ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

Tackling the Biggest Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur with Robert Gerrish of FlyingSolo In today’s lesson, I have a real treat for those of you who spend most of your working life alone as solo-entrepreneurs. Over in the ProBlogger Podcast listeners facebook group this week I ran a little poll to see how many of you as listeners work alone vs work in teams. The results were as I suspected - 93% of you work alone on your blogs. Of the other 7% - most had family members or readers volunteer their time to help out a little with some small aspect of their blog but it was largely a solo venture. This is no surprise to me at all because in the regular surveys we do of ProBlogger readers and listeners we regularly get asked questions on some of the challenges that solo-entrepreneurs face. As a result for today’s episode I asked Robert Gerrish to join me. Robert is a coach, teacher and community leader who has a passion for solo business owners. He’s the owner of an Australian site - FlyingSolo and has recently put together an excellent resource for solo-business owners called Soloism. I chatted with Robert earlier today, and I asked him about some of the biggest challenges I see in our community of solo-entrepreneurs. We talk about productivity, focus, loneliness, personal development, motivation, feeling overwhelmed and how to get through times when things don’t seem to work. He also gives us some tools and apps that solo business owners will find useful. If you’re a solo-entrepreneur (or want to be) you’re going to relate to a lot of what we talk about in this episode. I came away from this chat feeling motivated and inspired for my own business and hope you enjoy it to. Listen to this interview in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Overcome the Challenges of Being a Solo Entrepreneur Soloism 20% Discount Link ‘Note: we are an affiliate and earn a small commission if you purchase Soloism but we offer our genuine recommendation for it and the teaching of Robert.’ FlyingSolo.com.au 2x Your Blog Writing Productivity and Reduce Your Stress by Single-Tasking The biggest lesson I learned about Blogging (episode 38) A primer on the Pomodoro Technique Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 181 of the ProBlogger Podcast! My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, event, job board and a series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, beautifully designed and to create amazing content for it and to grow that audience that you’ve been dreaming of and to hopefully make some money from your blog as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I have a real treat for those of you who, if you’re like me, spend most of your time working alone as a solo entrepreneur. I do have a small team who works with me but I spend most of my day by myself and I’m not the only one. I’ve ran the ProBlogger Podcast listeners Facebook group this week, I ran a little poll to see how many of you as a listeners work alone versus working in teams. The result was as I suspected, 93% of you work alone on your blog. You don’t employ anyone, you don’t have anyone volunteering to help you in your blogging. Of the other 7%, most of you said that you had a family member or a reader volunteer their time or someone virtually offering their time in another part of the world. Of that 7%, most of you say you do spend most of your time alone as a solo entrepreneur even though you do have other people involved in the business. This figure of 93% or it’s probably 100% really is no surprise to me at all because every time we survey our readers, we find the same thing and we get a lot of questions from you as...

Ways to Use Facebook Live to Grow Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about Facebook live video which is a technology that has been around for a while now on Facebook and that I think continues to be something that bloggers could get a lot of value out of. We’ve seen Facebook continue to develop it over the last 12 months. Initially, it was only available to larger influencers and verified account holders, then they opened it up to everyone and in the last few weeks they’ve made it so you can now do it from your desktop rather than just using your phone. I know numerous bloggers getting pretty amazing results with FB live - they’re using it to build their brand, grow their audience and make money - so I thought today we’d look at some of the different ways that you can use it to grow your blog and business. Stay tuned my quick top 7 ways to use Facebook Live! Further Resources on Using Facebook Live 30 Practical Tips for Running Great Facebook Live Videos Zoom Webinar Tool Listen to this episode in the player above or on iTunes here (look for episode 180). Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 180 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk about Facebook Live and give you my Top 7 different ways to use this technology that I think has a lot of benefits for bloggers. As I said at the top, my name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and many other things all designed to help you as a blogger grow your audience and make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, we’re talking Facebook Live and we’ve seen over the last 12 or so months Facebook continue to develop this particular aspect of their platform. Initially, it was only available to larger influences or verified account holders but then they opened it up to everyone. I’ve seen a lot of our audience begin to experiment with the technology. Facebook hasn’t just let this technology sit dormant. Over the last few weeks, they’ve made it even easier to do. You can now do it from your desktop, you just need to log into Facebook itself and there’s an option to do a Facebook Live broadcast from your webcam which really opens it up to even more bloggers. I suspect they’re going to continue to develop it even further. I hope they add things like being able to share your screen and to do split screens. You can do a lot of that stuff using other tools and we’ll touch on some of that a little bit later on today. I know a number of you as readers of ProBlogger are already using Facebook Live but I suspect there’s many of you who have been looking at this technology and wondering how you would use it. That’s what I want to focus upon today. Let me give you seven ways to use Facebook Live to help to grow your brand, grow your audience, and to make money from your blog, and to build your business. Let’s get into today’s show. But before I do, I just want to briefly give you some of the why of using Facebook Live and I'm going to whip through these reasons really quickly. Firstly, for me, Facebook Live, the real benefit of it is that it gives you a live interaction with your audience. It’s all about engagement, it’s all about understanding who is reading your blog and who’s watching you because you get immediate feedback. More important than that, it personalizes your brand and it shows your followers, your readers, who you are. I’ve lost track of the amount of people that have contacted me after watching one of my live videos and having interacted with me on a live video. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said things like you're not the way I had previously thought of you,

11 Techniques for Lowering the Bounce Rate on Your Blog In today’s lesson I want to talk about a statistic or metric that is in Google analytics that I see bloggers talking about a lot - that of ‘bounce rate’. Just today I was asked twice about bounce rate and how to get it lower. So in this episode, I thought I’d tackle the topic and will talk briefly about what bounce rate is, about why I see many bloggers not really interpreting it in a helpful way and for the bulk of the episode I want to give you 11 things you can do to lower bounce rate on your blog. Lastly I’m going to suggest some homework that you might want to do! So if you if you’re not sure what bounce rate is or you look at the stat in your Google Analytics and want to know how to get it lower - this episode is just for you! Note: you can find this episode (PB179) here on iTunes if you'd like to listen to it there. Further Resources on How to Lower the Bounce Rate on Your Blog Google Analytics Plugin to Open External Links in a New Window ProBlogger Podcast Listeners Group on Facebook Further Reading on Removing Dates from Blogs ProBlogger Start Here Page Digital Photography School Start Here Page dPS Photography for Beginners Sneeze Page 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules all New Camera Owners Should Know (a sneeze post) How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Getting Blog Readers to Subscribe, Follow and Connect How to Turn First Time Visitors Into Interested Readers of Your Blog (Portal Strategy) Series of Blog Posts vs Long Blog Posts – Which is Better? How to Get People to Comment on Your Blog Posts How to Build a Culture of Community on Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 179 of the ProBlogger podcast! My name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com, which is a blog, a podcast, event, job board, and series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog to create lifechanging content for your readers and to hopefully make a bit of an income for yourself. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. Now today, I’m feeling a little bit strange. Listen to this. Can you hear it? There’s nothing. My house is so quiet today because my youngest son started school this week. Yes, all three of my boys are at school at last. Also it’s been very exciting to see him get in his uniform and waddle off to school with a massive bag on his back. The house is just so quiet. I think it’s gonna take a little time to get used to, but anyway, one of the good things about a quiet house is that I can record this podcast pretty much anytime of the day. I don’t have to set him up with a movie or anything like that or wait till he goes off to preschool. Without further ado, let’s get into today’s lesson. In today’s lesson, what I want to talk about is a statistic or a metric that you can find in your Google Analytics account. It’s one that I see a lot of bloggers talking about. It’s the statistic or the metric bounce rate – your bounce rate. That’s what I wanna talk about today. Even just today, I was asked twice in Facebook groups about bounce rate and how to get it lower, so I thought in this episode, I’d tackle the topic. We’ll talk briefly about what a bounce rate is, for those of you who’ve never heard that term before or maybe you’ve seen it in your Google Analytics and wondered what it was. I wanna talk a little bit about why I think some bloggers aren’t really interpreting bounce rate in a helpful way. For the bulk of this episode, I wanna give you eleven different things you can do to get your bounce rate lower and hopefully improve your blog. The last thing I wanna do is suggest a little bit of homework that you might wanna do to lower your bounce rate...

