’ll add this as we go) but I wanted this community to be administrated by a paid and dedicated staff member (Lara Kulpa who many of you are familiar with) to ensure that the forum is as useful as possible. We’re dedicating 100% of the income of the first 1200 or so members purely to cover this (and then a % of all further membership). My goal is to have Lara full time on this task.

Having a paid community manager is important to me because I know it’ll be run well, well moderated, more useful and that members will be looked after by someone accountable and focused on the task.

2. It’s valuable and I want it to be seen as such – my experience of forums in the past is that they tend to attract a lot of lurkers who join but rarely turn up and contribute. While having a cost on the forum may keep some away I believe it gives those who do join a little more reason to participate. If something costs you’re hopefully more likely to use it and a forum that is actually used is more valuable for everyone.

3. Discourage Spammers – while I fully expect members will successfully promote their blogs in this community – that’s not what it’s really about and I hope that putting a fee on it will keep spammers and self promoters a little more at bay. Feel free to tell us about your blog – but do it appropriately and as a good citizen of the forum. Spammers are not welcome.

The Details on Price and Introductory Offers

The introductory price of ProBlogger.com is $1.95 USD per month. Payment is via PayPal (sorry to those who are not able to use PayPal but at this point it’s the system that is easiest for us to use and is the most widely used option).

This introductory price of $1.95 is a limited time offer. I’m yet to decide on the price that we’ll put it up to but if you join at this rate you’ll only ever be charged this much per month for access to the forum. Those who join later will be charged at the higher rate.

I’m also offering 50% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook to anyone who joins the forum in the first month. This is purely an optional thing and not something that I expect everyone will want or need. You’ll be given a discount code once you register and pay for your first month on the inside of the forum for this.

To join simply follow this process:

1. head to the registration page of the forum here – add your details and join the forum.
2. go to the forum and hit the ‘complete the registration process by clicking here‘ link
3. hit the ‘$1.95′ option in the ‘cost’ drop down menu and click ‘order’
4. this will take you through a process where you can pay with PayPal and set up the subscription – once you have you can head back to the forum and start posting.

Will You Join Us?

At this point we’ve had 800 1000+ members join as paid up members and we’d love to have you join us. You can unsubscribe at any point if you find that it doesn’t fit your needs and stop future payments. While I know it won’t fit with everyone’s situation I do hope that you check it out and join the community as an active member – this will be as good as we make it so get involved!

Here a video (also on the front page of ProBlogger.com) where I go through a lot of the above information for those who prefer to watch and listen over reading!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger.com is Live! JOIN with 1200+ Bloggers to Improve Your Blog

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The technique is simply – open up a word document and begin to describe a type of reader that you’re either attempting to write for or who is already reading your blog. I’ll show you some examples of reader profiles that I have created below – but in short the task is to describe who they are, what their interests are, why they might be reading your blog and what their needs are.

The idea is that you end up with a picture of who you’re writing for that you can then use to inspire and inform you in your blogging.

Before I talk about the benefits of doing this and give a few thoughts on how to do one for your own blog – let me show you one that I created a while back for my photography site (click to enlarge).

The profile above describes one of the types of readers that we have on DPS – people who largely use their cameras to photograph their kids.

The profile describes why she reads DPS, some of her dreams, the type of photography she’s into, how else she uses the web, a little about her demographics, the level she’s at etc.

Here’s another one from a different type of reader at DPS:

Again – I’ve described another type of reader in a similar way to the first.

In each of these cases the reader profile is based upon a reader group already within the community – however this same exercise could be done with potential readers – or the type of person you want to read your blog if you’re just starting up a blog and don’t yet have readers.

Why Do I Create Reader Profiles?

Hopefully you can already see some of the benefits of these kinds of reader profiles – but let me list a few of the things I’ve enjoyed about having done this exercise:

• It Personalises the blogging experience – I find that having a person (real or pretend) in mind as I write reminds me that there are real people on the other end of my posts. There are people with faces, names and needs – I find it inspiring to visualise them as they read what I’m writing – it also helps me to write in a more personal tone.
• It informs my writing – having these kinds of personas before me and in mind as I write reminds me of some of the needs, problems and questions that readers might have. As a result I tend to write more practical posts that are written with real reader needs in mind. Often as I write I visualise the questions and reactions that these different readers might have to my posts and then try to build answers into what I’m writing based upon these questions and reactions.
• It identifies opportunities – I remember writing the first profile above (Grace) and having the realisation that quite a few of my readers have mentioned that they have dreams of one day making some money from their photography. This triggered me to start a section in our forum on making money with photography which has been really popular.
• It can be helpful for recruiting advertisers – often when talking with potential advertisers the question you’re asked is ‘what type of reader do you have’. Having these pre prepared personas can be really useful in answering that question. It also shows that you’ve thought about your readers and run a professional site.
• It identifies ways to connect with your readership - you’ll notice I’ve included details in the profiles on how the reader uses the web. It’s really useful to know what other sites your reader uses and what places of presence that they have as this can identify opportunities to identify places where people like the readers you already have (or those that you want) hang out.

How to Create a Reader Profile?

There are no real rules – you can see I’ve developed a certain style in my personas above. I added a picture to each of the type of person in the profile to further personalise it. I also tried to include information on these kinds of areas:

• Demographics
• Financial Situation
• Needs/Challenges
• How they use the Web
• Motivations for Reading DPS
• Experience with the topic – Level
• Dreams

I’m sure that others would include other types of information – if you’ve done this type of thing before please feel free to share your suggestions and tips in comments below.

Let me finish this post off with one last persona – again for DPS.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging

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Today I want to take the ’seeding’ idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it – and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there’s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post – that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ’seeding’ is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ‘watering the garden’ helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn’t for force things.

So without further ado – let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ’seed’ content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ‘out there’ is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do – and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.

The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group – but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

• timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
• doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
• the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
• making your tweet ‘ReTweetable’ by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I’ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn’s status update if I feel that the content I’m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again – it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you’re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?

This is a question I’m always asking myself as I’m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I’m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.

I don’t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly – but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.

Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

4. Pitch it to another Twitter User

This is similar to pitching another blogger but can have a great impact as well. In fact I recently had a link from a blogger who both posted on his blog and tweeted the link and the Tweet converted much better for me in terms of traffic.

The key once again is to make sure that the link is relevant to the Tweeter and the type of thing that you’ve seen them sharing on twitter with others.

5. Share a Link in a ‘Signature’

Many bloggers have links to the front page of their blogs in both email signatures and forum signatures – but what about directing people to an individual post? There are a variety of tools out there that highlight latest posts (feedburner has one) and they make a lot of sense to me because you’re sending people to standalone articles that you’ve written rather than a sometimes confusing front page of a blog.

6. Bookmark it

This is one that I don’t tend to do myself these days but I know many bloggers who do so I’ll include it. It entails submitting your post to a site like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious etc.

