This Wednesday I will be hosting a free live webinar with someone who has taught me so much about Facebook Marketing – Amy Porterfield.

At a recent session at Blog World Expo that Amy was teaching at I came away with a long page of action items of things to implement on my own Facebook pages and I’m confident that in our webinar you’ll likewise come away with some great ideas and things to do.

Amy is the author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and has consulted with numerous well known companies and individuals on their Facebook strategy – she knows what she’s talking about and is a great communicator. You’ll get a heap of value from this webinar.

Registration is free and this webinar is live. I’m looking forward to participating but more than anything from the opportunity to soak up some more great knowledge from Amy.

The Webinar is happening this Wednesday (7th December) at 9pm-10pm EST (US Eastern time).

Register here to participate. Numbers on the webinar are limited and we won’t be posting a recording of this one so do make sure you’re on the call.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Free Webinar on Facebook Marketing: This Wednesday

Seth’s among the world’s most prolific bloggers, but he’s also a profuse book author and serial entrepreneur.

How does he fit it all in?

Seth (image copyright Brian Bloom Photography)

One of his secrets might surprise you: “I’m America’s worst attender of meetings,” Seth reveals. “I don’t do any of that.”

“A meeting is a very special thing: it’s three or more people talking to each other about a decision that’s going to be made, and probably trying to get someone else to make it,” he explains. “And so I don’t have those. If I need information I have a conversation with one person. That’s not a meeting, that’s a conversation.”

He refers to Al Pittampalli’s book Read This Before Our Next Meeting, which was released in August through Seth’s publishing venture, The Domino Project, and which suggests more productive approaches to the traditional concept of the “meeting.”

Of course, that’s not the only way Seth manages to keep on top of things. As the interview reveals, his philosophy rests on a very clear vision of what’s important to him. It’s that vision that motivates him, helps him choose where to direct his energies, and enables him to make the everyday decisions that keep his media empire growing.

Our favorite piece of advice from the interview?

In a world where there’s not a lot of scarcity of ideas, and where digital stuff isn’t going to be able to be priced based on scarcity, ubiquity is a better strategy. If you can help change the conversation, if you can say stuff that’s worth saying, the money takes care of itself.
—Seth Godin

Start listening!

Or read the interview transcript in full:

Today I’m talking to Seth Godin of SethGodin.com. He’s a blogger, he’s a bestselling author of thirteen books including Poke the Box, he’s the inventor of permission marketing, and founder of Squidoo.com.

But when I emailed you about this interview, you replied. You set the appointment in Google Calendar and you sent me your Skype details. So I’m wondering, is it possible that America’s Greatest Marketer doesn’t have an assistant?

That’s correct.

How can this be? We imagine that you’re America’s Greatest Marketer, and America’s Busiest Man. Is that not the case?

Well, neither one of them is true, to be fair. I guess you make decisions about how you want to spend your time. What you didn’t mention is that I’m America’s worst watcher of television, cause I don’t spend any time doing that, zero. And I’m America’s worst attender of meetings, cause I don’t do any of that, zero. So I know people who do five hours of each every day. So right there I save myself ten hours a day.

The part about not having an assistant has to do with how permeable do you want to be to the world. You know, I don’t use Twitter, I don’t actively use Facebook, because I can’t do them justice. But if I hired someone to answer my email, it’d be better not even to use email. Cause what’s the point of having that filter? So I try to sort of strike this balance between doing some things at an insanely quick, prolific rate and doing other things not at all.

So in terms of permeability, you run a company, and you have publishers. I’m just wondering, if you don’t attend meetings, then how does permeability work with those kinds of operations that you’re working in?

Well, you know, we just published a book two weeks ago called Read This Before Our Next Meeting, and the author Al Pittampalli argues that a meeting is a very special thing: it’s three or more people talking to each other about a decision that’s going to be made, and probably trying to get someone else to make it. And so I don’t have those. If I need information I have a conversation with one person. That’s not a meeting, that’s a conversation.

If a decision needs to be made it gets made and then followup happens about what we’re going to do about the decision, but that doesn’t need to be a bunch of people around a table either. So there’s lots of interactions I have with people. I just don’t have those things that so many other organizations have where everyone sits around looking for the tallest poppy to chop down.

Fair enough. So can you tell us a bit more about what productivity means to you, and what motivates you to be so productive? Because obviously you are very productive.

Well you know, I think that it doesn’t count unless you ship it—that planning it and noodling it and refining it and thinking about it and keeping it in a drawer don’t count. You might as well do nothing. I think there are lots and lots of people who put in way more time than me, who may even create more than me, they just don’t ship.

No one calls up a plumber and says, “Wow, I can’t believe how many toilets you unclogged this week!” No one goes to short-order cook and says, “Wow, that’s your eight-hundredth hamburger of the week! That’s incredible!” Right? That’s their job. They ship for a living. If they don’t ship, they don’t get paid. And somehow we’ve seduced ourselves into thinking that it’s okay to hide. It’s okay for a playwright to write a play every five years. What was going on the other four and half years? I don’t know. If no one’s seeing your play, you’re not a playwright.

That’s interesting because I think many bloggers tend to see writing as a creative pursuit that does require shutting yourself away from the world, and having quiet time, getting in the zone, and noodling, as you say. And you’re not just writing blog posts—you’re writing book after book. How does the creative thing work for you? Do you take time out of your other work? Or is it just part of your regular routine? Are books and blog posts different for you? How does that work?

Okay well we need to be really careful here because a lot of times creative people want to know what other creative people do to do their work, as if using the same pencil as Steven King is going to do anything for you, ’cause it’s not. I know lots and lots of productive creative people and we all do it differently. So I think at its face, it’s not a particularly useful philosophy.

I will share one tactic which is that I write like I talk. The reason that’s important is that no one gets talker’s block. And so if you wake up in the morning unable to speak, then you need a physician. Everyone else doesn’t have that problem. So if you can train yourself to talk in complete sentences, and actually come up with thoughts that are worth sharing, then writing isn’t particularly hard—you just write down what you say.

That’s an interesting point you make about coming up with thoughts that are worth sharing. You’re a marketer so I’m thinking that you’re constantly looking at the market and looking at what people need to know or want to know or have a desire for information on. Have you trained yourself or honed your thoughts to meet those needs? Or are you just coming up with ideas every day? How do you make sure that your thoughts are worth sharing?

Oh they’re usually not!

What percentage would be worth sharing?

Five, maybe two.

Well how do you differentiate between the ones that are and the ones that aren’t?

Well, I notice things. That’s what I do. If I see something that I don’t understand I try to figure it out. If I see something that’s broken, I try to understand why it’s broken. And then you say either in writing or out loud what you noticed, and if it sticks with you for ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe it’s worth writing down. And then you look at the ones that you wrote down and sometimes they’re worth sharing.

So in that regard do you use your blog as a bit of a proving ground, I guess, for ideas? ‘Cause a lot of bloggers would do that—they’d use their blog as a proving ground, and then they’d go away and write a product based on what they’ve honed over time on their blog. Do you do that or is your blog just as finished as a book would be?

In some ways it’s more finished because I get feedback as it’s going. I can fix something on my blog the next day, etcetera.

I don’t have products. I don’t think about products. And I’m not trying to monetize any of this. It monetizes itself, which is fine, and if it didn’t, that would be fine. So I think that when people start to think, “What can I hold back? What can I sell? How can I move people through a sales funnel?” they start getting themselves into trouble.

Why? Specifically why?

Because then who’s the customer? Who are you serving? In a world where there’s not a lot of scarcity of ideas, and where digital stuff isn’t going to be able to be priced based on scarcity, ubiquity is a better strategy. If you can help change the conversation, if you can say stuff that’s worth saying, the money takes care of itself. And too often the $59, $99, $499 special report is neither special nor a report.

It’s true. Well, we’ve talked about the writing a bit. Let’s talk about the bigger picture. It’s very easy to look at the Seth Godin we see in the media and say, “Okay, this guy’s in the business of content. He’s a content producer.” But you’re not that. You’re also a marketer, you’re a business owner, and the reason you’re a bestselling author is because you’re one of the most innovative marketing brains in the business. So I’m wondering what do you describe as being your true passion? And how important is that passion in your level of productivity?

You know, I have way too many conversations with myself about this. I would say that my passion is having people surprise themselves by what they’re capable of. And if I can be present at least a little bit for some of that internal dialog, that’s a privilege and a thrill for me. And when I hear from somebody who was working as a janitor for some company, and then four years later they own it, and they give me, right or wrong, some of that credit, I’m pretty pleased with that.

Because I think that people have way, way more potential than society lets them believe, and if I can help unlock that, that’s a privilege.

So that’s what motivates you when you get out of bed in the morning?

It is. It’s exactly what it is. I think if I was trying to make money, I would do something else for a living. There are certainly more lucrative ways to spend one’s time, and I think if I was trying to work on my tan, I wouldn’t sit indoors in front of a computer screen all day. So yeah, this is why I’m doing it. For that.

So how do you prioritize? That’s your passion, and it drives you to do a lot of different things, so how do you prioritize the different interests that you have? And how do you decide that you’re going to add something new to the list? Cause I’m imagining that the list is pretty full.

Yeah, I’m very bad at this. The answer is “poorly.” I decide poorly. That’s my only answer: I’m bad at it.

So what kind of internal struggle, if you like, do you go through when you’re facing doing something new. For example, if you were thinking of writing a new book. You’ve just written a book, but how do you decide when it’s time to start a new project?

Well, books are different. The only reason I ever start a new book is because I have absolutely no choice. There’s no excuses, delaying or anything else left. The book forces itself to be written. That’s been true for the last probably seven books. It’s such a long journey, it’s so frustrating, it’s such a hassle, so few people read it compared to my blog. There’s only going to be a book when the muse insists on a book.

Okay, so what about things like new businesses? Because you’ve started dozens of companies, so how did thy get onto the list?

I have, but I’m getting better at breaking that habit. The last company I started was six years ago, and Squidoo is doing really nicely—we’re the 76th biggest website in the United States. But I started that because there were some people I really needed to work with and they wouldn’t work with me unless I had something to work on.

But there’s tonnes of businesses that someone who was willing to work harder than me would start if they saw what I see; it’s just really hard to persuade myself to sign on for a ten-year project like that. I probably should get better at that.

Right, so I’m just thinking one of the things you mention is delaying, delaying projects and also the ten-year thing, the timeframe. So do you prefer to go for things that are a bit of a shorter timeframe or … I’m just trying to get an idea of how you would sift out these things. ‘Cause obviously you’ve got lots of ideas and lots of possibilities and I’m just thinking if, indeed, the average person has this great potential that you see, then that’s potentially overwhelming to have that potential. So I’m trying to get an idea of how you would prioritize.

Yeah, the book I wrote, The Dip, I take very seriously. I think that being the best at what you do is far more important than most people think. Which means that you need to make the thing you do small, so that you can be the best at it. And I also believe that we live in revolutionary times. Which means that…

You know, Henry Ford could have done anything he wanted once he got started. He could have started any one of 500 other businesses. And you know, he did cars, then he did trucks. But he could have done golf carts, he could have done boats, he could have done motor scooters, he could have done motor cycles—all these things. At one point Henry Ford had Ford shepherds who were tending Ford sheep so they could shear Ford wool to weave it on Ford looms to make fabric for Ford seats to put into Ford cars. Because he could.

You need to make the decision about what change are you passionate about making, cause it’s all a hassle. And there’s no formula. You just have to have an instinct, I think, for how hard are you willing to push to be the best at that thing. That’s why I don’t use Twitter, right? Because I get why people think it’s fun. But I also know that I couldn’t be as good as it as I could be and still do everything else I do.

Thinking about Twitter, and Facebook—you said you’re not on Facebook—and you don’t do meetings, are there any other tools or approaches or philosophies that you have to manage all the tasks that you do? Obviously not doing, not subscribing to certain things that you can’t give your all to is one of your approaches for getting through all the tasks, but are there any others that you can share with us?

Well I think, you know, I posted a couple of weeks ago about the Zig Ziglar Goal Planner that we published, and it really is my secret weapon. I mean, it saved me from bankruptcy. There were seven or eight years in a row where I was within two weeks of running out of money. That’s a really long time. 900 rejection letters from publishers everywhere. Window-shopping in restaurants cause there wasn’t money to buy a plate of spaghetti. And the Goal Planner saved the day.

We’ve update it; we’ve modernized it, but I don’t care which version you use: there’s something extraordinarily powerful. I have never met anyone who has seriously written down their goals, and done it properly, who is stuck or is considered a failure. Not one person.

Excellent. That’s great. Just before you go, I wanted to ask if you could share with us one piece of advice that you’d give to other bloggers who want to increase their creative productivity to a level that they can use to generate a full-time income.

Oh, I don’t think you should do that.

Excellent! And why not?

Because then you just, you’re doing it to generate a full-time income, aren’t you? And this is amateur media; this is not professional media. And every once in a while an amateur gets so good that people come to them and beg them to take money. But if an amateur sets out to be a professional, she starts making short cuts and she starts trading in relationships for cash. And I don’t know how to tell people to do that.

So obviously for you the relationships are where it’s at, not the cash.

Yeah, because if you do care about cash, sooner or later enough people who admire your work and trust you, it’ll turn into cash. But in the long run, we never ever keep track of how much cash someone has. We always keep track of what their reputation is.

Very true. Well, that’s an excellent note to finish our interview on. Thank you very much for your time, Seth.

Thank you Georgina, it was a pleasure.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Seth Godin on Blogging and Productivity

These small victories interviews are with members of ProBlogger.com and are all about highlighting some of the small wins that real bloggers have – our hope is that they’ll inspire other bloggers at similar stages to not only celebrate the ‘big wins’ and those that have already gone pro – but to focus upon the smaller things that take us forward as bloggers.

This video only goes for just over 9 minutes so sit back and enjoy.

Transcription of Interview with Jeremy Vohwinkle

For those of you who prefer to read than listen – here’s a transcription of the video by The Transcription People.

Lara: Hi ProBlogger readers, this is Lara Kulpa again, the Community Manager from ProBlogger.com and I have with me today Jeremy Vohwinkle from Gen X Finance. How are you Jeremy?

Jeremy: Hi, I’m great thanks.

How Jeremy Got Started

Lara: Wonderful. So, tell us a little about your blog and your background and why you started.

Jeremy: Okay, sure. I’ve been working in finance for a number of years and, through my course of, you know, helping people with their finances, I would spend a lot of time researching different financial topics and what happened is I noticed a lot of times I would stumble on sites that weren’t necessarily big media sites or official finance sites and I kind of wondered, “Who are these people and why are they writing about finance?”

So I did a little research and I noticed that most of these people were running what I guess people called blogs at the time; this was back in 2006, and I was clueless. I had no idea what a blog was. If you asked me, I would have said it’s what some teenager writes when they get home from school or something. So, I had no idea this was the same sort of thing.

So, I researched Word Press and just kind of how the whole process goes and I figured “Okay, I’m pretty good with computers. I bet I can set this up myself.” So, I had sat around thinking about what I want to write about and obviously finance was at the top of my list because that’s what I do for a living and I pretty much am borderline Generation X myself and I worked with pretty much the same people in that demographic, so it just came to me “Let’s do Generation X Finance”. Not very inspiring, but that’s how I came about it. And, to be honest, it was just a part time thing after work. I just wanted to kind of hone my skills in, in terms of what’s going on in the world of finance because things are always changing; the laws and the stockmarket and
things like that, so it really was a way for me to just stay up on what’s going on in current events.