Strategies to Get Products to Review on Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share 7 strategies that I used to get products to review on my first ever commercial blog - a camera review blog. It’s not always easy to get products to review in the early days of a blog when you perhaps don’t have a big profile so in this episode I rewind the clock to when I was just starting out and share how I did it. So if you’d like to create more product reviews on your blog - this one is for you. Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on Writing Reviews How to Write Amazing Product Reviews How to Write a Must-read Product Review Facebook Group Using Quotes in Your Blog Legally and Ethically Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there! Welcome to episode 178 of the ProBlogger podcast! My name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com, which is a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start a blog, to create amazing content, and to grow your audience and hopefully make some money from your blog, too. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s episode, I wanna share with you seven strategies that I used in the early days of my blogging to get products to review on my first commercial blog, which was a camera review blog. I know a lot of you as listeners do reviews on your blog from time to time. Some of you have blogs that are purely about reviewing products, but it’s not always easy to get those products to review. In the early days of a blog, when you don’t have many readers perhaps and not have a big profile, it can be particularly hard to get those products. This is exactly the problem that I faced in my early days, and so today, I wanna give you seven strategies to get some products to review. Some of them are a little bit obvious, and some of them are quite creative and I hope will be helpful to you. If you wanna create product reviews for your blog, this episode is for you. You can find the show notes, transcript, and some further reading over at ProBlogger.com/podcast/178. Just before I start though, I also wanna make one other note. I have in the last couple of days changed our Facebook group’s name. It was previously a group that I’d called “The ProBlogger Challenge Group.” It was purely for sharing challenges for you as listeners, and I decided in the new year to broaden the group a little bit. Now it is called “The ProBlogger Podcast Listeners Group.” If you do a search on Facebook for “ProBlogger Podcast Listeners,” you’ll find it, and we will be still doing some challenges. But I also wanted to open it up a little bit more to discussing each episode and maybe even making a challenge for each episode. If you’ve got any questions or tips that you wanna share with the group, you can do that there. Again, do a search for “ProBlogger Podcast Listeners” or click on the link in today’s show notes. That’s enough of the logistics. Let’s get into today’s show where we are going to talk about reviews. The topic for today’s episode comes from Paul [Sutcliffe 0:02:40], who in a recent Facebook Live that I was doing asked me a question, which I answered in the Facebook Live, but then afterwards thought of a whole heap more that I could say on the topic. This is the question that he asked. He said, “How do people go about doing a good review of a product before you’re in a position to be having them sent to you by the product sellers? Do you spend your own money on them to start with or get info from other reviews and sources on the internet?” This is a great topic. Actually as I was answering it on the Live, it made me think back to my own early days of blogging because I started out, as many of you know,

Six Ways to Boost Traffic on Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about getting your traffic kick started in the new year. Many bloggers struggle with getting traffic momentum early in the year after the holiday period traffic slump that most of us go through because our readers are not online as much or after we’ve taken a bit of time off blogging - and it can be frustrating to come back to your blog and see traffic lower than it was last year. In this lesson, I want to give you 6 things you can do to hopefully boost your traffic a little and to hopefully get it back to where it was or even higher. So if you’re looking for a boost in traffic - today is for you. Further Resources on Strategic Blogging Combined with Blogging from the Heart BuzzSumo Tips on Creating More Shareable Content Interview With Donna Moritz on Repurposing Content Into Slidedecks Creating Community Challenges and Content Events Tips on Creating Guest Content Tips on Building Your Profile Through Comments on Other Blogs Tips on Using Autoresponders I talk about “having a fight” in 3 Ways to Define What Your Blog Is About Ultimate Guide to Landscape Photography Ultimate Guide to Street Photography Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey! It’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 177 of the ProBlogger podcast! As I said, my name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com, which is a blog, a podcast, an event, job board, and series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and to make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, I wanna talk about getting your traffic kick started for the new year or (if you’re listening to this in a few months’ time) after you’ve had some kind of a slump in traffic. Many bloggers struggle with getting traffic momentum early in the year. Maybe it’s because your readers have been away over the holiday period. I know a lot of Aussie bloggers particularly struggle at this time of year because a lot of their readers are away at the beach or have just had holidays. They’ve not been online as much. Or maybe it’s because you’ve been away, and you’ve stopped blogging for a couple of weeks to have a break. Whatever the reason, whether it’s end-of-the-year slumps or mid-year slumps – because I know a lot of American bloggers have a mid-year slump when a lot of their readers go away for summer holidays. In this lesson, I wanna give you six things you can do to hopefully boost your traffic, to give you a bit of a kick start in terms of traffic after a slump, and hopefully get things back to where your traffic was or even higher. If you’re looking for a boost in traffic, today’s episode is for you. You can listen at ProBlogger.com/podcast/177, where I’ll have some show notes and further readings and further listening for you as well. Let’s get into today’s show. I got an email this morning from one of my readers, who said, “I’ve had a slump in traffic over the holidays and the new year and need to get things back on track. What should I do?” A number of things come to mind. Some of what I wanna share this morning, I have touched on in previous podcasts, so I’m gonna refer back to those where I have done that. Six things came to mind. Half of them are content-related, and half of them are not. I’ll start with the content-related ones because sometimes renewing your focus on content can kick start traffic and help to build some momentum on your site. The first thing that I would be doing if I had just had a bit of a slump in traffic – perhaps my traffic had plateaued, and I wanted to take things to the next level – is to really focus upon creating shareable content. This is something that I definitely have talked about in previous ...

Techniques to Create Scannable Content for Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share a simple way to write content that is much more likely to be actually read, understood and acted upon by your readers. We’re going to talk about techniques for creating more scannable content for your blog. As bloggers, we put a lot of time into carefully choosing the right words for our blog posts but many times what stops people really engaging with our content is the way those words are arranged on the page. They’re very often presented in a way that is too hard to read and inaccessible to many people. As a result our posts go unread, get no comments and have little chance of being shared on social media. So if you’re someone who wants more readers, more engagement and more sharing of your content - learning to write more scannable content is a skill that you will want to develop and this episode is for you! Further Resources on Scannable Content: 19 Techniques to Create it How to Write Like a Human 5 Google Font Combinations That Will Make Your Blog’s Design Sing Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 176 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com; a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger, to start a blog, to grow your audience, and to help make money from that blog. You can find more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to share something really quite simple. It’s a skill that is going to help you with all of the content that you create for your blog. It’s going to help your blog to be more read by the readers who come to it, it’s going to help those readers to understand what you are trying to say to them, and to take action upon the content that you create. It’s also going to help you to get more shares on your content too. Today we’re talking about techniques for creating scannable content on your blog. As a blogger, you probably put a lot of time into carefully choosing the right words for your blog posts. We all do that. We all really think hard about those words, the things that we’re trying to convey. But many times what stops your readers from actually engaging with the content that you put a lot of time into is the way those words are arranged on your page. They’re very often the right words but they’re just not arranged in the right way and they’re presented in a way that is either hard to read or inaccessible to some of your readers. As a result, our posts go unread. They get no comments or few comments and they have little chance of being shared because people aren’t actually reading the content, they’re not comprehending it. If you are someone who wants more readers, more engagement, more sharing of your content, then today’s episode is for you because learning to write scannable content is a skill that you will want to develop. Again, let’s get into the techniques for today’s show. Studies show that the average person only really comprehends about 60% of what they read. That’s a little bit depressing as a blogger. It’s no wonder that this is true because another study that I came across today found that only 16% of people read websites word for word, 16% of people read the content that we write word for word. Most people today simply don’t read every word that is in front of them, they scan what they’re reading. I know this to be a fact because it’s exactly what I do. When I first arrive on a website or a blog, I tend to do a very quick scan around the page without scrolling whatever I see above the fold. If I see something that interests me, then I might scroll down further. But really, it’s an initial scan of the page to see if the content looks like it is relevant to me and if it’s good enough ...

