Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

Five Awesome Lessons You Can Learn From My Blog Traffic Case Study

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Blog Traffic Statistics

In February 2014, my blog got over 5,000 visitors which resulted in a little over 9,000 views. It was the first time my blog got fewer visitors in a particular month than it got the month before since March 2013. At the time, I was unsure of this blog’s future because a blog of mine that was getting hundreds of daily visitors also went through this trend and did not quite recover. I did more research so this blog could avoid the other blog’s fate, and this research led to me learning more about getting blog traffic.

My traffic consistently increased month by month, and the statistics show no signs of decline. In July 2014, this blog got over 17,500 visitors which resulted in over 26,500 views. In the short span of five months, I was successfully able to triple my traffic. Now, I no longer do research to see how my blog can survive. I do research do see how I can make my blog thrive more than it already is. Throughout the journey, I have learned five core lessons that you need to takeaway from this blog post.

  1. If you want it, you can get it. Although I had no plans on tripling my blog’s traffic in five months, I wanted to get 20,000 views in one month. That evolved into getting 26,500 views in one month. Right when I saw the potential at the end of July, I gave myself the goal of tripling my traffic yet again in the next five months. That means my goal for December 2014 would be get over 52,500 visitors resulting in 79,500 views for the month. I want it, and I know I can get it. I’m going to need help though. *Pauses and gives a wink*
  2. Social media is everything. If you are not using social media to promote your blog, then you are not using it properly. Social media has attributed to an overwhelming majority of this blog’s success. Social media traffic even resulted in this blog’s search engine traffic rising dramatically. In July 2014, traffic from social media and the search engines contributed to about 70% of this blog’s traffic. A large portion of the other 30% came as a result of people writing about me or sharing my blog posts because they heard about me through social media.
  3. Be patient. Blogging takes a very long time before you start to see the traffic. There are some experts who say that if you are not seeing a lot of blog traffic in 6-12 months, then blogging is not for you. It took over six months for me to get over 200 views in a month and over a year to get over 4,000 views in a month. It takes time to grow a strong presence on the web.
  4. Make sure you do something that you love. The only reason I was able to reach this point, and the only reason I will continue to excel is because I love what I do. There are other components such as me knowing some things about how social media works and the 100,000 Twitter followers I have, but I started off with zero knowledge on social media and 0 Twitter followers.
  5. Always look for more ways to grow. Right when I optimized my social media presence, my SEO traffic also went up. Since my success on Twitter, I still invest a majority of my time on Twitter, but now I am starting to give more attention to Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.

I take #5 deep into heart because it forces me to never settle. I always look for more avenues of growth for traffic, revenue, and other things as well. Pinterest and YouTube have really been picking it up lately. I just passed 14,000 Pinterest followers, and I’m aiming for over 20,000 Pinterest followers before the end of the year which now seems much easier than it was before. My YouTube channel is approaching 20,000 channel views, and my goal is to bump it up to 30,000 views and exceed 400 channel subscribers before the end of 2014. I am also paying more attention to my Facebook Page, and my goal for that is to have over 1,000 likes before the end of 2014.

That’s the social media side, but there is also another side of blog traffic that I have not paid equal attention to, until now. I did not take growing an email list seriously. I offer the free prize and make the subscription box easy to see, but with only 0.3% of my visitors subscribing, I am taking further action to dramatically boost the number. Now I am finding more ways to grow my email list, and my goal is to be at 5,000 subscribers before the end of the year. With the amount of traffic my blog gets, it can be done. I would just need 5% of all of my blog visitors to subscribe to my blog from now until the end of the year to make it happen. With the new plugins I have added to me blog bringing in numerous subscribers, I have been getting much closer to this goal as the days pass by.

What are some of the lessons you have learned from your own blogging experiences?

 

One Simple Way Grow Your Pinterest Audience

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Pinterest Logo

There are numerous tips to get more followers as well as 100 Amazing Pinterest Tips that will show you how to really optimize Pinterest. If you do not have the time to read those two articles, you can do one simple thing to get more followers on Pinterest (you can tell it’s simple by how long this blog post is)

Being active is a big way to get more followers on Pinterest. When you are active on Pinterest, you need to be pinning the kinds of pins on Pinterest that would get more repins.

Being active is a very simple way to get more Pinterest followers. If you want to learn how to optimize your Pinterest pins and get more repins, you can subscribe to this blog (if you have not done so already) and receive the free How To Master Pinterest Video Tutorial.

 

Five Reasons Why Social Proof Is Massively Important

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Using Social Proof

When people say they went somewhere or something spectacular, some of those people will feel obligated to prove to their friends that something happened by showing a picture. Proving our point has become one of the major desires for any human being. When it comes to buying products from the experts, potential customers have a stronger desire to see social proof. They want to see how big your social media profile became before buying your products. The proof of a successful product that people want is no longer just in the pudding. It’s also in the social proof. Here are five reasons why social proof is so important.

  1. Social proof can prove that your methods work. The person who has 10 million YouTube channel views is more qualified to teach people about going viral on YouTube than the person who has 1,000 YouTube channel views.
  2. Big numbers help out in decision making. You need to grow a bigger presence on your social networks so you are able to grow bigger numbers. Most people are more likely to follow the social media expert with 100,000 followers than the social media expert with 1,000 followers. Most people are more likely to view the YouTube videos with tens of thousands of views than the ones with a few hundred views.
  3. You become more credible. The experts in their niches who have hundreds of thousands of followers look more credible than the people who have a few hundred followers.
  4. You look popular. Big social media presences are associated with popularity. This is one of the reasons why we believe (correctly) that celebrities are popular. They have millions of followers to show for it. However, many people buy fake followers to make themselves look popular. This does not result in popularity, and it’s easy to get caught.
  5. You look successful. Think about #3 and #4. A bigger social media presence would make someone look more credible and popular. Those are two of the many essential components of a successful person crushing their niche. Many people have great respect for those who are successful in society.