That being said, you know, I just, I really got kind of sucked into it and the more I read other blogs, the more I was excited to write about my own and it just kind of fed off itself.

Lara: Yep, that happens.

Jeremy: Yep. So, I mean that’s kind of where I got started and I went from being completely clueless to now this is my full time job and I make a living writing about finance. So, it’s been a pretty amazing journey.

Jeremy’s Small Victory #1

Lara: That’s fantastic. So, what was the small victory you shared with us in the ProBlogger community?

Jeremy: Well, there is a couple of them. One of them actually stemmed from ProBlogger itself. When I first got started – this was probably 2007 I think, so I was only a few months into my blogging career I guess you could say. He, you know, Darren hosted a group writing project and I didn’t know what this was but I thought ProBlogger’s a big site so if I can somehow maybe get a link or something on the site, that would do wonders for my blog.

So I sat down and I kind of, you know, I hammered out a post in maybe an hour. I just, I submitted it and, you know, that was it. I didn’t expect a whole lot from it but I wanted to take part in, you know, what other people were doing.

What happened after that was kind of amazing because it, over the coming months, I received a lot of other sites linking back to my site. So that, the fact that I was mentioned on ProBlogger really evolved into getting dozens if not hundreds of links to this one post and, as I watched my stats, I realised that now this post was my most popular post on my entire site. And it was with this a light bulb kind of went off and said “Okay, if I can write one post that gets so much interest and in turn has started making me money, I bet I can take this blog to the next level.” I was doing it just as a hobby at the time but this was a real turning point where I decided that I have to look deeper into blogging and what I can do to actually get more popular, get more links and maybe turn that into some money. So, that was probably my biggest small victory.

Jeremy’s Small Victory #2

Jeremy: But the other one, which didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, was meeting, kind of not meeting, but interacting with other bloggers in the personal finance kind of blog space. There were a number of us that kind of got started right around the same time, we all had similar subscriber bases, we had similar traffic levels and we kind of just informally reached out to each via email and, I don’t know if it was 2007, 2008, but someone came around and said “You know, maybe we should form sort of a blog alliance or maybe we should kind of unofficially form a blog group or something like that.” And we kind of said “Okay, let’s do that.” And, being as original as we are, we called ourselves ‘The Money Writers’, which again not too exciting but we write about money, so it just made sense.

We set up a site ‘themoneywriters.com’, we just kind of pooled all our feeds together into one handy location and we set up an email group so that we could just communicate easily back and forth with each other. And, essentially, early on it was just kind of a virtual water-cooler. You know, we would talk about what people are talking about on finance blogs, what, what’s going on in terms of advertising, we’d bounce ideas off each other in terms of you know “How are you making money on your site?” and “What are you writing about that’s successful?” and things like that.

But eventually it kind of evolved into a more official group where we were pitching advertising to, you know, the whole group. So someone might come to us saying “I want to place an ad on your site” and we’d say “Well, you get a discount if you place ads on all of our sites.”

Lara: Wonderful.

Jeremy: So, this kind of collaboration allowed us to, all of us take part in advertising that we may not have had an opportunity to in the past. So that was a big stepping stone in terms of starting to propel our blogs into the pro-blog status.

Lara: Right.

Jeremy: But I think more important than that was simply having a group of trusted bloggers that you can, you know, talk about things with because, when you blog on your own, it’s kind of a solo job for the most part. You’re writing, you’re just trying to get links, you’re trying to do some social media stuff but you don’t really have a close connection with a lot of people, so having this kind of network where you can confide in people and you can kind of vent or, if you’re, got writer’s block, you can kind of get ideas from people. That was a huge, a huge benefit and to this day, if I didn’t you know kind of become part of this group, I don’t know if I would’ve had the energy to keep up with this for the past four years. I don’t know if my site would be making as much money as it is now. So the simple act of, you know, joining a small group of other bloggers has done wonders for the long run.

Lara: That’s wonderful. I know Darren has talked about blogger alliances before in the past.

Jeremy: Yep.

Lara: And it’s always been a really great idea to find people that are in the same niche as you and working together is clearly, it definitely gives you some level of victory together.

Jeremy: Oh yeah, for sure.

Lara: That’s great. So, last but not least, do you have any words about the ProBlogger community that you’d like to share with the readers of Problogger.net?

Jeremy: Yeah, certainly. Probably to kind of feed off of what I just talked about, which was forming that kind of blogger alliance. If you don’t have that personal alliance, I think the ProBlogger community is the, probably the next best thing because you have a group of people that all basically are sharing the same sort of goals. These bloggers wouldn’t have signed up if they’re not serious about taking their blog to the next level and if they’re not serious about making more money or propelling their blog to a new status. So, if that’s kind of what you’re looking to accomplish, you might as well sign up because you’re going to have people that you can bounce ideas off of, you can get people to, you know, share links, you can expand your reach by joining other social networks. It’s just, it’s a great way to kind of meet other people and really get the support that you need as an individual because, you know, it is hard work, there’s a lot of competition and every little bit of help you can get is going to make all the difference in the world.

Lara: Awesome. So I will cut this off here and thank you so much, Jeremy, for doing the interview with us. We’ll see you in the forums.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Interview with Jeremy Vohwinkle – ProBlogger.com Small Victories Series

While I was initially a little skeptical about what I could learn from a so called ‘internet marketer’ and actually avoided what he and others had to teach me – since taking the time to do his course I’ve learned so much about online business.

Jeff has recently produced some fantastic new videos that many of you will be familiar with so I thought it would be a good time to set up an interview to look at his approach, particularly from a blogger perspective.

This interview goes for 35 minutes and covers:

1. Hype, Long Sales Pages and a Change of Approach in Internet Marketing
2. Getting over the Idea of Selling Something on a Blog
3. The Sideways Sales Letter (something blogs are ideal for)
4. Do Product Launches Work in Niches that are not ‘Make Money Online’ Niches?
5. What Did Jeff Learn in Launching his own Blog? (he had over 2000 people waiting to read it before even launching with a smart strategy)
6. Product Launches as Events
7. Secondary Benefits of running a Product Launch
8. Jeff’s New Videos
9. Can Product Launches Work for Small Blogs?

This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done and I hope you make the time today to have a listen or read through the transcript below (I’ve put the above topics into the transcript to help you find what interests you).

Also make sure you check out Jeff’s 4 videos

• Product Launch Millionaires – a video giving inside information on some of the really big internet product launches
• Product Launch Disasters – Jeff shares how some product launches have failed and why in many ways it didn’t matter. He also shares an inspiring story of his first client
• iPhone video – talks about the strategy behind Apple’s iPhone launch recently
• Product Launch Blueprint – this is a downloadable PDF of Jeff’s full Product Launch Formula and a video that walks you through it. This is GOLD if you’re ever going to launch a product on your blog and I find it hard to believe he gives it away for free.

To get them you need to opt in with your email address but it is well worth the effort. That last video is well worth the opt in – it’s a formula that I have printed up and next to my computer for every launch I now do.

Here’s the Interview

I hope you enjoy this interview with Jeff:

Transcript of Interview with Jeff Walker

Transcipt by The Transcription People.

Introducing Jeff Walker (and Darren’s Longest Introduction Ever)

Darren: Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and today I have the privilege of interviewing Jeff Walker from Product Launch Formula. Jeff’s a guy that many of you will know partly because I’ve recently promoted a couple of his videos that he’s just released but also, because over the last year or so, I’ve mentioned him a number of times as being someone who’s really helped me in my own launching of products. Jeff, I’m not sure how much of my story you know but, up until about two years ago, I relied almost completely upon advertising revenue and affiliate revenue to monetise my blogs and, with the economy changing, I began to, you know, start to experiment with my own products and launched my first one probably a year and a half ago, just before I came across Product Launch Formula and made a complete botch of it, but I learnt two things; one, I know nothing about product launches, I mean didn’t know anything about it, but, two, it worked anyway.

Because I’d built trust and credibility and some influence in the spaces that I was operating in, people just bought the E-books that I was selling like crazy and we did a six figure launch in a week just on the back of some terrible strategies. So, this is the longest introduction I’ve ever done, but I guess I wanted to say that a lot of bloggers are very suspicious of Internet market and product launches, but they unknowingly are in a great position to be able to use some of the strategies that you teach to do it in a way that I think is authentic and that can lead them into some profit as well.

So, thank you for joining us. That’s the longest intro I’ve ever done, but I just wanted to say I think is really a relevant conversation for people. So, thanks for joining.

Jeff: Well, thanks for having me. This is going to be fun. Yeah.

Hype, Long Sales Pages and a Change of Approach in Internet Marketing

Darren: So, perhaps let start with, a lot of bloggers when I mention product launches and Internet marketing, are quite suspicious of the whole Internet marketing game. We’ve all been on the receiving end of long sales pages and the ‘hypie’ sort of emails. I know that’s not your style, but what, how would you respond to that? How have things changed over the last couple of years?

Jeff: Well, you know, it’s sort of interesting because I actually got my start online way back, like I think around 1990 on like those online services like, actually the first one I found was called ‘Genie’ and there was like ‘AOL’ and ‘Prodigy’ and ‘CompuServe’ and all those and the world was a lot smaller; the online world was smaller back then and it was all about the conversation. And then, you know, the Internet came along and I got on the Internet and everyone got on the Internet and, all of a sudden, and even back then hardly anyone was selling anything. I mean, selling online took … it was like rocket science to be able to take a credit card. And, but then gradually it evolved into like … there is a lot of hype and a lot of marketing and it’s all about commerce and then I think, you know, when sort of the 2.0 revolution, which I sort of, I’ve lumped blogs into like really the forerunner of that, is really about the conversation.

So I really think where the Internet is going is back towards the conversation and you know I think product launches really, the way I teach them, the way I do them, a product launch is a conversation. It’s a conversation you’re, as a business owner, you’re trying to direct.

You know, you don’t want it to be a free-for-all; you want it to be something you can direct and take in the direction you want, but it very is, it is very much a conversation and, frankly, people are more interested in conversations than they are in, in a … you know a sales letter is like a monologue or a lecture and, you know, occasionally someone who’s incredibly gifted can deliver a lecture that holds people’s attention, but you have to be incredibly gifted. So, like, to write a sales letter that really captures people, you have to be some Ninja copy person or have a completely rabid market. So, it’s just a lot easier if you can just have a conversation that keeps someone’s attention.

So, I know that’s sort of a rambling answer but, you know, your question sort of hit on a underlying like philosophical stuff that I feel very, very strongly about. I mean I think that the Internet is all about a continually evolving ‘power to the people’ in terms of giving us the capability to, to be, each be publishers and then a continuing evolution of connecting us, make us more connected and enabling conversation.

Darren: That’s one of the things I really love. When I finally got over the hurdle that I was enrolling in an Internet marketing course, I was so surprised and really impressed to hear this whole conversational approach to it and, yeah, it was something that I guess I wish I’d got a hold of a lot earlier because bloggers are really into conversation; we value it, we value that relationship, but a lot of people just leave it at that. We just develop relations. But that can actually be part of a marketing approach which is really powerful.

Jeff: Right.

Getting over the Idea of Selling Something on a Blog

Darren: One of the challenges I see a lot of bloggers facing is getting over the idea of selling something to their readers. They’ve given so much content away for free and they have a mindset either that

• “My readers will leave if I start charging them for something” or
• “I’ve given so much away for free, what else could I produce that is worthy of charging?”, or just that
• “I can’t bring myself to sell something on my blog, I’m not a salesy type person.”  

What would you say to bloggers who have those sorts of mindsets?

Jeff: Well I think you have to … you know, I can completely understand that. In fact, I was once asked by Marlon Sanders, who’s one of my earlier marketing heroes, how I came up with Product Launch Formula and I said it was basically because I was scared to ask people for money, you know, so like I invented this elaborate romance thing and then finally it got to the point where I really needed the money and so I’d romanced them so long that, I did ask for money and all of a sudden I realised that they were happy to give it to me. So, I guess, to those people really I would say, and this is going to sort of sound a bit hard core but, you know, you have to decide whether you’ve got yourself a hobby or whether you’ve got a business and, you know, if you’ve got, if you have a business, I mean, well do you want to eat you know next month or not.

And I mean, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having a site that is a hobby where you’re publishing and you get a lot out of that and it brings a lot of self worth or you feel like you’re helping people or changing the world or facilitating something, nothing wrong with that. I think that’s very admirable but, you know, if you are in business to make money, you know, I think there’s two ways to make money online.

There are two ways; one way is by selling other people’s stuff and one way is by selling, the other way is by selling your stuff, and make no mistake, if a blogger’s out there and he’s running ads on his site, whether they be banner ads or AdSense or he’s, or you’re just, you’re putting up links, affiliate links, you are selling something; it’s just you’re selling other people’s stuff. I, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I think everyone should sell other people’s stuff and their own stuff. I think everyone, almost everyone should mix those two business models. I think it’s much better that way. You know, you want to sell other people’s stuff to sort of even out, to give you a broader inventory because none of us can create as much as our market wants and you want to sell your own stuff because the margins are higher and you actually have control and now you’re building a business and a real asset.

So, I mean I’d get over, I’d just say “Get over it.” You know, if you’re running ads now, you are running, you are selling stuff, it’s just it’s not your stuff.

The Sideways Sales Letter

Darren: Great. One of the things you talk about, it’s quite central in Product Launch Formula, is the sideways sales letter. Can you give us a bit of a quick overview of that.

Jeff: Right. Yeah, well I mean, if you look at a typical long form sales letter and, Darren, I have to admit, you know, I never was, never sold anything in my life, but I’ve always been someone who wrote. I always wrote a lot and when I first, you know, the first long form sales letter I was exposed to, I bought the product and, and then, you know, I mean, I admit I actually like sales letters and I don’t really like writing them but I can appreciate a good sales letter. But the reality is that most people aren’t like me; they don’t like them and they don’t read them and I was like looking at these letters and I’m like well what usually happens is people get them, one of those long form sales letters, and first when you load the page, you don’t know it’s a long form, you’ve just been sent the link or you’ve found a link. It wasn’t like you were looking, you know, had Googled like “I want to go read some long form sales letters”.

So, anyway, you end up on one and you don’t know it at first and then you see that little scroll bar off on the right and that goes, it just keeps on getting smaller and smaller and smaller and then it’s like, just like really tiny and it’s just showing you there’s like 30 pages to read. And so what I think most everyone does is they grab that scroll bar and they, you know, they look at the headline and either they leave or they grab that scroll bar and they scroll down to the bottom and they look what the price is. And then, you know, if the price seems reasonable based on the headline, then they’ll go back and skim through the sales letter and, you know, you look at a couple of ball points or a couple of sub-heads or something. The reality is that, if not many people are actually reading them, they’re not terribly effective.

So, I’m like okay, how can we change this paradigm and I, what I, I came up with this idea of the 30, the sideways sales letter. So, if you go from say a 30 page sales letter or a ten page sales letter and, instead of having that be, like there’s a vertical, you know, 30 pages long, if you turn that sideways and instead of made that scale pages, if you made that scale days, and it went to 30 days long or maybe ten days long, but you did this … essentially the same thing you would do in a sales letter, you start – what’s a sales letter start with a headline – so you start off with something, you know that, a headline that’s very compelling, so that would be your first piece of pre-launch content.