How to Think About Giving up Your Day Job for an Online Business In today’s lesson I want to tell you a story - a story of advice I was given when I was starting out that I ignored - a story of regret and a story that I hope might move you to taking some action! Listen in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Quit Your Job and Build an Online Business Becoming a ProBlogger – A story in Many Parts How to Start a Blog in 5 Easy Steps Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, its Darren from Problogger and welcome to Episode 175 of Problogger podcast. As I said, my name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com; a blog, a podcast that you’re listening to now, an event, a job board, and series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience. And if you haven’t started a blog, to start a blog too and to make money from that blog. You can find out more about problogger at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to tell you a story. It’s a story of advice that I was given when I was just starting out, advice that it turns out I completely ignored. It’s a story of regret and a story that I hope might move you into taking some more action in your blog and your business. Have you ever been given the advice don’t give up your day job? Back in 2004, I was given that advice numerous times, quite a few in fact. I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half and I just discovered that you could make money from blogging. Now, by no means was it much money. I was only making a few dollars a day at first but I was beginning to see the possibilities of monetizing blogs. The dream of going full time as a blogger had begun to grow in my mind. At first, I didn’t tell anyone about this dream of going full time with my blogging but as my income begin to grow, I couldn’t help myself. I began to tell a few friends and family members about these dreams. Whilst most of my friends and family were very encouraging, or at least they humored me without saying anything negative, I did get that advice quite a few times when I would tell them that one day I might become a full time blogger. Their advice was “don’t give up your day job.” Often, those words were said in a gentle, joking tone. It was kind of almost like a “don’t give up you day job.” It’s kind of a funny saying people would say. But sometimes, they were actually telling me not to give up my day job and their advice was well meaning. And in some ways, it was wise advice too because who had ever heard of a full time blogger back in 2004? Most of my friends didn’t even know what a blog was, let alone know of anyone who was a full time blogger. There was some wisdom in their advice and it was well intentioned. I didn’t take it to heart and I certainly didn’t let those words have much of an impact upon me because basically over the coming years, I did begin to give up my day job. I would say actually it was day jobs because at that time, I was working a number of part time jobs. I was working as a youth worker and a minister in a church. I was working in a factory packing parcels, I was working in an catering kitchen putting food on trays, I was working as a casual laborer doing things like assembling Cirque De Soleil tents. I only did that one day, it was too hard for me. I was also studying part time. I had the luxury of having lots of different jobs that I was working. Gradually over the coming year or so, I began to give up those day jobs. It was a gradual process, it certainly didn’t happen overnight and it took me a year or so to really give them all up to the point where I was a full time blogger. I will link in today’s show notes to the full story if you are interested in reading that. Over that time, I did begin to give up those day jobs.

An Alternate Resolution to Transform Your Blogging in 2017 In today’s lesson I want to talk about New Year’s Resolutions and Goals and want to suggest setting a goal that I think will help to set your blogging up for a great year of blogging. In fact - I’m really excited about this episode because it’s an alternative way of thinking about New Year’s goals and resolutions - something I’ve never really considered before that I am really excited to try myself. So if you’re looking at the new year and are wondering how to make it the best year ever for your blog - this episode is for you! Further Resources on An Alternate New Year’s Resolution That Will Transform Your Blogging for 2017 How to Set Blog Changing Goals for the New Year Start The New Year off Right with Jeff Goins’ Three Secrets to Full Time Blogging Setting Goals: Why You Need Them, and How to Write Them How to Do an End of 2015 Blog Audit: Take Stock of What You’ve Achieved and Where You’re Headed Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 174 of the ProBlogger Podcast and a very Happy New Year to you. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind www.problogger.com, a blog podcast event job board, a series of eBooks, and a real-life paper book, one of those old fashioned ones, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and to make money from your blog. You can find out more about all of those things that we do at ProBlogger at www.problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about New Year’s resolutions and goals being the 2nd of January. I want to suggest setting a goal that I think will help to set your blogging up for a great year of blogging. In fact, I’m really excited about this episode because it’s an alternative way of thinking about New Year’s goals or New Year’s resolutions. It’s something that until today, while I was out of my walk, I’d never really considered before. I’m really excited to share it with you and to try it myself. If you’re looking at the New Year, 2017, and wondering how to make it the best year for your blog, I hope this episode will help you do just that. You can find today’s shownotes with some links to some further reading that I’ve got for you at www.problogger.com/podcast/174. Happy New Year! This podcast should go out on the 2nd of January 2017. I’m actually recording it though on the 27th of December from a little bit few days ago and I’m currently recovering from a very hot Christmas. It’s summer here in Australia and Christmas Day for us was 36 degrees Celsius which was about 97 F for those of you who aren’t used to Celsius. We spent most of the day, on Christmas Day, swimming in a swimming pool, my mother-in-law’s swimming pool. It was a bit of a hot day, a little bit different too. I know how many of you who celebrated the day and spending your time at this time of year because I’ve been watching some of you who are snowed in on Instagram at the moment. But now that Christmas is over and preparations at our house are turning towards New Year’s Eve. We actually will be celebrating and staying in the New Year with five other families who are coming over for the evening. We tend to get together with the same families every year. This year, there are 10 or I think about 15 kids should be pretty noisy and a lot of fun. Every year, as part of that celebration, the conversation tends to turn to New Year’s resolutions and goals for the coming year. Over the last few days, I’ve been pondering my own goals and resolutions, my own plans for 2017. Now I’m not huge on resolutions but I always do set a few goals for my personal life, my health, my relationships, as well as my business, as well as my blogging. I’ve talked a lot about goals in the past. In fact, if you want to go back and listen to episode 77 after you finish this o...

Using Quotes in Your Blog Legally and Ethically In today’s lesson, I want to talk about using quotes on your blog. I’m regularly asked - particularly by new bloggers - what the etiquette and legalities are around using content that others have written in your own content - or the practice of quoting others. It’s a good question because quoting others and building upon their ideas with your blog can be one way to improve the quality of your content, serve your readers and build relationships with others (the ones that you quote). Having said that - using the content with others in inappropriate ways is something I see semi-regularly and it can really hurt (if not destroy) your reputation if you don’t do it right. There’s no need to worry though - it’s not hard to get right and in this podcast I’m going to share why quotes are beneficial, why you need to do it right, some tips on how to do it and lastly I want to share some ways to use quotes on your blog to create different types of content. Listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How to Use Quotes in Your Blog Content Legally and Ethically 8 Tips for Using Quotes and Dialogue in Your Blog Posts The Why, How and When of Using Quotations on Your Blog How to Cite Sources & Not Steal People's Content on the Internet When Do You Need to Secure Permissions? ProBlogger Facebook Challenge Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, and welcome to Episode 173 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of eBooks, and a real book, too – all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your blog to create amazing content, to build community and engagement with your readers, and hopefully to make some money from your blog as well. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, the last of 2016, I wanna talk about using quotes on your blog. I’m regularly asked, particularly by new bloggers, “What’s the etiquette and legalities around using content that other people have written on their blogs or in their books or in other forms? How do you use that in your own content?” or I guess, questions about the practice of quoting other people. It’s a great question because quoting other people and building upon their ideas with your blog’s content can be one way to really improve the content on your blog. It’s a great way to serve your readers (and we’ll talk a little bit more about why that’s the case) and to build relationships with others, the people that you quote. There’s a lot of benefits of having quotes in your content, but having said all that, using content from others in inappropriate ways is something that I do see people doing semi-regularly. It can really hurt, if not destroy your reputation as a blogger, if you don’t do it the right way. That might sound a little bit harsh, but I have seen people’s profiles and credibility really ripped to shreds because they haven’t done it right. That might sound harsh. I just want to say right up front, there’s no need to worry. It’s not hard to do right. This podcast is all about doing it the right way. In this podcast, I wanna talk a little bit about why you should use quotes, how to do it right, some tips on practically how to do it, and I wanna share some ways that you can use quotes and begin to practice using quotes in your content to create different types of content. You can find today’s shownotes, where I will link to some further reading on this topic that we’ve published on ProBlogger and some reading that I found in researching today’s podcast at ProBlogger.com/podcast/173. I do just wanna take a quick moment to say that this is the last episode of 2016.

