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5 Steps To Make Your Blog Go From Hobby To Business

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5 Steps To Make Your Blog Go From Hobby To Business

Some blogs on the web are money making machines that allow bloggers to bring in six figure incomes. Before getting to this stage, many bloggers initially take it as a hobby. I considered blogging as a hobby for a very long time. Just to be exact, it took me about a year to go from hobby to business, and I wasn’t making much money when I started (that’s true about any blogger).

You may be on the fence right now still taking blogging as a hobby. It is great to start off treating it as a hobby because you need to enjoy blogging in order to be successful. There are tips to get more traffic and make money online, but if you don’t enjoy writing content, it is not going to work out. After you can consider blogging as a hobby, and you are eager to make the transition from hobby to business (that you still enjoy), here are the five steps you need to take.

 

Step #1: Write a bunch of blogs until you find your niche

When you first start out as a blogger, it is important to avoid settling with one blog right away. Although there are some people who know what they want to write blog posts about since day one, there are other people who make big changes. I wrote blogs and blog posts about the Red Sox, Yugioh Cards, and Legos before I started this one.

If I settled with the Red Sox blog, you would not be reading this blog post right now. I refused to settle with one idea until I created this blog. It is okay to have dozens of blogs before finding the best niche for you. When you identify your main blog, you have the option of using your other blogs to test out particular plugins, themes, or code before applying them to your main blog.

 

Step #2: Focus on the main blog

Once you identify your main blog, you need to solely focus your time on that individual blog. When I first started this blog, I was still updating my Yugioh Philosophy Blog because I had no idea how far this one would go. As a result, I was writing one blog post every day for the Yugioh Philosophy Blog and one blog post every day for this one. It was only when this blog started to get more traffic than the Yugioh Philosophy Blog that I paid my undivided attention to it. As a result, I did not write another blog post on the Yugioh Philosophy Blog, and I was able to write two blog posts every day for this one (I have stopped since then because when I say two blog posts per day, I am referring to 250-500 word blog posts).

The strategies I use to promote this blog change, but the blog I promote is always the same. Don’t try to juggle responsibilities for multiple blogs because you put all of that time into one blog, and provide more value to your readers. If you insist on having multiple blogs, my recommendation is to still focus on one of them until it brings a full-time revenue. Then, create another blog and have contributors for it. Neil Patel does this very well with his Quick Sprout, KISSMetrics, and Crazy Egg blogs.

 

Step #3: Look at the leaders of your niche

The reference to Neil Patel earlier is the proper segway for looking at the leaders of your niche. I examined the leaders of my niche so I could learn new information, what works, and what does not work. Neil Patel has multiple blogs that get over 100,000 visitors every month, and I read through many of the Quick Sprout blog posts.

In addition to Neil Patel, I also read what Jeff Bullas, Kim Garst, and others put on their blogs. Seeing how the leaders of your niche are writing blog posts will give you ideas for your own content. The best way we learn is by example, and by looking at enough successful bloggers in your niche, you will be able to learn from the best examples available.

 

Step #4: Write high value content often

One of the main reasons why most people get stuck at the hobby stage is because they are not writing valuable content often. Some bloggers write inconsistently. On one month, these bloggers are able to write 10 blog posts, but the next month, these bloggers only write two blog posts. This inconsistency indicates that blogging is still a hobby.

In addition, the content you post needs to be valuable. I could have ended this blog post a long time ago if I chose, but then it wouldn’t be as valuable. I could have simply mentioned the first three steps and then scheduled the blog post. However, extending the blog post to include other steps and examples increases its value.

Instead of writing a blog post just to say that you wrote one, write a blog post that you know your targeted readers will enjoy.

 

Step #5: Create products that match your niche

Most of the blogs that are bringing in the six figure incomes are doing so with products. There is the rare exception in which ads are bringing in a bulk of the revenue, but ads are the exception, not the rule. Most people cannot make a full-time income with advertisements just because a blog would need to be getting over 100,000 visitors every month to have a good shot at it.

Instead of relying on advertisements, you need to create your own products. The web has made it incredibly easy for us to write books, launch training courses, and create membership sites. All three of these products have the power to bring in six-figure incomes. Some of the people have used these products to make millions of dollars, and that is not an exaggeration.

Creating your own blog is a great way to get more traffic and spread awareness for the products that will bring in the revenue.

 

In Conclusion

Blogging is a fun experience that can also turn in big profits. Some people make six figure incomes just from their blogs, and in order for you to start making revenue with your blog, you need to go from hobby to business. You can still enjoy writing blog posts when you make this transition, and this love for blogging is critical towards your success in the area.

Blogging success is never an overnight success. For most bloggers, it takes several years before they get the type of traffic associated with a full-time income. However, blogging success is possible, and it has transformed some people’s lives.

12 WordPress Plugins That You Need To Have

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12 WordPress Plugins That You Need To Have

One of the biggest advantages WordPress.org has on the free version is that you gain access to various plugins that can be used to enhance your blog. These plugins perform a variety of functions such as get more subscribers, boost SEO traffic, and improve the way your blog looks.