And you would come out the gate you know with that piece of pre-launch content and then a typical sales letter might go, you know, headline and then it’s got a sub-head and then makes some type of a promise or it raises some type of a pinpoint and then it might tell some stories and then it might have some bullet points and then it might go into the offer and then it might talk about the guarantee and then it might, you know, give the pricing.

And if you took that same thing and spread it out over like ten days or 14 days as your pre-launch and walked through people from that headline that grabbed their attention and gradually pulled them in with a story and then later when the pre-launch started to shift, the actual offer and then at the end, asked for the order, it’s a lot easier to engage people that way. Because what happens is, first of all, since you’re not asking for money up front, you’re not, it doesn’t look like a sales letter. You’re not asking for money. Then their BS detector gets, you know, it doesn’t go into red alert right at the very beginning of the sales process, of the launch. So you get them engaged and you pull them into your story and it gives you time to have that conversation and it’s just deadly effective. It’s just the way to grab the market’s attention, whatever market you’re in.

Darren: That’s great. As I heard you teaching that the first time, I realised I’d had a four years sideways sale process myself. I’d had the headlines along the way. I remember the first time I, you know, wrote ‘I’m a six figure blogger’, I’ve just realised that I didn’t actually post that wanting to grab people’s attention, but it did and there’s been other times along the way that I’ve had blog posts that have been headlines and then other blog posts that have been stories and then other blog posts that have, you know, sold benefits of what I’m doing and so what I’ve learnt is that, as you blog, you are creating a sales letter but then, as you launch products and as you do launches as well, you do a much more congested version – congested?

Jeff: Condensed.

Darren: Condensed. Condensed version of a launch and it’s a really, it is a powerful thing if you’ve already got that sort of relationship there as a blogger.

Jeff: Absolutely. I mean if someone is out there blogging and they haven’t put out, put together a product yet and, you know, say you’ve been blogging for six months or a year or whatever, longer, you know, basically, you have built up a huge amount of what I call relationship capital. I mean that’s like sort of … Darren, I actually don’t know if you’re married or not but like if, people that are married you know, usually, like if you want to, like for me like if I want to go, you know, hang out with my friends, go to the bar for a night, you know, that’s fine, but if I try to do that like 14 nights in a row, it wouldn’t probably go over as well. So, you know, there’s different things you can do. You know, maybe you like, you know, if, I don’t know, if the grass needs cutting or whatever, you can do things do build up relation capital, relationship capital.

Darren: Yeah.

Jeff: You know? So, I mean you could, if you’re sitting there blogging, putting out great content for an extended period of time and you’ve never sold anything, then you’ve got great relationship capital and, in fact it’s, earlier you said some people are worried that like they’ve never sold anything and people aren’t going to like them anymore if they try and sell something. It’s the opposite.

You know, if you’ve built up those raving fans and you have that readership, people are following you, you’ve built up huge relationship capital and some portion of your readers are, want to give you money. They, you know, the deal is, and Darren I know that you know this, is that when you’re a Publisher, when you’re publishing a blog, it’s like you are in fact a celebrity. People view you as a celebrity or as an expert or even we could say guru or whatever.

I mean, it’s like, it’s like when you think of a book author, everyone thinks of a book author as like “Wow, I was at the airport and I met the author of such-and-such a book. It was so cool.” Well, it’s the same with bloggers. As soon as you start publishing, you are the star and so people they see you that way and, if you offer something for sale, they want to buy from you. Not everyone of course, but a significant number.

Darren: Yeah. That blew me away the first day that I launched a product and someone emailed me and said “I didn’t really want your product but I bought it because I wanted to say thank you” and that, I think that was part of the reason that it was so successful the first time.

Jeff: Right.

Darren: And then they said “Actually, it was a useful product as well, which was a bonus.” So, yeah, it was really great.

Do Product Launches Work in Niches that are not ‘Make Money Online’ Niches?

One of the objections that I get every time I talk about making money online is that only people who talk about making money online make money online. “The best way to make money online is to teach other people how to do it. It’s only the gurus who are making the money.” Can you give us some examples of other niches where your kind of product launch strategies are working?

Jeff: Yeah, well it’s sort of funny, Darren, that you ask me that because, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, “That only works if you’re teaching people how to make money online.” And the funny thing is, is I was, I developed all these techniques in my original business, which was teaching people about the stock market, and I published a newsletter about the stock market. I had no idea these techniques would actually work in the so-called ‘Internet marketing, make money online’ niche, you know, for the first five years that I did them. I thought they just worked in the stock market. Well it turns out they worked in the ‘make money online’ niche. Then I started teaching this stuff and people have used it in just every field you could imagine. I mean people have used it in off line services – services like Dentistry and Chiropractic and Massage Therapy. They’ve used it in little niches online like Quilting and Raw Foods and Health Foods and Photography, teaching photography. In fact, that was yours, right?

Darren: Yeah.

Jeff: You did, yeah, you did. Well, there’s been several and they’re teaching guitar, there’s like business coaching in Poland, they’re just, I mean almost anything you could imagine; chocolate, like teaching people about chocolate. And then people have done it like with widgets, like marching band accessories and wooden dolls and on and on. Carving wooden dolls, there is a whole, there is a launch about carving wooden dolls, Holstein cow embryos. It just goes on and on and on. I mean just things I’ve never, like even like big corporate stuff.

Like, someone did a launch selling CRM software, Customer Relationship Management software, to Fortune 1000 companies and it’s like, that sales process takes months and it’s made, the decision’s made by a committee. So, it’s like “How do you do a launch to them?” I couldn’t, when I published this, I had no idea where it would go and it just keeps on going and going and going. And I hear handwriting analysis. I mean, it’s just, I really get, I really love hearing these ‘cause it’s just like these markets I’ve never even heard of. Dressage, that was a famous one. Jane Savoy did one and, which is horse training, dog training, taking care of your pets, taking care of your cats and dogs, on and on and on.

And the reality is it’s easier in those markets than in the make money online market because there’s so many launches in the make money online market, you really have to do, yeah, you have to do something to really stand out and be different.

Darren: Yeah, is there some common thread between them? Like, I know there’s a lot of celebrity bloggers out there. It probably, wouldn’t apply as much to some topics as others, like any, I’m thinking a ‘How To’ type topic is going to be more appropriate than perhaps a news orientated topic.

Jeff: Well, ‘How To’ is fantastic. Anything where you can sell information is fantastic. News oriented, boy, I don’t, you know I think, you know I’ve never … let’s see, let me think, I have never done anything personally in a news oriented thing. I think one direction a lot of people … if we look at social media, what’s happening now is a lot of celebrities now, they’re able to control their own destiny to a certain effect. Like, even like some of the Hollywood celebrities now, they can get all these twitter followers and now they don’t have to worry about, I mean they don’t have to rely on the media, they don’t have to rely on studios, they can go direct to the people.

I think one area for those people, and I would sort of put news type sites in the same thing, like even if you are just publishing about news and scoops and this and that, I mean I think there’s, there is money to be made just purely in being a celebrity and like taking a, taking, doing a seminar or taking a trip somewhere and bringing along people, you know, people can pay to go along with you, that type of thing, and then you’re talking about a launch that would be very, very effective. And they’re kind of, and they’re … I’m just completely guess there because I don’t have experience there and so, you know, because I want to be clear on when I’m talking theory versus reality.

Darren: That’s good. I mean one of the thoughts that just comes to mind is even to have a subscription area of a blog and to launch that.

Jeff: Yeah.

What Did Jeff Learn in Launching his own Blog?

Darren: So, I mean I know you’ve recently launched your own blog and I’ve heard you talk about how you used some of the strategy in launching your blog.

Jeff: Right, right.

Darren: What have you learnt from launching your own blog?

Jeff: Well, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s funny because it’s, yeah, this is my first real, real blog. I mean I’ve had, you know, dozens of launch blogs but this is one that, you know, it’s sort of more branded to me and any time I do anything that … I mean one of the absolute cores of Product Launch Formula is to use sequences. It’s a lot easier to influence people with a sequence than with a single email or a single blog post or a single ad or a single sales letter or a single tweet or a single anything. You know, it just gets lost in the clutter. There’s just, there’s so much being published. So I always want to do a sequence, so when I looked at my blog it’s like, okay, well I can’t, I don’t want to do a full out like product launch for a blog piece and at the end of the day I’m going to be sending people to a blog post.

I mean, you know, no matter how great a writer I think I am, it’s still going to be a blog post and, you know, a blog is about creating an ongoing presence, so, like, so what can I do. But I, so I did put together a sequence. I, like my sequences are pretty simple. I said, I asked people to help me come up with a tag line for the blog and then I ran a contest and I gave away an iPad to the winner, to the person, in fact it was an Australian that won it.

And so I had a contest to come up, to come up with a tag line. Well, part of that was because I couldn’t come up with a tag line. I, actually, I’m pretty lousy at naming things. So I couldn’t come up with it, I hate, couldn’t come up with something but I’m also like “This is a way to get engaged, get people thinking and talking about me, my brand and my blog like two weeks before the blog came out.” And I think … I forget how many thousands of entries I got into that contest, but basically there was thousands of people thinking about me and my blog and anticipating and then, when I wrote the blog post, I’m like, okay, go to the blog post and take a look and see, you know, see who won and then I was able to link that actually, take that over a couple of blog posts and I think I, you know, opened it Alexa, I think it was an Alexa top 10,000, instantly, instantly when I brought that blog out, like the first day.

And so there, there was no product for sale, you know, and there still isn’t. It’s just a blog, but I mean it was like I put some thought into it “How can I sequence this to get people engaged ahead of time?”

Darren: I can’t, I can’t imagine how many bloggers would like to have had 2,000 people wanting to read a blog before it actually even launched, so that’s fantastic.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Product Launches as Events

Darren: What, one of the things I love about what you talk about is events and seeing a launch as an event rather than just a, you know, a sales page or a blog post or a tweet. Can you talk a little bit about this idea of events and how you teach that.

Jeff: Yeah, well, I mean if you’re, often like if you’re coming out with a new product, like for you Darren if you had, you know, you were running a blog for a long time and you hadn’t sold anything, published anything, then just by that very nature that you came out with something, that is an event. And like Apple, you know, they just came out with that iPhone and so that, that’s just an event because the iPhone is such an iconic device and people are looking forward to it.

They don’t have to work real hard to make an event but what they do is they stage it; they get some rumours coming out and Steve Jobs gives a keynote, then they let you download the keynote and then they, then they do pre-orders and then they open up for the phone a few days later and, similarly, like with someone like you, where you had, you’d spend, you know, you’ve been publishing this blog, you haven’t sold anything, just letting people know that something’s coming.

Often I’ll do, I actually start with what we call a pre pre-launch and that’s where we find a way to let people know that it’s coming ahead of time, without saying “Hey, my product’s coming.” You know, no one just wants to read an email that says “Hey, my product’s coming”, they, but they, but if you can sort of let it slip out, like I did, I held a contest. Or you can do a survey “Hey, I’m working on this … you might’ve heard”, maybe subtly mention “I’ve been working on this new course on how to play guitar and, but before I finish it, I’d really like to know like what you want to know about playing guitar.”

And so now … you can run a survey like that, send people to a survey and now you’re, instead of “Tom, hey I’ve got something I’m going to sell you”, it’s like “Hey, I really need your help. Could you, I’m really interested in your opinion.”

So that’s the way you start to build something into an event. You can also do things like tie it to, you know, your birthday or the New Year or a holiday or a graduation or a birth or a wedding and tie it … like, we did a, I helped out with a launch where the product was a series of, an E-book, actually it was a few E-books, on how to write love letters.

That was a great one – How To Write Love Letters. And so what we … this woman was helping out, she actually had a, her daughter was getting married. So we turned this whole, we turned her daughter into, getting married, into this event to launch this book. And it started off with “Hey, my daughter’s getting married. I’m really excited. I want to surprise her at her wedding shower with a bunch of great well wishes and can you, so could you go to my blog and just leave a comment where you give your well wishes to Abbey and Jonathon and then I’m going to take all these, all your well wishes and I’m going to print them out and give it to her on the day of her wedding shower.” And so that was the beginning, we used that event at the beginning of the launch and then we took it from there, like, oh boy, this is so heart-warming, which it was. I mean this was like a blog where, if you’re ever having a bad day, you just would go and read. There’s hundreds of comments of pure love and I mean it was no one could read it without like ending up in tears.

But that was the start of the, that event started the launch and then we took it from there and evolved it into “I’ve been so touched by this that now I’m, I’ve got like these, I’m going to make this the best offer ever and give you an extra three books on love letters and all this. So, there’s an example.

Secondary Benefits of running a Product Launch

Darren: One of the great things that I have discovered in doing launch after launch is that they actually build momentum for your blog and there’s actually other benefits. Every time I’ve launched a product, my blog readership’s gone up as, you know, my affiliates and JV Partners have promoted it to their audience and those people actually become readers. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, some of the side benefits of running a launch?

Jeff: Yeah, this is something we actually ‘The Launch Echo’ and, until you experience this, it’s, it’s it … well, first of all, most people don’t know about it and even if they hear, even if they hear about it, they think it’s just almost mythical because it just sounds so crazy, but what happens is you build up amazing momentum and you use affiliates and partners but even, it works even if you don’t have affiliates and partners.

So, what you do is you are all of a sudden engaging in this conversation and getting, and usually there’s some pre-launch content involved and, you know, I advocate giving away great free pre-launch content. You know, I’m in the middle of my launch and I’m just giving away video after video with real training in it and then people just love it and they pass it around. I mean, if you look at Twitter right now, it’s just going crazy with, you know, like every five minutes or ten minutes, one of my videos is getting tweeted and so I mean that’s just building up huge momentum just in, not just in Twitter but all over the place. And, you know, you’ll see … I mean, I just took, the, my new launch is … I’m actually using a new web site and I hit the Alexa top 1,000 the day we started that thing. And, of course, that’s due to JV Partners, but that has this long, this echo effect going forward where you build up your, if you build your readership … I mean, what’s the value of like adding like 1,000 regular new readers to your blog, I mean going forward.

Darren: Yeah.

Jeff: I mean, that’s immense. You know, I mean, that’s like money in the bank, whether you’re going to promote someone else’s product, whether you’re going to run advertising, run AdSense or sell additional products in the future. Something, there’s another thing we call ‘Launch Stacking’ where generally each launch gets bigger and bigger because of that echo, because you’ve added more readers, because you’ve, if you’ve got an email list, you’ve built your email list because you’ve attracted more partners. And also another key thing is, because you have increased the conversation with your readers, you have a better idea what they want going forward and then you can create those products.

You mentioned early in the call, like, people, they’re like “I, we, I, well I give away so much already, I don’t know what to give people, I don’t know what I would sell them. How can I come up …” Well, if you just get that conversation going, they’ll tell you what they want to buy from you.

Darren: Exactly. We just ran a survey of our readers of people who bought our last E-book and we had 12,000 people tell us what they want their next E-book to be about. It’s just amazing, like they’ve actually told us and 75% of them told us the one thing.

Jeff: Yep, yep.

Darren: And they’ve said “I will buy an E-book on this.” So that is the best research, you know, and you can tell what I’m working on next.

Jeff: Right, absolutely. It’s like … Darren, I don’t know, do they use this, there’s a term here that they, that, it’s called ‘shooting fish in a barrel’, do you, do they use …

Darren: Yep.

