Jan
7
Every post you write does not have to be completely original content, 
and bring up new subject matter. Occasionally its good to use past blog posts, and bring them together to make a new post, and give people another way to think about things.
For most websites, the search engines love the home page because everything is linked to it. The internal pages of the site link back to the home page. And in many cases, external links on other sites also link only to the home page.
But on your blog, it’s easy to connect multiple blog posts together.
For instance, if I’m writing a new post on creating titles for your blog posts, I may write some new material, but I’m also going to link you back to one of my popular entries – Blogging For Business Tip #8 – which is all about creating titles.
Dec
23
Giving A Book To A Child With Just A Couple Of Seconds Of Your Time
Filed Under Blogging Success, Books | 1 Comment
Want to help out in the literacy campaign? It’s easy with FirstBook’s Bedtime Stories challenge.
If you post a comment by December 25th, Disney will donate a free book in your honor towards the fight for helping more children with the love of reading. (Click here to post your comment)
I’ve been following FirstBook for some time, and their mission is one I strongly believe in. Reading is the key to success. And in order to give kids a desire to read, its important to get books into their hands as early as possible. I’ve been donating books to a variety of sources for years.
One of the things I love about blogging is how easily you can have an impact. Post something as easy as Disney’s offer to donate free books, and let bloggers do the rest. You can have hundreds of comments in a very short time period.
Thanks to all that help in this wonderful cause. And have a very happy holiday season!
Oct
9
Blogging For Success – A Full Time Income By Sharing Your Thoughts
Filed Under Blogging Success | 1 Comment
The focus of my blog is to share ideas to help you take your business online, and make money within your business by using a blog. Many business owners already have a business in place, and simply want to sell their existing products and services. Online marketing gives them the tool to expand out fro
m their local target market.
But there are also many bloggers that start blogging for the fun of it, and slowly build a business from the popularity they receive as a blogger. Dooce.com is such a site.
The owner, Heather, has been blogging for years about her life – from dating, to marriage, and now to kids – and shares a wide range of ideas and opinions on life. She makes enough now (about $40k per month) to afford her and her husband the lifestyle of making this their "full time" position. Not bad work, eh?
Two things make a site like this so valuable: traffic and content.
As a business owner, no matter what products or services you sell, these same two items apply to you.
You have to have content to become successful. Write, write, and write some more. Even if you spend the first few months writing, and you’re the only one reading, its imperative that you get the content out there.
Once you have a system in place for growing your content, its time to find readers. You must give them what they want, and supply it in such a manner that they have the desire to come back. Just like you create products for niche markets, your blog must reach out to your target audience, and communicate in a manner that will attract attention.
Take your first step today!
Oct
3
So You Want To Be A Millionaire
Filed Under Blogging Success | 1 Comment
What would you do if someone dropped $15 million into your lap – all to buy a blog you’ve been running as a solopreneur?
Not a bad job if you can get it.
According to Paid Content, that’s what happened to John Wu, solo owner and blogger for Bankaholic.com Bankaholic provides a wealth of information on deposits, savings accounts, money markets, bank rates – really anything that has to do with the financial world. With the immediate crisis in the banking and loan world, it’s nice to think that BankRate, the company acquiring Bankaholic, can actually afford to spend the $15 million on a blog site. 
What makes a site like Bankaholic so valuable? Ultimately it comes down to traffic. With an Alexa ranking of 41,904, and a Pagerank of 5/10, plus high ranking keywords, it’s great at dr iving traffic to the site. For instance, under the keyword "money market rates" Bankaholic comes up number 2. Not bad.
So what can you do to start growing your own blog? What niche can you go after? What keywords can you rank high on?
It could be well worth your time.
Sep
22
7 Things I Learned From Blogworld 2008
Filed Under Blogging Success | 1 Comment
Back from Blogworld 2008 in Las Vegas this past weekend. I’ve heard some industries are declining and trade shows are going with it. Well not in the land of blogs – this conference was huge and thriving.
I’m excited to start sharing all I learned this past weekend with my clients. So I thought the best way to get the word out is to create a post on the 7 things I learned while attending Blogworld.
1. The most important thing about blogging is content. You have to write. And write some more. And when you think you’ve said it all, write some more. The only way to reach out to your audience is to write content.
2. Write what your audience wants to hear. Sure, you can write all you want. But if no one has interest, there’s no reason to blog in the first place. Find out what your audience is reading, and write for them.
3. Who are the power players in your industry? Follow their blogs. They became the power players for a reason. Use them as your mentor, and follow in their footsteps.
4. RSS is important. Connect yourself everywhere.
5. Monetize your site after you have content. Too many people want to start the money flowing before they have the content to back it up. Create the system of blogging regularly, then monetize.
6. It’s important to build your subscriber list, both for sending information to, and to help you monetize your site. Never forget your first goal is to build your subscribers by giving them what they want.
7. Traditional ways of looking at things are over. The traditional media may be using phones for opinion polls, but what about other methods? Jones Soda Co. ran their own opinion poll for this years’ Presidential race. A table was filled with bottles with 4 photos on the front: McCain, Obama, Clinton and Paul. At the time of this photo, only 3 bottles left of Obama. hmmmm….
Sep
18
I got into an interesting discussion with a friend of mine on the way up to a meeting. He’s having a similar discussion with his clients as I am with mine.
After a few weeks of blogging, our clients call us up with one question:
Nobody is reading my blog so why should I keep writing?
The idea of writing a blog is to share information with prospects and clients. People that find you in some manner, like and appreciate what you do, and choose to follow you.
