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5 Blogging Myths Debunked

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Blogging Myths

A blog is a powerful way to interact with more people, boost your presence on the web, and get more sales at the same time. Some people have been able to make full-time incomes with their blogs. However, most people have not made full-time incomes with their blogs yet. Quite on the contrary, most blogs bring in little to no revenue despite all of the work those bloggers put into writing valuable content. There are many reasons why a blog does not bring in revenue such as not being monetized or not bringing in traffic, but another reason why most blogs are not successful is because the bloggers behind them live under five myths. These myths are commonly practiced, but they are also not as powerful as they are thought to be. Here are the five myths:

  1. Writing more blog posts equates to more traffic. Most of the popular blogs just happen to be filled with content. What allows these blogs to become popular is that the blogger has developed a strong social media presence that gets used to promote the blog. Then, as social media traffic, goes up, SEO traffic goes up.
  2. SEO is king. SEO is something you should look into, but social media is more powerful than SEO. While you have to hope for the best with SEO, building a social media audience is a reliable way to bring in more blog traffic.
  3. Traffic is more important than good content. Once you get the traffic, the value of your content will determine how long people stay on your blog. It is better to get 10 visitors that stay on your blog for 10 minutes each than it is to get 1,000 visitors that only stay on your blog for two seconds.
  4. You can be a successful blogger overnight. If overnight success means a few years, then yes, it is possible. The reason there is no such thing as overnight success is because it takes a long time for people to know about you. This blog got 38 views on its first month and is now getting hundreds of thousands of views every year. Many bloggers become demoralized if they do not become overnight successes, but it is just part of the process. Here is a picture that shows you exactly what I am talking about.
  5. The knowledge you have is good enough. No matter how smart you are, there is still more information you can learn about your niche. That is why I strongly encourage you to read more articles on the web, read more books, and watch YouTube videos related to your niche.

These five blogging myths continue to deceive bloggers into thinking in the wrong way about their journey and making the wrong decisions. By addressing these myths now, you can stop thinking the wrong thoughts about blogging and continue your journey on a brighter note. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other blogging myths you would like to debunk? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Secrets About Blogging That Others Don’t Want You To Know

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Top Secret

Blogging has become a complex art. What started as an online diary has turned into a way for people to build powerful presences on the web. Now over 150,000 blogs get created every day, and there are millions of blogs on the web. Some of these blogs have Alexa ranks under 100,000 while other blogs have no Alexa ranks at all. What’s the difference between the blogs getting thousands of daily visitors and the blogs that struggle to get one thousand visitors every year? The answer is these five secrets about blogging that others don’t want you to know.

  1. The subscriber list is everything. Even if your blog is getting hundreds of daily visitors, you need to grow your subscriber list. Your subscribers are the ones who get emailed each time you come out with a new blog post, share your blog posts, and buy your products. Optimize your blog for subscriptions by offering free prizes and having a pop up show up on your blog.
  2. SEO is overrated. I relied on SEO for over a year and saw small increases. These increases allowed me to go from 170 monthly views to 200 monthly views. When I focused more of my time on social media, I got the exponential traffic that continues to grow to this day.
  3. You need to have your own product. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make extra income, but if you do not have your own product, you are not establishing yourself as an expert in your niche. In order to make revenue from your blog, you must have your own product in place. On a successful blog, the blogger’s products bring in far more revenue than advertisements. Some of these successful bloggers don’t have advertisements at all.
  4. All social networks are important. You want to offer as many sharing options for your blog posts as possible. The only reason I now include pictures in my blog posts is so other people could share my blog posts with Pinterest. Make it as easy as possible for others to share your blog posts on as many powerful social networks as possible.
  5. Big social media audiences look really good. We have a natural tendency to believe that the person with the bigger audience is more credible than the person with the smaller audience. The power bloggers also happen to have big audiences on social networks, and those big audiences allow their content to spread while boosting their credibility.

The beans have been spilled, and the methods to grow your blog are right here. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you know any additional secrets about blogging? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Only Share What Your Target Audience Cares About

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target audience

I know what spurious means, I know how to make a paper airplane, and I know how to grow a big social media audience.

If you are like most people who visit this blog, you don’t care about the first two things. I know what spurious means. Big deal! Let’s not forget to mention millions of people know how to make a paper airplane.