I don’t tend to do this any more as I find many of these sites have algorithms that penalize a site if it’s submitted by the same person over and over. What I do instead is occasionally shoot a link to another user of these sites in the hope that they’ll submit it for me. Having said this – I also find that as your traffic grows the submissions become more and more organic from regular readers so there’s less need for me personally to be involved in these types of ’seedings’ in social bookmarkting sites.

7. Guest Posts

Another method that I’ve seen a number of bloggers using with real effect lately is to link to your important blog post in a guest post on someone else’s blog.

Most people who guest post on another blog tend to link back to the front page of their blog in the byline. This is a good general link to get but if you have an important post that you’ve written that relates to the guest post you’re writing you should find a way to incorporate a link to that post – either as the byline link or if the blogger allows it – within the blog post itself.

8. Give readers an easy way to share it

Hopefully with some of the above techniques you’ve got a few readers over to your blog – now you want them to share it with others.

There are many ways to make your blog post ’sharable’. I tend to use a combination of templated techniques as well as a few custom ones that I add to posts once on posts that I think will do well on social media sites.

• Templated techniques – there are many ways to build social media buttons into your blog. There are heaps of tools and plugins that will do this for you. The key in my experience is not to have too many buttons/options but to choose just a few that relate well to your audience.
• Custom techniques – if I notice that one of my posts is starting to do well on Twitter or Digg or some other social media site I generally will either add an extra button to a post or add a text link pointing people to where they can tweet or digg the post. I find that these more obvious little additions to a post can often tip it over the edge to a viral traffic event.

9. Newsletters

This is a way that I often ‘tip’ posts that are doing OK over the edge into a viral traffic event. It usually works like this:

A – I write a post that I think MIGHT do well as a viral post

B – I time the publishing of that post for a Thursday morning – an update goes out via RSS to my subscribers

C – I use some of the above techniques to get the post seeded (Twitter, Facebook etc)

D – I wait until the post is submitted to Digg and then add a Digg button to the post (or some other social bookmarking site)

E – I then send out a newsletter to my list including a prominent link to the post

What I find is that without the last step (sending a newsletter) the post can do quite well – but when I send the newsletter I quite often see a ‘tipping point’ with the post and it’ll go viral on multiple social media sites at once on the back of the extra traffic that I’ve been able to send to the traffic via the newsletter.

2 Final Words of Advice

Let me finish with two words that I think are key to much of the above – persistence and relationships.

1. Persistence – There’s a real need for persistence in seeding content. Much of what I’ve described above are things that I’ve been doing for years and they’ve only become more effective the longer that I’ve done them.

My experience of finding readers is that it is all about momentum. In the early days to find just a handful of readers can be a real challenge – the above methods may not bring thousands of people through the door – however the 10 than they do bring in on your first day could lead to 100 next month which could lead to the thousands in the coming year.

You may get lucky and your seed may grow into something big in the early days of your blog – but even small results can grow slowly into big things over time. Each reader that you bring into your loyal readership is important because they have a network of their own that they could help spread word of your blog to.

2. Relationships – The other key to much of the above is to be as relational as possible. Much of the above relies upon people sharing your posts with others once you alert them to the existence of your posts. So put aside regular time to grow your network, to build a presence on sites like Twitter, to build trust and influence on other sites outside of your blog – this networking can pay off in a big way over the long term. Just do keep these other social networking sites in perspective – they’re not the main game themselves but should be used to build up your home base.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom

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• “Great content will market itself” – a statement I heard one speaker make at a blogging conference last year.
• “Write it and they will come” – a motto I’ve heard a number of new bloggers sharing as a secret to their yet to be found success.
• “Quality Content = Readers” – an ‘equation’ I saw being written about in one online blogging course recently

Each of the above statements has elements of truth to it. Many bloggers have built successful blogs on the back of great content. However there are almost always other factors at play.

The reality is that many blogs produce quality content that doesn’t get read. The reason isn’t that the blog’s not worth reading – but in many cases it’s because nobody knows to go read it.

Here’s the thing…..

Letting your content market itself DOES work IF you already have an audience to help with that process by spreading word of it through word of mouth – but if you’re just starting out and don’t yet have a readership the reality is that YOU are the only person who knows your great content exists.

Word of mouth can still play a part in your finding of readers – but as YOU are the only person that knows about your great content YOU need to be the one who starts the process and starts the process of getting the word out.

It’s time to hustle and get word out about your content.

Seeding Content

Later in the week I want to highlight 9 methods to do this – however today I want to start with a more general suggestion that comes from my own experience of getting content read

Seed it – Don’t Force it!

Perhaps it’s just my personality or style – but I find that sometimes less is more in the blog post promotion game. Here’s how I’d chart the effectiveness of my blog promotions vs the amount of effort (or aggressiveness might be a better word) put into the promotion.

Let me flesh this out a little:

• In my experience if you only put little effort into your blog promotion you get little results. This is what I talk about above – if you don’t let people know about your posts how will anyone find them?
• If you put in too much effort into it and get too aggressive with your promotion you can also get little results. In fact sometimes when you’re too aggressive you can actually go backwards and hurt your site.
• For me it’s about putting in some effort – but not getting too full on about it. It’s a real balancing act at times.

I like the term ’seeding’ to describe how I try to promote my content.

I’m not really a great gardener but I do know that in order for me to have a new plant grow in my garden I need to go to some effort – but that if I do too much I can actually hurt the growth of the plant.

To have a plant grow I need to plant a seed, I need to ensure it gets water, I can give it some fertilizer, I need to give it a little protection from my kids digging it up…. but after that it’s up to the seed and the environment to make it grow. It takes some effort – but there comes a point where I need to step back and let the seed do it’s thing.

This is similar to my experience of promoting content on blogs. Often it takes me getting the ball rolling but if I force things it can actually have the reverse effect.

As I look back on some of the biggest traffic events on my blogs there’s been a real mix of my own promotion (usually to start the process) and a more organic thing happening. Sometimes I push too hard and don’t get results – other times I don’t push enough and get little return also – however getting it right can lead to incredible days of traffic.

Update: read the continuation of this post at my next post in the series – 9 Things to Do to Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your MOM

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Myth of ‘Great Content’ Marketing Itself

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The TeachingSells program has been closed to new participants for quite a few months now but in the coming weeks they plan to open the doors again. In the lead up to it Brian’s put together some great free content that even if you don’t signup for the full course you’ll benefit from.

For starters there’s a cool (and quite funny) new video to introduce you to the ‘teaching sells philosophy’. See it here:

Once you’ve watched it sign up for the free goodies including:

• A Free 22 Page PDF report – Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start Making Some)
• An audio version of the same report
• The outline of a 20 Step Process Map to build an online training business
• A great instructional video on ‘traffic’ (an excellent watch)
• 3 case studies (audio and transcripts) that illustrate how 3 online entrepreneurs have used Teaching to build successful businesses online.

I’ve just gone through all the free stuff and have come away freshly inspired even though I’ve previously taken the full Teaching Sells course in the first time they ran it.