Michael Stelzner on Building a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others In today’s lesson, I want to talk about how to build a business around creating content that is based upon interviewing other people. To help me do that, I have invited my friend Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World onto the show because he’s someone who I’ve seen build an amazing business relatively quickly in the social media space. In the early days of that business, he did it simply by interviewing others. I first met Mike at a blogging and social media conference, in 2009, where he interviewed me and quite a few other speakers at that conference. In 2009, Mike was brand new to the scene. I’d never met or heard of him. As we discover in the interview that follows, he had little to no experience in social media at that point. However, within a year or so his blog - Social Media Examiner - was one of the go-to blogs on the topic, and today his event ‘Social Media Marketing World’ is one of the go to events on the planet. He’s built an incredibly successful business around Social Media. Listen to this podcast above in the player or here on iTunes. In this interview, we take a step back in time to 2009, and I ask Mike about that first conference. I ask him: Why he took the approach he did, How he got so many influencers and speakers to agree to be interviewed by him as an unknown and the benefits of doing those interviews. We then talk about Mike’s tips for preparing to interview influencers How to conduct yourself during the interviews And what he does after the interview to grow the relationship further Lastly: We talk about some of the new ways of doing interviews today. Mike did most of them in person face to face in the early days but today with podcasting, live video and other technologies there are some amazing opportunities. He gives some tips on choosing which medium to use How to monetize this type of content And shares some tools that can be really useful - particularly if you’re looking to do live video This interview sparked numerous ideas for me, as we spoke, and I’m confident whether you’re just starting out or are a more experienced blogger that you’ll come away with some great ideas and practical takeaways too! Further Resources on How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others Social Media Examiner Social Media Marketing World Huzza Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there! It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 172 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com – which is a blog, a podcast, an event, a job board, and a series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start a blog, to grow that blog and the audience reading that blog, and to create amazing content to change the lives of your readers, and at the same time, to build a sustainable, profitable blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, I wanna talk about how to build a business around creating content on your blog or on your podcast or video channel that is based upon interviewing other people. To help me do this, I’ve invited my friend Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner onto this show today because he’s someone, who I have seen build an amazing business relatively quickly in the social media space. In the early days of that business, he did it simply by interviewing other people. In fact, this is how I first met Mike – at a blogging conference. It was a blogging and social media conference back in 2009, where he interviewed me and quite a few of the other speakers at that conference. Back in 2009, Mike was brand new to social media. I’d never really heard of him before and certainly ...

How I Doubled My Blogging Income to Achieve the Most Profitable Month In today’s lesson, I want to talk about my blogs monetization strategy that is responsible for our biggest month of profit every year. Back in December 2010, I rather impulsively did something on my photography blog that led to our biggest month of earnings ever. It almost doubled a normal month of earnings on my blogs. It was our very first 12 deals of Christmas campaign. In this episode, I want to walk you through exactly what I did that first year and talk about how we’ve evolved that campaign over the last 6 years and have expanded it to run other campaigns and to start a whole new sister business for Digital Photography School. Listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on How I Doubled My Blogging Income and Had My Most Profitable Month Ever Check out Digital Photography School where the 12 days campaign is kicking off Here you can see the deals in our first year: 24 Hours Left to Save on our End of Year Photography Deals A podcast in which I talk about my first eBook/product and give tips on how to create your first products too. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 171 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger, founder of ProBlogger.com - a blog, podcast, event, job board and series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger grow your audience, to create content that helps that audience, and to make money from that blog – to build a profitable blog. That’s what ProBlogger is all about. You can learn more about it and find all those eBooks and the job board over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about a part of my blog’s monetization strategy that is responsible for my biggest month of profit every year. Back in December 2010, I rather impulsively did something on my photography blog that led to our biggest month of earnings ever, to that point. In fact, it almost doubled a normal month of earnings on my blogs in two weeks. It was our very first 12 Deals of Christmas campaign. I’ve talked about 12 Deals of Christmas or 12 Days of Christmas numerous times on ProBlogger, but never really gone into the specifics of it. I kinda mentioned it and kinda described it in a sentence or two, but in this episode, I wanted to walk you through exactly what I did on that very first year and talk about how we’ve evolved that campaign over the last six years, have expanded it to run other campaigns during the year, and also how we expanded it to start a whole new sister business for Digital Photography School. As I’ve said, I’ve never talked in this detail about these 12 Days of Christmas campaigns before, so I hope you find it useful to you. I’m going to share the shownotes as well as some further reading and some links to some of what we’ve done over on the shownotes at problogger.com/podcast/171. Okay, let’s get into it. As I said, today I wanna talk to you about 12 Days of Christmas, the campaign that we’ve been running on Digital Photography School. Now the idea for this particular campaign back in 2010 really started quite simply. In the lead up to Christmas that year, I wanted to put some of our eBooks on special on Digital Photography School. Digital Photography School to this point had been running for about three to three-and-a-half years, and we had launched three eBooks in the previous year-and-a-half. I’ve talked a little bit about the first eBook that we launched Portrait Photography eBook in the previous episode, which I will link to in the shownotes today. Really the idea was to find a way to put that eBook and the other two that we launched since on sale the week or so before Christmas because I was thinking it might be something that people might give ...

How to Stay Inspired and Avoid Bloggers Burn Out In today’s lesson I want to talk about blogger burnout and how to avoid it. Most bloggers start out blogging with an incredible burst of passion, excitement and energy with their blogging, but usually at some point within the first year or two, many bloggers come up against their first bout of blogger burnout. It can happen in different ways and for different reasons. Some bloggers push through it and others get stopped in their tracks by it. Most successful bloggers go through it numerous times - I certainly have. So in today’s episode, I want to share 9 strategies for staying fresh and inspired with your blogging so that you can avoid bloggers burn out. So if you’re feeling burnt out at the moment or you want to get ahead of your next blogging slump and develop some strategies for avoiding it altogether - this is for you. Note: listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes (look for episode 170). Further Resources on 9 Ways to Stay Inspired and Avoid Bloggers Burn Out The Biggest Lesson I Learned About Building a Profitable Blog in 2015 7 Productivity Tips For Bloggers Battling Blogger’s Block – Where do you get Stuck? Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to Episode 170 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of eBooks, and a real book as well – all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and to make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, I wanna talk to you about an issue that impacts most bloggers at one time or another – blogger burnout. I wanna teach you how to avoid it, give you some strategies that you could put in place when you’re facing bloggers burnout at the moment or whether you want to stop it happening to you in the future. Most bloggers do start out blogging with an incredible burst of passion, excitement, energy, with lots of hopes and dreams of where their blogging will take them. As a result, they start out really strong, but usually at some point, within the first year or maybe two years of blogging, they come against their first bout of blogger burnout. It can happen for different reasons and happen in different ways. Most bloggers tend to push through it, or at least try to push through it – that first bout. But some, even at the first time they hit it, gets stopped in their tracks. Now, most successful bloggers go through this numerous times, and I certainly have. I can think back over the last 14 years of blogging. I’ve hit bloggers burnout many times. In today’s episode, I wanna share with you nine strategies for staying fresh and inspired with your blogging, so that you avoid bloggers burnout. I’m gonna speak from my own experience of having gone through this or having seen bloggers burnout approaching me, and I’m getting better now at seeing it coming before it actually hits and putting things in place as it approaches to actually stop it hitting in full force. So if you are feeling burnt out at the moment with your blog - it does happen at this time of year for many of us – or you wanna get ahead of your next bout of blogging burnout, I wanna share with you some strategies for avoiding it today. This episode is for you. You can find today’s shownotes at problogger.com/podcast/170. Yesterday, I celebrated my blogger-versary. I might sound like a bit of a crazy thing to do, but I do have a little alert in my calendar that goes off on the 27th of November every year. It’s actually the 28th today, and so last night, I turned to Vanessa and said, “Guess what? It’s my blogger-versary! It’s been 14 years since I started blogging to this day.” Started in 2002.