Social proof is not just an ego exercise. Instead, it is a way to tell people that you know how to master the system, become successful, and then your knowledge will become more valuable. Do you have Reason #6 for why social proof is valuable?

 

7 Questions That Every Self-Published Author Needs To Answer To Know If They Will Be Successful Or Not

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Kindle Self-Publishing

There are millions of self-published authors out there, but a majority of those self-published authors have not made it big yet. Most self-published authors want to get out there but find it difficult to get more book sales and generate a full-time income with their content. If you are a self-published author, you need to ask yourself these seven questions to see if you have the potential to make a full-time income by writing your own books.

  1. How will you market your books? You need to know the answer for this one. Without a clear marketing strategy, it’s not going to work. Just because you may not have a clear marketing strategy now does not mean it is the end. You can come up with an effective marketing strategy so you are constantly able to write new books and
  2. What niche do you want to be known for? You need to have this identified before you even think about writing your next book. Writing books on an array of topics will make it less likely for you to get returning customers.
  3. Are you willing to write 10 books without bringing in thousands of dollars every month? Many self-published reached their fortunes a few years after they started. You will have to be patient and consistently write books in order to generate the type of income that you want to generate.
  4. Are you willing to write one book every month? The more frequently you write books, the more sales you will be able to generate. The other benefit is that new and returning customers alike have more options to choose from.
  5. Are you willing to put in more content into your books while making them more valuable? You need to provide the type of books that beat the competition. Providing more value is a great way to do that
  6. Are you going to grow your presence on your blog and social networks? You want to grow as big of a presence as you possible can. The bigger your presence
  7. Do you have the dedication? In order to be a successful self-published author, you need to have the desire to write content and share it with the world. If you are only writing books because you heard that writing books is a great way to make more money on the web, then you will not be able to write the books associated with valuable content.

After you ask yourself those seven questions, you will be able to identify how likely you are to thrive as a self-published author. If you did this assessment and still feel confident about your success as a self-published author, then you are closer to making those dreams happen. What are your thoughts on the questions? Do you have any tips for aspiring self-published authors? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

5 Blogging Tips You Absolutely Positively Need To Know Immediately

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Blog

There are many tips about growing a better presence on the web, getting more blog traffic, and growing your email list. Some of these bloggers have optimized these tips to see their blogs grow dramatically while others are learning from the experts. In the midst of common blogging tips that get mentioned time and time again, there are some blogging tips that get forgotten about.

  1. Focus on your bounce rate. A lower bounce rate indicates that more visitors are staying on your blog for a longer period of time. If you get people to stay on your blog for a longer period of time, more of those visitors will become subscribers and paying customers.
  2. Your blog’s loading speed is important. If your blog takes too long to load (which can mean more than 10 seconds), people will become impatient. All websites and blogs are able to load within a few seconds, but there is a difference between the blog that gets loaded in five seconds and the blog that gets loaded in 10 seconds.
  3. Always respond to other people’s comments on your blog. You need to interact with your readers so they have a reason to leave more comments. As your blog posts get more relevant comments, that will indicate more activity and popularity. This activity and popularity will encourage some of your visitors who have not left a comment yet to suddenly leave one.
  4. You need to create categories for your blog posts. Categories make it easier for your visitors to find blog post content based on specific topics. Instead of digging through blog post after blog post for blog posts about Twitter, you can go into the Twitter category for this blog. This allows people to easily find specific content they are looking for.
  5. Your blog must be easy to use. People will stay on your blog longer if it is easy to use. Make sure you have a powerful menu on your blog that is easy to use, and make it easy for people to find valuable blog posts.

Those are the five tips that most people forget about. What were your thoughts on the tips? Do you have any additional blogging tips that you feel many people forget about? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

You Only Know If You Try

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Keep Calm And Give It A Try

We all have strange pet peeves. For a very long time, I did not like wearing green shirts.  I do not know why, but I just did not like wearing that color. I resented the thoughts of wearing green pants, shorts, or socks. I resented the idea so much that I never even gave it a try.

Then, I went to TJ Maxx because since I still grow, I still have the experience of sizing out of clothing. At the same time, I was starting to really take my YouTube presence seriously and wanted to buy different collared T-shirts so I would look more professional in my YouTube videos. Sure enough, TJ Maxx had low prices, and I do not remember how many collared T-shirts I ended up with, but it was somewhere in between 5-10 collared T-shirts. I’ll go with seven just to be as close to the middle as possible.

Sure enough, one of the collared T-shirts was green. The T-shirt looked nice, but I did not like the color. Since TJ Maxx’s prices are low, and there is a refund policy, it was agreed upon that the green collared T-shirt would be purchased along with the other ones, and if I did not like the collared T-shirt, I could return it.

Then, I tried on the collared T-shirt, and I enjoyed it. Now I have a collared long sleeve shirt that is also green. It is amazing to think I did not like green clothing a few months ago, but now I enjoyed wearing those green shirts.

We are quick to assume that ideas will not work and that certain things were never meant to be. However, some people reach totally different conclusions just by giving it a try instead of assuming how it would work. Just as Sam tried the green eggs and ham in Dr. Seuss’ classic book, I tried the green shirts. Now I like to wear them.