The reason I particularly like Brian’s teaching is that many bloggers get stuck in a rut of thinking that the only way to make money from blogs is by running ads or promoting affiliate programs. While some bloggers make it with this approach many choose to blog about topics where this model is really tough. Brian present another model of making money online that I think many bloggers could use to monetize previously un-monetizable niches.

To me what he teaches is a common sense next step for many blogs that seem to ‘get stuck’.

Yes – you do need to give an email address to get the free stuff but if you know Brian’s approach you know he’s not one of those guys who goes over the top once he’s got you on his list. Yes you’ll get information on the Teaching Sells course but subscribers to Brian’s lists know that he also gives extra stuff (articles, videos etc) along the way and he’s someone who completely respects unsubscribe requests.

I hope you’ll find this great free content worthwhile! Grab it here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Get These Free Goodies at Teaching Sells

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In this post I want to share what I’ve learned along the way on how to make money with Amazon.

While Amazon’s Associates program is not my largest income stream (I rank how I make money blogging here) it was actually the first experiment that I did with monetizing blogs. I began to experiment with it in the last quarter of 2003 (just before I started using AdSense).

I started using it on a personal blog that had been going for around 12 months and had around a thousand readers a day – the first quarter was not spectacular in terms of earnings – I made $31.80 (around 30 cents a day) and almost gave it away.

I’m glad I stuck with it – here’s a chart of the quarterly earnings since the last quarter of 2003 (note, it doesn’t include July or August of this year as that’s an incomplete quarter so the overall figures from this period is below the $119k figure mentioned above):

As you can see there has been some ups and downs since the early days but the overall trajectory has been positive. It’s a little hard to see in the chart, as it is quarterly, but Decembers are always great months – last December is still the best month I’ve ever had despite last quarter being a record over a 3 month period.

So what have I learned on the way to earning six figures from Amazon?

Today I want to share 11 tips on what I’ve learned in making money blogging from the Amazon Associates Program. Tomorrow I’ll share another 10 (update: You can read Part 2 here).

1. Traffic Traffic Traffic

Let’s start with the most obvious point – one of the biggest factors in the upward swing in my Amazon earnings has been a corresponding upward swing traffic.

As with most ways of making money from blogging the more eyeballs that see your affiliate promotions – the better chance you have of it converting (of course this is a generalization as not all kinds of traffic converts – but more of that in the next point).

While I do think it’s worth starting to experiment with affiliate promotions early on in your blog (even before you have a heap of traffic) your main focus in the early days needs to be upon creating great content and building traffic to your blog.

2. Loyalty and Trust Convert

One of the other major factors that has come into play with the increase in earnings that I’ve had has been the type of readership I’ve managed to gather on my blogs. While I do get a fair bit of search engine traffic I’ve found that in most cases (and there is an exception below) search visitors are not converting with affiliate programs on my blogs – instead it is loyal and repeat readers.

The main reason for this is that those readers who connect with you on a daily basis over the long haul develop a trust with you (and your blog) and so when you make a recommendation or do a review they’re more likely to take that advice.

3. The Intent of Readers Matters

Another big factor in the equation of Amazon conversions is the intent that your readers have when they visit your blog. Why are they there and at what stage in the ‘buying cycle’ are they at?

I began to think about this just over a year ago as I looked at the growing traffic on my photography site but realized that my Amazon earnings didn’t seem to be keeping up with the traffic growth that I was experiencing. What I realized is that DPS was a blog that was largely writing about ‘tips on how to use a camera’ and that as a result it wasn’t really drawing readers to it who were in a ‘buying mood’. In fact a survey that I did found that many of my readers had recently purchased a camera and were on my site specifically because they wanted to learn how to use it.

As a result I added to the mix of new content on the site more articles relevant to people buying a digital camera. I wrote tips with advice on buying cameras, reviews of digital cameras and equipment etc. This culminated in a while new section on the blog devoted to ‘gear’.

Slowly this has attracted new readers to the blog – readers who are researching their next camera purchase – readers who are more likely to click a link to Amazon and who once there are more likely to make a purchase.

This is where search traffic can convert with affiliate programs – ie when you’re writing content that people in a ‘buying mood’ are searching for.

4. Relevancy Matters

This is another common sense tip that many of us (yes I failed on this one in my early days) mess up. The more relevant to your audience the products are that you promote the better chance you’ll have of converting.

• Promote iPods on your blog that largely talks about spirituality and you are unlikely to convert (believe me, I tried) – promote relevant books, CDs and DVDs instead.
• Promote perfume on your travel blog and you’re unlikely to see many sales – travel books, luggage and other travel products will work better.

Sometimes it is hard to find a product that matches your topic (Amazon doesn’t work with every topic) but try different products related to your topic and track what converts best for your audience.

5. Get People in the Door and Let Amazon Do What they’re Good At

One of the great things about Amazon is that it is a site people are familiar with, that they trust and that is very good at converting people to be buyers. They have honed their site to present people with relevant products to them (based upon previous surfing and buying habits) and over many years have tweaked their site to convert well.

As a result I find that once you get people to visit Amazon (pretty much for any reason) that a percentage of them will naturally end up buying something. The cool thing is that whether they buy the thing you linked to or not – you’ll earn a commission.

While I find specific promotions of particular products work best with Amazon – I also have had some success by getting people in the door for other reasons. For example I recently ran a post on DPS that gave readers a hypothetical $1000 to spend on photography gear and asked them to surf around Amazon and choose what they wanted to buy. The result was 350 comments and quite a few sales.

While a ‘get people in the door’ strategy might seem to grate a little with my ‘Relevancy’ tip in point #4 – the key is to get people in the door in a relevant way. Once they’re there the purchases they make might not be ‘relevant’ to your blog but their motivation to visit should be.

6. Social Proof Marketing 1 – Best Seller Lists

People are more willing to make a purchase if they feel that they’re not alone and if they know that others have and are buying with them. I’m sure there’s some insightful psychological reasons for this but from where I sit buying seems to somehow have become a communal activity.

One of the most powerful social proof marketing strategies that I’ve used with promoting Amazon affiliate links is creating ‘Best Seller’ type lists for readers to show them what is currently popular in terms of purchases in our community.

The best example that I can give of this technique in action is my Popular Digital Cameras and Gear page on DPS. It’s a page that I update every three months, that I link to prominently on the blog and that converts really well. To construct it I simply go through the reports/stats that Amazon gives affiliates to look at what products are selling the best from within my community. I then pull it into different categories of products and ‘Waahlaaa’ – we have a best seller list.

It converts well because readers know that others in their community are buying these products too – there’s a Wisdom of the Crowd mentality going on I guess. Another quick example of this was a recent post – 23 Photography Book Reviews [Ranked] where I ranked the top selling photography books in order of sales but also linked to reviews we’d done of each of them on the blog.