Jeff: Do they use it? I mean, that’s what I, what I want my marketing to be is like shooting fish in a barrel. In fact, I’d like to take that barrel and shrink it down to the size of a bucket and, you know, the same number of fish are now in this bucket, you just cannot miss. And that’s what it, like when you have 12,000 people that just told you, and the amazing thing is is when you ask 12,000 people something, you will get all kinds of responses but they’ll always skew to two or three main responses.

Darren: Yep.

Jeff: And the reality is, if you had only gotten like 120 people or even probably 50 people to respond to that survey, you probably would have gotten as much data as you needed because it still would have gotten that one thing that they wanted to buy from you. I mean, and then it’s just so easy, when you create it, it’s like … I mean people think I’m like some marketing genius – it ain’t the case man – I’ve just got these easy steps that I follow and one of them is just selling stuff that people want. You know, it’s just, I mean it’s easy.

Darren: That is great. And the other bonus of running a survey like that is that I’ve had hundreds of people say “Thanks for asking”.

Jeff: Right.

Darren: They’ve replied with emails that have said “Wow, you know, thanks for sending this, doing this survey.” I’m like, there’s, there’s, you know, it’s more marketing, more good will.

Jeff’s New Videos – Must View Content

Darren: I just want to tie this up, but can you quickly talk us through the videos that you’ve just released. I’m going to link to them under this post but I have to say that the quality of them’s really great and particularly the last video that you’ve launched which outlines your Product Launch Formula is, whether people buy your product or not, you’ve given some really useful stuff in that video. Can you just talk about those videos you’ve released?

Jeff: Yeah, sure, the first one we put out was actually a real departure for me because I’ve, all my publishing has always been talking about the little guys and the strange little niches that have done really well with launches.

So, for this time around, I decided to do something a little different and the first video was called ‘Product Launch Millionaires’ and it’s about the really big launches in the Internet marketing world because there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that people don’t understand. People think those launches, the big launches, are not working well. The reality is they’re working better than they ever have. So, I actually give a lot of insider stuff; I talk about the launch, I go there, stuff that, you know, some of the actual product launch math, what has actually, you know, how much you actually make, what the profit margin actually is.

The second one is probably, my favourite video I have ever put out is ‘Product Launch Disasters’. In that one we actually talk about some of the things that have gone wrong and I name some of the names of people that have screwed stuff up, including me, but then at the end of it I talk about the most important launch ever and this is a launch that looked like it could have gone wrong but it ended up going pretty well and I highly encourage people to watch the Product Launch Disasters video. It’s literally the best thing I’ve ever done, I think.

Then I came out with the iPhone video, talking a little bit about the strategy behind the Apple iPhone launch and how it’s, how similar it is to the way we do launches.

And then, just earlier today as we record this, I released ‘Product Launch Blueprint’ and that’s basically … you know, I do a lot of mind mapping. I use these, this mind mapping program. There’s a bunch of them out there; the one I use is called ‘Mind Manager’ from Mindjet. And so I basically walk through the blueprint, like the overall blueprint of Product Launch Formula so they, people can download the actual blueprint, it’s a PDF. And then there’s also a video that accompanies that where I walk through the entire blueprint.

Darren: And that, that’s great. That gives you a real overview of, you know, a lot of your other teaching which is really valuable and it’s fantastic that you give that away for free. So, thank you for that.

Can Product Launches Work for Small Blogs?

My last question is, a lot of my readers are small in terms of the size of their blogs and their reach. Can this stuff work for a small blog, for a small, a person who has limited influence?

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the reality is we all start with limited influence. I mean I certainly did. And, and one important thing I believe in is baby steps. You have to start somewhere and, you know, I mean if we look at, you know, the most accomplished people at anything, you know, Tiger Woods playing golf, Kobe Bryant playing basketball, you know, Jimmy Page playing guitar; they all started somewhere and they all took those baby steps to get started and move along.

So, there’s a lot of people that might have a small readership now, but there’s no reason it can’t grow a lot bigger. And I like to think of this … in fact one of the things in Product Launch Formula is, you know, that I’m going to be rolling out, it’s completely all brand new. One of the things I’ve never taught before is this, what I call the ‘Product Launch Arc’ and that’s … I wish we could draw it – we can’t draw it right now since we’re in an auditory environment – but basically how, when you start out, you know, your launches might be small and your first few launches might be small, but because of that launch stacking and because of that launch echo, you build momentum going forward and at some point all of a sudden critical mass takes over and all of a sudden your launches just start growing exponentially. And then, at some point, as they get just incredibly large, you know, they’re going to stop growing exponentially and there’s more of a levelling off process and then you’re just sort of going back to the well and doing re-launches.

But, yeah, it absolutely will work for smaller people because what this is about … I mean we didn’t even talk about like some of the mental triggers and stuff but what you’re doing is your aligning yourself with the way humans communicate and humans are influenced. That’s what this is really about, is it’s about aligning yourself with the way to influence people and communicate with people and it doesn’t matter if you have, you know, 30 people following you or 300 or 3,000 or 300,000, the principles are all the same. You might not get as big a returns when you’re just starting out, but this really is how people get bigger and go from being like, you know, someone with small readership to being someone with a large readership.

Darren: And the thing I guess we all need to remember is that those big launches, they started somewhere and they started with small launches and, you know, you tell some of your own story around that and I find, that’s what I find so encouraging is that the first launch, it may not be mind-blowing but it’s, it’s, the most important launch, your next launch is your most important one because it’ll take you towards that, those larger ones. So, yeah, it’s really exciting to hear. Thanks so much, Jeff, for the time that you’ve given us today. I’m going to link under this post to some of those videos that you’ve already launched and I’d really encourage people to check those out. So, thanks for your time today.

Jeff: Thank you Darren. I really enjoyed it.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Exclusive Interview with Jeff Walker on Launching Products off Your Blog (Audio and Transcript)

These small victories interviews are with members of ProBlogger.com and are all about highlighting some of the small wins that real bloggers have – our hope is that they’ll inspire other bloggers at similar stages to not only celebrate the ‘big wins’ and those that have already gone pro – but to focus upon the smaller things that take us forward as bloggers.

Transcription of Interview with Carleen Coulter

For those of you who prefer to read than listen – here’s a transcription of the video by The Transcription People.

Lara: Hi everybody, this is Lara Kulpa from ProBlogger.com and as part of our new series on small victories I have with me today Carleen Coulter. Hi Carleen.

Carleen: Hi. How are you?

Lara: I’m wonderful. How are you?

Carleen: I am doing very well.

Lara: Good. So how about you give our listeners a little bit of a background?

Carleen: Okay. My name is Carleen Coulter. I’m the author of multiple blogs but my primary one is beautyandfashiontech, the words beauty and fashion followed by T-E-C-H .com.

Lara: Okay.

Carleen: I also have a blog, girl gloss and run some affiliate sites and I also run a little non profit blog for my dog.

Lara: Oh.

Carleen: Yeah, he doesn’t try to make any money.

Lara: So …

Carleen: Oh, go ahead.

Lara: No, no, no, you go, go ahead.

Carleen: I basically started blogging, I’d say it was about three and a half, four years ago now. Kind of did it on a whim. I just one day started reading some other blogs and said, hey, I’d kind of like to try that and started doing it. I’m actually an attorney by profession.

Lara: Oh, wow, nice. Very nice.

Carleen: So it’s … yeah, you know, it makes for a nice combination. I kind of like writing about things that aren’t legal topics from time to time.

Lara: I can’t blame you there.

Carleen: Yeah. The legal stuff gets kind of dry.

Lara: Yeah. So when you put your … put in your application to be featured in the series, what was the small victory that you were talking about?

Carleen: Well actually I had kind of a small victory and then more of a medium victory. The small victory was when I first started doing this, my, my now husband, he was then my boyfriend, was really kind of teasing me about it. He, you know, he would go, “So you’re writing about makeup, you think you’re going to make some money from this.” Because I told him, well, you know, I’d kind of like to make a little money, extra money on the side.

Lara: Right.

Carleen: And, you know, he said, “You’re never going to make money on that. You’re falling for some make money online thing.” And I said, “Well, you know, I’ll try and see what happens.” So after maybe, I don’t know, a month or two, you know, I start showing him, “Oh, here, look. I’m at least making, you know, a buck a day on AdSense.” He’s like, “That’s not money. That doesn’t count.” And so I think I was about three months in and two things happened. First, I got my first AdSense cheque. So I actually, you know, made enough to get to that hundred dollar mark.

Lara: Absolutely.

Carleen: And then I also sold a $1500 ad contract for a six month ad contract.

Lara: Wow.

Carleen: And so he comes home and, you know, I proudly show him this $1500 and that pretty much shut him up after that. And he simply said, “Yeah, you can do more of this.”

Lara: Yeah, sure, absolutely. That’s awesome.

Carleen: Yeah. So that was … that was the small victory. The medium victory was really from there it kept growing and … when I first … I was … I’m originally from Nebraska and I moved out to Illinois to be with my husband and I took a cut in pay. I lost a part-time teaching job that was extra income from that and the cost of living out here is kind of ridiculous.

Lara: Yeah.

Carleen: So, yeah, I moved out here, I really kind of needed extra money and was looking to replace my teaching income and what happened was by about the one year mark I had done that. So that’s kind of my medium victory is that, you know, things grew. I replaced all that lost income, actually increased it quite a bit and in the end last year my husband was laid off of his job and that actually probably saved us. I mean …

Lara: Wow.

Carleen: My income at that point covered the mortgage and we got by okay. And, fortunately, he’s re-employed now.

Lara: Right. That’s fantastic. You know, a lot of people talk about how they think that everybody is trying to get into the blogging thing and the making money online thing because of the way the economy is of course in the United States and things are getting rough around here and we’ve been battling this whole thing for a couple of years now and it’s really nice to hear that within such a relatively short period of time, if you look at the grand scheme of things, I mean, a year, but that’s not asking a lot, to be able to put in the effort for a year’s time. And …

Carleen: Yeah, you know, yeah, I think it … the key is putting in the effort.

Lara: Right.

Carleen: I mean, it’s definitely work.

Lara: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s … there’s nothing … Darren recently had a post about how unsexy it is and …

Carleen: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.

Lara: Yeah. You know, there’s nothing … there’s nothing out there saying that this is one of those like set it and forget it kind of Ronco rotisserie things, you have to really put in the effort, and that’s fantastic. So let me ask you this, being a member of ProBlogger.com and coming to the site and everything, what are some things that you think have helped you along the way?

Carleen: Well, first off, I have to say that ProBlogger, ProBlogger.net, the actual blog, was instrumental from the get go for me. When I first started blogging and started realising, oh, I could actually make some money from this, I think I read every single thing on there. I mean, yeah, I mean, Darren was like … he was a God to me. I was like, “Wow, this is just amazing. It’s a great site.”

Lara: Yep.

Carleen: So when ProBlogger.com the forum and everything started, I immediately wanted to be part of that. And I think it’s a very useful place, especially … I think it’s particularly probably good for new bloggers and then there’s some established bloggers in there who are quite active.

Lara: Yep.

Carleen: So it’s a nice mix of people. You get new people in there with fresh ideas and questions. I mean, I’ve learnt from people’s questions.

Lara: Yeah.

Carleen: You know, people ask questions that I never thought of and I thought, okay, that’s interesting. And then I also learnt from the answers.

Lara: Right.

Carleen: And then, like I said, there’s experienced people in there too who bring their own wealth of knowledge.

Lara: Right, right. One of the things that I hear a lot from people, now that we’ve been sending out the weekly newsletters and kind of pointing people in certain directions each week, one of the responses I keep getting is that people are feeling almost like wallflower-ish. You know, they go in there and they’re kind of like, you know, “There’s so many people with such great information I feel like I have nothing to add,” you know. To which my answer is always, “Well, you know, your learning process can be somebody else’s learning process as well,” which kind of goes along with what you just said.

Carleen: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, I can’t, I can’t say how many times I’ve seen somebody either in, in the ProBlogger forum or another forum ask a question where I just … it might be a very basic question and it’s something I’ve never thought of before.

Lara: Right.

Carleen: And I get something out of that and I say, hey, I really learned something from that. Also you can’t … you can’t discount the, just the social interactions and getting to know people.

Lara: Right.

Carleen: I’m always one that’s always loved forums because I’m just pretty social and, you know, if you’re kind of a wallflower you really can, you know, get to know people just by going in forums, asking a few questions, throwing in your thoughts and, you know, don’t worry about being new or maybe not having been blogging that long or anything. You know, I think everybody has something valid to add.

Lara: Fantastic. Well, Carleen, thank you so much for talking to us today. And go ahead and tell everybody what your URL is again.

Carleen: The primary site is beautyandfashiontech.com. The first part is easy, beauty and fashion T-E-C-H .com.

Lara: Okay, great. Well thanks so much and we’ll see you in the forums.

Carleen: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Lara: Absolutely. Bye bye.

Carleen: Bye.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Interview with Carleen Coulter – ProBlogger.com Small Victories Series

With currently dozens of stories there, all of which are really great, we’ve got so many interviews to do! The idea behind this was to not only feature our Community members on the blog, but also to serve as inspiration to others who may think that even these “small victories” can’t or wouldn’t happen to them.

First, we’ll start with Chris Monty (pictured above), owner of Blippitt.

Transcription of Interview with Chris

For those of you who prefer to read than listen – here’s a transcription of the video by The Transcription People.

Lara: Hi ProBlogger readers. This is Lara Kulpa the community manager for ProBlogger.com and I have with me Chris Monty from Blippitt and we’re going to use Chris as our guinea pig for our new feature at ProBlogger.com where we feature our members over at ProBlogger.net with a story about their little small victories. So, Chris, hi.

Chris: Lara, how are you?

Lara: Good. How are you?

Chris: I’m good thanks. I’m excited.

Lara: Good. Good, good. So tell us a little bit about you, like what your background is and how you got started blogging and making money online?

Chris: Sure. Well I was in the mortgage industry which was a wonderful career choice up until around 2007 and the market started to fall and I had kids, a couple of little kids, and was on 100% commission and, you know, I just started thinking to myself, why am I putting myself through all this when, you know, I know … I’d just started to read ProBlogger and I’d gotten to know a few friends online who were blogging and making a little bit of money and I just kind of … when I first started I really didn’t even do it to start making money, I just, you know, I heard about blogging, I’d never tried it, so I setup a free blog over on Blogspot by Google just to have a little fun. And I, you know, I started one about being a dad and I started another one about, you know, one of my guilty pleasures is watching pro wrestling on the weekend. So I started another one where I was …

Lara: Nice.

Chris: … just kind of talking about pro wrestling stories and that kind of thing. And it was really just for fun until one day I guess I hit on a hot story and, you know, I saw that I was getting several hundred hits on my blogger blog and I thought, uhuh, so this must be how this happens. So I decided to actually do some research into and, you know, figure out how to properly setup a blog and spent a long time researching search engine optimisation and social media and …

Lara: Yeah.

Chris: … just sort of took it from there.

Lara: Cool. So what is the blog that you’re … that’s getting the most of your attention right now?

Chris: That’s definitely blippitt.com and, you know, I’m not so sure now that it was such a great domain name choice because every time someone emails me about it, they misspell it, you know.

Lara: I was going to say, can you spell that for everybody?

Chris: Yep, it’s B-L-I-P-P-I-T-T .com. So two Ps and two Ts in blippitt.com.

Lara: Gotcha. Gotcha. We’ll put that in the post too just to make sure.