Transitioning From Single Author Blog to Multi Author Blog In today’s lesson, I want to talk about hiring writers for your blog. In order to do so, I want to share a case study of how I took my own photography blog from a single author blog, publishing 3 posts a week, to a blog that now has around 50 writers, and I don’t write anything. Most bloggers start out blogging as single author blogs and many remain that way. Even so, I’m regularly asked by bloggers how to add new writers to their blog without putting off their readers. So in today’s episode, I want to share a few reasons why a multi-author blog might be worth considering, and I want to share the 3 stages I went through to make the transition from single author blog to having a paid team of regular writers. Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. Some of the topics discussed today include: How I found my first guest writers Where I currently find new writers How I transitioned from relying upon guest posters to having a writing team How I took readers on that journey So if you’ve ever wondered if you should consider adding new voices to your blog - this is for you. Further Resources on Strategic Blogging Combined with Blogging from the Heart Create 10 Blog Post Ideas for your Blog ProBlogger Job Board Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 169 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com - a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience to create great content, to build your readership, and to ultimately make money from your blog, if that is your goal. You can find today’s shownotes over at problogger.com/podcast/169, and you can learn more about ProBlogger, the brand, and all the things that we do at ProBlogger.com. Now in today’s lesson, I want to talk to you about hiring writers for your blog. To do so, I want to share a case study of how I took my own photography blog, Digital Photography School, from being a single-author blog, where I published three posts a week, to a blog that now has around 50 writers and an editor working for me, in which we now publish 14 posts a week, and I don’t write a single one of them. Most bloggers start out blogging as a single-author blog, and most probably remain that way. That’s totally fine, but I am regularly asked by bloggers if they should add new writers, and if they should, how to actually find those writers, without actually putting off their readers and disillusioning their readers. That’s what I want to talk about in today’s episode. I want to share a few reasons why a multi-author blog might be worth considering, some of the costs of doing it, but I also want to share the three stages I went through to transition from being that single-author blog to having a paid team of writers. I want to talk about how I found my first guest writers and share some techniques in getting some user-generated content, content that you don’t have to pay for, at least not in financial terms. I want to talk a little bit about where I find my new paid writers, and I want to talk a little bit about that transition from single-author blog to multi-author blog and how I took my readers on that journey. So if you’ve been wondering about whether you should add new authors to your blog, this is the episode for you. You can find today’s shownotes, where I will have some further reading, and there’s a full transcript of what I have a feeling might be a slightly lengthy show. There’s a lot of information I want to take you through. You can find those shownotes at problogger.com/podcast/169. Grab a drink perhaps because this is gonna be a meaty episode.

Edit Your Blog Posts With Seven Simple Steps A lot is taught about the importance of writing great blog posts, but it is in the editing of your writing that your post can really be made to shine. If left unedited, it can create a very different impression that can hurt people’s view of you and your blog. In today’s episode, I want to share with you a simple 7 step process to editing your posts. We’re going to talk a little about proof reading but also some bigger picture editing too - because really fixing spelling and grammar edits are just a small part of this. So, if you know your posts could be lifted in quality by having a simple process to walk through to edit your posts - this one is for you. And if you know a blogger who could benefit from this episode - please do share it too. Listen to this post in the player above or here on iTunes. Further Resources on 7 Steps to Editing Your Blog Posts 9 Crucial Tips for Self-Editing Your Blog Posts (That Every Blogger Can Use) Making your content sound more human Crafting irresistible blog intros and openings Crafting great titles How to create great calls to action Visual editing and polishing your posts 10 Points to Pause as you create blog posts Last week’s Million Dollar Blog Post and Challenge Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to Episode 168 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a real book as well which you can find on Amazon all designed to help bloggers to grow their audience and to make money from their blogs. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. You can also search for that book over at Amazon, just searching for ProBlogger. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about something that I think is really important for bloggers, and that’s something that I know some of us attend to avoid. That is editing our blog posts. Let us talk about the importance of writing great blog posts and creating great content which is definitely important but it’s the editing of our writing where our post can really be made to shine. Left unedited, it can be kind of left pretty average. Not editing our posts can really hurt the impression that people have of us and our blog. It can come across as really careless when we don’t edit. In today’s episode, I want to share with you seven simple steps to editing your blog posts. We’re going to talk a little bit about proofreading which I know is what many of us think about when we think about editing but we’re going to get way beyond just proofreading our content because editing really is a much bigger picture thing. Fixing your spelling and grammar is important but it’s just a small part of the process. If you know, like I do, that your post could be lifted in quality by having a simple process to work through to edit your posts, this episode is for you. If you know a blogger who could benefit from this, please do share it with them. You can share it by sending them to problogger.com/podcast/168 where I will have lots of further reading for you as well. I’ve got quite a bit of material that I want to point you to. Editing is so important. I want to present to you seven steps for editing your blog posts. The first one is something that you need to do before you start writing. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that good editing starts with good planning. Planning before you write will help you so much in the editing process. The more planning you put into your blog post, the better it will be in terms of structure, quality, and the more benefits you’ll have for your readers as well. One of the things I try to do before I create any blog post, before I create any podcast,

How to Overcome Blogger Procrastination In today’s lesson I want to talk about an issue that I think is at the heart of why many blogs don’t reach their potential. In fact it’s an issue that I think is at the heart of why many people don’t reach their potential in many areas of life. Listen to this episode here on iTunes. I want to talk about procrastination and why we so often don’t do what we know we should do. In this episode I’ll share a quote from my mum that changed my life. In this episode I’ll share a couple of stories of my own procrastination and how I pushed through it to achieve some pretty remarkable things. In this episode I’ll share with you a challenge that I hope will help us all to get something off our ‘someday’ list and put it onto our ‘today’ list If you’re someone who procrastinates and perhaps feels that they’re letting opportunities pass them by because you’re not taking the action you know you should take - this episode is for you. Further Resources on How Procrastination Stopped Me Writing a Million Dollar Blog Post How to Start a Blog 10 Surefire Ways to Overcome Blogging Procrastination 7 Tips for Avoiding Procrastination. Without Delay is the Easiest Way. Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU Challenge: Identify one thing that you have been avoiding. Tell someone about it - tell someone in your ‘real life’. Tell us in the Facebook Challenge Group (here's the specific thread to comment on) Put a date on it of when you are going to do it by Get to work! Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 167 of the ProBlogger podcast, an episode that I think could just be the most important episode I’ve ever done. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a book all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to talk about an issue that I think is at the heart of why many bloggers don’t reach their potential. In fact, it’s an issue that I think is at the heart of why many people don’t reach their potential in many areas of their life. Today, I want to talk about procrastination and why so often we don’t do what we know we should do. In today’s episode, I’ll share a quote from my mum that changed my life. In today’s episode, I’ll share a couple of stories of my own procrastination and how I pushed through that to achieve some fairly remarkable things. In this episode, I’ll share with you a challenge that I hope will help us all to get something off our someday list, something we’ve been procrastinating on and to put it on our today list. If you’re someone who procrastinates and perhaps feels like you’re letting opportunity pass you by because you’re not taking action that you know you should take, this episode is for you. I want to start today‘s show with a quote from my mum. I quite often quote Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein and other such people on my Twitter account at @problogger but I added to my tweets recently this quote from my mum because I realized that it’s something that had really shaped me and really put the finger on an issue that had been a bigger part of my life and that had potentially held me back in many ways. This is the quote, “Your life will be better if you take action on the things you avoid.” It’s a very simple idea. Your life will be better, your blog will be better, your business will be better, your relationships will be better if you take action on the things that you avoid. That’s a bit of a paraphrase because my mum used to say this in many different ways and she started saying...