Not every WordPress plugin is created equally, and after using hundreds of plugins for this blog, I have been able to identify the most effective WordPress plugins that your blog should be utilizing. Here’s the list.

 

#1: Optin Forms

Compared to other free plugins that perform similar functions, the Optin Forms plugins does a great job at getting more subscribers. This plugin connects with a variety of emailing options such as iContact and Aweber, and it allows you to include an optin box at the end of every blog post. After you read this blog post, you will be able to see the Optin Form plugin in action asking for your email address (you get free goodies).

The optin box that you see at the end of my blog post was also very easy to create. The Optin Forms plugin gives you five pre-made themes to choose from, and you can change any of the colors and text in your optin box. You can even change the button’s color to match your blog’s color. If you want to grow your email list, the Optin Form is the next WordPress plugin that you need to install.

 

#2: Quick Page/Post Redirect

The Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin allows you effectively redirect people to different pages on your blog or any webpage on the web. You can set up a Page in your menu that, when clicked on, can redirect your visitors to a product page, even if that product page is not a part of your blog.

When you go to this blog’s menu and click, “My Books,” you are immediately brought to my Amazon Author Page which consists of all of my books. This is a more direct approach than you clicking that page, staying on my blog, and having to click a link that leads to my Amazon Author Page first.

In addition, the URLs for your blog posts have an impact on SEO. For a blog post like “5 Blogging Tips For Success,” the usual URL would be www.yoursite.com/5-blogging-tips-for-success. However, a good SEO practice is to use fewer words in the title, and only focus on the keywords. The ideal URL would be www.yoursite.com/blogging-tips-success.

Many people realize this difference late in the process and are left with blog post URLs that are not SEO optimized. Changing the link to www.yoursite.com/blogging-tips-success would result in all of the people who go to www.yoursite.com/5-blogging-tips-for-success being led to a 404 error page. You can use the Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin to fix this issue by having www.yoursite.com/5-blogging-tips-for-success redirect to www.yoursite.com/blogging-tips-success.

 

#3: Comment Redirect

As long as your blog posts are valuable and do not have grammatical errors, most of the people who muster up the courage to leave a comment on someone else’s blog enjoy the value that your blog provides. As a result, these people will be more likely to subscribe to your blog, but some people may not subscribe to your blog just because they do not know where the optin box is.

Even when people see my optin box made by Codeleon at the end of my blog posts, not all of them will subscribe at that moment. That’s even true for the people who comment on my blog. Some of the people who comment on my blog are not on my email list, but the Comment Redirect plugin allows me to change that.

All this plugin does is redirects someone to a different page on your blog immediately after that person submits a comment. The Comment Redirect plugin only gets applied when a visitor leaves his first comment on your blog. On this Comment Redirect Plugin, you can lead people over to a landing page, promote your most popular blog posts, or if you choose to do so, promote your products. Personally, I recommend promoting a landing page, and the last thing you want to do with the Comment Redirect is promote one of your products.

 

#4: Optimize Press

Speaking of landing pages, Optimize Press is a great plugin for creating great landing pages. I used Optimize Press to create my landing pages for my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. I was able to create the page in just 10 minutes, and it works. If you enter your email address on that page, you will properly get added to my list. You can create multiple landing pages for specific giveaways or reasons such as a good URL for the Comment Redirect plugin.

In addition to creating great landing pages, Optimize Press also allows you to create training courses and membership sites. Although Optimize Press is not a free plugin, it is worth every penny, and if you are confused with anything about the plugin, Optimize Press comes with great videos and support so you can get your questions answered.

 

#5: Hello Bar

Hello Bar allows me to display the message that appears on the top of my blog. The actual message up there has varied over time, but you can always promote a link (preferably a landing page or product), or you can use it as an optin form that collects email addresses.

Hello Bar has a variety of functions to choose from, and creating the actual bar is extremely easy. Hello Bar has a simple approach that allows you to easily add text, identify where you want to direct visitors who click on the link, and change any of the colors that you see. Hello Bar also has email integration for numerous mailing services such as iContact and Aweber.

One of the advantages of the Hello Bar plugin is that the message on the top can scroll down. Each time you scroll down while reading this blog post, the Hello Bar follows you. In addition, it is tempting to click on because it offers something valuable and the color combination was chosen to match the color psychology of consumers.

 

#6: Add Meta Tags

#6 is an SEO tip and a plugin’s name at the same time. Adding meta tags makes it easier for Google to understand what your blog post is about because you get to provide keywords, a short description for your content, and the title.

Keywords allows Google to identify what search terms should be used to lead people to your blog. With this knowledge, many people assume a great strategy would be to stuff their meta tags with keywords, but this is a mistake. My recommendation is to only have 5-7 keywords per blog post because if you add too many, they will lose their effectiveness on Google.