Chris: Great.

Lara: Now how old is that, two years?

Chris: Well there’s a little bit of a story behind it. I’d been, you know, participating in some make money online forums and that kind of thing and, you know, it started out really as … it started out as one of the many make money online blogs out there. It started out as Montysmegamarketing.com and, you know, I had a pretty good following but I realised that the make money niche is not really where I wanted to be. So I launched Montysmegamarketing.com in July of 2008 and then, you know, after I lost my job in mortgage in February of 09 I rebranded it, I changed the domain name, you know, I moved everything over on the server to Blippitt …

Lara: Yep.

Chris: … .com and turned it into more of a mainstream pop culture, entertainment news, sort of a blog. So it’s, you know, I think of it as kind of like a buzz feed meets the inquisitor meets boing boing, you know.

Lara: Right.

Chris: You know, it kind of goes, what’s hot on the Internet and have a few laughs and we do viral videos and you’re fail of the day and things … mix in a few daily deals and that sort of thing.

Lara: Nice. Very cool.

Chris: So it’s, it’s been really going well. I mean, it cracked the Alexa top 100,000 within six months and then hit the Alexa top 50,000 just three months after that. So it’s fortunately just been doing nothing but … the traffic has been doing nothing but going up.

Lara: That’s fantastic. Fantastic.

Chris: Yeah.

Lara: So what was your small victory? When we put the call out inside ProBlogger.com for our members and said that we were going to do this, you were very excited to put your post in there and you said that it was your new favourite thread and I had to agree with you because I think it’s so cool to hear all these stories. So …

Chris: I think so too. I mean, there’s a lot of people that read ProBlogger that are doing a lot of good things and it’s, you know, it’s nice to hear what everybody’s success story is and …

Lara: Yeah.

Chris: You know, certainly my … one of mine was hitting the … hitting the Alexa top 50,000.

Lara: Absolutely.

Chris: Another was finally making it to the first page of Digg which actually just happened about two months ago. It was a …

Lara: Nice.

Chris: … post we did on, you know … of course it was a list put on which was something like 24, you know, contextual advertising fails. And it was actually … it was a pretty funny post.

Lara: Cool.

Chris: You know, I can see why it sort of took off and went viral.

Lara: Definitely.

Chris: But, you know, I’ve never seen traffic like that. In fact that was the main catalyst to make me go out and, you know, instead of being on a reseller server now I went out and just purchased a dedicated server through … through HostGator and …

Lara: Yep.

Chris: … we’re cooking along.

Lara: Cool. Now, I have to ask you this question because I know the answer and I want you to share it with everybody else. How has the ProBlogger community helped you with this whole thing?

Chris: The ProBlogger forums have been invaluable just from everything from how to market my blog better to the technical aspects of it. And just the other day … I use a plug in called WEBO Site SpeedUp to … I run the blog on WordPress which is just a fantastic system as far as …

Lara: Yep.

Chris: … search engine optimisation goes. But as far as hogging your CPU resources on your server it’s …

Lara: Yep.

Chris: … it’s a nightmare.

Lara: Yeah.

Chris: So, you know, this plug in got updated and my site basically crashed and I kind of posted this urgent, you know, thread in the ProBlogger forums, “Help. My (6:23) is down. I can’t get it back on,” you know. I know some WordPress but I don’t know PHP anymore than I know rocket science. So …

Lara: Right.

Chris: … you know, a couple of guys jumped in there and got me back up and running in no time …

Lara: Nice.

Chris: And it’s also been nice to just, you know, ask people, “Hey, take a look. What do you think of these monetisation methods?” You know, “I’ve got these ads running on the right, I’ve got these ads on the top and I’m using these advertising networks, you know, are there any others I should know of?” You know, “How can I go about negotiating a higher per CPM rate from some of these folks?” And, you know, the feedback that you get in there is great. Now, that being said, you can’t just come in and ask questions all the time and wait for people to answer them, you have to give as well as get.

Lara: Right.

Chris: So I sort of jump in and share my expertise whenever I can with …

Lara: And you do.

Chris: I use the term expertise loosely. I’ve been doing this for two or three years now but, you know, I feel like I’ve gotten to know things about WordPress and things about SEO that a lot of people would benefit from, so.

Lara: Absolutely. Absolutely. You’ve been a big help in there. And the thing to remember is that, you know, just as much as there are people who are in there that have been at this for six or seven or eight years, there are people in there who have been in it for six or seven or eight weeks and you’re kind of like in that, that middle ground now where …

Chris: Right, right.

Lara: … you know, there’s an equal balance and it’s really nice.

Chris: I’ve made some good friends in there too. It’s nice to, you know, we’ve got a few people that, you know, we private message each other, “Hey, I just put up a new post about this and I could use some traffic to it. Would you mind blogging about it?” You know, they’ll do the same to me, like, “Hey, we just put up this post about XYZ, you know. Can we … can you send us a few visitors or maybe mention it on your blog?” And, you know, networking online is not a whole lot different than networking online[sic]. It’s really …

Lara: Right.

Chris: It’s who you know.

Lara: Right. Very cool. So anything else you want to tell us about Blippitt?

Chris: You know, we’re just … we’re growing. It’s going really well. We just launched an iPhone app that’s … it’s available for free in the iPhone store.

Lara: Cool.

Chris: We’ve got our Facebook page up now and we’re on Twitter. We not too long ago were mentioned in a blog post by MTV.com so that was kind of a rush.

Lara: Oh, wow.

Chris: It’s nice. I looked in the stats one day and I started seeing all these hits coming from MTV.com and they picked up on a post we wrote, a Lady Gaga post that we had written and, you know, it’s great. I do plan on eventually … in fact I’ve already started it. I’m just kind of writing an eBook about exactly what steps I took to, you know, build links to Blippitt the way I did and how I’ve gotten the traffic and how I’ve … you know, I’m basically … I told myself if I can get it to the point where we’re making a good three to four thousand dollars a month then I would consider that a full-time income and …

Lara: Absolutely.

Chris: … we’re finally now … we’re finally now there. I mean I still, you know, I still have a day job but it’s for the benefits and it’s because I want to …

Lara: Right.

Chris: … and not because I need to. So it’s really cool just to be able to show my wife, you know, hey, all that picking on me you did because I was spending so many hours online is now paying off.

Lara: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris: Once the cheques started rolling in, her attitude changed a little bit.

Lara: Yes, they do. They do. It’s all about the green.

Chris: Yep, that’s right, yes.

Lara: Show me the facts, honey.

Chris: They’re really supportive of the whole process and it helps to have that support system behind you, definitely.

Lara: Yeah, that’s great. Fantastic. Well thank you so much, Chris.

Chris: Sure.

Lara: And we will be happy to watch Blippitt continue to grow and be really cool.

Chris: Yeah, that would be great. I mean, the one thing I can tell folks listening is to, you know, just never give up and never get discouraged. There were definitely times, you know, six or seven months into it and then a year into and a year and a half into it when I thought, you know, I’m really … I’m missing out on this family time and I’m just wasting time and it’s never going to happen, it’s never going to take off. But I’ve got this sign on my bed … on my bathroom mirror that is a quote from Winston Churchill and it just says, “Never give up. Never.”

Lara: That’s awesome.

Chris: And just when you finally commit yourself to doing it and not giving up, you know, that’s when things finally seem to take off. So you’ve just got to stick it out and be dedicated to it.

Lara: I love it. I love it. Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris: All right. Thanks, Lara.

Lara: All right. Great talking to you.

Chris: See you in the forums.

Lara: Okay. See you there.

Chris: All right.

Lara: Bye bye.

Chris: Bye.

So there we have it, our first ProBlogger Community Small Victory Interview! Many more to come, and if you’re interested in having your “small victory” story posted like these, join the ProBlogger Community and share your story!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Interview with Blogger Chris Monty: ProBlogger.com Small Victories Series

Today I’d like to share that interview with you as an example of a blogger who has made a living from blogging by building a niche focused blog.

decor8 has opened up many doors of opportunity for Holly. She makes a full time living from the blog (and also employs a regular columnist as well as her husband to run the back end) and it has led to other exciting possibilities including a book deal.

In this podcast interview Holly:

• shares the story behind starting decor8
• gives insight into how she keeps coming up with fresh content ideas
• shares what type of posts work best at drawing in readers to comment
• talks about her decision to bring on a regular columnist
• reflects on dealing with negative comments
• answers the question of ‘what is a conversion’ for you when a reader hits your blog
• share how she’s built her readership
• reveals how she makes a full time living from her blog
• talks about her other ventures, including her ‘blogging your way’ e-course and up coming book

I love hearing stories like the one Holly shares because it’s yet another example of a blogger who makes a good living her blog (and it’s not a blog about making money on the internet!). I also loved chatting with Holly because she’s all about enhancing the lives of those who read her blog by producing a high quality and inspiring blog.

The interview is just on 51 minutes long so grab a cup of coffee and sit back to enjoy Holly’s insights on blogging!

here’s the podcast:

While you’re listening check out her blog and enjoy!

PS: you can grab the mp3 of this interview for later here – Interview with Holly

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Interview with Full Time Blogger – Holly Becker from decor8

If you’re a regular ProBlogger reader, you know that Darren dishes up heaps of incredible blogging advice 7 days a week, 365 days a year. His archives positively overflow with information on how to build a blog from the ground up, how to engage readers, how to earn a living from your blog, how to search engine optimize your blog, how to market your blog through social media and so much more.

If you’re a beginner blogger, there’s no better place to learn than at ProBlogger.

I know because when I started blogging in 2007, ProBlogger was like a launch pad for me.

I blasted into the blogosphere, writing posts in rapid fire succession as new idea after new idea spilled out of my bloggy brain faster than I could jot them down in trusty notebooks scattered around my house and car.

I churned out short posts, long posts, reviews, interviews, vlogs, linkies and more list posts than you could shake your cursor at. I SEO’d the daylights out of my blog, carved out a nice niche for myself and built up a pretty sweet subscriber base. I came, I blogged, I monetized. Oh yeah.

And then, after 3 solid years of blogging, I suddenly found myself with nothing left to say. No, not just blogger’s block. I’m talking not a damn thing to blog about. Zero, zip, nada. Last stop on the blogosphere for this lady.

350 posts, 1200 subscribers and 2000 comments later, I was officially all blogged out.

So I spent a week curled up in the fetal position deciding whether it’s better to burn out or fade away from the blogosphere, and then it hit me.

Surely I couldn’t be the first – or the only – blogger to feel this way!

So I did what any blogger worth her Alexa rank would do – I decided to BLOG about being all blogged out.

Newly invigorated, I set out in search of other solo bloggers who’d felt this same way to ask them what they did about it.

What I found was 10 top bloggers with very different takes – and advice – on being all blogged out.

Laura Roeder @lkr

Blogging Since:

Well I’ve been creating and sharing content online in various formats since about 1996. But I’ve never really considered myself a “blogger”or had one mega-popular blog. My current blog for my business has been running for about a year and a half.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Yes, definitely! I don’t blog that frequently so I usually don’t try to force it. I sometimes only update my blog once a month, it just depends on what I have going on and what I’m inspired to create. 99% of my blog is in video format, it is really difficult for me to write a beginning-middle-end article, it’s just not how my thoughts come I guess. But I could talk forever so video is the perfect format for me!

What did you do about it?

I plan out an editorial calendar at least 6 months in advance. This is the key part – you can’t just plan but you have to force yourself to stick to the weekly topic. I think too many bloggers wake up in the morning and try to think of a great topic that day – planning out a calendar in advance is a great solution. And then you have time to filter your ideas to make sure they’re all good instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel, desperate to come up with ANYTHING to write about!

Chris Guillebeau @chrisguillebeau

Blogging Since:

2008 — although I had been writing in other formats for a couple of years prior.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Thankfully — no.

How have you avoided it?

I’ve avoided it by trying to be somewhat intentional about the process.

First, I don’t limit myself in writing about one specific, niche topic. I write about a number of topics (travel, entrepreneurship, motivation) for a number of venues (my own blog, other blogs, a newspaper column, magazines, books, etc.). The variety is very helpful, because even though I’m writing a lot, the deliverables are not always the same.

And second, writing is my job. It’s just what I do. If a plumber gets bored, she still shows up every day and goes to work. Why should it be different for creatives? Steven Pressfield wrote about this in the wonderful little book The War of Art, which I re-read regularly and would recommend to anyone feeling “blogged out.”

Chris Brogan @chrisbrogan

Blogging Since:

I started in 1998 back when it was called journaling. I’ve used several different sites before settling on my own domain, and my blog technologies used to be WYSIWYG website design tools, so those ones are lost to all but the Wayback machine.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Never. I have more blog posts than I have time to post them. I write two or three at a time, so that I have a few in my rainy day pile (though at the time of writing this, I ran out, so will have to blog a few things on the next two airplanes). I never feel all blogged out. We have TONS to cover, and lots of ways of looking at things.

How have you avoided it?

Blogging/writing is about practice. The more you do it, the easier it comes. It’s like exercise. You can’t join a gym and bench press 300 pounds the next day. It takes a while to work your muscles up into the shape you need to perform. Same with writing.

I keep my eyes open. I read. I spend lots of time on other people’s blogs. I cultivate relationships, where sometimes the question someone poses makes for a great blog topic. There are tons of ways to find blog topics. One trick to doing something about it is to maintain a list of blog topics to write about for rainy days. I’ve given people over 300 over the last few years.

Danielle LaPorte @daniellelaporte

Blogging Since:

2008

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

No, never, absolutely not, the very thought makes me gasp in horror. For real.

How have you avoided it?

Everything is content. Believing that it’s all around you will help you find it. The conversation that you had with your girlfriend about Haiti, or the absurdity of phone books being delivered, or why your barista gives you the best customer service. Notice what you notice and trust that you can create some value out of it.

Tell a story. My speaking coach, Gail Larsen told me something that changed how I approach both speaking gigs and writing: Creating good content is not about looking for stories that will support your message, it’s about letting the stories find you. The stories that you remember so vividly, that you recall with the most affection or emotional charge – they’re in your psyche for good reason. You’ve held on to them because they resonate with your truth, your message – and that’s where the creative sweet spot is. Find the message in the stories you’re inspired to tell.

Get interviewed. Ask a friend to ask you some questions. Keep it casual or turn on a video camera while you’re at. You will be amazed at how damn profound, informed, and creative you can be when you get to riff to someone who already thinks you’re great.

James Chartrand @MenwithPens

Blogging Since:

I began blogging in early 2007 for my own business blog at Men with Pens, and I also began guest blogging at various other sites around the blogosphere at the same time. This spring, it’ll be three years that I’ve been a full-time blogger.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Oh, absolutely. Since my focus has always been on freelance writing, and that’s what I’ve tried to blog about the most, there comes a point where you tell yourself that you’ve said all you could, that you can’t think of anything else to say. That feeling never lasts very long for me – I have a pretty active mind that seizes on new ideas and spins easily – but sure, I think every blogger goes through a period of feeling there’s nothing left to write about.

I feel that many people, when they hit this point, fall back on repeating the same messages or content, only in different words. It’s a way to break through the problem, but I didn’t want to go that route. I feel a sense of obligation not to cheap out just to be able to slap up a post – I worked hard to build my blog up, and it means more to me than that. Blogging is more than just a job you have to do; it’s a commitment you make and uphold.

What did you do about it?