However, if you are like most people who visit this blog, you are a targeted visitor. You want to know how to get more blog traffic, get motivated, be more productive, get more eBook sales, and/or build a social media audience. That’s what you probably care about.

I’m not writing any blog posts about an SAT word study guide or tips on creating the best paper airplane because my target audience wouldn’t care about those things. The posts that get the most engagement on this blog are the ones that directly relate to what my target audience cares about.

This is why successful blogs are specific. If you write blog posts about 10 different niches, then you are going to confuse a lot of people. Confused visitors never buy your products, and they wouldn’t even think of following you on any of your social networks or entering their email to receive an update each time you publish a new blog post.

Before you click publish (or hopefully you are clicking schedule), ask yourself if your target audience would care about what you are going to publish. If yes, then click the publish button, but if you do not think your target audience would care about what you are going to publish, then do not click on the publish button.

 

7 Proven Methods To Keep Visitors On Your Blog Longer

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blog traffic growth

The longer you keep a visitor on your blog, the more likely that visitor is to do the following:

  1. Become a returning visitor
  2. Subscribe to your blog
  3. Tell their friends about you
  4. Buy one of your products

There are several benefits associated with getting more visitors, but few people know how to keep visitors on their blog for a longer period of time let alone how much time the typical visitor is spending on their blog. As your blog becomes more popular, you will be able to find out how much time your average visitor spends on your blog on Alexa. Whether you know how long your visitors stay on your blog or not, it is very important to make sure your visitors stay on your blog for as long as possible. Here are 7 proven methods to make people stay on your blog for a longer period of time.

  1. Make your blog load faster. People will not stick around if it takes too long for your blog to load. People have things to do, places to see, and other blogs to visit. The world moves super fast which means your blog needs to load super fast. People will not wait for a few seconds to go by to access your blog.
  2. Include videos in some of your blog posts and on your sidebar. If your visitor watches a 5 minute video on your blog, that means that person was on your blog for an extra 5 minute. Imagine what would happen if half of your blog’s visitors watched a 5 minute video. They would stay on your blog for a very long time.
  3. Include links to your older posts. By including links to your older posts, you will reduce your blog’s bounce rate. In addition, linking to your older blog posts provides your visitor with more content. The more links to have to your own blog posts, the lower your bounce rate will be. You should make it a goal to include at least 1 link to another blog post on your blog in all of the blog posts that you write.
  4. Have a good theme and background for your blog. Your blog’s design is one of the initial deciding factor of whether people stick around or not. Before visitors read your blog posts, they see the theme and background. If your blog’s theme and background look bland, too complex, or unbearable (this can go from only having a bright yellow color as the background to something that shouldn’t be there), visitors will leave your blog before reading the post.
  5. Write longer blog posts. If your visitors have more content to read, then they will stay on your blog longer. It takes longer for someone to read a 1,000 word blog post than it takes for someone to read a 500 word blog post. Writing longer blog posts will also have an impact on your blog’s SEO.
  6. Include eye-catching pictures in your blog posts. Pictures make the entire reading process much easier. Instead of just seeing a giant slab of text, show your visitors a picture. This picture can strengthen the idea of what your blog post is about, provide insights, be humorous, or do something else. Ultimately, the picture engages the visitor and keeps that visitor on your blog for a longer period of time.
  7. Write valuable content. In order to get your visitors to click on the links to your older blog posts and watch the 5 minute video, the content you provide on your blog needs to be valuable. You can write quality content and not make a single spelling or Grammar error. However, you need to write valuable content that people remember you for. You won’t remember every word in this blog post, and I’m not expecting you to (I don’t remember all of the words to my own blog posts, so it’s okay). The only thing your visitors will remember is the value that your blog post provided.

It is important to write quality content, but it is also important to keep people on your blog for a long period of time. That’s how a visitor gets value from your content and becomes a returning visitor for your blog. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional advice? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

8 Signs Your Blog Is Not Doing Well

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website traffic decrease

There are some blogs that are thriving and get thousands of visitors every day. On the other hand, there are blogs that are not doing as well. Some people know that their blog is not doing well, others know their blog is thriving, while others are not sure. Regardless about what you think about your blog, you need to know whether your blog is doing well or not. That is why I provided with you 8 signs that your blog is not doing well. That way, if your blog is not doing well, you know what to work on. In addition, if your blog does not have any of these signs, it means you are doing a good job with your blog.

