A Day in the Life of a Full Time Blogger
I have met several people who are harboring a horribly distorted fantasy of what the life of a full time blogger entails. Some seem to think that they will sit down for 20-40 minutes a day, string together a few phrases and words, click “post” and VIOLA. The day of work is done.
Reality is quite different. Don Miller over at the “Make Money Make Sales” blog shares how he’s spending his time now that he’s a full time blogger in the post , BANS Adjusting For Success or Do Nothing And Fail
My day usually starts with a check to make sure my 100 + sites are live and doing what they are supposed to do. I spend a few hours commenting and getting links for those sites. Let me say this, there is nothing fun about getting links, at least that I can find, so I fire up iTunes and go get them. I usually write 10-12 posts a day for my various niche blogs and work a few trends blogs.
Did you catch that? 100 + sites… 10-12 posts a day… getting links. Blogging is truly not a “get rich quick” endeavor… however, Don admits that he’s having the time of his life.
Making money either online OR off line is only easy if you LOVE what you’re doing. If you spend your weekend blogging instead of golfing, fishing or swimming at the beach, then by all means… dig in and learn what being in business online is all about.
However, if you think you’re going to become a 6 Figure Full Time Blogger because you have 3 posts on your blogger account… well, think again. Full time income usually requires full time effort. However, when it’s something you LOVE to do anyway (as Don obviously does), then spending 12-15 hours a day having fun is a GREAT way to spend your days and nights!
Best Blog Post Secrets Revealed
There’s no doubt about it, blogging can easily become a dreaded chore. Finding blogging inspiration can be one of the most difficult parts about blogging.
If you’ve found yourself searching for blogging inspiration, it’s probably because you’ve fallen into a blogging rut. The secret to finding blogging inspiration is to mix up the types of posts you create for your blog.
Yes, when it comes to creating a blog, a post is not merely a post. According to blogging experts, there are more than a dozen different types of post. Here are 8 of the best posts I’ve found on the secrets to creating many types of blog posts.
- Jennifer at Network Blogging Tips has recently posted 16 Post Ideas for Your Blog - Different Types of Posts for Network Blogs
- Darren Rowse of Pro-Blogger offers his take on how to break out of a blogging rut with his 20 Types of Blog Posts - Battling Bloggers Block
- Michael Martine offers his own take in a guest blog post at Pure Blogging in theThe 5 Types of Blog Posts that Experts Write
- Gyutae Park is offering his own version of the different types of blog posts in All 13 Types of Blog Posts - Which Ones Are You Missing?
- Dave Briggs over at Dave Press has narrowed the list down to 7 different types in his post The different types of blog post
- Rohit Bhargava at Olgivy Public Relations offers The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One. This unique and informative presentation is delivered via slideshare… and offers a “difficulty” rating for achieving success with each type.
- Collis at the The North X NorthEast Blog offers 9 Essential Posts that Every Blogger Should Know
- Nate White shares 5 Types of Blog Posts that Generate Traffic which, of course, are the BEST kinds of blog posts.
What’s your best blog post secret?
The Impact of Business Blogging
Blogging is the buzz word in business these days and with good reason- blogs are an EXCEPTIONAL communication tool. The impact of business blogging is becoming more evident each day.
The biggest impact of business blogging is the ability to use blogs to COMMUNICATE with customers.
Business Week prounounced: Blogs Will Change Your Business
Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later
Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business — including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)
You’re in a great place to figure out blogging. If you want to stay in touch, you can either sign up for the newsletter or sign up for this blog’s rss feed. Notice, there’s a low tech way to stay in touch… and a high tech way to stay in touch. It’s all about making communication easy!
Blogging is about communication and businesses need to communicate. The fact that blogging makes that communication EASY as well is why blogging is taking the business community by storm. It’s really simple:
- Businesses need to communicate to current customers.
- Businesses need to communicate with potential customers.
- Blogs make it easy to communicate with people.
The reason blogs are shaking up the business world is that blogs are delivering on the promise of the internet. Over a decade ago, we were told that our business websites would allow us to reach more customers… today blogs are making good on that promise.