Factors to Consider When Shaping Content Strategy for Your Blog In today’s lesson, I want to share 11 factors to consider when thinking about developing your blog’s editorial strategy and thinking about your blog’s editorial style. The success of your blog hinges on many factors but among the most important of them is your content. Putting thought into what content you want to focus upon creating is crucial. What I share with you today will help you to create a framework for content that not only serves your current readers, but will hopefully make your blog stand out from the many other blogs in your niche. This episode is perfect for anyone just starting out with blogging, who is thinking about content for the first time, but I also think it’s great for anyone who has been blogging for a while who wants to review and renew their editorial strategy. Further Resources on 11 Factors to Consider When Shaping the Content Strategy for Your Blog Vanessa’s Blog Style and Shenanigans Why Evergreen Content is the Best Investment of Time for a Blogger How Inspiring Your Readers Drives them to Search for Information (and Interact) 52 Types of Blog Posts that Are Proven to Work How Many Posts Should a Blogger Post? [Pros and Cons of Daily Posting] How Often Should You Blog? (Hint: The Answer Might Surprise You) ProBlogger FAQ: How Long Should Posts Be? Series of Blog Posts vs Long Blog Posts – Which is Better? How to Decide if You Should Start on a New Social Network or Medium Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to Episode 166 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, and series of ebooks all designed to help bloggers grow their audience and make money from their amazing blogs. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to share 11 factors to consider when thinking about your blog’s editorial strategy and coming up with your own unique blogging style. The success of your blog really does hinge on many factors as you’ll know from listening to previous episodes. There’s many things that do help to grow your blog but among the most important of them is obviously content. Putting thought into what content you want to focus upon creating is so important. What I want to share with you today will I hope help you to create a framework for content that not only helps you to serve your current readers but also to help you to create a blog that stands out from the many other blogs in your niche. This is a question I get asked a lot is, “How do I make my blog stand out?” Whilst there are many factors, I think ultimately it will come down to your content as one of the most important factors. This episode today is perfect for anyone just starting out with blogging who’s thinking about content for the first time. You may be starting a blog and thinking, “What should I be writing about?” This episode will help you. I think it’s also perfect for anyone who’s been blogging for a while where you want to review your content and to renew your editorial strategy. I do have a lot of further reading today and I encourage you to open these notes up as you listen if possible over at problogger.com/podcast/166. Let’s get on with today’s show. It was recently asked a question on a podcast interview that I really struggled to answer. It stumped me even though the question was quite simple in some regards. The question was this, they asked, “In the early days of your blogging, how did you develop your blog’s editorial style and strategy?” Whilst on the surface this does seem like a very simple question to answer for someone who’s been blogging, I’ve really struggled to answer the question because I knew the interviewer was looking for some pr...

An Interview with Daniel Flynn - Co-founder of Thankyou In today’s episode, we hear from Daniel Flynn, co-founder and Managing Director of Thankyou a social enterprise that sells consumer products like water, nappies, hand sanitiser and much more here in Australia and soon to be New Zealand. They give 100% of their profits to end extreme poverty. Daniel closed day 1 at our event, a couple of months ago, with the most remarkable of keynotes. The title of his talk was Turning Stumbling Blocks Into Stepping Stones and he spoke about the story of Thankyou, from the very beginning (8 years ago), when Daniel and his co-founders were in their early twenties and stepped up to start Thankyou. His session was remarkable and the most highly rated session of our event this year. In fact, it was right up there with the best session we’ve ever had in terms of ratings. In this interview Daniel shares a few highlights from the event but also gives advice on: Comfort zones The importance of being a learner Celebrating the wins before moving on to the next thing A powerful tip for those struggling to have enough time A tip for confronting fear The other voice you’ll hear in this interview is Karly Nimmo who helped me out by interviewing some of our speakers from the event this year. Karly is another of our speakers and is from Radcasters.com - a podcasting school. There’s lots of goodness in this interview! It goes about 14 minutes, and at the end I’ll chime back in with a few thoughts on what they covered. Further Resources on an Interview with Daniel Flynn Co-founder of Thankyou.co Thankyou Radcasters ProBlogger Event Virtual Ticket Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Daniel: I know it’s a numbers game in blogging and online it’s all about the numbers. When it comes to making a difference, I love the thought of the one. If we can impact the one person, it doesn’t sound like much. If everyone did that, our world would look completely different. Darren: That was the voice of Daniel Flynn, founder of an amazing organization by the name of Thankyou who we are so lucky to have as a guest on our episode today. Welcome to episode 165 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, and job board as well as a series of ebooks, and I keep forgetting to say a real book that you can find on Amazon called ProBlogger. They’re all designed to help you to grow as a blogger. To create your audience, to build engagement with that audience, and to make money from your blogs. You can find all the information you need about ProBlogger over at problogger.com. Particularly look for the start here page if you’re new to ProBlogger. In today’s episode, we do hear from Daniel Flynn, the Co-founder and Managing Director of Thankyou, a social enterprise that sells consumer products. They started out selling water but have moved on to many other products like hand sanitizer and even recently have launched a whole baby line of nappies and other baby products. They sell here in Australia and soon to be in New Zealand and I suspect you might see them oversees internationally over the years too. They give 100% of their profits to end extreme poverty. Whilst they started out small as just a three young people in their early 20s, they have really found a foothold here in Australia and they’re in all major supermarkets. Daniel closed day one of our event a couple of months ago, the ProBlogger event, with the most remarkable of keynotes. The title of his talk was Turning Stumbling Blocks Into Stepping Stones. He spoke about the story of Thankyou and took us right back eight years ago when they started out, when he and his co-founders were in their early 20s and they stepped up and started Thankyou.