Note: the key with these ‘best seller’ lists is to drive traffic to them. One way to do this is to link prominently to these pages from within your blog and to link to them from within other posts from time to time on your blog so that the post doesn’t just convert for a day or two while your post is the most recent one on your blog.

7. Social Proof Marketing 2 – Reader Reviews

I used to do all of the reviews of photography books on DPS. It was mainly because I couldn’t find anyone else to do them and probably partly a little because I’m a control freak.

However one day I had a reader offer to write a book review for me. Because I knew the reader I thought it’d be OK so published it. As with all my reviews it had an affiliate link to Amazon in it. I was a little skeptical about whether it’d convert though because I thought my readers might not respond as well to a stranger’s review of the book as opposed to my own. I was wrong.

The review not only converted as well as my normal reviews – but did even better than normal! This could have been for many reasons but one that I suspect came into play was the way that I introduced the reviewer as a ‘DPS reader’. I didn’t build them up to be an expert, I just presented them as a normal reader with no agenda wanting to share some thoughts on a book that had helped them.

I suspect that the social proof concept came into play a little here. Readers saw another reader recommending something in a genuine way and wanted to get a copy for themselves.

Note: interestingly Amazon themselves uses reader reviews as a fairly major feature of their site.

8. Genuine Recommendations and Reviews

There are two main ways that I promote Amazon links. The first is in ‘Reviews’ for products (the second I’ll cover below in the next point). These links are where I or one of my writers will genuinely look over and test a product and give it the once over.

I insist my writers actually read the books, test the cameras and use the software products that they review and encourage them to be as genuine and unbiased as possible so as to point out both the pros and cons of the product. While there’s some temptation to hype up a product and only talk about it’s positives a real review will help your reader relationship over the long haul and I find actually helps promote sales.

Review links work well because it’s usually people who are considering buying a product who really read reviews – it comes down to the buying mood/intent mentioned in point #3.

9. Informational Links

The other type of link that I use to Amazon is when I’m mentioning a product in passing and/or a new product is announced that is relevant for my niche. For example when the Nikon D300s was announced recently by Nikon we immediately posted about the news because it was a notable and anticipated camera announcement. The camera was not yet available in stores and we were not able to get a review sample yet – but it was available for Pre-Order on Amazon so we linked to it.

There was no recommendation or review attached to the link but it was a relevant link for readers who wanted to know more about it (price, specs, pictures etc). Some readers pre-ordered the cameras from that link.

Similarly if we’re writing about Photoshop or another photography post production software we’ll usually include a link to the software. Again it’s not a review link but rather an informational/contextual type link. These don’t tend to convert as well in terms of sales but they do get people ‘in the door’ at Amazon and can help a little with sales from time to time.

10. Contextual is King

One of the biggest reasons my initial attempts with Amazon fell flat on their face and simply didn’t convert was that I thought it’d be enough to slap an image based button on my sidebar that featured a product or that was simply a banner ad to Amazon.

Amazon give publishers a lot of these type banners but despite trying almost all of them I’ve had little or no success with using them at all. Instead – 99% of my conversions have come from links to Amazon from within blog posts when I’m writing about the products themselves.

By all means experiment with the widgets and buttons Amazon gives you – if they do convert for you then more power to you – but every blogger I’ve talked to that has had success with Amazon tells me that it is contextual links from within blog posts that work best.

11. Promote Specials, Promotions and Discounts

There’s hardly a product on Amazon that does not have a listed discount on it. Most books are as much as 30% off recommended retail prices and at different times during the year Amazon runs other special discounts and promotions on different single products or in different product categories.

Keep an eye out for these kinds of promotions because they can be well worthwhile promoting (if relevant to your readership). In fact last time Amazon had cameras on special I promoted it to my newsletter readers and had readers emailing me to thank me for letting them know about it.

Another related tip is that when you’re writing a review of a product and Amazon have a listed discount – include a note about the discount in the post (see yesterdays post about Chris Brogan’s new book for an example).

11 More Amazon Associates Tips Tomorrow

I’ve got another set of tips to share with you on how to make money with the Amazon Associates program tomorrow (update: You can read it here. I’ve also added a 3rd post to the series with 10 more tips for making money with Amazon Associates).

I’d love to hear how you’ve gone with promoting this program? Have you had any success? What tips would you give?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program

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OK – so here’s a sample of what others have written about the workbook!

“If you’re ready to get over the hump and take your blog to the next level, download the 31DBB Workbook and follow it daily. Until it becomes habit.” – Lynn Terry

“I highly recommend that anybody who blogs for business purposes reads this book. You may want to print a hard copy of this electronic book and put it in a three-ring binder for easy reference. And keep a highlighter handy…you’ll need it!” – Write Associate

“If you want to improve your blog but somehow always procrastinate, therefore, I would highly recommend the workbook.” – Daniel Scocco

“Darren’s not known as “ProBlogger” for nothin’. In 31DBBB, Darren teaches you proven methods of improving your blog and engaging your readers. Since completing 31DBBB, I’ve noticed an increase in traffic and it’s helped me hone my blogging mission.” – The Mogul Mom

“The cost of this valuable resource is only $19.95. That makes it almost an impulse purchase. Darren is one of the best known bloggers in the world. All of his works are top notch and his latest offering is no exception. If you want a better blog, you can have it in the next 31 days. Go get it.” – John Chow

“Participants in Darren’s program are reporting great things—increased traffic, deeper reader engagement, broader networking with other bloggers, creative new ideas, getting through bloggers block, and more. And at $19.95 it’s a steal.” – Brian Clark

“Darren knows what he’s talking about, so definitely check out whichever of his books pertains to you.” – Shawn Collins

There’s a lot more been written around the blogosphere on the workbook but these were the reviews that I found at the top of Google’s rankings when I searched. If you’ve got your own review on your blog – feel free to link to it in comments.

Don’t Have a Copy Yet? – learn more about the workbook and secure your copy here.

Update on Sales – a few people have asked me how the workbook has been selling. I don’t have exact figures on hand as those sold in a bundle with a book on SitePoint are yet to be tallied up but it’s been a profitable journey so far. My estimate is that once the SitePoint figures are tallied up that over 3500 will have been sold with more sales coming in on a daily basis.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What people are saying about the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook

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Compelling – “having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention, or respect”

Image by margolove

Compelling content is a cornerstone of all great blogs. But what is it? How do you write it? Why do some blogs have it and others don’t?

Over the next week at ProBlogger I’ll be exploring a number of important principles (I have 7 so far) of producing compelling blog content. Not all of the principles covered will be relevant for every post you write or even for every type of blog but hopefully in these principles you’ll find something that helps to take your own content to the next level.

Make sure you’re subscribed to ProBlogger to get updates of each post in this series.

Principle #1 – Being In Tune with Your Readers Needs

For content to be compelling it needs to connect with needs of those consuming it.

Whether those needs are for entertainment, news, inspiration, community, instruction, intellectual stimulation, a laugh/or a cry etc – if your content meets the need it goes a long long way to being compelling – after-all, who pays attention to something that has little relevance to them?