Business blogging takes blogging beyond the “what I had for breakfast” realm and into an era when connecting with customers is an essential part of making a sale. That’s why blogs make great business marketing tools.
How Should You Start a Blog Post
It’s no secret that I adore blogs as marketing tools, but sometimes the hardest part of blogging is knowing where to start. I frequently have clients ask how should you start a blog post… and they’re not talking about the mechanics of blogging.
How should you start a blog post is actually a GREAT question… and you might be surprised at the answer. You should start a blog post by thinking about your blog’s reader… your target audience.
What information do your readers want to know?
(Hint, in order to do this, you need to know who your target audience is. If you’re a business owner and you need help with this, pick up the book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.)
Once you know who your target audience is and what information your readers want to know.. then you need to find out what keywords they’re using to find that information.
There are lots of free tools which you can use to find keywords… but the figures vary widely and most importantly, the free tools don’t show you subtle variations of keywords.
For example, I have a client who is selling a dog product. Various free keyword tools gave her widely varying figures. One said there were 600 searches being done daily… one said 1200 searches monthly… yet another showed 25 searches monthly.
WHICH ONE DO YOU BELIEVE?
There is a tool that allows you to “see” inside your target blog audience’s mind… it’s called Wordze.
Wordze gives you the INSIDE SCOOP on keywords being used by REAL people. It tells you where people are located who are searching those keywords. It tells you the sites that already dominate those keywords… and lets you see the opportunities within.
If you go straight to Wordze… you’ll pay $45 per month for this service. But, if you use the link above you’ll get a special discount for readers of this blog and you’ll only pay $35 per month.
Start your blog post by researching keywords. Find out the words your target audience is using to find information just like you’re offering.
Blogs are great easy marketing tools for any business. You’ll increase the power and efficiency of your blog by targeting the right keywords for your blog post.
Blogs: A Powerful Marketing Tool
If you have a love/hate relationship with your marketing, you’re not alone. On the love side, you’re in LOVE with the thought of launching a powerful marketing tool…. one that creates more business for your business. Ideally, that powerful marketing tool would be easy to use.
On the other hand, there’s the hate side of the marketing relationship. You HATE the tweaking… you hate the testing… you hate the less than scientific art of marketing.
As Shakespeare would say, “Ah, there’s the rub!” Marketing is all about “tweaking” your marketing message. Sometimes all it takes is a single change of a word in a headline and suddenly the phone is ringing where before it was silent.
It’s in that tweaking where marketing success happens. That “trial and error” is what separates the marketing “professionals” from the marketing “amateurs”.
Marketing professionals KNOW that the first run is the baseline. Marketing professionals give that first marketing message their all… but they know that there are changes ahead.
Another key that separates the marketing professionals from the marketing amateurs is that marketing professionals know that the “early bird gets the worm”. Waiting for a month or two to measure a marketing campaign’s success and THEN making a change is not the way of the marketing professional.
A powerful marketing tools is one which allows the message to be delivered quickly and then is easily tweaked. Erin Blaskie over at the Business Consulting Blog writes in Secrets to Success:
“To be successful, you must take your ideas and implement them - FAST. Don’t hold back and don’t dilly-dally with details and with trying to be perfect. Get it up there and out there and tweak as you go.”
That is why your blog can be your most powerful marketing tool. It can act as the foundation for your marketing success.
Because blogs are super easy to update, you can use your blog to “test” your marketing message. You can tweak quickly and split test almost on a dime. Oh, and while you’re testing your marketing messages… you’re also building relationships and earning trust with potential clients.
That’s why a blog is a natural as an Easy Marketing Tool.
Digging for Gold in Old Content
Once you’ve been blogging for a while, you may find you’ve got lots of GREAT content that is “hidden” in the archives. Blogtrepreneur offers some helpful tips including linking internally to your old blog content.