To avoid feeling I was running on empty, I looked instead at the related subjects of freelance writing. I realized there’s a lot more to writing than just writing about writing. There’s the business side, the administration, the customer service, the branding, ways to land new jobs, etc. When I realized that I wasn’t limited to what I could write on and still stay within my specialty, a whole world of possible posts opened up. I revisit that vast pool of potential each time I feel tapped out.

Another trick I use when I’m feeling like I just have nothing to write about anymore is to write – about something else. I put the blogging aside and work on some fiction or creative writing, just for fun. Or, I go out for a day and screw off, and I find that taking myself away from feeling like I have to blog brings me new inspiration. As I enjoy my day, I think about how the experiences I have relate to my subject. How are buying a pair of boots and blogging the same, for example? How is grocery shopping and writing similar? What did I like about that sign, and why did it catch my attention?

Sometimes, to be creative, you have to get away from trying to be creative, and ask questions that you wouldn’t normally think of asking.

For tapped out bloggers, my best advice is to take away the pressure by reminding yourself that this isn’t an obligation. In the bigger scheme of life, missing a week of blog posts while you disconnect or cutting your posting frequency from five days a week to once every two weeks won’t really make much difference. It’ll give you some relief from that ‘have to blog’ feeling, remind you of what’s really important in life and let you take care of yourself first.

Johnny B Truant @JohnnyBTruant

Blogging Since:

I really only started seriously in late 2008, writing my old pure humor blog at theeconomyisnthappening.com. I’d been writing “blog-like” stuff for some time before that on and off, but never actually launched a blog until 08.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Oh yes. Around 2001, I used to write a humor newsletter that I’d manually e-mail out to my friends and family. (The salvageable newsletters became the earliest posts in the humor archive on my current site.) Although I haven’t hit a wall since starting blogging in earnest in 2008-9, I hit several with those old pseudo-blog writings.

I started that endeavor with a weekly newsletter, and then slipped into monthly. Several times, I’d re-run old posts because I had nothing to write about, and once I wrote a post about having nothing to write about. The reason that pseudo-blogging ended was because I got tired of feeling like I had nothing to say every week — or at least, nothing to say that was funny.

What did you do about it?

I just quit.

Now, I’m not particularly concerned about running out of material and here’s why: Back in the day, I wrote humor and only humor. If it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t fit to run — with one notable exception just after 9/11/01. So not only was I looking for funny things to happen, but I had to work hard to tell folks about them in funny ways. That’s really, really hard to do — especially ongoing.

My blog now is an unashamed hodge-podge. I’ve deliberately kept my blog from having a niche, a genre, or a focus. It’s just about me, my business, what I’ve learned, what I do, and whether or not wild turkeys have found their way into my barn. Sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s dead serious. All I have to do now is write what’s in my life, my head, and my heart — whatever that may be.

Lastly, I’ve only run two guest posts ever on my blog, but I’ve had other offers and may just start accepting some if I do get bogged down. I’ve seen some of my blogging friends do that if they are running low or if they go on vacation. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

Sarah Bray @SarahJBray

Blogging Since:

Don’t tell anyone, but I actually started several failed blogs before having even a whiff of success. My first one was in 2004. And no, I’m not giving details (curse you, Google archives!).

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Heck yeah. Every blogger has those moments. We pressure ourselves to crank out amazing post after amazing post, and then we wonder why the wheels stop turning. For me, it was my subject matter — writing posts about the strategic side of web design for such a wide audience. I’ve got fellow designers who want to know how I do it, entrepreneurs who are completely new to the web (or the social web), entrepreneurs who are definitely NOT new to the web, people who are curious about my adamancy for content-driven websites…it’s just a really broad audience.

More challenges:

• Writing about technology without inducing cricket chirps or loud snoring
• Writing about things that anyone can do — not just super-technical people (which requires getting out of my super-technical brain and pretending I’m my computer-challenged mother…an interesting and involved process)
• Writing about new ideas that are not talked to death all over the internet already

All of that has the power to turn me into a headlight-mesmerized deer if I think about it too much.

What did you do about it?

I put a lot of pressure on myself to only publish stuff that gives me a blood-rushing-to-the-head feeling. It’s what I do instead of punching all of those people in the face who say that bloggers aren’t “real writers”. Or maybe it’s because I like that writerly high you get when you know that you’ve communicated something really effectively.

So to answer the question, I stick to a posting schedule that will allow me to do this. During some seasons of the work year, I publish three times a week. In this particular season, I publish once a week. I’m a huge believer in sticking to a posting schedule. It’s like your favorite show being on tv at the same time every week…you feel more committed to it when you can expect it. At the same time, I let myself be comfortable with changing my publishing schedule when that makes sense.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this if your entire job is to write. But for my situation, giving myself permission to change my posting schedule for a season makes more sense than writing crappy stuff, not writing at all out of sheer overwhelm, or not getting my client-related work done. It takes some of the pressure off during busy times, which somehow brings blog topic epiphanies out of the sky. I don’t know how it happens…magic, maybe.

Dave Navarro @RockYourDay



Blogging Since:

I started the RockYourDay.com blog in 2006, but didn’t really start building it seriously until the beginning of 2008, when I went all guns blazing (thanks to some inspiration from @menwithpens). I started The Launch Coach in early 2009 and hit the ground with a running start on that one, since it was making me money right off the bat, and that’s where I put 95% of my blogging time.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

I feel that way all the time – I think it’s a natural part of a writer’s psychology, when we wonder how we can write something good when it’s already been done. We worry that what we write might not be good enough compared to other people or compared to our own successful posts, and it’s draining.

What did (do) you do about it?

The way out of that is to remember you’re in this to help people, not achieve God-like status on a post-by-post basis. What I do to break the funk is look through old comments for where people talk about what they’re struggling with and write about that, imagining I’m writing to that one person. That breaks the all-about-me-drama and gets me back on track. (And if I haven’t had comments lately I go to other blogs and look at their comments).

Audrey McClelland @AudreyMcClellan



Blogging Since:

I started blogging in June 2008.

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Definitely. I started my personal blog in June 2008, after I had my 4th son. After blogging about his birth and then about being the mother of 4 boys – I started to feel VERY “all blogged out” in November of 2008. I wanted to blog about things beyond my personal motherhood story. I think I kind of felt like, “What makes my story different or unique?” I kind of felt like nothing did… my blogs started to get very much of the same feel. So I made a conscious decision to change the direction of my blog in January 2009 because I felt it would infuse me with added energy.

What did you do about it?

I came out of it by starting my 365 Days of Fashion Advice for Moms. I loved sharing my experiences as a mom, but I wanted to get away from constantly talking about how difficult mealtime was or how I was so tired from not sleeping throughout the night. I wanted to add my love of fashion to the mix. So I started blogging about fashion advice for moms and I brought my own motherhood experiences to it, as the mother of 4 boys.

The advice I would give a blogger that is all blogged out is bring another dimension into your blog. I had worked in the fashion industry for 6 years previous in New York City and I had a love and a passion for fashion. I did and still do wake up every single morning excited to blog about it. I just needed to take that step to bring another piece of me onto the table and not be scared to do it. Things changed for me professionally when I did make the change and it was all because I was feeling “blogged out.” I didn’t feel like my writing had a direction in 2008 and I wanted it to. Niching my blog became the best thing I ever did.

Michael Martine@Remarkablogger



Blogging Since:

I had been creating and designing websites since 1994 (pretty much as soon as I got online when the Internet became available to anyone via AOL back in the day). I discovered Blogger in 1999 before Google bought them and have been a blogger ever since (though I switched to WordPress as soon as I discovered it).

Have you ever felt all blogged out?

Never! My audience is made of up certain segments who all have specific problems. So between that, the basics, and the new stuff that keeps unfolding, there is no end of topics to blog about.

How have you avoided it?

There are several reasons why I’m never blogged out. My readers, clients, and customers are mostly business owners. Different businesses have different challenges when it comes to blog marketing, so by focusing on a specific niche (like, say, real estate agents or freelance web designers) and then addressing a specific problem someone in that niche faces, I simply never run out of topics. I don’t always focus on a specific industry, but I’m guaranteed an infinite number of blog post topics if I do.

This means my posts tend to be longer than the usual 250 – 500 words of a typical blog post. Because of this, it takes me longer to write a post and so I don’t publish as often as many other bloggers. At the least, I publish twice a week. At most, I may publish up to four times a week. But I never publish every day of the week. This makes it easier to come up with ideas and keeps the quality of the writing higher.

Here are some tips for coming up with post ideas:

• Think of a specific type of person in your blog audience and a problem they have, then write a post for that person that addresses the problem.
• The basics never go out of style. Tackle them in your own way or link to posts which cover the basics.
• Tell a story from your own life that has a lesson to teach your audience.
• Compile a list of resources your audience will find valuable.
• Accept guest posts from others in your niche (sometimes you have to ask for them).
• You can always interview others in your niche.

To prevent yourself from getting blogged out in the future, try these tips:

• Be in constant communication with your audience: ask what keeps them up at night, what their problems are, what information they are hungry for.
• Think of series of posts you can write. A series guarantees post ideas for many days. Note how successful Darren has been with his “31 days” series. You have to think of these in advance and plan them out.
• As you surf the web, collect links by topic in Evernote or some other note-taking system. Then, when they become numerous enough, you can publish them in a resources post. These can build up over time, so that very little work is involved in creating them.

Don’t let ideas get away from you when you do have them. There are many ways to capture ideas.

So, if you’re feeling all blogged out, you’re in good company. And you’re definitely not at the end of the blogging road.

Laura, Chris G., Chris B., Danielle, James, Johnny, Sarah, Dave, Audrey and Michael gave awesome ideas about what to do when you’re feeling all blogged out. And, I don’t know about you but my head is swimming with new blog ideas. Now…where’s my notebook?

Well? What about you? Have you ever felt all blogged out? What did you do about it?

Heather Allard lives in Rhode Island with her husband, three kids, Hope, Grace & Brendan and one big dog, The Dude. Since 2001, she’s started three businesses and sold one of them for six figures. Now she shows mom entrepreneurs how to build a business between diaper changes and play dates – without breaking the bank, or their spirit. Find her on Twitter as @HeathAll.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Feeling “Blogged Out?” [10 Pro Bloggers Share Their Advice on What to Do]

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/03/09/feeling-blogged-out-10-pro-bloggers-share-their-advice-on-what-to-do/feed/ 82 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/02/26/rock-hard-thighs-cold-hard-cash-robb-sutton-review-site-secrets/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/02/26/rock-hard-thighs-cold-hard-cash-robb-sutton-review-site-secrets/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:55:00 +0000 kellydiels http://www.problogger.net/?p=10492 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Rock Hard Thighs and Cold Hard Cash: Robb Sutton Spills His Tawdry Review Site Secrets

]]> guest post by Kelly Diels

When I was wondering how to create an effective, money-making review site, I thought of Robb Sutton.

Robb Sutton’s review site, Mountain Biking by 198 “pulls in thousands in review product every month” and in the last 15 months has received over $100,000 dollars worth of review product. He’s also got several other sites, including a coffee review blog, and oh yes, makes a pretty decent living as a ProBlogger.

That is, when he’s not hanging out with the likes of me and telling me all his secrets.

Kelly Diels: Robb, tell me all the dirty details about review sites.

[looooooooooooong pause. Isn't it a little early in the conversation to have offended him?]

Kelly Diels: Robb?

Robb Sutton: I’m here. Sorry…was just closing up a few things. Now you have my 100% attention.

Kelly Diels: You know a girl likes that.

Robb Sutton: Yes, they do!

Kelly Diels: I mean, so I’ve heard. Tell me, dahlink, how you got started with review sites.

Robb Sutton: Well, it all started with an idea that had nothing to do with reviewing product, ironically.

Kelly Diels: Go on…

Robb Sutton: I had this idea that I was going to have a trail review site for mountain biking that was all user submitted content. About 5 minutes into the process, I realized that you can’t have user submitted content without traffic. So I started a blog where I reviewed parts, bikes and other related products and that took over what was the user submitted part. Basically, I used it as a traffic generator that became the model for Bike198.com.

Kelly Diels: So you’re inadvertently brilliant?

Robb Sutton: I fell into it…I like to think of it as a progression. I had some experience being on the other side of the fence in the corporate world, so I knew how to quickly adapt that to blogs.

Kelly Diels: How did you get your pretty mitts on things to review?

Robb Sutton: Well, back when the industry had no clue who I was, I relied on current contacts and cold contacting through emails and phone calls. Now it is a combination of them finding me and me finding them.

Kelly Diels: Do you work with PR companies, or companies directly?

Robb Sutton: I work with PR companies, directly with manufacturers, distributers and some retailers.

Kelly Diels: And for those of us who just got really scared, what does that process look like?

Robb Sutton: Typically, I send out an email explaining who the site is, what we do and what the process is. I then include examples with some simple search engine and site stats. If it is a smaller company, you pretty much get to the right person right away. A lot of times through that email and you are off and rolling. For larger companies and some smaller ones, a follow up call is required to get in touch with the right person. Phone calls always convert better than emails, but I always start with emails so they know who you are when they pick up the phone.

Kelly Diels: Gawd, it is almost like online dating.

Robb Sutton: Yeah, a little bit!

Kelly Diels: What sorts of strings get attached to the product and reviews?

Robb Sutton: No strings really. Sometimes you have to return the product if it is super expensive. But sometimes you don’t even have to do that. Most companies know what blogging and review blogging entails these days.

Kelly Diels: Which brings us to Disclosure, baby. Tell me how you handle Big Brother, the FTC.

Robb Sutton: I have a blanket disclosure on all of my sites that is linked up in the footer that explains links, products, etc. I am very up front with my readers on the process so there is nothing that is hidden that could be considered bad by the public or FTC. Everything is up front and honest.

Kelly Diels: And if you’re just not into her the product? What do you do?

Robb Sutton: I write the truth! Bottom line is that you are writing for your readers and not the companies. If you are just going to write glorified advertisements then no one is going to take you seriously. Back everything up with facts and everything turns out ok.

Kelly Diels: Sing it, sister.

Robb Sutton: Even companies I have given poor reviews to in the past still send me stuff. They want to reach the audience and you want to deliver the goods. Its a win/win.

Kelly Diels: All press is good press…

Robb Sutton: Actually…that is very true.

Kelly Diels: Seriously. The first time someone trashed me online (Allyn Hane, lover, I’m a-talking to you) I was delighted. But I digress. What kind of traffic are companies and agencies looking for?

Robb Sutton: They are looking for targeted traffic.

Kelly Diels: What does targeted traffic mean?

Robb Sutton: The specific number isn’t really important. 100 targeted eyes are better than 10,000 that aren’t targeted.

Kelly Diels: How do you demonstrate “targeted eyes”? I feel like we just took a sharp right turn into a gun range.

Robb Sutton: Targeted traffic is basically qualified leads. When someone subscribes to your blog, they are targeted because they want to digest that subject matter. And don’t shoot!

Kelly Diels: I can’t. I don’t even know the process for getting a gun permit in Canada but I know it takes forever. Also I’m a lover, not a shooter…Tell me about a review or a product that got you all hot ‘n bothered.

Robb Sutton: Hmmm…

Kelly Diels: I went to a sex toy party on Friday night and, given the subject of my blog, I’m pretty sure that I can review those products and claim them as a tax deduction. But again, I digress.

Robb Sutton: [laughs, possibly uncomfortably] Yes, you probably could…An example of an interesting product/review was when I got in a fork from a manufacturer because of comments I made about how I didn’t like the direction they were heading.