When you begin, you may be writing for one or two people (usually yourself and your mom). 
But after awhile you begin to attract attention. Someone comes in and finds an article of value, and decides to link to you so they can come back and read more from you. They refer you to others, and soon you have a small following.
But if you quit writing after a few weeks because "no one is reading", this can never happen. If that same person makes it in on a post they enjoy, they will soon leave if they find out you haven’t written in months. People like action. They like consistency.
When you build your business, you don’t quit marketing because you haven’t seen results in a week or two. You keep it up knowing it will benefit you in the long run. Same with blogging.
You keep writing knowing it will benefit you in the long run.
So get writing!
Sep
10
What do you do when you spend your time writing a dynamic post [at least you think it is] and all of the sudden you start getting negative feedback?
The first one is always the hardest. How can someone not agree with you? How can they state their beliefs, and counter what you had to say – it is your blog under your control. Maybe you should delete the comment.
Think again.
Conflict isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can be good for business. If someone cares enough to
counter what you have to say, at least they are reading. And it gives you a new way to think and respond.
First decide the true impact of the comment. Is it something that hurts you or your company, and reduces your credibility? Some hateful comments can do more damage than good. If you’re just not comfortable with it, by all means delete it.
If the negative comment opens up the opportunity for you to come back with your own comment, post the comment and put in your own two cents. Tell people why you differ from the person commenting. What is your belief, and how can you turn their negative into a positive for you?
Also understand that your true prospects and clients can read above the negativity to make up their own minds. In some cases a negative comment can reinforce someone’s decision to use you – they like your ethics because of the way you handled the situation.
Jul
24
How Invisible Are You
Filed Under Blogging Success | Leave a Comment
You write and you write. And nobody reads.
How do you change that?
There’s a fine line between writing what you want, and writing what others desire.
Think about your own reading patterns for a moment. Chances are you read a variety of thin
gs throughout your busy day. Maybe a newspaper to keep up with world events. Magazines and trade publications to stay informed and be educated. And maybe a novel to escape your everyday life.
You have different sources for different types of information.
Your readers are the same way. They look to you for a number of reasons.
- They want to be educated on something they don’t already know.
- They want to be kept informed on a topic of interest.
- They want to be entertained.
Or maybe they want all three. Your readers have to find value in what you offer. And they also have to look forward to reading what you have to say – and how you say it.
Nobody likes the dry professor that rattles on and on about something that is, well, maybe boring. (Like blogging – how many people truly get as excited about blogging as I do?)
But if you add some spunk, some pizzazz once in awhile, it will keep your readers on their toes, wondering what you’ll come up with next.
Jul
16
How High Up Are You In The Search Engines?
Filed Under Blog Statistics, Blogging Success | 1 Comment
I just read a couple of stats I thought I’d share.
750 million people use the search engines each month searching for products or services.
To find those products and services, these same people type in over 61 billion keyword searches each month to find what they are looking for.
Sounds like a lot, right? You really want to be there hanging out at the top of the search engines, right?
Well yes. And no.
The trouble is most people don’t understand what it means to be at the top.
If you’re a photographer, you don’t really need to be at the top of the keyword "photography".
If you’re a bronze sculptor, you don’t really need to be at the top of the keyword "artist".
When people type in generic words like "photographer" or "artist", it’s only a guess as to what they really want.
Are they looking for a school to take a class? Are they looking for someone to commission to work with? Are they doing research?
So why spend the money, time or effort trying to get to the top of these generic keywords?
Instead you need to niche down and get to the top of your exact keyword phrases. Things that people will really type in when they are trying to find you.
bronze sculpture vs artist = 1,240,000 vs 638,000,000 searches
Florida wedding photographer vs photography = 489,000 vs 412,000,000
And when you type in these key phrases, a funny thing is happening. It’s not just websites anymore that come naturally to the top of the search engines. It’s blogs. And social media sites.
Are you marketing your business with social sites yet? Why not?
Jul
15
"I put up a website a couple of years ago and have been spending a lot of money with pay per click ads. Problem is I really don’t have a lot of new clients coming from my site. Do I need a blog too? What am I doing wrong?" ~ Jane, CA
Have you ever thought the same thing? Wasn’t your website supposed to be your ticket to online wealth?
Unfortunately that is what a lot of people would have you believe.
I regularly talk with people that have a simple website in place, and spend a ton of money on pay per click and search engine optimization. Let me ask you a question.
If you had a gas station in a little town – five miles off the highway – would you put up a sign and wait for the traffic to stop in?
You may laugh. But unfortunately that’s what a lot of people end up doing with their websites. They are simply off target from where they truly need to be.
People search online because they know they can get information quickly. The
y search. They click on a link. If they don’t see the relevancy within 10-15 seconds, they back out and try again.
So if you’ve created an ad for a specific type of garden gloves, and you’re directing anyone that clicks on the ad to the home page of your garden shop, you’re visitors get frustrated and back out.
It’s not about the traffic – it’s about the connection.
The clearer you make your design, your landing pages, your advertisements, and your copy, the easier it will be to convert people from prospects to buyers.
And yes, more and more people are finding it easy to direct your traffic with a blog.
A website is static – you create it and leave it sit (you can add pages, but that takes time, effort and money). But with a blog, you can be adding new content – focused content – on a daily basis.
It allows you to really get specific, and write directly to just a few potential clients. Each post is meant to resonate with a particular audience. Plus it has it’s own natural optimization – so you can begin eliminating the cost of an SEO person.
I know you’re ready to move ahead, and put your online sales on track .
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