Marc's Blog

How To Create The Best Free Prize Possible

June 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Giving away a free prize will encourage people to subscribe to your blog, like you on Facebook, and do other things as well. While the free prize encourages these actions to be performed, it is the best free prize possible that makes people take you seriously and buy your products. If you do a good job with the free prize, your potential customers will buy your products primarily because they believe that your products are much better than your free prizes.

Although it is important to create a free prize that would be worth something, many people only create a free prize just for the sake of saying that they have a free prize. These people create a bad free prize that does encourage more subscribers and Facebook likes, but the bad free prize does not encourage anything after that. Potential sales never happen, and some people go as far as unsubscribing or unliking if the free prize is really bad.

A free prize is just that. It is free, but it is also a prize worth winning. In order to make your free prize worth winning, you first need to decide what your free prize will be. If you want to provide a digital prize (so you don’t have to pay for shipping), you can offer an eBook, Power Point, video, or audio. Those are the options that most people use for their free products. For this blog, the free prize is a video about Pinterest.

Your free prize needs to be a lengthy one. The longer your free prize is, the longer you will be able to keep someone’s attention. A free eBook with 10 pages can be read in under 5 minutes while a free 50 page eBook takes 10 minutes to read. Free 30 minute videos get more attention than free 10 minute videos because the person can watch the free 30 minute video for an additional 20 minutes. By keeping someone’s attention longer with a lengthier prize, that person will think more and more that they need to buy some of your products.

Offering a lengthier prize also shows people that you went the extra mile to provide more free content. People love it when others go the extra mile to help them. Some of the people who get your free prize will eventually return the favor by buying one of your products.

While length is a big factor towards how good your free prize is, the quality of the free prize also determines how much attention it gets. If the free prize is a 50 page eBook with low quality content, then most people will “x out” of the book without saving it or bothering to read it any further. In addition, a poorly performed 30 minute video will lose attention as the seconds go by.

Your free prize needs to be lengthy and contain quality content. It is the job of your free prize to answer all of the readers’ questions about a particular area in your niche. That is all you need to do to create a free prize that entices people to buy your products.

What are your thoughts on the free prize? Do you have any tips on creating a free prize? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

One Of The Most Underrated WordPress Stats

June 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

WordPress Statistics

After achieving a big goal for this blog (getting 100,000 annual visitors), I decided to raise the bar higher with a new goal: get 100,000 visitors every month. I want to have a traffic rate that would allow me to get over 1 million annual visitors. It sounds like a lot of work, but what sounds even more challenging is that I plan on accomplishing this goal by the end of 2014. In order to get the extra 900,000 annual visitors (and at that rate, 100,000 monthly visitors wouldn’t be far behind), I have been doing more digging than usual to find out how I can grow my blog’s traffic. Although 100,000 annual visitors is a big milestone, I want to turn it into 100,000 monthly visitors.

One of the areas that I did more digging in was my blog’s stats. I use WordPress for my blog which means I get various statistics about visitors, views, clicks, and subscriptions. I used this statistics to guide me through the process of going from 30 visitors every month to over 100,000 visitors every year. However, throughout all of my searching and analyzing, there was a powerful WordPress statistic that I kept on missing…that is…until now.

The powerful WordPress statistic that too many people overlook is the number of views your individual blog posts get. This blog post is my 928th blog post, and if all of my blog posts generated 3 visitors every day, then this problem would be over. I would already be getting over 1 million visitors every year. However, that is not the case.

By identifying how many views your individual blog posts are getting, you will be able to identify your most popular blog posts. Those are the topics that you need to continue writing blog posts about. If one of your blog posts is getting 50 daily views, and you write a Part 2 for that blog post, chances are the Part 2 for that blog post is going to get close to 50 daily views. That’s 50 daily views that you would have never had.

When most people look at blog traffic, they look at the final number. The final number may be 10 daily visitors, or that final number may be 100 daily visitors. Regardless of the final number, that’s what most people focus on. Few people look at the statistics of the individual blog posts that contribute to the final number. By looking at what makes the final number happen, you will be able to identify what you need to write about in the future to make that final number larger.

What are your thoughts on this WordPress statistic? Do you plan to use this statistic? Is there another underrated WordPress statistic that most people are missing out on? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

A New Way To Look At Obstacles

June 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

When we think of obstacles, we think of something that is scary. We think of how unlikely it is for our ideas to work and ultimately get consumed in fear. Obstacles are the barriers to success, but most people prefer to sacrifice success in order to avoid the obstacles.

Instead of looking at an obstacle as a necessary evil, you need to look at an obstacle as a benefactor. Obstacles allow you to get more experience and learn from your mistakes. Everyone who has ever become successful faced obstacles at some point in their journeys. Even the billionaires have faced obstacles before. Traf-O-Data was a bust while Virgin Vodka didn’t go far either.

Obstacles are tough to get through. However, overcoming the obstacles makes winning so much better. Success feels so much better after you are able to jump over all of the hurdles and keep on going forward past those obstacles. Obstacles are a part of your journey. Enjoy them for what they are while knowing that with persistence and dedication, you will be able to conquer all of the obstacles in front of you.