3 MORE Tips to Help You Increase Your Productivity In today’s episode, I want to continue on from the previous episode and share 3 more thoughts on how to become more productive and build healthy habits around your blogging and in your life. While normally our episodes are designed as stand alone episodes this one really does build upon the last one, so I would encourage you to listen to that one first if you haven’t done so, yet. In it I talked about: Starting with your why and building goals around it The power of saying ‘it’s just what I do’ and ‘normalising’ the habits you’re trying to build through making appointments with yourself Building Systems rather than thinking just about building ‘good habits’ Today I want to extend upon these ideas and talk about how I got my own weekly system or routine to the point it’s currently at - because it didn’t just happen! Listen to this podcast here on iTunes (or in the player above). Today I’ll share: The power of ‘leveling up’ your habits My approach to when you can’t keep your schedule up And how I stay sane as someone who doesn’t like systems - but has one! So if you’re someone who struggles with managing your time or have tried to build good habits but have failed to stay on track - this episode is just for you. In Today’s Episode 3 MORE Tips Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits Start with Small Things and ‘Level Up’ Never Miss 2 in a Row Create Space to play Further Resources on 3 MORE Tips Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits 3 Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 164 of the ProBlogger podcast. I’m the guy behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, an event, a job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help you to grow your blog and to achieve your dreams as a blogger. You can learn more about ProBlogger and see all our latest episode and the tutorials that we publish every couple of days on ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I want to continue on from the previous episode and share three more thoughts on how to become a more productive blogger and how to build healthy habits that help you to achieve your blogging goals, but also goals in other areas of your life as well. Normally, our episodes are designed to be stand alone, you can just listen to one and then move on. This one today definitely builds upon the last one. If you haven’t listened to Episode 163, I do encourage you to go back and listen to that one first because everything I say today builds upon that. In that previous episode for those of you who need a recap, because it’s been a few days, I talked about starting with your why and building your goals around that why. I talked about the power of saying, “It’s just what I do,” and normalizing the habits that you’re trying to build through making appointments with yourself. Lastly in the last episode, I talked about building systems rather than just thinking about building good habits. Today, I want to extend upon those ideas and I want to talk about how I got my own weekly system or routine to the point it’s currently at because it didn’t just happen. Today, I’m going to talk about the power of levelling up your habits. I’m going to talk about my approach when you can’t quite keep that schedule up for different reasons. Lastly, I want to talk about how I stay sane as someone who doesn’t like systems but is living my life by one. If you’re someone who struggles with managing your time and you try to build those good habits in the past but have failed to stay on track, this episode is just for you. Continuing on from that last episode, today I want to start by talking about starting with sm...

3 Tips to Help You Increase Your Productivity In today’s lesson, I want to chat about how to be more productive in your blogging (and life) through building good habits and systems into what you do. It’s so easy as an online entrepreneur to slip into bad habits when it comes to using our time or to lead a life where we spend our time frantically moving from one urgent thing to another without really putting much thought into what we need to get done. So today, I want to share with you 3 things that have helped me to begin to form good habits in my blogging, business, and many other aspects of my life. So, if you’re someone who struggles with managing your time or have tried to build good habits but have failed to stay on track - this episode is just for you. In Today’s Episode on 3 Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits Start with your goals and why. The power of saying ‘It’s just what I do’. Think Systems - not habits. Further Resources on 3 Productivity Tips to Help You Build Healthy Habits Is Your Blog Being Hurt by Your Obsession to Create New Content? Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 163 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. I blog, podcast, event, job board and series of ebooks, all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience, building engagement with that audience and to make some money from your blog whilst hopefully making the world a better place too. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to chat to you about how to be more productive in your blogging and life through building some good habits. In fact, I want to talk about building a system around these habits in what you do. It’s so easy as an online entrepreneur, as a creative, to slip into bad habits when it comes to using our time and to lead a life where we spend our time frantically moving from one urgent thing to another or really responding to the agendas of other people without putting too much thought into what we need to get done. Today I want to share with you three things that have helped me to begin to form good habits in my blogging, in my business, and to be honest, many other aspects of my life because these things really do apply beyond blogging. If you’re someone who struggles with managing your time or have tried to build good habits in the past but have failed to stay on track like I have many times in the past, this episode is just for you. I’ll link also to the next episode once it goes live because this is a two-parter. I’m going to share three tips for you today and then we’re going to build upon those three tips in episode 164. If you’re listening to this a week or so later, you can listen to two today. Let’s get into talking about how to build good habits for your blog, business and life. Anyone who’s been listening to this podcast for a while now knows a few things about me. In fact, you probably know quite a few things about me but two of them in particular which have been recurring things. Firstly, I’m not a naturally organized person. If you’ve done the myers-briggs personality assessment, I have IMNINFP. The P part is the bit that’s off the charts for me. That P aspect of my personality, it’s me not being a great planner, it’s me not being naturally ordered, it’s me not knowing from one moment to the other what I’m going to do next. I’m an impulsive kind of person and I don’t like to be pigeon holed. I joke quite a bit with my team who are all the opposite to that P part. They’re all J personalities and that they all love spreadsheets and I don’t and they’re much more ordered. In some ways, I’ve hired the right kind of people because it really does help me to keep on track.

How Lisa Corduff Took Action and Built a Six Figure Business In today’s episode, we hear from Lisa Corduff from lisacorduff.com in an interview that Karly Nimmo from Radcasters recorded at the ProBlogger event a few weeks ago. Lisa spoke at the event in one of our most highly rated sessions titled ‘Anyone Can Create an Online Product’. It was a session that resonated with a lot of attendees. Lisa is a whole foods blogger who had been blogging and had a facebook page for a couple of years without tremendous growth but decided to ramp things up. She started a free 21 day challenge which really took off and then created a paid 8 week program to offer to her community called ‘Small Steps to Whole Food’. This led to her building a six figure business - all with 3 kids aged 4 and under (one a baby of 4 months). This episode is now available for listening to in the player above or here on iTunes (look for PB162) In this interview Lisa shares a few highlights from the event but also gives advice on: What to do when you feel tempted to compare yourself to others The power of taking action What to do when fear shows up What she wishes she knew when she was starting out The power of having a ‘posse’ And how to make the most of the time you have Also note - Lisa is one of the most effective users of video that I've seen - she uses it to drive sales of her products, build reader engagement and grow her brand. This week just just announced a new course on how to use video that I highly recommend you check out. If you sign up before the end of October you'll save $50. Please note: I'm an affiliate for Lisa's course but also make this as a genuine endorsement. Lisa's the real deal and gave some amazing advice at our event. Check it out if you want to learn to use video better. Further Resources on How Lisa Took Action and Built a Six Figure Business Lisa Corduff Lisa’s Video Course Karly Nimmo of Radcaster’s Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Lisa: I still wouldn’t have done anything if I didn’t have a deadline. Launching that free challenge, giving people a date that they could expect that something was gonna get in their inbox, made me move. Darren: That was the voice of Lisa Corduff who is the feature of today’s podcast. Welcome to episode 162 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event which you’ve just heard a snippet from, job board and series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience, to build engagement with that audience and to monetize your blog. You can find out more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. As I just mentioned, today, we have a special interview with Lisa Corduff from lisacorduff.com. It’s an interview that Karly Nimmo from Radcasters recorded at the ProBlogger event after Lisa had just gotten off stage after presenting at the event. Lisa spoke at the event and was one of our most highly rated sessions. She did a session entitled Anyone Can Create An Online Product. That was a session that really resonated with a lot of our attendees. You’re going to hear why it resonated in a moment with this interview. Let me tell you a little bit about Lisa so you’ve got the backstory of it. Lisa is a Whole Foods blogger who has been blogging and had a Facebook page for a couple of years without tremendous growth, she talks a little bit about that during this interview but she decided to ramp things up and started a free 21 day challenge which really took off with her audience. Off the back of that, she created a paid eight week program to offer to her community called Small Steps to Whole Food. This process lead her to build a six figure business while she had three kids at home all under the age of four,