Staying in tune with these needs can be done in a variety of ways including:

• watching the comments section of your blog for questions and problems
• watching your metrics to see what words people are searching for in search engines to arrive on your blog
• watching what people are searching for when they are on your blog using your internal search tool
• running focus groups with loyal readers (something I’ve done a few times with real success)
• keeping an eye on what questions are being asked on other blogs, forums and on social media sites
• writing a post asking your readers for their questions or giving them an opportunity to share their needs

3 Hot Tips For Connecting with Reader Needs

Hot Tip #1 – Best and Worst Posts

I’ve recently asked my readers to share their ‘best and worst’ aspects of blogging at the end of a week. One of the benefits of doing this (and one I didn’t anticipate) was that it identified some common and recurring problems that my readers were having. The comments on these posts have led to me writing numerous posts that directly seek to solve their problems.

Ultimately your goal as a blogger should be to produce content that adds value to people’s lives. Produce this and you’ve got a great foundation to build a successful blog upon.

Hot Tip #2 – Ask So What?

I love the question that Chris Garrett (the co-author of the ProBlogger book) encourages bloggers to ask every time they write a blog post.

The question is – ‘So What?’

This question is all about asking yourself whether a post actually matters – does it have any point? Will it help people in some way?

Write it out in bold lettering and put it somewhere prominent in the place that you blog. Before your hit ‘publish’ on any post ask it to yourself – ‘SO WHAT’? Does your point have a point? Does it meet a need? Who will it help?

Hot Tip #3 – Solve your Own Problems

One of the best ways to ensure that your content is meeting real needs that people have is to Solve Your OWN Needs and Problems.

An exercise that I do every time I start a new blog is to not only brainstorm a list of topics I have expertise on and things that I can help others with – but I also create a list of things that I need to learn for myself on the topic. What don’t I know yet? What challenges do I currently face? What aspects of this topic do I ask others about?

Once you’ve got that kind of list you have a list of real needs that people have and your goal needs to be to learn more in order to be able to answer them or to find someone else to help you write content on those topics.

Another useful list to create is a list of problems that you have previously had and have overcome. Think back to when you were just first exploring your topic (or if you can’t remember put yourself in the shoes of a complete newbie who has just started out). What questions did you have? What mistakes did you make? What challenges did you not know how to overcome. These beginner questions and needs are GOLD – write them down and write posts that answer them.

Homework – Go Do This!

Take 15 minutes to go on a Reader Need Hunt

Your goal is to spend the next 15 minutes compiling a list of needs that your current readers and/or potential readers might have.

Start in your blog’s own comment section and hunt for questions and then proceed through the list mentioned above. If you don’t have any readers or those you have are not verbalizing their needs yet – focus upon the last two items on the list.

You can’t find enough of these types of problems and needs. Compile them all in a list and keep it somewhere that you can begin to work through.

What You Said on the Topic

When I asked you what compelling content was to you the themes I’ve explored above came up a lot – here’s some of what you said on the topic:

• “Content that teaches you something that you can walk away and hold onto. Any bit of information that you can apply to your life.” Mitch
• “It helps me solve a problem that I have” – Jan
• ” it needs to be a useful or helpful to the targeted audience. People likes to learn something useful or helpful” – Bash Bosh
• “Helps me solve a problem that I have” – Dave
• “The important of audience is pretty obvious – write what appeals to your readership.” – Jeffrey
• “I enjoy content that logically lays out a problem and then shows me how to solve it.” – Jarie
• “To me, compelling content is content which falls into one of – 1) Educates me on something I am interested in. 2) Provides insight into something I am interested in. 3) Helps me solve a problem” – Wesley
• “Helps me to solve an issue or makes something easier to deal with, whether professional or personal. Sometimes its even straight forward advice you read and then think, this is it – this will work – this is my answer! These are often called my “Lightbulb Moments.”” – Denise
• “For me, compelling content answers a question, solves a problem, or teaches me something I need to know.” – Judy

Thanks to everyone for their comments. I’ll feature more in coming days as we explore more on the topic of how to create compelling content.

Make sure you’re subscribed to ProBlogger to get updates of each post in this series.

Update: I’ll list future posts in this series as they are published:

• How to Create Compelling Content through Reader Interaction
• How to Find Your Blogging Mojo – Experiment with Different Voices
• SURPRISE! – Create Compelling Content by Being Playful
• How to Build Compelling Content by Leaving Your Readers wanting MORE
• The Power of Taking Extra Time to Create Content
• Inject Yourself into Your Content

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Get In Tune with Your Readers Needs [and Produce Compelling Content]

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Over the last few days I’ve read a few comments here on Problogger from bloggers who are feeling low because they’ve noticed a plateau or even a decrease in the traffic coming to their blog.

While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have big hopes and dreams for their blogs.

Today I’d like to look at some of the reasons a blog’s traffic might decrease and suggest some ways forward for each of them.

1. Seasonal Traffic

If you’re still in the first year of your blog you are yet to see what a full calendar year looks like in terms of traffic for your niche. Most niches have natural rises and falls in traffic.

For example (see below for a chart of visitor numbers) on my photography tips blog we see spikes in traffic in December and January. December’s traffic boost is generally to do with people researching new cameras to buy and January is generally associated with people working out how to use cameras that they got for Christmas. On the flip side we often see dips in traffic over August to October.

What to Do: The first time you see a seasonal rise or fall in traffic it can be quite confusing – however the key with it is to not panic when you see a dip but to identify opportunities to maximize the rises and to minimize the falls.

For example it might be that you need to tailor your content for certain times of year and what people are doing in relation to your niche.

For me on my photography blog this meant writing content in November-December on how to buy a digital camera (to capitalize on the Christmas buying trend), writing beginner photography tips in January (to capitalize on the trend of people looking for tips on how to use their new cameras) and during low seasons (like July when it’s summer in the US) writing topical tips like Beach Photography Tips or How to use a camera in the Bright Sun.

Another Tip – one great free tool for looking at seasonal traffic is to use Google Trends to analyze what people are searching the web for. For example if I type in ‘digital cameras’ I get this chart:

There’s lots of interesting stuff in this (the downward trend for starters) but it clearly shows what I’ve observed above – more people are searching the web for that term from November-December each year. This information could confirm a suspicion you have or help you identify a trend to capitalize on in your niche.

Further Reading: Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture it for your Blog.

2. Topical Interest

At other times of year traffic events can be triggered by other current events. For example I know one music blogger who has had a lot of traffic this past few weeks simply because they’d previously had a lot of content that ranked well in Google on Michael Jackson. Of course in coming months as the news of Jackson’s death subsides it’s likely that they’ll see some declines in traffic.

What to Do: The key with topical rises and falls in traffic is to try to capture as much of the rush of traffic as you can so that when the decline comes you’ve got new subscribers/readers to your blog (see further reading below on ’sticky blogs).