Kelly Diels: Umm… “got in a fork”? Dude. translation, please. I mean, it sounds naughty but even I’m drawing a blank.

Robb Sutton: Suspension fork. It is the thing on the front of the bike that is the suspension.

Kelly Diels: Oh it is a thing. Not a position. That clears everything up. So why was this fork so fabulous?

Robb Sutton: Because it was sent to me after I made the comments. I backed everything up with facts on why I didn’t agree. And they said…ok…try it out for yourself. I thought that was pretty cool.

Kelly Diels: That’s pretty smart marketing, actually. And..? How was the fork?

Robb Sutton: Great product. Still don’t agree with that one aspect.

Kelly Diels: I had no idea forks were so controversial.

Robb Sutton: They are a reputable company that produces a great product but I just didn’t agree with the “new standard” they were introducing.

Kelly Diels: Ok, Mr. Fancy Britches. I get it. YOU HAVE OPINIONS – which, I’m thinking, is probably why your review site works.

Robb Sutton: Doesn’t everyone?!

Kelly Diels: Yes, darling. That was a compliment in disguise. I think that is what reviews are about – good, solid, well-reasoned opinions…So. You get loads of free products, but how do you make money? You can’t eat forks.

Robb Sutton: Affiliate revenue, direct advertising, e-book sales like my Ramped Reviews (aff), pay-per-click…I like to diversify.

Kelly Diels: And what about all the companies kissing your…site? Do they ever buy advertising?

Robb Sutton: They do, and it is a lot easier to sell advertising space to people you already have a working relationship with.

Kelly Diels: And what does that do to the separation of church and state, editorial vs revenue? Do you feel awkward about reviewing your clients?

Robb Sutton: Not at all. Everything is explained up front. No surprises. Keep in mind that nothing is written that is pure emotion or inflammatory. It is all fact-based opinion.

Kelly Diels: That’s right. We all have niches. MINE is pure emotion and inflammatory prose. So stay outta that one, my love…Ok. Going general: do you think review sites of higher ticket items – like bikes, cameras etc – work better than other kinds of review sites, like say restaurants or experiences?

Robb Sutton: I think it is about equal. I also run a coffee review site (coffeeobsessed.net) that does really well and it is very young. I think the possibilities are wide open.

Kelly Diels: Now you’re speaking my language. The language of love/caffeine.

Robb Sutton: Yeah, I’ll leave that one to you! I’m obsessed…I’ll admit it.

Kelly Diels: With coffee? Or mountain bikes?

Robb Sutton: Nothing better than a great cup of coffee, but both. And blogging, of course.

KellyDiels: I ask because I like coffee and mountain bikers. I may have mentioned this before: THIGHS OF GRANITE.

Robb Sutton: Very true! And a strong grip.

Kelly Diels: If you do say so yourself. With whom can I verify this? I have to fact-check, you know.

Robb Sutton: Any cyclist…but especially mountain bikers because we have to ride technical terrain.

Kelly Diels: Well, there you have it. The secrets of review sites, hot coffee, and rock hard…thighs.

Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She’s also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage, a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Rock Hard Thighs and Cold Hard Cash: Robb Sutton Spills His Tawdry Review Site Secrets

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/02/26/rock-hard-thighs-cold-hard-cash-robb-sutton-review-site-secrets/feed/ 41 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/29/interview-with-six-figure-blogger-pat-flynn-available-for-problogger-newsletter-subscribers/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/29/interview-with-six-figure-blogger-pat-flynn-available-for-problogger-newsletter-subscribers/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:14:17 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=10187 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Six Figure Blogger Pat Flynn Available for ProBlogger Newsletter Subscribers

]]> A couple of weeks ago I hooked up on Skype with a great blogger by the name of Pat Flynn who has a fantastic story to share.

Pat was working as an architect and was about to get married – life was good – but unexpectedly he was laid off from his job and was left wondering what to do.

It turns out that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to Pat – he took a small blog about an architectural exam (the LEED exam) that he’d been using to help himself study for the exam and turned it into a six figure income generation machine.

He launched an E-Book off the back of his blog and in its first month he made $8000. That was just the beginning though – in his first year of business the site generated over $200,000!

You can check out Pat’s blog at Green Exam Academy and his newer site at Smart Passive Income.

My chat with Pat was both inspiring and informative and today I’m sharing it with those who have subscribed to the ProBlogger Newsletter and will be adding it as a free bonus to anyone who subscribes in future.

Sign up below to get access to our weekly newsletter and this free Podcast with Pat Flynn.

If you don’t see a signup form above you could be using an Ad Blocker program that also blocks signup forms. Please disable it for a few minutes and refresh this page to see the form and sign up.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Six Figure Blogger Pat Flynn Available for ProBlogger Newsletter Subscribers

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/29/interview-with-six-figure-blogger-pat-flynn-available-for-problogger-newsletter-subscribers/feed/ 36 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/08/lesson-from-readwriteweb-an-interview-with-richard-macmanus/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/08/lesson-from-readwriteweb-an-interview-with-richard-macmanus/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:15:50 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=9819 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Lesson from ReadWriteWeb: An Interview with Richard MacManus

]]> One of my new years resolutions in 2010 is to interview one blogger per week as a podcast. I’ll post most of these for members of the community at ProBlogger.com but from time to time will share some of them here on ProBlogger.net for all to hear.

Yesterday morning I had the privileged of speaking with Richard MacManus – Founder and Editor of the successful ReadWriteWeb blog.

Richard started ReadWriteWeb back in 2003 and has since grown it into one of the world’s largest blogs in terms of traffic, subscribers and most importantly influence. Richard has also taken RWW from a single author blog into one with at least 13 writers.

In this 45 minute audio podcast Richard shares the story of RWW and its beginnings, talks about the transition to a multi-author blog, shares some tips for new bloggers, talks openly about how RWW is monetized (including through advertising, publishing premium reports and running events) and looks forward at the future of publishing.

The interview also briefly features my 18 month old son who decided that Richard was someone he really wanted to speak with :-)

Richard’s one of the most thoughtful and insightful bloggers I’ve interacted with and has built a blog that reflects this. He majors on being constructive, insightful and useful and this podcast reflects that.

You can listen to this 45 minute podcast here or right click and save it to listen to it at your leisure.

While you listen be sure to surf over to ReadWriteWeb and follow Richard on Twitter and Facebook.

PS: apologies if there is an initial slowness in downloading but as you’d expect, there will be a bit of action on this podcast in the first little while after this post goes live.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Lesson from ReadWriteWeb: An Interview with Richard MacManus

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/01/08/lesson-from-readwriteweb-an-interview-with-richard-macmanus/feed/ 33 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/23/leo-babauta-from-zen-habits-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/23/leo-babauta-from-zen-habits-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:48:40 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=8771 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Leo Babauta from Zen Habits Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> This week I’m featuring a short series of interviews with successful bloggers looking at a popular post on their blog and why they think it went viral. Today Leo Babauta from Zen Habits has agreed to dissect the popularity of one of his site’s most popular posts.

1. What is the post on your blog that has had the most traffic in the last 12 months?

I would never have guessed this until I looked it up in Analytics, but the top post in the last year is “10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas“.

2. Where did the traffic mainly come from?

The page had nearly 500K pageviews in the last year, almost all from Google searches. A small amount came from Yahoo (#2), direct traffic, MSN, and other search engines.

3. Did you do anything extra to market or promote this post or did it just happen organically?

No, I didn’t promote this post any more than other posts. It did well in delicious.com the first day, without my help, and quickly found its way to the #1 spot in Google searches for “healthy breakfasts” and related search terms. I don’t do SEO at all (I don’t believe in it), so this happened totally organically.

4. What can we as bloggers learn from the success of this post?

Google can bring tons of traffic, but the way to get there is not through SEO or overly promotional techniques. It’s by creating useful content that people will want to bookmark, link to, and find in searches, solving problems that many people have.

So:

1. Figure out what problems a lot of people have.
2. Create really useful content to solve those problems.
3. Write a good headline to help the post get spread more widely.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Leo Babauta from Zen Habits Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/23/leo-babauta-from-zen-habits-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/feed/ 51 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/18/duncan-riley-of-the-inquisitr-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/18/duncan-riley-of-the-inquisitr-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:34:07 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=8769 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> This week I’m featuring a short series of interviews with successful bloggers looking at a popular post on their blog and why they think it went viral. Today Duncan Riley from The Inquisitr has agreed to dissect the popularity of one of his site’s most popular posts.

What is the post on your blog that has had the most traffic in the last 12 months?

Is American Idol’s Adam Lambert Gay? Is there really any question? (656,254 page views)

Where did the traffic mainly come from?

Approx 85% came from Google. Interestingly after that was AOL and direct (as opposed to Yahoo or a social site)

Did you do anything extra to market or promote this post or did it just happen organically?

Initially it was organic. We’d picked up in the semi-finals of American Idol that there was this great singer, and people were asking whether he was gay or not. We led with the question people were asking, a tactic I know other sites advocate, but we don’t do that often, because it doesn’t always make for a good solid headline.

First day traffic was 611 page views, then 10,164…then it bubbled along: 1,000 one day, 2,000 the next, with a couple of 10,000 days as well.

It wasn’t huge for us on a daily sense for over 2 months, but it kept appearing in our stats. We did follow up posts (none which did the same level of page views, but some around the 50,000 to 100,000 page view mark) and we kept linking back to the original post each time. Two months later, and Adam Lambert was heading towards the final of American Idol, and more people kept asking the question. 2 months and 1 week after the post went up, it did a 107,834 day; we were the top result in Google for “Is Adam Lambert gay.”

The success was a combination of two things: timing and link strategy. We were early, if not the first site of size to write about the topic. After that, we not only linked back ourselves, but the post received a good number of external links as well (being first helped a lot), pushing us to the top of Google

What can we as bloggers learn from the success of this post?

1. Timing isn’t everything, but there is still strong opportunities for first to market. If you can offer a post that contains information (or commentary) that is unique, first (or close to first), and topical, that post can sometimes become a big post for you.

2. Sometimes long term pays A lot of what we do is short term when it comes to news, but some stories can wag not only for days, but weeks and (as in this case) months. Marque content has the ability to provide for you over a longer period; our post here didn’t start that way, but it had longevity.

For example this post I wrote back in June; it’s done just over 55,000 page views as I write this, but every day it gets page views, one day 500, next 1000, then 150 etc, and I have every reason to believe that in 3 months time it will probably still be wagging along and will eventually pass 100,000 pageviews. Not spectacular I know, but likewise if you’ve got a sizeable number of posts doing the same thing, they all add up.

It doesn’t matter what the vertical: both my examples here are entertainment related, but it could be just as easily be applied to a good advice post, or internet marketing post, or more. You need look no further that bloggers who post about WordPress templates and plugins for example to know that a good post can wag for not only months, but sometimes years.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/18/duncan-riley-of-the-inquisitr-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/feed/ 33 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/15/vitaly-friedman-of-smashing-magazine-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/15/vitaly-friedman-of-smashing-magazine-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:22:58 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=8766 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> This week I’m featuring a short series of interviews with successful bloggers looking at a popular post on their blog and why they think it went viral. Today Vitaly Friedman from Smashing Magazine has agreed to dissect the popularity of one of their most popular posts.

1. What is the post on your blog that has had the most traffic in the last 12 months?

The most popular post in our magazine was the article “Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Best Of” which was published in October 2008. It is one of the many tutorials round-ups that we’ve done then. Overall, the post has now almost a 1,000,000 unique visits.

2. Where did the traffic mainly come from?

Most traffic came from Google, followed by social media, in particular via StumbleUpon, Twitter, Digg and Reddit (in this order). Since we are paying a huge amount of attention and time investment into preparing well-researched, high-quality posts, it is very likely that stories published on SM are going fairly well in social media. After all, almost every story needs over 25 hours to be completed. Another reason for our popularity in social media is the simple fact that we don’t post too often – at most 2 articles per day appear on Smashing Magazine.

About a couple of months after the post was published the organic traffic via Google etc. started to catch up, so at the moment we (on average) have much more traffic from search engines than from social media. All the social media together are still only a small portion of the traffic coming from Google.

3. Did you do anything extra to market or promote this post or did it just happen organically?

We never push a story hard to reach some critical mass of diggs, votes or tweets. The post did well, because many designers found it useful and bookmarked it or recommended it. That’s the basis and the requirements for a good, successful, popular post.

4. What can we as bloggers learn from the success of this post?

The quality of the content defines the nature of post’s popularity over months and years. The more time you invest into preparing a post, the more quality it will deliver to the reader and the more appreciative your readers will be. The latter will deliver your blog organic growth, traffic and solid readership. That’s as simple as that. Deliver quality and you’ll be rewarded with good reputation and good traffic.

5. I notice you’ve got a book coming out soon – how did it come to be? Got any tips for aspiring bloggers wanting to do a book?

Yes, we are currently in the final stage of publishing our “Smashing Book” – a printed book about best practices in modern Web design and development. Books are still valuable, because they are more solid and permanent compared to bits and bytes. The idea to create a book came because we wanted to explore how we can strengthen Smashing branding in further traditional media. We decided to create the community book, a book that is based upon ideas and suggestions of our readers, involving them in basically every step of the process.

Publishing a book is easy these days is easy – with digital printing and numerous layout applications one can create an e-book in hours. The process is also fast and relatively cheap. But this is not what we decided to do. The Smashing Book is printed the traditional way. We aim to the masses. This is possible because we have a huge audience and we are selling to them directly, bypassing common bookstores and shops. To do this we need plenty of money to pay for paper, layout and printing. But there is a traditional solution to go around this, the pre-sale phase. We have started the pre-sale to gather money and estimate the circulation (yes, it’s a secret). In exchange for customer’s trust, we are offering a big discount of 20%.

Since we wanted everybody to be able to afford the Smashing Book, we have decided to introduce something that we call “social shipping”. The idea here is that we offer customers from US and Germany free shipping, but since shipping costs are extremely high to some parts of the world, they can voluntarily pay more for the shipping of their copy. And, of course, selling around the world needs some serious logistics. There are literally tons to move. An e-book would be more much more comfortable, but we hope that our readers will appreciate our efforts to create a physical piece that can be put on the shelf. The printed Smashing Book will appear in the end of this year.

Check out the Smashing Magazin upcoming book (it is available for pre-order) here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine Shares a Popular Post Case Study

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/15/vitaly-friedman-of-smashing-magazine-shares-a-popular-post-case-study/feed/ 40 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/12/interview-with-blogsmu-founder-james-farmer/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/12/interview-with-blogsmu-founder-james-farmer/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 20:04:13 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/?p=7449 Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Blogs.mu founder James Farmer

]]> Earlier today I posted about a fantastic new service by the name of Blogs.mu – a service that enables you to set up your own blog network. Now I’d like to post a quick interview with James Farmer – co founder of Incsub, the team behind Blogs.mu and the company that runs the WordPress MU hub WPMU DEV and the industry news blog WPMU.org. He’s also the founder of Edublogs.org. He (like me) is based in Melbourne, Australia.

He caught up with me over email last week to talk about Incsub’s brand new offering: Blogs.mu.

So what’s the difference between, say, Blogs.mu and WordPress.com?



Well, the main difference is that at Blogs.mu you become the blog provider, and you have a huge amount of flexibility and functionality that you just won’t get anywhere else.