When you choose the keywords, be sure to use long-tail keywords (the ones that consist of multiple keywords). I could have chosen the keyword “WordPress plugins” for this blog post, but instead, I chose, “WordPress plugins that all blogs need to have.” Which one paints the better picture for what your blog post is about?

 

#7: Google XML Sitemaps

Not having a sitemap is a big mistake for your SEO. Google uses your blog’s sitemap to index your blog posts and make sure they get seen on their search engine. That means if you want more SEO traffic as well as a reliable way to track results, then you need a sitemap.

Normally, a sitemap is very difficult to properly create, but this is when the Google XML Sitemaps plugin steps in. This plugin makes it super easy to create your own sitemap. Then, you can submit that sitemap to Google with the webmaster tools. What may take just 15 minutes of your time may result in hundreds of extra visitors later.

 

#8: Limit Login Attempts

We must embrace the fact that the internet is not secure, and hackers are everywhere. The Twitter accounts of Burger King, Donald Trump, and Uber Facts are three of the many accounts to have been hacked. There are also hackers who are hacking into blogs and putting up bad content.

Regardless of how popular you are on the web, chances are there is a hacker who is trying to obtain your password. Some of these hackers use a computer system that logs in and enters as many password combinations as it possibly can (which means thousands per day). This is one of the reasons why many websites including WordPress encourage you use to long passwords. However, that is not enough protection.

If you gave them the opportunity, some hackers would spend days trying to log into your account until they identified your password. The Limit Login Attempts plugin is the fix to that problem. This plugin limits the number of times that you (or any hacker) can log into your blog. If any IP Address exceeds the limit, that IP Address gets locked out for the time you specify. I choose to lock people out of my blog for 12 hours just in case I am the one who enters the wrong password (or someone tries to guess my password just for fun).

I get an email each time this plugin catches someone, and I have been amazed with the results. Initially, I thought this plugin was a joke because no one would ever hack my blog. Since installing this plugin, I have learned about thousands of attempts for logging into my blog.

Another great perk of this plugin is that it gives you the IP Address that was used for the login attempts. If you Google search an IP Address, you can find the location of the computer, and better yet, you have the option to prevent that IP Address from visiting your blog. I only recommend to use this as a last resort (if the same IP Address is a repeated violator), but with limits in place, your blog is very unlikely to get hacked. In a four number password, there are 10,000 possible combinations. That means someone would have to enter 10,000 passwords before they identified whether your password has four numbers or not. This does not even include letters, special characters, or if you wisely decide to use a longer password. My password exceeds 10 characters and is filled with special symbols, numbers, and letters. With the Limit Login Attempts plugin in place, I don’t have to worry about a robot guessing until it identifies the right password.

 

#9: Pinterest Pin It Button For Images

Pinterest is a social network that does not get as much credit as it deserves. While some people are thriving on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, there are not nearly as many people making it big on Pinterest. If you are not on Pinterest, then you are missing out.

Regardless of whether you use Pinterest or not, plenty of your visitors will have Pinterest accounts. Over 70 million people use Pinterest, and many of these people love to share pictures. If you make it easy for people to pin your blog posts, you will be able to get more traffic from Pinterest. Even if you do not have a large presence on Pinterest, some of the people who visit your blog may have large audiences on Pinterest.

The Pinterest Pin It Button For Images plugin is a plugin that adds a “Pin It” button to all of your pictures. This button only shows up when you drag your mouse on the image, but by clicking on the image, a new window that allows you to send the pin opens up to the side.

The more people share your content, the better, and Pinterest is a great source for more blog traffic.

 

#10: WWSGD

The abbreviation for this plugin stands for “What Would Seth Godin Do.” Although I wish this plugin allowed us to get business advice from the famous marketer himself, WWSGD allows you to put a message on your blog welcoming new and returning visitors alike.

You may have seen a message on the top of this blog post welcoming you back or welcoming you for the first time. These types of messages build a strong connection between you and the reader. You can customize what the messages say, and with some basic knowledge in HTML combined with Google searches, you can also modify how the box surrounding the text looks. This plugin is critical towards making your visitors feel like they belong on your blog. Making them feel like they belong will encounter those people to visit your blog numerous times. The more someone visits your blog, the more likely that person will be to buy your products and subscribe.

 

#11: WordPress Editorial Calendar

As you schedule more blog posts, it will be more confusing to remember when you scheduled blog posts. When I was writing two blog posts every day, I would accidentally send out three blog posts on some days because I scheduled two blog posts to get published at the same time. That did not help out towards keeping people on my email list.

That problem happens less often because now I only write one blog post every other day. In addition, I use the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin. This plugin allows you to  stay organized by displaying all of your sent and scheduled blog posts on a calendar. If you do not know whether you properly scheduled a blog post three weeks in advance, you no longer have to scroll through your blog posts and look at the dates to see if that blog post was scheduled at the right time. The WordPress Editorial Calendar allows you to see the exact date and time you are scheduling certain blog posts.