Internally linking to blog content means simply creating a link inside your post to another post. For example, I have an older post called “5 Easy Ways to Create Content for your Blog.” It was written back in June 2007… and I think it’s a helpful post. Since my blog has a lot more readers now than it did then, I can draw attention to my old blog post by creating this internal link.
However, internal linking will also help your Search Engine visibility… a fact that is NOT lost on tech blog owners. This technique is so powerful, there’s even been a Wordpress plug in developed to make it easier for Wordpress blog owners to do this.
Of course, Daily Blog Tips offers the BEST reason for linking to internal content: It keeps readers on your blog for longer!
My favorite tactic for resurrecting old content is when I leave comments on other blogs (whether they’re do-follow enabled or not) is instead of linking to my blog’s opening page, I’ll link to a post with similar content. That way, when someone follows the breadcrumb trail I leave via commenting on other blogs… they’ll come directly to a post of great interest.
What’s your tip for reusing old blog content?
Cashing Out and Selling Your Blog
Over at the Performancing blog, there is a post offering 3 blogs for sale… and the lister obviously arrived at his “valuation” of the three blogs by using this tool: How Much Is My Blog Worth. No bids and the only comment is a recommendation on how to get SOME buyer interest in the blog.
Meanwhile, Small Potato is offering his blog WPDesigner.com for sale on the same site. WPDesigner.com not only has a high PR (7), it also has a membership site as well. According to the tool above, the value of Tung Do’s site is 762,693.54.
He also reports the following “stats” for his blog:
- 2900 RSS subscribers (best month yet)
- Over 400 paying themes club members
- Over 1300 club members overall
- PR7 front page with multiple PR6 sub-pages
- #1 on WpThemesGallery’s Top 40 WordPress Blogs
- #1 on Google for “wordpress theme tutorial”
- #3 on Technorati
- 2 of Wpdesigner.com’s free themes are being used on WordPress.com, which is a community of hundreds of thousands of bloggers.
The current bid for his blog… comes in at less than 10% of the fantasy figure at $65,000.
The truth of the matter is, there are several ways to value a blog. The first is Monthly Income X 12 = Sales Price. The second is to try to use the first figure but then try to assign a “blue sky” value to the audience the blog has built.
However, Business Review Online has come up with a formula to determine your blog’s value:
BVIa =
adh (aay/1,000)
—————
abt x ehwIf you look at the equation, you’ll see that you need to know how many hits the blog gets per day (average daily hits or adh); and the average advertising yield for web adverts alongside the blog (aay). To work out the cost of the blog you need abt, which is the average number of hours spent per day blogging, and ehw, which is the employee hourly wage of the blogger.
NICE!!!
Unfortunately, Sam the gentleman who is trying to sell his long neglected blogs for $2700 is probably going to be disappointed. Trying to sell a neglected blog is like trying to sell a condemned house… in order to get any money out of it, you’re going to have to invest a lot of time and effort into bringing the house or blog “back up to code”. However, unlike a real estate investor, anyone interested in Sam’s 3 blogs just needs to wait until Sam misses his domain renewal and then snap up those domain names and launch a new blog there.
On the other hand, the years of work Small Potato has invested in his blog has resulted in many bidders on his blog.
In the end… your blog is worth what people will pay for it… and in the case of a neglected site… you may need to actually PAY someone to take it off your hands!
Creating Blazing Hot Headlines that Attract Readers
There’s no doubt about it… creating a blazing hot headline that attract readers for your blog is tough! However, it’s where you should invest MOST of your efforts when it comes to your blog. Writing Headlines that Work is one skill that will pay HUGE dividends if you can master it.
Creating blazing hot headlines that attract readers is as much art as it is a science.
Blogging without a blog says in the post: Your First Line Can Sink You
“If your first line doesn’t capture your readers attention, they are apt to move on to a post that does.”
Many offline lessons in headline writing apply to blog headlines as well. Pithy always trumps wordy. Grab attention and remember, it’s probably the only content the majority of people will see. You must also remember that your blog title most probably will be seen out of context!
Do not try to make the title “smart”, by using irony, word play or other “journalistic” approach.