It’s also important to be aware of upcoming events in your niche and writing content in anticipation of that. This can be hard in predicting the death of a mega pop star like Jackson but in different niches it’s possible to predict events.

For example - before the Athens Olympics I was involved in running a blog where we wrote a post in advance of the Olympics for every single event in the games. The posts included athletes names and any information we could get on the events. We updated the posts with results once they events had been run. As a result we were consistently ranking very highly for ‘Event name Results’ when people were searching for winners of events in Search Engines.

Further Reading: How to Create a Sticky Blog

3. Posting Frequency

One common reason for lulls in traffic is that a blog has had a lull in new content being published. I saw one blogger writing a post recently about how their blog was failing to gain traction and in the comments of the post a reader pointed out that the blogger had hardly been posting. The reality was that the blogger had produced very little to be read and so people were not visiting.

What to Do: Posting more doesn’t guarantee extra traffic but it can be a factor to consider. Chart your last few months of posts and see if there’s any correlation to rises and falls in your traffic – you might identify a trend!

Worth noting is that some bloggers report that when they post LESS that they actually get more traction with readers. I know of one blogger who was posting 10-20 times a day and when he dropped things back to 2-3 posts a day he noticed not only increases in comment numbers per post but that his posts were being shared more on social media sites. At 10-20 posts a day posts were coming off the front page of his blog so much that readers hardly had a chance to read and share them.

Further Reading: What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog?

4. Shifts in Search Rankings

Many blogs see the way that they are ranked by Google (and other search engines) rise and fall over the years.  

A Personal Example – Back in 2004 (just before Christmas) I woke up one day to find that my main blog at that time had all but disappeared from Google. I’d not done anything to the blog that wasn’t allowed by Google and hadn’t made any major changes to the site – I just disappeared. My heart sank (actually I felt quite sick) because that blog was the main source of income from my blogging and 75% of my traffic had vanished.

The lull in traffic lasted about 6 weeks before it magically reappeared. In that time I got myself another job and diversified my blogging and learned a lot.

What to Do: Sometimes search engines change their algorithms and occasionally they seem to lose sites from their rankings for no apparent reason. The key with this type of loss of traffic is to not panic, make sure you’re abiding by Google’s guidelines (not selling text links or doing anything else considered to be black hat) and then  apply for re-inclusion using Google’s webmaster tools.This has happened to me a couple of times over the years and each time the traffic came back – it wasn’t quite as good as when it disappeared but things seemed to right themselves.

Further Reading: Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers

5. Poor Quality Posts

Of course another factor to consider when looking at the traffic to your blog is whether you’re actually building a valuable site for readers and producing high quality, engaging and useful content.

This one can be a little confronting to think through and might take you getting an outsiders critique or feedback (sometimes it’s hard to be objective about something you’ve put so much work into). As I look back on my own blogging I know there have been definite times where traffic has suffered when I’ve struggled for inspiration as a blogger and where this has impacted the quality of what I was able to write.

On the flip side there have been times where I’ve been inspired to write series of posts that have connected with readers and helped them in practical ways which has driven a lot of traffic to my sites.

What to Do: Ask yourself (and others around you):

• Are You Being Relevant and Useful to Readers?
• Is your blog helping your readers by providing them with value, solving their problems, entertaining them or giving them a sense of community?

If the answer is no then it is likely to impact the number of people reading it.

Further Reading: How to Write Great Blog Content

6. Promotional Activities

As I look at some of the rises and falls in traffic to my blogs I know that some of them can be directly tied to my own marketing and promotion of my blogs (or the lack of promotion that I’ve done).

Writing great content doesn’t guarantee a blog’s success. You can’t just build it and expect that ‘they will come’. Sometimes you need to get out there and promote yourself.

Perhaps the lull in traffic on your own blog is partly to do with taking your foot off the accelerator in your own marketing.

What to Do: This means different things for different blogs but could include investing into social media sites like Twitter, promoting your posts to other bloggers, networking with other bloggers, running a competition on your blog, leaving comments on other blogs and forums, guest posting on other sites, doing promotions in main stream media, doing some giveaways….. etc

Further Reading: How to Find Readers for Your Blog.

Keep Moving Forward – Don’t Give Up

There are many other potential factors that could be at play (I invite you to share others below) but the key is to not be paralyzed by the declines and plateaus in traffic that you experience but to spend a little time trying to identify the reasons and then keep on motoring on with your blog.

You can see from the first chart above that my photography blog has had quite a few months where traffic has plateaued and dipped – but I’ve kept to the vision that I have for the site and continued to keep working. A decrease in traffic from one month to the next is not pleasant but it’s not the end of your blog. If I’d allowed the dips to determine whether I’d keep blogging or not I’d probably have lasted 2-3 months on that blog and failed to see it grow to the point that it has.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It]

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Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers – but let me give you a few basic first steps:

1. Content is King

The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.

Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written – of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For

Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.

3. Titles Titles Titles

There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:

• first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
• if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
• next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
• also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title

4. Keywords in other parts of your post

Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.

5. Link to Your Own Posts

Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).

6. Links from Outside Your Blog

Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.

Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it – they could just link up.

Also – take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.

7. Plugins

I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags – but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.

8. Readers Begat Readers

This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….

Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can – don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.

My Hunch with SEO

Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong – I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum – but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.

As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.

It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get – but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..

Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.

My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.

Help this process along by giving your readers way to share your content (and seed it to social networks) as well as to become subscribers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers

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Regular readers of ProBlogger are familiar with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project that we ran here recently.

The concept was simple: bloggers set aside 31 days to be intentional about improving their blogs.

Each day for 31 days readers were presented with a daily task and teaching to give them concrete ways to take their blogs to the next level – the goal being more readers, higher quality content, deeper reader engagement and higher levels of creativity and energy for the blogger.

Challenges included writing tasks, promotion techniques, methods to deepen reader engagement, creating thinking exercises, ideas for breaking through bloggers block and much more.

Today I’m releasing a Workbook that puts a fully updated version of 31 Day Challenge in your hands

If you already know about it and want a copy now – you can buy it now here.

Why a Workbook?

Over 14,000 bloggers have completed the challenge and the feedback was fantastic.

Bloggers who’ve taken the tasks seriously are reporting increases in traffic, greater reader engagement, fresh inspiration for posts and a greater sense of where their blog is headed.

However two common requests came from participants repeatedly:

• 1. People wanted to do the challenge at their own pace (some found daily tasks too fast, some too slow).
• 2. People wanted all the content in the one place (so they could keep it somewhere handy and dip into it again and again over time).

As a result I decided to put together a downloadable workbook version of the challenge.

The work book is professionally edited – contains new content, unique to the workbook and it is available to purchase today in two ways.

Two Ways to Get the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook

1. Get the Book By Itself For $19.95

Download the 31DBBB workbook as described below for $19.95 USD.

To order it with this option simply hit the following ‘buy now’ button and you’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finalize your payment and download the workbook immediately.