 

#12: Widget Context

Isn’t it annoying when you put widgets on your blog only to realize that they should not appear on certain pages of your blog. You may not want a certain widget to be on your homepage, and you may want another widget to only show up on your homepage.

The Widget Context allows you to choose where widgets appear on your blog. If you want a widget to be displayed everywhere on your blog, then you don’t have to do anything else. The Widget Context is set to that default. However, if you only want to show your widget on certain blog posts and pages, the Widget Context plugin can be used to specify where you want the widget to show up.

The Widget Context is especially great for testing a widget. Some widgets that get put up for the first time do not work as intended just because we are not used to them. You can use the Widget Context to test out the widget on one of your blog’s pages that does not get a lot of attention. You can keep testing the widget until it works, and then you can display the widget everywhere on your blog knowing that it works.

 

In Conclusion

There are numerous WordPress plugins to choose from. However, not all of them are created equal. These 12 WordPress plugins have been the most beneficial for my blogger journey, and they have enhanced my blog in one way or the other. Plugins are essential to a blog’s success because they provide a blog with enhancements that a blog cannot provide for itself.

What are your thoughts on the 12 plugins? Do you have a favorite plugin? Please share your thoughts and plugins below.

6 Reasons Why Your Success Is In Your Email List

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I am sure you have heard of phrases like, “The money is in the email list” and “Your blog must have a way to collect email addresses.” When I was a new blogger, I did not fully understand the power of an email list. I initially thought it was just a strategy surrounded by too much hype. I did read the types of phrases I mentioned before, but few articles with those phrases would go deep into why growing an email list is important.

It was just “understood” that a blog must have a way to collect email addresses. Few articles went deeper than that when discusses how important it is to grow an email list, and that resulted in me not taking my email list seriously for a long time (big mistake).

Other than me saying that not growing my email list was a mistake and that the money is in the list, here are six reasons why it is important to grow your email list.

 

#1: Higher click through rate.

If you craft your emails effectively, you will get a much higher click through with an email list than with a social media audience. Based on the number of tweets I send out, the number of followers I have, and the number of visitors I get from Twitter, my tweets as a lump sum get a click through rate lower than 1%.

Although my Twitter presence does equate to hundreds of daily visitors, my email list is proving to bring forth a greater click through rate. For the typical email, at least 10% of the people on my list end up clicking the link in the email. The higher your click through rate is, the more traffic your blog will get, and emailing your list is a great way to produce a high click through rate.

 

#2: Scalar traffic

Touching upon higher click through rates, scalar traffic is another great reason to grow your email list. If you get 10% of the people on your list to click on the emails you send, then you would get more clicks as your email list grows.

If you have 100 people on your email list, that mathematically means you are getting 10 clicks. If you have 1,000 subscribers on your email list, that mathematically means you are getting 100 clicks. Just keep on adding the zeroes, and you will quickly realize how powerful an email list is.

One of the most successful marketers in the world is Brendon Burchard, and he achieved a big portion of his internet fame through a big email list. Burchard boasts an email list of over 1 million people, and if 10% of those people are clicking on the links he sends out, he is getting 100,000 visitors each time he sends out another link.

 

#3: More sales

In order to effectively utilize your email list, you need to interact with the people on that list. One of the ways you can do this is by promoting one of your products. My recommendation is to only have one promotional email every month and make sure the rest are informative, but sending out that one promotional email every month has the power to bring in more sales.

Since your subscribers are seeing you often and reading through your content, it is quite possible to promote one of your products and expect to bring in more sales. All you have to do is send them emails before that point.

Another great way to get more product sales is by creating an autoresponder that sends out a series of emails that are several days apart from each other. Your autoresponder sequence has the power to entice people to buy your products and let them know about your story. Here is the order that you should create your autoresponder to bring in more sales:

  1. An email about an aspect of your story that relates to something your readers may be facing.
  2. An email that provides value such as a lengthy report or blog post for free.
  3. An email about the product itself and what it is all about.
  4. An email that pushes for the sale.

In the first three emails, you should reference the product but not push for the sale. Just include a P.S. here and there about your product and what it has done for others.

The reason the autoresponder sequence takes four emails to pull off is because you want potential customers to be in the right mindset when buying your product. Imagine how likely you would be to buy a product if the salesman rushed over and said, “Buy my product.” Then imagine what would happen if another salesman told you to buy his product who you felt related to and recognized as an expert. You would be more likely to buy from the second salesman than the first one.

 

#4: Powerful product launches

The product launch is one of the most important phases, and some would argue that it decides whether a product becomes successful or not. Your email list is a great way to get more sales which also means it is a great way to have powerful product launches.

For training courses that you create, this can mean a massive amount of customers quickly buy it, and that means you will quickly get new testimonials. For Kindle authors, a powerful product launch means Amazon will start to promote your book more throughout their site. Having lower sales ranks for their books allow Kindle authors to get more sales.