The title to be built must be thought as of a label to your article in the unlimited virtual library that the Internet is.On the Internet, headlines are often displayed out of context. The reader is searching for your content and will only get to it, if a most appropriate, serious and well thought out label is attached to it. On the web, readers often don’t get the chance of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the titles they are presented with.
Another key to a great blog title is to think in terms of an inverted pyramid. Google Blogoscoped writes in Good Blog Writing Style
“..first get to the point and mention the core ideas, then fill in the details in later paragraphs. The first and second sentence should allow people to decide if they want to continue reading this. “
However, Lorelle points out the dual challenge of your quest to write a pithy, punch headline or blog title.
“There are two goals to writing an effective title.
- Catch a reader’s eye and encourage them to read.
- Help search engines help searchers find your article.”
Wait!!! I have to write pithy, punchy headlines AND INCLUDE RELEVANT KEYWORDS TOO!!!
Yes, it’s true. That title plays a HUGE role in your quest for Google dominance. Sure, you can get away with writing a few posts and using catchy titles that search engine ignore (because they’re so cute and clever, they don’t contain any essential keywords), but if you make a habit of it… then you’ll find your blog struggling to find an audience.
The original title of this post was going to be “Writing Pithy, Punchy Headlines” The problem? No one and I mean NO ONE is searching the internet for tips on how to write pithy, punchy headlines.
However, there are a few tortured souls searching for how to create hot headlines to attract readers to their blogs. Thus the change in the title above.
Leo Babauta has written a great article called “The Sexy Art of Writing Headlines that Kill“ Leo should know. He’s been able to quit his day job and now blogs full time PLUS his blog has snagged him a book deal.
RSS and your blog….who, what where and why!
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a quick and easy way to keep track of the latest content from your favorite sites without actually taking the time to surf over and pick up content.
Mandy, over at Build A Blog has done a GREAT job of outlining the step by step method of blog subscription in her post, What Is RSS And How Does It Work?
Money Making Scoop shows How To Increase Your RSS Subscribers. Keep in mind, it’s important to sign up for feeds correctly, as pointed out by BONTB.
Remember, when it comes to RSS feeds, the headline is EVERYTHING.
Keep in mind that the readers you get via RSS are usually technically savvy readers. These will usually be other bloggers or other technically savvy internet users, so if that’s your target audience, then be SURE your site is included the 55 Active RSS Directories
If you are creating a blog as an easy way to communicate with less tech savvy readers who may not understand RSS, then be sure to offer a regular email newsletter to your subscribers. After all, Chris G said it best: "Get the people side right and you have won over half the battle."
Your blog as a marketing tool
Your blog can act as a powerfulMARKETING TOOL, but only if you recognize not only what your blog is capable of doing, but also what it is NOT capable of doing.
Your blog is not a substitute for marketing/advertising but rather it’s another FORM of advertising and marketing for your business.
Think of your blog as a tool. For example, if you need to move leaves from your front lawn, you’ll find yourself entering a hard ware store and purchasing a rake. A rake is a cheap and effective tool to move leaves into piles in your yard. However, if you were to purchase a rake and then set it carefully in your front lawn at the beginning of October and expect to come back in November to find your leaves neatly raked into piles… well, unless you hire a young strong back that is NOT going to happen.
When you purchased the rake, you probably didn’t expect the rake to move the leaves for you on it’s own. The same is true of your blog.
Your blog can effectively perform some of your most dreaded marketing tasks, but you should think is as a leaf blower or a garden tractor attachments. These elements can make moving leaves EASIER… but they do not function without direction on your part.
So in our fun world of creating allegories… a rake is a traditional HTML web site. The traditional HTML web site requires a lot of raw "effort’ on your part.
A blog is more along the lines of a leaf blower. It’s a lot easier to move a lot of leaves with a leaf blower than it is to move a lot of leaves with a rake.
However, a blog is not a set it and forget it proposition. If someone tells you it is… well, read more about that here: Resisting the irresistible…. or how NOT to be a victim of a really great sales letter.
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