2. Get the Workbook + Online Marketing Inside Out Book For $29.95

SitePoint (who helped me with editing the book) are also releasing a new book (a hard cover book not an e-book) today – it’s called Online Marketing Inside Out.

It is a great resource for those wanting to market products or services on the Web. This book shows you how to reach customers through podcasting, blogs, social networks, video, email, and contextual advertising and much more.

To get this 2-for-1 deal simply head over to SitePoint where you can read more about the book they’re offering and will receive both books when you order. Order Now (via SitePoint).

What You Receive with the Workbook

The 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project is all about giving participants a series of 31 daily tasks to help them make improvements in their blogs. This workbook takes this goal a step further with:

• Refreshed and Edited Versions of the Daily Tasks and Teaching
• New Bonus Material – each day has extra tips, questions and reflections (6000 extra words of content to help you extend the daily tasks and help you to apply them)
• Notes Areas – if you print out the book there is room to take notes, record ideas and make plans to help you implement the content
• 94 pages of content – actually we put two pages on each page in the book so it’s actually 188 pages.

Grab Yourself a Copy Today

Whether you’ve completed each of the 31 Daily tasks already and want to have a copy to dip into again and again as you continue to develop your blog or whether you’re yet to really start 31DBBB – I hope you’ll find this workbook helpful.

Grab your copy of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook here

PS: How are Bloggers using 31DBBB?

One of the things that I’ve loved about 31DBBB is seeing how it is being used so differently by different participants.

While originally designed for bloggers to work through over a month – the feedback that we’ve been hearing from bloggers indicates that 31DBBB is being used in a variety of ways including:

• Intense Training – bloggers setting aside days, weekends or weeks to go through multiple tasks at once
• 1 Task a Day – the way we designed it – one day at a time
• 1 Task a Week – bloggers taking their time with the challenge and making the tasks week long tasks
• Monthly Cycle – bloggers using the tasks again and again each month as a monthly routine for their blogging.
• Occasional Inspirational Resource – bloggers dipping into 31DBBB on a more occasional basis – using it on days when they have time or lack inspiration.

The great thing about 31DBBB is that you can do it at your own pace and in your own way. Daily tasks don’t need to be done daily or in any particular order as all but two are independent tasks that can be repeated time and time again to help you grow a dynamic blog.

Grab your copy of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook here

PS: A special thanks to the team at SitePoint who helped with cover design and editing as well as to Reese Spykerman with help with layout and design.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Get Your Own Copy of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog WorkBook

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Your task today is to rework the title of the next post that you write

OK – so you need to have a post written before you can do this one but assuming you have a post ready to go – here are a few reflections on getting the titles of blog posts right.

Why the Title is One of the Most Important Elements of Your Next Post

The title of your next post is the main factor that people use to determine whether they’ll read your next post. This is true in most places that people are going to stumble upon your post whether it be on a search engine, in an RSS feed, on a social media site, in a link from another blog etc.

A great title will draw people into the post and give them reason to read it.

A bad title will more often than not be ignored, glossed over and mean a post goes unread.

As a result – bloggers need to spend at least a few minutes thinking specifically about the post title before publishing. Without it all the effort that you put into your actual post could be wasted.

8 Tips for Writing Compelling Blog Post Titles

Much has been written on the topic of writing great blog post titles and I’ll link to some great resources below – but here are a few strategies and tips that I’ve found useful (note: to get a full explanation on each of these read my post How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog):

1. Communicate a Benefit – a title should tell readers something that they’ll ‘get’ by reading your post.
2. Create Controversy or Debate – not suitable for every post title but there’s nothing like Debate to get people checking out a post.
3. Ask a Question – in my experience posts with questions in the titles tend to get read more than others – they also are better at stimulating comments from readers.
4. Personalize Titles – for example: using ‘you’ in your post title (and post) can have a real impact and take a post from the realm of ‘theory’ into a more personal post.
5. Use Keywords – keywords that signal to readers and search engines what your post is about can help draw in significant traffic if you use them well.
6. Use Power Words – Not all words are created equal – some evoke a powerful response in readers – words like ‘free’, ’stunning’, ‘discover’, ‘warning’, ’secrets’, ‘easy’ etc all work well in my experience of blogging.
7. Make Claims and Promises – as long as you can back them up in your post – a big claim or promise can get someone’s attention.
8. Humor Titles – be careful with this one – funny can work great but it can also leave your readers very confused if it’s too cryptic…. or if it’s just not funny.

Again – you can get a fuller description of each of these 8 strategies here.

7 More Tips on Writing Titles

1. Run it by Your Blog Buddy – on day 15 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog you were encouraged to find a blog buddy. The activity of writing titles is one thing that having a blog buddy is best for. I have a couple of fellow bloggers that I regularly ping with an instant message to bounce ideas off when it comes to titles. More often than not the quick conversation that follows improves the title considerably.

2. Consider Title Updates – I know that this will annoy some bloggers who don’t believe in updating posts after publishing them but I personally don’t have a problem with updating post titles after they’re published if it is clear that they are just not working. The only thing to remember is that some blog platforms derive their URLs from the title so you’ll only want to make updates if you can keep your old URLs in tact.

3. Write for Readers First and Search Engines Second – some bloggers try to write titles that are so optimized for search engine optimization that they forget their actual readers. It’s possible to have a post that ranks really well in Google but that is so poorly worded that even though it ranks #1 nobody will click on it – keep readers as your #1 priority.

4. Keep it Simple – I find that it is often the most simple and straight to the point titles that simply say what the post is about that work the best. There are times to be a little ‘clever’ but more often than not it is a title that clearly gives the topic and communicates a benefit of reading the post that will get clicked on most.

5. Learn what Works and Repeat it – Don’t feel you have the reinvent the wheel with every title that you write. The more posts you write on your blog the more you’ll begin to learn about what works and what doesn’t work. When you find a format that works well with your readers don’t be afraid to use it again. Of course you won’t want to use exactly the same title more than once but you’ll begin to see some formulas that work (see my link to a great series by Brian Clark below – it contains some title formulas to try).

6. Don’t Oversell Your Post – the temptation with blog posts is to make them so compelling and have such a big promise that they go beyond what the post itself can deliver. In doing this you create an expectation in your reader that you just can’t fulfill. Don’t oversell yourself or you’ll have disappointed readers on your hands.

7. Numbers and Lists – Tried and True – one of the most successful types of posts (and therefore titles of posts) are the good old ‘list post’. The title that tells readers how many points you’ve made has something about it that just seems to connect and compel people to click them.

Let me finish with the advice I started with – take your time with your blog post titles. You invest considerable time and effort into your actual posts – don’t short change yourself by slapping the first title that comes to mind on them.