 

#5: Word of mouth

In a world filled with the internet, social media, and mobile phones, word of mouth marketing still emerges as a great way to get noticed. High school gossips still go around, and as a student myself, I know that most of those gossips still take place through word of mouth.

In addition to still existing and reaching out to a variety of people, word of mouth marketing is an extremely valuable form of marketing. When someone tells their friend about you, it’s not in Facebook post that can easily get overlooked. Instead, these people are talking to friends, and when these types of conversations take place, each friend is paying more attention than they would be to a social media post.

Sending emails to an email list will allow you to develop the type of bond with your subscribers that results in word of mouth marketing. Think of word of mouth marketing as something similar to click through rate. Although you cannot track word of mouth marketing statistics, it is possible to create an estimate.

Let’s say that 10% of the people on your email list will tell their friends about you. Then, you can play around with the numbers I mentioned when referring to scalar traffic to determine how many people would tell their friends about you. If you have 1,000 people on your email list, 100 people are going to tell their friends about you. That is 100 extra people who know about you and may end up on your email list. Then, some of these 100 people will tell their friends and some of those friends will tell their friends. It is an infinite loop of people telling their friends about you, your email list growing larger, and you getting more traffic and sales.

Growing an email list helps word of mouth marketing and word of mouth marketing helps your email list.

 

#6: People will remember you

Just because someone reads your blog and enjoys your blog posts does not mean that person is going to be a returning visitor. Some people may forget about your blog while others may get preoccupied by other things. The reason is that there are few visitors who have an extraordinary desire to visit your blog every day, let alone once every 30 minutes.

Since most people do not have this strong desire to visit your blog that frequently, it is possible to see a blog visitor one time and never again. However, if you get a visitor to subscribe to your email list, that person will be able to remember you.

The people will not automatically remember you by subscribing to your blog. Instead, you will remind people of who you are by sending emails to them. If you are someone who cannot remember to all of the blogs you have subscribed to over the years, then you are not alone. I do not remember all of the blogs I have subscribed to since the beginning of my journey, but each time I get an email from that blogger, I am reminded of the following:

  1. Who that person is
  2. Why I subscribed to this person’s blog
  3. The desire to revisit this person’s blog so I can read what I missed

Being remembered is an important way to build an authority on the web, and an email list allows more people to remember you. We are obsessed with our emails. Most of us check our inboxes multiple times every day while some of us are even checking our inboxes once every 15-30 minutes. Insane? Yes, but having your message in other people’s inboxes will almost ensure that numerous people read that message and go to your blog.

 

In Conclusion

Your email list is where the money is, and it is essential for any blogger who wants to make it big on the web. You may have known that already, but now you also know why growing your email list is important.

Just to know that something is important is not convincing enough to take action. I learned that the hard way by not taking my email list seriously for a long period of time. I only took my traffic numbers seriously, but that also meant some people were visiting my blog and not coming back. Some people didn’t come back simply because in their busy worlds, they couldn’t remember me. Being able to send an email to these people’s inboxes would have resulted in them remember who I am and visiting my blog more often.

There are free emailing options available such as WordPress’ Jetpack option, but growing a big email list requires an investment. That is why I invested in iContact which I use to grow my email list.

Are you taking your email list seriously?

5 Ways To Optimize Your Blog For Social Sharing

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One of the two key components to a blog’s success is how many people get to see your content, and if you get numerous people to share your blog posts, more people will see your content. Social sharing is massively important because billions of people are on social media. In addition, whether the people who share your blog post have 100 followers or thousands of followers, they all have audiences.

Since all of these people have audiences, more people will be exposed to your content. Then, with more people seeing your content, it is possible for even more people to share your blog posts on their social networks. As a result, the cycle continues, and numerous people are sharing your blog posts.

In order to get there, you need the traffic, but you also need to prepare your blog for success. Implementing these five methods will make it easier for people to share your content so it reaches more people.

 

#1: Include social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts

There are millions of blogs with social sharing buttons at the bottom of every blog post. One of the reasons why these social sharing buttons are at the bottom of every blog post is because it gives the reader enough time to read through the entire blog post. If the reader enjoys reading your blog post and is then presented with the ability to share your content, that reader will be more likely to do so.

There are some bloggers who place their social sharing buttons at the top of every blog post instead of at the bottom. This is a strategy that will make readers remember that they can share your article at any point. However, some people may forget by the time they read the entire blog post, and then no social sharing buttons will be available.

My recommendation is to place the social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts, but putting them on the top or bottom both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

 

#2: Use Click To Tweet in your blog posts

I experimented with one of my blog posts by making all of the tips 140 characters or less which made each tip short enough to be tweeted. Ever since I published that blog post, numerous people have been tweeting that particular blog post using the custom tweets that I create with Click To Tweet.

The advantage of Click To Tweet is that you get to create a custom tweet with the proper heading and URL. That means your readers do not have to go through the trouble of thinking what to say when they promote your content.