It’s like WordPress.com in a box really, only better! Once you’re up and running you can create and host as many blogs as you want, at your own domain.

You’ve been able to do this for a while using WordPress MU but that’s been pretty hard as you need to setup hosting, run installation, download and configure themes and plugins etc.

Now though, we do that all for you… and you are free to grow your blog network or community in whatever niche you like – and, of course, run your own advertising!

It’s white label blog networks if you will… kinda like Ning.com for blogging.

So, you say users can run their own advertising, how does that work?

Blogs.mu Supporters (starting from 5 cents per blog per month) can run their own advertising across the entire network just by dropping in any ad code – it’s simple and very effective (or at least we like to think that!)

Every blog theme has 4 ad ‘spots’: under the post title and above the content, under the content and above the comments and at the top of each sidebar – as well as across a footer slot, for running JS contextual ads like Kontera or similar.

And you can set display rules for your ads too – like ‘only show them to IE browsers’ or ‘only show them to search engine visitors’ so you can make money like WordPress.com too… without annoying your users.

So what’s with the MU, are you big in Mauritius?

Heh, very funny, the MU actually stands for MultiUser – as in WordPress MU – also known as WPMU. We love the platform and have been on it from the start – one our WPMU Sites (Edublogs) is older than WordPress.com by 3 weeks… so we know what we’re doing.

And yeh, we did the obvious as well and setup WP.MU too – it’s an installation service for people who do want to get down and dirty with the guts of it all.

So we hope we’re covering every base!

And how do you think Problogger readers could best use Blogs.mu?

Well, I’m hoping there are a heap of ways that established and aspiring probloggers could use Blogs.mu. First up, if you’ve got an active community then this is a great way to get them writing in your space (you could even configure your site to a subdomain of your existing site!)

Another way would be that it’s a really affordable and powerful way to run your own 10 or so blog network.

Either way there are tons of advertising opportunities – and we’re looking into incorporating eCommerce, membership subscriptions, ‘pay to blog’ features and more pretty shortly.

Also, we’ve got some forums up and running for existing and prospective users (it’s completely free to join) at forums.blogs.mu so if any of your readers would like us to consider or build in specific features – we’d love to hear from them!

Check out Blogs.mu for yourself.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Blogs.mu founder James Farmer

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/12/interview-with-blogsmu-founder-james-farmer/feed/ 21 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/28/fast-traffic-to-a-blog/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/28/fast-traffic-to-a-blog/#comments Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:21:10 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/28/fast-traffic-to-a-blog/ Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


An Interview (with Me) on Getting ‘Fast Traffic’ to a Blog

]]> A couple of weeks back I was sent these questions as part of an interview that someone wanted to do in the writing of a book.

In the end the person doing the interview couldn’t use it – so I’ve decided that rather than waste the significant time I put into responding that I’d post the answers here.

The focus of the interview seemed to be going down the route of getting ‘fast traffic’ to a blog. You’ll see this theme coming up numerous times in the questions and probably sense a little of my frustration with the idea in my answers. I hope you find the interview useful.

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers…

My name is Darren Rowse, I live in Melbourne Australia with my wife ‘V’ and two boys (aged 6 months and 2 and a half). I’ve been blogging for a little over 6 years. It started completely as a hobby but gradually grew into a part time and then full time job (and then beyond). I’ve written a book on blogging (called ProBlogger), am the cofounder of the b5media blog network and over the years have started around 30 blogs (although only concentrate on 3 today). I’m also a keen photographer and love to read.

2. What blogs do you own, which one is your favorite, and why did you start it?

I personally own and edit three blogs today – ProBlogger (a blog about blogging), Digital Photography School (a blog to help digital camera owners get the most from their cameras) and TwiTip (my most recent blog – a blog focusing upon Twitter Tips).

I enjoy each blog for different reasons but I guess if I had to give up two and keep one the one I’d keep would be ProBlogger – simply because it is the oldest of the three (although not the biggest – DPS is gets more traffic) and one that I’ve put most time and effort into over the years.

I started ProBlogger simply because it was a blog I wanted to read myself. I was experimenting with making blogging a business but no one else was writing about that at the time – so I thought I’d start it and journal what I was learning.

3. what is the number one thing you learned about blogging that has impacted your bottom line, that thing that makes the difference between succeeding and failing in this business?

There are so many things and to isolate one is difficult (and perhaps not that helpful as great blogs are built upon many factors and rarely just one thing).

However if I had to choose one thing it’d be that successful blogs are ‘useful’ blogs in one way or another.

Blogs need to meet a need or solve a problem that potential readers have. The need might seem frivilous (the need to be entertained for example) or it could be a need for information, community, news etc.

Meet a need and you give people a reason to subscribe to your blog and to pass it on to others. Create a blog that doesn’t really prove useful in any way and you’re unlikely to build a successful blog.

4. If you have to bring instant visitors to your blog in the next 30 minutes, what steps will you follow?

If you’re expecting big traffic quickly you’re asking the wrong guy. My strategy has always been to write content that people will want to read now – but also for years to come. Some call this ‘evergreen’ content and it takes time to write. It might not bring traffic quickly but if you write something that is still relevant in a year or more you’ll continue to draw traffic to it.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t answer your question but to be honest there’s a lot of bloggers looking for quick traffic and quick money and a lot of people promising to teach them how to get it – but that’s not my experience of blogging.

Take a long term view, build something that matters and you’ll build a blog that grows in traffic over the long haul.

5. Most bloggers like to get passive traffic… What are the one time actions we can do which will keep on bringing traffic without any effort after that?

Once again I’m afraid my answer could disappoint…. I’m not really someone who has found too many actions that will bring traffic (or income) without any effort after you do them.

The only real exception to that is to write brilliant content. When you do this it has the potential to bring traffic to your blog (via search engines) for years to come. This in turn can lead to ongoing income.

Other than that I’ve not really found too much about blogging that is ‘passive’. It’s a lot of work over the long haul.

6. What’s your most effective traffic generating strategy which works every time for you and gives the best return in terms of traffic regarding to your time spent?

Outside of writing useful and high quality content (am I sounding like a broken record yet) I’d say it is engaging in social media communities. For me one of these has been Twitter (for others it’ll be sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook etc). These social networking and social bookmarking sites have the potential to spread word of your site or posts on it virally through the network and beyond.

It takes a lot of time to build up these networks to the point that they are effective at driving a lot of traffic. Start building your networks now.

7. What are your top 3 traffic sources and how exactly do you attract traffic from each of those sources?

• Google – write good content, build relationships with other bloggers and website owners in the hope that they’ll link to you, learn basic search engine optimization techniques and stick at it for the long haul.
• 2. Direct Traffic – this traffic is largely from readers who subscribe to my blogs via RSS or newsletters. The key with this is to convert first time readers to your blog into loyal readers by interacting with them, displaying subscription methods prominently, calling readers to action and building anticipation in visitors to your blog that you’ll write something that they’ll not want to miss in future.
• 3. Social Media – this is about building your network over time, writing the type of content that goes well in these networks (research what types of stories go viral on these sites) and making connections with others on the networks.

8. Let’s say you lose your name, contacts and everything. You have to start from scratch as a “nobody”. What will you do then for the next 30 days so that your blog will start getting 1000 unique visitors each and every day?

I’m not sure it’ll make 1000 visitors a day within 30 days the way I’d do it but I’d probably spend time investing into

• writing great content
• offering to guest post on other blogs (linking back to my own blog)
• networking on social media sites
• and even investing a little money into advertising on sites like Facebook and StumbleUpon (where you can advertise fairly cheaply).

Other than that I’d be wanting to take a longer term view than 30 days and concentrate on building a useful blog with lots of content over time.

9. What else would you like to share, something that our readers can immediately apply to their blogs and see results fast?

Forget the word ‘fast’.

Really – forget it.

You can probably use some techniques to get fast traffic but a more profitable strategy over the long haul is to build a blog that people become loyal to and proud to belong to over the long haul. Do this and they’ll pass on word of your blog to others for you and in the long haul you’ll see bigger growth.

In my experience – the only times I’ve had ‘fast traffic’ to my blog is once a blog has been going for significant time and after I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into it. While the traffic might come in fast – the reality is that it was only as a result of a lot of hard work in building the foundations of the blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


An Interview (with Me) on Getting ‘Fast Traffic’ to a Blog

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/28/fast-traffic-to-a-blog/feed/ 133 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/16/interview-with-top-100-blogger-daniel-scocco/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/16/interview-with-top-100-blogger-daniel-scocco/#comments Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:38:35 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/16/interview-with-top-100-blogger-daniel-scocco/ Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Top 100 Blogger – Daniel Scocco

]]> I always love it when I see bloggers extending their online businesses beyond their actual blogs to make money ‘because’ of their blog rather than just from it through advertising. One such blogger who has stepped out and done this in the last week is Daniel Scocco who has this week launched his Online Profits course that was released earlier in the week (see my announcement post).

I’ve always been impressed with Daniel and how he approaches his online business (I’ve had him as a guest post many times here on ProBlogger) and so wanted to do a short interview with him to find out more about the course and how he came to put it together.

How has the response been to the release of Online Profits?

The response was good. It was above my expectations, especially because I opted for a very clean and fact-based sales page.

We had close to 50 registered members at the end of the first day. My initial aim was to get 100 members on the site within the first week, because that is a good number of people to work with. I am sure we will cross that mark by Friday.

Getting mentioned on Problogger was paramount to that success though. In fact after reading your post I was twice as motivated to put a lot of hard work into the training program, making it worth for all the people that will follow your recommendation.

What’s been the #1 (or 2) question or concern that people have expressed about it and what’s your answer been?

The main question that people had was: “Why should I join the training program if there is so many freely available information around the web?”

I won’t deny that there is a lot of good and free information on the Internet. Problogger is perhaps the best example around. I started reading it back in 2006, and it certainly made a big difference on my “blogging career.”

Sometimes, however, people don’t have the time or the skills to find, organize and interpret all that free information and to transform it into a structured learning environment and into action plans.

That is where ebooks, books and training programs come into play. For example, back in 2006 when I started learning about SEO, instead of going around looking for bits of information here and there, I purchased the SEO Book from Aaron wall and read through it. The time that it saved me was well worth the money I spent for it, and I was also secure that the information was reliable.

Secondly, when you purchase an educational product or join a training program, you will be more motivated to act instead of just learn. You paid for the information after all, so you better do something with it! You will also be in a situation where you are encouraged to take action, both from the fellow members and from the mentors.

Another question that was asked frequently was: “Will I have access immediately to all the training modules?”

The answer is no. For this first launch we opted to make the training modules available gradually, so you will inevitably need to wait to access the advanced ones. The reason for this structure is to not overload the members with all the information at the same time (which is a recipe for making people not apply the knowledge that they will gain).

Over the last year there have been quite a few courses released that have had similar subjects to Online Profits – what’s different about this one?

Yes there are many eBooks and courses that teach Internet marketing. Most people that write about Internet marketing or “making money online,” however, do not earn that much. That is why I made an effort to bring credible names to this project.

I wanted the lessons to be written by people that have experience with real projects.

Additionally, I also think that Online Profits is unique in terms of content broadness. There are good training programs out there if you just want to learn SEO (SEO Book), if you want to learn how to make money blogging (Blog Mastermind) and so on.

For the people that want to get a complete understanding of Internet marketing (e.g., from setting up a website to optizing WordPress, from PPC to affiliate and email marketing), however, Online Profits could be more suitable.

The thing that I love about what you’ve pulled together is that you’ve managed to draw together a fairly amazing group of people. How did you get them all to agree to participate?

First of all I only approached people whose work I respect, and I explained my plan to them: to create an Internet Marketing training program that will be credible and worth for the members.

In other words, I wanted to create something that would add value to the Internet, and not simply to generate some quick bucks for the rest of us.

I believe that was the main motivator for them to join, even because most of those guys already make some killer money online, and financial benefits don’t speak to them.

What you’ve done with Online Profits is to leverage your current blog and profile to launch this course. Many bloggers aspire to do this – what advice do you have for them?

First of all you need to give before you ask. Before launching the training program I worked on my blog for 2 years, published over 1,000 posts, and attracted over 16,000 RSS readers (over 30,000 if you count all my blogs).

Secondly, I have also done all that with a genuine interest in helping other people, not expecting anything in return. When I started Daily Blog Tips, my only goal was to share the tips and tricks that I learned with previous blogs and websites. Period.

I guess if I had started my projects with the sole goal of making money people would have noticed it, and perhaps they would be less inclined to read what I had to share with them.

What’s your best tip for bloggers starting out today?

Let me try to summarize it in one sentence: create something you will be proud of.

Practically speaking, create value for other people, publish unique and useful content, network with fellow bloggers, give before you ask, and have fun along the way!

Check out the Online Profits course – it’s 50% off until the end of the week!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Top 100 Blogger – Daniel Scocco

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/16/interview-with-top-100-blogger-daniel-scocco/feed/ 30 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/08/12/interview-with-jack-humphrey/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/08/12/interview-with-jack-humphrey/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:06:12 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/08/12/interview-with-jack-humphrey/ Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Jack Humphrey

]]> This morning I got on the phone with internet marketer Jack Humphrey as part of his webside chats series of interviews. It was an enjoyable 45 minutes which you can listen into here:

Jack also has some other great interviews in his series – check them out here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Interview with Jack Humphrey

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/08/12/interview-with-jack-humphrey/feed/ 11 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/25/million-dollar-blogger-interviewed/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/25/million-dollar-blogger-interviewed/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:03:23 +0000 Darren Rowse http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/25/million-dollar-blogger-interviewed/ Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Million Dollar Blogger Interviewed

]]> Yaro Starak has just published an audio interview with one of his former students (and now a coach) from BlogMastermind Alborz Fallah.

Alborz is behind a car blog here in Australia – a blog that has enabled him to grow his blog to a point where it’s been valued at over $5 million – have a partnership with a major media company, take on investors and more. It’s pretty impressive since he only started blogging in 2006!

This guy is getting luxury cars to review, is competing with the biggest car sites in this country and employs 6 full time staff.

Here’s the interview (there’s a transcript too) – it’s a great story with tips on writing content, finding readers and more.

PS: having just listened to this for the 2nd time what shines through to me is Alborz’s passion for his topic and his believe in writing amazing content. I think these things are central in what he’s achieved – great stuff.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Million Dollar Blogger Interviewed

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/25/million-dollar-blogger-interviewed/feed/ 35 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/upcoming-interview-with-the-blog-squad/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/upcoming-interview-with-the-blog-squad/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:53:03 +0000 Lara Kulpa http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/upcoming-interview-with-the-blog-squad/ Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Upcoming Interview with The Blog Squad

]]> Hi all, Darren’s still on paternity leave, but will be doing the interview “Blogging for dollars: Can you really make 6-figures?” this Thursday with The Blog Squad. I just wanted to post the details so you can go register!

The Blog Squad Interviews Darren Rowse, Problogger.net
Thursday, June 26, 2008
7 p.m. Eastern Time
Free – Registration Required
http://www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/problogger

Blogging for dollars: Can you really make 6-figures?

You’ll learn:

> How to determine the right monetization method that’s right for you

> The difference between active and passive income

> How to optimize ads for your blog

> The design elements you must have for your blog to be an effective money-maker

> Some of the secrets that make a blog successful

> Plus much more!

Register now at http://www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/problogger

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


Upcoming Interview with The Blog Squad

]]> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/25/upcoming-interview-with-the-blog-squad/feed/ 9