  1. Your blog does not get a lot of social media traffic. Social media traffic and SEO traffic are related. As you get more social media traffic, you will also get more search engine traffic. In addition, social media gives you the ability to interact with the people who visit your blog. Not getting a lot of social media traffic and not having a targeted audience means that you will not be able to interact with as many people who visit your blog as you could be.
  2. Your blog does not get many visitors in general. A big reason this problem exists for most people is because they have not developed big, targeted audiences on their social networks. Few visitors on your blog means few people to interact with or share your posts.
  3. Your blog posts are not getting shared often. If your blog posts are not getting shared often on social networks, it shows that few people visit the blog, and few of the people who come in the first place don’t share your blog posts anyway. In order to fix this problem, you need to by omnipresent on all of the social networks, grow those audiences, and share your blog posts. Then, some people will take your lead by reposting your post or sharing your blog post using social media sharing buttons which should be at the bottom of every blog post.
  4. You don’t have a big email list. Everyone on the email list represents someone who likes your content enough to trust you with their email address. In addition, these people will most likely become returning visitors and read your blog posts every other day. In order to get a bigger email list, implement these tips.
  5. You don’t know a lot about SEO. One of the best ways to get a lot of long-term traffic to your blog is by enhancing that blog’s SEO. However, there are many people who do not know exactly how to boost their SEO while some people get confused by the meaning of the word SEO. You can brush up on your SEO here and learn how to boost your SEO by going here.
  6. You do not look at your blog’s statistics often. If you do not look at your blog’s statistics often, then you don’t know how many visitors you are getting or how many people are on your email list. Your blog statistics have the answers, as well as information. You can identify the day you got the most traffic on, and the sources that led to that traffic. Then, you can look back at that day and identify what you did differently to get the rise in traffic. After that, continue doing what you did differently on that day and you will see a big jump in your traffic.
  7. You consider blogging to be a hobby. If you are writing blog posts inconsistently, and your blog is not big-time (yet), then you consider blogging to be a hobby. Blogging only works for the people who see blogging as something that is more than a hobby. Blogging for a hobby may result in a few visitors, but blogging for your profession will force you to consistently write blog posts and never miss a single day. Some passionate bloggers wrote blog posts for the day even when they had fevers. You need to decide for yourself how seriously you take blogging and decide whether your view of blogging will be as a hobby or a profession.
  8. Writing 250 words feels awkward or too time consuming. There are some blog posts that will take a long time to write (some blog posts are longer than others). However, if feels awkward or too time consuming to put in the time to write 250 words, then that’s a big problem. You should strive to make all of your blog posts at least 250 words, and if it feels uncomfortable writing 250 words, imagine how difficult it would be to write 250 words (and eventually a lot more) every day. The best way to get over this problem is by writing more often. Challenge yourself to write 1 blog post every day. Then challenge yourself to write 1 blog post every day while writing a book. The more you challenge yourself, the more words you will be able to write.

Congratulations on making it though the checklist. Did you make it through the checklist fine or do you have some things to work on? What are your thoughts about the checklist? Do you have any additional signs that a blog may be in trouble? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Blogging Tip: Talk About A Problem That Your Targeted Readers Face

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Chances are you have wondered for a long time which blog posts get the most traffic. While some blog posts get hundreds of daily visitors (which add up to several thousand daily visitors for the main blog), other blog posts are getting visited once in a blue moon. There are certain types of blog posts that give you an edge, but a majority of popular blog posts are all related by one thing: they discuss a problem that their targeted readers face.

For this blog, my targeted readers are social media users, bloggers, and people who want to be more productive. I write blog posts that discuss problems that these people face such as finding more time in a given day, increasing a blog’s SEO, and getting more targeted followers on Twitter. These are the types of problems my targeted readers have, and I provide the answers to these problems with my blog posts.

The more popular and helpful a blog post is, the more times it is going to get shared across the social networks. It may take several months of writing helpful blog posts before they become popular, but when they become popular, you will see the big increase in traffic that you have always dreamed of.

This is one simple way to write better blog posts and get more people to share those blog posts at the same time. What are your thoughts on this blogging tips? Do you have any additional tips on optimizing this part of writing a blog post? Please share your thoughts and advice below.