Just to give you an idea, here is an example of Click To Tweet in action for this article. The tweet is prewritten, and you can include a shortened URL in the tweet as well. There are more people who use Bitly and other link shortening service to reduce the amount of characters in a tweet to get more characters. Some people do not like tweeting the long links of other people’s articles, but by using Click To Tweet and already having the shortened URL in the tweet, more people will send it out.

 

#3: Make sure people can pin your images just by clicking on them

Pinterest is a big player on social media, and in order to spread on Pinterest, you must have pictures in all of your blog posts. Having pictures is not optional for spreading on Pinterest because every Pinterest pin requires a picture. The importance of Pinterest is one of the reasons why I spend more time nowadays creating my own pictures.

One great method to get more people to share your pictures, and therefore your blog, on Pinterest is by allowing people to pin a picture just by clicking on it. There are millions of websites that now make it possible to pin an article just by clicking on the picture. If you go back to the picture in this blog post, you will notice a “Pin It” button that appears faintly enough to be seen but not be too distracting.

You may be wondering whether Pinterest is really worth it, especially if you do not have a large audience on Pinterest yet. Including this feature gives other people the ability to share your content to their audiences on Pinterest. That means you may only have 100 followers, but one of the people who pins your blog post may have 10,000 followers. That is a lot of extra exposure just for adding a “Pin It” button on all of your pictures.

I use the Pin It Button For Images WordPress plugin to get the “Pin It” button to appear. Pinterest is gradually making it easier for anyone to pin something just by clicking on the picture, but this is a powerful feature that you want to make sure you have on your blog now.

 

#4: Share your blog posts on your own social networks

The main benefit seen with sharing your blog posts on your social networks is that you will get more traffic. Whether that means 1 new visitor, 10 new visitors, or something higher, sharing your blog posts on your own social networks results in more traffic.

Sharing your blog posts on social media is also a great way to spread on the social networks you share them on. If someone retweets your blog post, more people are seeing it. Some of the people who retweet your tweets may have over 10,000 followers. That is extra exposure that may result in more retweets and visitors as well.

It is great to get other people to promote your content on social media, but you also want to build a big presence for yourself on social media. Building a bigger presence for yourself on social media will allow you to boost your credibility, build strong connections, and achieve the main goal referenced in this blog post: get more people to share your content on social media.

 

#5: Decrease your blog’s bounce rate so people stick around

Just because you get a lot of people to view your blog posts does not guarantee that people share them. In order to boost the chances of someone sharing one of your blog posts, you need these people to stay on your blog for a long period of time. Someone staying on your blog for a long period of time indicates that the person enjoys reading through your content. The people who enjoy your content are the ones who will become returning visitors and let their followers know about your content dozens of times.

I have been thanking people again and again for sharing for sharing my blog posts. Some of the people who share my blog posts are new people that I interacted with for the first time while other people have been sharing my blog posts for several months. The reason someone would continue sharing blog posts from the same blog is because they find that blog interesting. Reducing your blog’s bounce rate will make people stay on your blog for a longer period of time, which may lead to more social shares in the long-term.

 

In Conclusion

The more your content spreads, the more people will be able to see it. As more people see your content, more of them will share it. Spreading on social media works like a chain reaction. If enough people are sharing your content, more people will see and share it.

Some of the people who read and share your blog posts may not be introduced to your blog by one of your social media posts. Instead, someone else who promotes your blog can introduce it to the people in their audience. The more people you get to promote your content, the greater of an impact this strategy has to attracting more audiences to your blog.

Then, with all of the traffic coming in, your blog’s success then comes down to what people do when they visit your blog. Are they subscribing, buying products, and promoting your blog to more people? If your visitors are performing those actions, then you are going to have a very good blogging career.

Do you have a 6th tip for optimizing a blog for optimized sharing?

5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

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5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

Since the beginning of 2014, there has been an ongoing debate about whether guest blogging is still a good way to increase blog traffic. On January 28, 2014, Google said that any attempts to get spammy backlinks by writing guest posts would no longer work. Since this statement, some guest bloggers have stopped writing guest posts because headlines such as “Guest Blogging Is Dead” have appeared more often around the web.

On the contrary, guest blogging is alive and well. There are still people who are utilizing it properly and writing for popular blogs. The guest blogs that allow people to write guest posts are still sending out numerous posts every day. If you are not writing guest posts, you definitely should, and here are five reasons why you should do so.

 

#1: You get backlinks

One of the important takeaways from Google’s statement is that spammy backlinks that you get by writing guest posts would no longer work. When Google says spammy, that’s referring to you writing on a guest blog completely out of your niche. Spammy backlinks refers to something such as you having a social media blog and guest blogging on a fashion blog. The two topics are completely different.

The quality backlinks from guest posts, the ones on guest blogs related to your niche, are still valuable. The person with the social media blog would want to write on guest blogs about social media such as Business2Community and Social Media Today. When you write your bio for your accounts on these guest blogs, be sure to include a backlink to your main blog.