Further Reading

For a little extra inspiration and instruction on how to craft great blog post titles check out these resources:

• A great book that I’ve found helpful is Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich: Create Winning Ads, Web Pages, Sales Letters and More – it contains a lot of proven headlines that the author David Garfinkel has used in his own copy writing. While it’s mainly about headlines in advertising that have worked much of it applies to blogging (and other places you need compelling headlines) also.
• Andy Beal wrote a thought provoking post – How to Optimize Blog Post Titles – in which he explores two audiences of blog posts and how he suggests you optimize titles for each at different life stages of a post.
• Aaron Wall shares How to Craft Kick-Ass Title Tags and Headlines – the post has some good SEO tips but also considers the ‘human’ aspect I mention above.
• Brian Clark has written some fantastics posts on Blog Post Titles in his series Magnetic Headlines. It includes some title templates that are worth experimenting with.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

15 Ways to Rework Your Next Blog Post Title

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image by s-revenge

If you’ve got a spare 10 minutes today check out Eyetrack III who have published some great findings in their latest eye tracking studies of news and multimedia content sites (found via Direct Creative Blog).

There’s loads of juicy goodness in the full article but here are 11 of the main points that grabbed my attention:

1. “Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page”
2. “Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior…. larger type promotes lighter scanning”
3. “a headline has less than a second of a site visitor’s attention”
4. “For headlines — especially longer ones — it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers”
5. “Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best”
6. “Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones.”
7. “We found that ads in the top and left portions of a homepage received the most eye fixations”
8. “Size matters. Bigger ads had a better chance of being seen”
9. “Close proximity to popular editorial content really helped ads get seen”
10. “the bigger the image, the more time people took to look at it.”
11. “Our research also shows that clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixations on homepages”

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

11 Striking Findings From an Eye Tracking Study

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It is for that reason that I’m really excited about a brand new service that has just launched – Blogs.mu.

Blogs.mu is essentially your own blog network in a box. It allows you to set up your own WordPress.com type community using the powerful WordPress Multi User platform – this opens up many possibilities both for existing and new bloggers.

There’s a lot to be said about Blogs.mu so I’ll let you peruse their site to learn whether it fits with your needs but a few highlights include:

• Let your readers start blogs or just limit it to starting your own on sub domains
• Run advertising on it
• Using it on your own domain
• Lots of Themes built in
• Plugins pre installed
• Import previous blogs into Blogs.mu
• Support forums

The service is free with loads of features but you get extra capabilities and unlock some of the above features (and others) by becoming a Blogs.mu supporter. Support packs start out at $9 a month for a 10 blog pack.

Blogs.mu has been developed by Inscub – a team with a heap of experience using WordPress MU who have helped set up and run some massive WPMU blog networks. I’ll have an interview with James Farmer from Inscub later today to talk more about Blogs.mu – but in the mean time it might be well worth your time to sign up and reserve your Blogs.mu community name and preferred url before someone else does.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Start Your Own Blog Network or Community with Blogs.mu

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Since finishing 31DBBB yesterday I’ve had a number of participants in the project email me to ask what other training that they can do to keep improving their blogs.

The realization that it seems many have had is that when you invest time and energy into your blog it does improve – our 31 day project has led many people to really step up their blogs and continue to see them improve.

As a result of these reader questions I’ve approached Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick from the popular Become a Blogger course to see if they’d be willing to open up their course again to 31DBBB participants (and all ProBlogger readers). I chose Become a Blogger because I think it’s at a level that many 31DBBB participants will find useful.

Get Become a Blogger for $1 for 2 Weeks – Yaro and Gideon didn’t hesitate to agree and then blew me away by offering ProBlogger readers access to their course for just $1 so that people could sample what they offer and see if it’s something that they want to continue with.

The deal is simple – Become a Blogger is normally $77 a month (it goes for 6 months) but if you sign up as a ProBlogger reader you get a trial period of two weeks for $1. If you don’t want to continue just email Yaro and Gideon and canceling your membership.

What is Become a Blogger?

This is a course for those just starting out with blogging or who have started but are struggling to set it up a level. Here are the 8 modules covered in the video training:

1. Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And FREE
2. How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance
3. How To Create Powerful Content For Your Blog, Consistently and Without Fail
4. How To Use Images On Your Blog To Make You Stand Out From The Crowd
5. How To Create A Different Dimension To Your Blog By Adding Audio
6. How To Breathe Life Into Your Blog Using Online Video
7. How To Create Multiple Streams of High Quality Traffic To Your Blog
8. How To Make Money From Your Blog

There are a variety of good bonuses also on the sales page including a forum are and teleconferences to help you step it up.

You can read full details of what is included in the modules and bonuses on the sales page of Become a Blogger. They also have some free videos on that page to give you a feel for what the course is like.

PS – Don’t have a Blog?: if you don’t yet have a blog then this course is relevant for you as it does have a module on setting up blogs from scratch. Others who already have blogs will find modules 2-7 well worth their time.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Get 2 Weeks Access to ‘Become a Blogger’ for $1 [Exclusive to ProBlogger Readers]

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Last week I linked up to a free report that Yaro Starak had released outlining the way that he makes money from setting up membership sites (get the report here if you missed it) – as a follow up to that report Yaro today has just launched a great coaching resource for those wanting to discover more – Membership Site Mastermind.

You can get details of what the program entails on the sales page for MSM. He’s created a special video at the top of the page if you don’t want to read the very long sales page.

The program that Yaro has put together covers a lot of topics over the 6 modules that it runs.

• Module 1 – Topic Selection and Preeminence
• Module 2 – Traffic Generation
• Module 3 – Human Resources and Technology
• Module 4 – Content and Pricing
• Module 5 – The Launch Process
• Module 6 – Post Launch

There are also a variety of great bonuses including videos on the technical aspects of setting up a membership site, interviews with membership site owners, templates, a members only forum area and live coaching calls.

Yaro is a great teacher (most of the teaching in this is done via video/mp3/transcripts) – he produces high quality teaching resources – he shares in a very personal way with simple and easy to understand language.

Best of all – Yaro’s done what he is teaching. He’s built a business around membership sites that earns him a six figure income while traveling the world.

Signups Close on 11 May – you do need to make a decision on whether this is an investment for you in the coming week as doors close on 11th May.

If you’re considering membership sites as a way to build an online business – I’d recommend you get Yaro’s free report and consider this new coaching program.

Fast Action Bonus: Yaro is also offering a special bonus for people who sign up in the next 24 hours. It’s access to some training he’s doing called “How To Live The Two-Hour Work Day”. The training is being done live here in Australia in Brisbane but if you can’t make it to the live session you get access to recordings of the training.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Discover How to Make Money with Membership Site Mastermind

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Yaro’s just old me that it’s now available for you to download.

The report contains some great information on how Yaro uses membership sites to build significant community sites and a six figure income. If you’ve ever considered a membership site as a way to make money online I’d recommend you get the report for a look.

While Yaro will follow this report up with a paid membership site for further teaching (he’s previous ones have been excellent) the report itself contains good information whether you go further in the process or not – Yaro’s approach has always been to create valuable resources and this one is no exception.

Signup to download Yaro’s report here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Membership Site Masterplan Report is now Ready for Download

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