What are your thoughts on obstacles? Do you have any tips about overcoming obstacles or have any obstacles to share? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Wake Up Earlier

June 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Morning Roaster

Did you know that your morning is a strong indicator of how productive you are throughout the day? Waking up earlier in the morning may be the difference between an unproductive day and a day when you are able to write 10,000 words. The logic behind it is that when you wake up, you have more willpower. When you wake up, there are less excuses. You have less to do at 7 am than you have to do at 7 pm. If you are wondering how you can increase your productivity, you should also wonder how you can wake up earlier.

Before I continue, it is still important to get the right amount of sleep. Based on scientific studies, 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep every day will lead to a longer, healthier, and more productive life. If you are sleeping below 6.5 hours, then you are not getting enough sleep. However, if you are sleeping for 8 hours, then you are getting too much sleep (yes, there is such a thing). That means you only want to sleep in between the 6.5 to 7.5 hour range. This is where waking up earlier comes in.

The first thing you need to do to wake up earlier is to create a schedule that you are committed to implement. If you get to bed at 11 pm, then you need to commit yourself to waking up in between 5:30 am and 6:30 am. That does not sound like a lot of sleep, but that is because most people sleep longer than the recommended amount of sleep.

Now that you have the schedule in place, you need to have motives. How are you going to benefit by waking up earlier? If you can’t think of a benefit, then you will continue sleeping for 10 hours. We need to have a reason to get up every day, but having a strong motive will make you want to get up quicker every single day. Some strong motives could be getting work done faster, publishing more books in a shorter amount of time, doing the work now so you can spend more time with your family later in the day when everyone wakes up, and so on. Those are the types of motives that get you out of bed faster and allow you to be more productive throughout the day.

One of the easiest ways to wake up earlier is a two step strategy. Most people get the first step right, but almost everyone messes up the second part. The first part is setting an alarm clock. Everyone seems to do that. The second part which almost everyone messes up is leaving the alarm clock out of reach. If you can click the snooze button on your alarm clock while in bed, then the alarm clock is too close to your bed. Keeping it further away will force you to get up in order to turn off the alarm clock (which gets very annoying after a while).

If you want to be productive, what you do when you wake up will play a big role in how productive you are for the day. If you wake up and go straight to TV, then your day is not going to be very productive one. However, if you wake up and start the day off by writing some blog posts, then you are going to have a very productive day.

You have more control over your productivity than you think. What you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. By setting a good tone in the beginning of the day, you will be able to get more work done throughout the rest of the day. What are your thoughts on waking up earlier, and do you have any other advice about sleep? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Reasons Why You Need To Share Your Location On Twitter

June 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Twitter is a big place filled with a lot of people. Because of this, some people are fearful of including their location on Twitter. They do not want others to know private information that can make it easier for people to find them. However, the location you put does not have to be very specific. You do not have to reveal your address, but being too broad does not solve the problem either. Telling people that you live on Planet Earth is not a good location. On the other hand, telling people that you live in a particular location that is not too specific but not too broad is the best way to approach the problem.

On my Twitter profile, I reveal that I live in Scarsdale, New York. By doing this, I am not giving away my address, but I am not telling people that I live somewhere in the Americas. Just because a lot of people reveal their location does not necessarily make more people want to include their locations. Some people do not include their location on Twitter just because they are amazed that some people would actually put their location up. However, putting up your location on your Twitter account is a very good move if you want to excel on the platform. Here are five reasons why.

You get to make more connections, and those connections will be stronger. If someone currently lives in or used to live in the same town you live in now, you will have a stronger connection with that person. If you talk with this person for a long time on Twitter and find that this person is very trustworthy, you could possibly meet in real life.
You will get more local speaking opportunities. When businesses hire people to speak at their events, they look for the greatest quality for the lowest price. If you live near by, that means the company does not have to pay for a plane ticket for you to speak in public. If someone in New York City is looking for a public speaker, and it is visible on your Twitter profile that you live near the city, the person behind the event will want you to speak at the event.
You will get more fans. Your fans are the people who know everything about you that has been released to the public. They know your marketing strategies, great moments, bad moments, birthday, and location. Giving some people one more thing about you will turn them into fans.
You can connect with leaders in your niche and ask if you would like to meet. If one of the leaders in your niche lives near by, ask that person if they would like to meet you at a restaurant in the afternoon. If you ask a leader in your niche to do this, you must build a strong connection and talk with that person first. If a stranger came up to you and asked if you would like to have lunch together, you would be very likely to say no.
It gives you leverage during news stories and vacations. If you tweet, “Enjoying the sun at my vacation destination,” it will be winter in some parts of the world. When it’s summer in North America, it’s winter in Australia. If you say, “Enjoying the sun,” and your location for that tweet is somewhere in Florida, then you have more leverage. Instead of your followers asking where you are, they will be able to say, “Have fun at Florida.” Florida is not specific enough for people to pinpoint an exact location for where you are, but it is enough to give people an update about where you are.

Including your location on Twitter is an essential way to build more connections, get more engagement, and boost sales. The most common reason why people do not include their Twitter location is because they are afraid of their safety. The chances of someone looking through your account thinking about hunting you down are extremely unlikely. You will be safe if you put a brief but sufficient location for yourself on Twitter. All you need to do for your location is leave the city and the state/province that you live in. What are your thoughts about including your location on Twitter? Have you already put your location on Twitter? Please share your thoughts below.