 

#2: You get your content in front of a large audience

When I was struggling to get 100 daily visitors, I often wrote guest posts on Business2Community. Writing these guest posts allowed more people to know about me because I was writing to a larger audience. Business2Community is a blog that gets thousands of daily visitors. Business2Community boasts an Alexa rank under 3,000 and a bounce rate under 40%.

Every guest post I put up on Business2Community got shared over 100 times. Getting shared this many times allowed more people to see my content. Some of these people scrolled down to my bio and visited my blog.

 

#3: You can get more blog traffic

The people who like your guest post may decide to go to your bio and read your blog. This is the common association between guest blogging and getting more traffic for your own blog. However, there are more ways to get traffic from your blog posts.

One method of getting more traffic for your guest posts is by including links to the content on your main blog throughout the content of your guest post. For some guest blogs, including a link here and there to your blog posts won’t be any trouble, but you should check the rules of writing guest posts before implementing this strategy.

Whether you can implement the first method or not, you are getting another backlink for your blog. Backlinks are still very valuable for SEO, and most of the successful blogs that get thousands of daily visitors are getting that traffic from SEO. These blogs also happen to have thousands of backlinks, and that is not a coincidence.

 

#4: You can get more subscribers

There are many guest blogs that allow users to write a bio, and the first three lines of that bio appear at the bottom of every guest post. If the guest blog you are writing on permits you to do this, you should tell your readers about a free prize. That free prize, whether a video or a guidebook, should be related to the guest post you just wrote.

With this in mind, your guest posts should be geared towards the free prize that you already offer. When you write these guest posts, be sure to get them to at least 1,000 words. Writing longer blog posts makes someone read your content longer, and the longer someone reads your content (as long as your content is valuable), the more content that person wants from you.

Your guidebook or video that you tell them about in the three lines that appear at the bottom of every guest post will be the content that they want. When someone clicks on the link, send that person to a landing page. Entering an email address will give that person the ability to read more of your content, and you will have another person on your list.

 

#5: You will become a better writer

In order to be the blogger who people come back to again and again, you need to produce valuable content. Writing more guest posts will allow you to get more practice in. The great thing about writing is that there is always room for improvement. You can be a phenomenal writer, but it is even possible for the best writers in your niche to get better.

By getting more practice with your guest posts, it will be easier for you to write valuable content on your blog as well as any books that you may write in the future. Writing is a powerful skill for dominating the web, and many people utilize it. Whether writing takes the form of a blog post or an email, it is a big factor towards success on the web.

 

In Conclusion

Guest blogging is alive and well. In addition, now is the perfect time to utilize guest blogging. There are numerous guest blogs in your niche that are waiting for contributors like you to submit content. You should strive to write one guest post each week so you can become a better writer and get your content in front of multiple audiences.

Some of these audiences will consist of hundreds of people while other audiences will consist of thousands of people. However, getting quality backlinks for your blog will help your blog posts rank better on SEO and get more traffic. Guest blogging is the perfect win-win because you get your content in front of people, you get the quality backlink, and the person who owns the guest blog gets more content.

Are you a guest blogger, and if not, do you plan on becoming one?

10 Methods To Free Yourself From The Chains Of Writer’s Block

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Getting stuck can be an overwhelming feeling, and in the case of writer’s block, a blogger struggles to think of more content to write. This is a feeling that hinders progress and in some cases, results in a decline in confidence. Even the most experienced bloggers on the web experience writer’s block at some point in their journey.

Luckily, there are ways to free yourself from the chains of writer’s block. Writer’s block is a problem that can be fixed, and by fixing hat problem, it will gradually become easier for you to write content. Eventually, you will be right back at your peak, and the words will be flying across the page. Here are the different methods you can use to free yourself from writer’s block.

#1: Use Topsy

Topsy is a website that allows you to see every tweet ever written. By easily being able to see all of the tweets with a certain keyword, you will see titles that can inspire future blog posts.

If you see an article called 4 Ways To Get More Pinterest Followers, you have several options to play with. You can write an article called 7 Ways To Get More Pinterest Followers or 4 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers.

Changing one word or number in the title gives you the power to create a completely different blog post. That means you can turn one idea you get from Topsy into multiple blog posts. Imagine what you would be able to do if you discovered 10 good tweets on Topsy that could be the inspiration for future blog posts. You may come up with 20 different blog post ideas which will eliminate writer’s block for a while.

#2: Read Other People’s Articles

There are other people in your niche who are also writing blog post after blog post. Similar to how you were able to get ideas from Topsy, you can also get ideas from other people’s articles. There are some bloggers who write titles that grab our attention that we can use to create titles for future blog posts.

In addition to the titles, some of the content in the blog post itself can serve as inspiration for the next blog post you write. Maybe there is a tip a blogger mentions that you can expand upon and turn into a lengthy blog post.

The more sources you have, the better. I have a separate email address that I use to subscribe to other social media experts’ and entrepreneurs’ blogs so I can constantly learn more about my niche and get more blog post ideas.

#3: Watch YouTube Videos About Your Niche

Similar to reading articles, watching YouTube videos about your niche also has the power for you to learn new things and get more blog post ideas. You should subscribe to at least 10 YouTube channels of the people in your niche.

The benefit of a YouTube videos is that you can watch and listen instead of reading text. This makes multi-tasking more possible to implement. An example of this is that you can check your email while watching and listening to the YouTube video at the same time.

If you enjoy watching YouTube videos, you should also consider listening to podcasts in your niche. Podcasts are also great sources of information because some of the hosts ask really good questions, and then the expert on the podcast gives really good answers. Those questions and answers can also be used for future blog post ideas.

#4: Take A Break

There are going to be some days when writing will become difficult. Just because you want to comfortably write again does not necessarily mean that constantly writing until you get out of writer’s block is the right approach.

In some cases, taking a break is the best approach. The worst thing you can do when you are stuck is stay stuck by trying to perform the same action. It leads to frustration, and in some cases, a loss in confidence. When I encounter a writer’s block in which writing through it is not enough, I take a break.

The three main breaks I take are running, playing video games, and reading a book. I only do one of those three, and then I get back to writing. There are some miscellaneous breaks slipped in there, but the main point of these three breaks is to get my mind out of writing. Restarting fresh is better than sticking with writing the content but staying stuck.

#5: Write Every Day

The more you write, the easier it becomes. Many people get stuck in writer’s block because writing comes unnatural to them. In a really good hour, I could write 4,000 words. However, there was a time when I could barely write over 1,000 words in the same timeframe.

The reason I have gotten better at writing over the years is because I write more often. I am approaching 400,000 words for this blog, and I have written well over 100,000 words for my Kindle books.

#6: Write even if you don’t publish

Writing even if you don’t publish is a great way to get more comfortable with writing, and therefore encounter writer’s block less often. I have written numerous articles and books that never got published. One of these books is 40,000 words long while the other book is 25,000 words long. Writing these books gave me more experience.

Would I ever go back and publish these books? I would have to think about it for a while because although the content is there, I wrote the books in 2013. My knowledge and writing have dramatically enhanced, but in order to enhance your knowledge and writing, you need to start. You need to start writing even if you do not publish all of the content.

#7: Write about something outside of your niche

In many cases, writer’s block occurs because a blogger does not want to constantly write about the same things. When I get writer’s block, I am tempted to write another article about getting more followers on a social network, but I already have numerous articles about that.

When this problem occurs, choose to write about something outside of your niche. Just because you write something does not mean you have to publish it. If you are a social media expert, you can write about baseball. It may not be your best content since you do not know as much about it compared to your niche, but writing about something different may be enough to get the ball rolling.

#8: Eliminate all distractions

The more distractions you have, the more likely you are to encounter writer’s block, and when you get the writer’s block, distractions will make you stay stuck for a longer period of time. This is why it is essential to remove the distractions around you.

There are plenty of distractions around us. The distraction that affects the majority of us is the inbox. Anytime a new message comes up, it has turned into a human desire to see what that new message is. When I am writing content, I remove my inbox from my screen so I can no longer see it. Out of sight, out of mind.

In addition, I make sure I am working in a clutter free zone. The more clutter there is on my desk, the more difficult it is for me to concentrate on writing content. Take some time to look at everything on your desk later today and ask yourself what really belongs and what can be removed. Vases can surely be removed, but you may find a good reason to keep a notebook on your desk (writing down blog post ideas, writing down goals to achieve, etc).

#9: Write down the ideas the night before

Every writer has a time of day in which they are very productive as well as a time of day where they are not as productive. For a majority of writers, nighttime is the least productive time of day. It is the time when our bodies are thinking about going to bed instead of writing more content.

It is during these nights where you can brainstorm different blog post ideas. You always want to start off the day knowing exactly what you want to write about. The first hour you wake up controls how the rest of your day goes. If you wake up and are productive, chances are you will be productive for most of the day.

#10: Create an outline for your blog posts

I have been experimenting with a new method which is creating an outline for your blog posts. Although outlines are ideal for the bloggers who write long blog posts that are over 1,000 words long, bloggers who write shorter content can still benefit from the outline.

In an outline, you write down the title of your blog post and the main points that you want to discuss. For this blog post, I wrote the title and the 10 methods that I wanted to discuss. Nothing more, and nothing less. In the end, I was able to turn about 50 words into this blog post.

Creating outlines allows me to come up with more ideas and organize those ideas. Before creating an outline, I would write down a bunch of ideas, but after a week, I would completely forget what I was thinking when I wrote down a certain idea. Wasted opportunity! That won’t happen if you create an outline for your blog posts before writing the content or searching for the next idea.

In Conclusion

Writer’s block is one of the worst things to get stuck with. It affects all bloggers, but how a blogger responds to writer’s block depends on how strong that writer’s block is as well as how long it lasts.

What are you doing to stop your writer’s block?