Three Things That Could Be Limiting the Potential of Your Blog In today’s lesson, I will highlight 3 things that I see a lot of bloggers ignoring - or not paying enough attention to - that could be limiting the potential of their blog. Note: this podcast is available here on iTunes. Subscribe there to get notified of all new episodes. It can be difficult to know where to turn your attention to when it comes to blogging. While we do each need to work out our own priorities with our blogging, these are 3 things I think most bloggers wanting to build traffic and income should focus their attention on. If you’re interested in traffic and blogging income - today’s episode is for you. I was on a panel at an event recently and the moderator asked the panel to name 3 things that most bloggers don’t pay enough attention to on their blogs - things that could be limiting their potential. Today I want to share the 3 things I said. Each of them are things that if ignored won’t kill your blog - but could be really limiting the potential of your blogging. Each of them have the potential to bring a lot of life to your blogging. Further Resources on 3 Things Most Bloggers Don't Pay Enough Attention To 5 Mistakes Bloggers Make with SEO and What To Do About Them Create an Opt-In to Increase Your Email Subscriber Numbers How I Increased the Subscriber Rate on My Blogs by 80-1000% How to Drive Traffic and Profit in your Blogging with Autoresponders How to Create Your Blog Content Calendar Email Services and Tools Mentioned on 3 Things Most Bloggers Don't Pay Enough Attention To AWeber MailChimp ConvertKit SumoMe OptinMonster Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there bloggers, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 161 of the ProBlogger podcast. As I said, my name is Darren and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board and series of ebooks all designed to help you to grow your audience and to make money from your blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, I want to highlight three things that I see a lot of bloggers ignoring or at least not paying enough attention to. These are three things that by ignoring, you could be actually limiting the potential of your blog. It can be so difficult to know where to turn your attention to when it comes to blogging, what you should be focusing upon. Whilst we need to find out our own way through this, we need to work out our own priorities based upon our blog’s goals, these three things I think are very important when it comes to building your traffic and building an income from your blogs. If that’s what you’re interested in, building traffic, building a blogging income, today’s episode is for you. Recently, I was on a panel at a conference and was asked by the moderator to name three things that most bloggers don’t pay enough attention to on their blogs, three things that could be limiting those bloggers in their blogging. The question was one that I really enjoyed pondering. Luckily, I was the second person to answer it so I did have a little bit of time to consider my response. In today’s episode, I wanna share the three things that I said. Each of these three things are not things that will kill your blog, not like if you ignored them, they’re not gonna kill your blog. I have three things that could be limiting the potential of your blog and how far your blog could rise. They could actually on the flip side bring a lot of life to your blogging if you do focus upon them. Let’s get into them. The first one is search engine optimization. Before some of you are ready to hit pause on this podcast because it’s something that you just started a lot to do, can I encourage you to listen on just for a few minutes...

Challenge: Write an Opinion Post on Your Blog In today’s episode, I’m issuing you with a challenge to create a piece of content that centers around your opinion on a topic relevant to your audience. Adding your opinion to your content is such an important way to make your blog more useful to your audience, and it also makes it stand out from the crowd. Today, I’m going to share with you not only why opinion posts are so important, but I also want to give you some practical tips on how to structure your opinion post. I’m also going to give some tips on what to include in your piece of content. This is one of our monthly challenge posts, so I’m not only going to teach you how to create on opinion post, but I’m also going to challenge you to create one. Challenge: Publish your post. If you think this challenge would be interesting to your audience please link to this episode of the podcast/shownotes - we would love more bloggers to join. Once you’ve created and published your opinion post - head over to our Facebook group and look for the thread for this challenge and share the link to your content. Once you have - please check out some of the posts other people have created. Then please visit, like, comment, share, and encourage others to do the same. Further Resources on How to Write an Opinion Post on Your Blog Facebook Challenge Group How to Write an Opinion Piece for a School Newspaper How to Write a Strong Opinion Piece How to Write an Opinion Essay Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to episode 160 of the ProBlogger podcast, my name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board, a series of ebooks and numerous other things all designed to help you as a blogger to grow your audience and make money from your blog. You can find out more about ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I’m going to issue you with a challenge. It’s part of a monthly series of challenges. Today’s challenge is to create a piece of content that centers around your opinion on a topic relevant to your audience. Adding your opinion into your content is such an important way to make your blog more useful to your audience but also that might get standout from the crowd, I strongly believe that. That’s my opinion. Today, I want to share with you not only why opinion post is so important but I also want to give you some practical tips on how to structure your opinion posts and also some tips on what to include in the basic content that you’re going to create for this month’s challenge. This is one of our monthly challenge shows. I don’t want to just teach you how to create an opinion post but I want to challenge you to create it and to share it with our other ProBlogger podcast listeners in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook. I will link that to our Facebook group or you can head to Facebook and do a search for the ProBlogger Challenge Group and join that group. Okay, some of you will have no problem with this particular challenge whatsoever. You have lots of opinions and you do not mind sharing them at all in your conversation but also on your blog. This is the central type of post that you create on your post, on your blog but for many bloggers, myself included, sharing your opinion is something that may not come naturally for you. I was brought up by my parents, who I love dearly, to keep my opinions to myself. As a result, it’s something that I found as a blogger took me way outside my comfort zone particularly when I first started. I was always thinking to myself as I was considering sharing my opinion, “What are other people going to think about this opinion?” “How are they going to react?” “Are they going to share their opinion?” “Will their opinion differ to mine?” I guess, for me mostly,

Link Building Tip - Generate Hundreds of Links for Your Blog in 5 Minutes a Day In today’s lesson, you are going to learn a simple technique that has generated 100 new links for my blogs in the last month. This technique is fairly simple, and it only takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to do it. Yet, this technique is quite powerful. Incoming links to your blog are important because they drive traffic to your site from other parts of the web, and they also help you to rank higher in search engines like Google. Higher rankings also lead to more traffic. So, if you want more traffic and a bigger profile in the search engines this episode is for you. Further Resources on How to Generate Hundreds of Links for Your Blog in 5 Minutes a Day The Simple Tip That Gained Us Over 200 Backlinks WPBeginner Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships 5 Mistakes Bloggers Make with SEO and What To Do About Them Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 159 of the ProBlogger podcast. I’m your host, Darren Rowse, the founder of problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help bloggers to grow their audience and make money from their blogs. If you want to know more about ProBlogger, you can check it out at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, you’re going to learn a simple technique that has generated 100 new links for my blogs in the last month. It only takes me about five to ten minutes a day to do it so it’s fairly simple and yet it’s quite powerful. Incoming links to your blog are important because they drive traffic to your site from other blogs, other parts of the web. They also help you to rank higher in search engines, Google in particular, which again leads to more traffic. If you want more traffic and a bigger profile in the search engines, this episode is for you. Let’s get into the tip for the day. Today’s tip is really quite simple. It’s not rocket science at all yet it’s incredibly effective as I mentioned in my introduction today. I first came across this one from our friends over at BuzzSumo. I’ll link to the blogpost because it is a few weeks old now, actually it’s probably a couple of months old now. They in turn got the idea from Syed Balkhi from WPBeginner. The tip is really simple and in essence it is to look for mentions of your blog or keywords that are relevant to your blog and articles on your blog on other people’s blogs and to reach out to those bloggers to see if there’s an opportunity for them to link to you. As I said, this is not rocket science but it really does work and I want to walk you through the little system that I’ve built, the workflow I guess that I’ve built to do it. This is something that I think many bloggers probably have done once or twice but what I want to suggest to you is that it’s useful to put aside five or ten minutes a day, longer if you’ve got it, to do this because it really is quite effective. I use a tool called BuzzSumo. I use the paid version but there’s a 14-day trial as well so you can see if it suits you. There are other tools around that do similar types of things. For example over at Mars, they also have a tool as well. I think there is this called Link Opportunities. It doesn’t really matter what tool you use, but I use BuzzSumo so that’s what I will refer to in this episode. I’ve got no affiliation with them whatsoever, it’s just a tool I like and it is a tool that has other features as well. What I do with BuzzSumo, they have a little monitoring tab and in that monitoring tab I plug in a few things. I’m monitoring a few different words. Firstly, I’m monitoring my brand names, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. And then I’m also plugging in some keywords that are relevant to my niche. As I’ve said before,

Feeling Stuck? How to Regain Momentum Are you feeling stuck with some area of your blogging or business life? If so, today’s episode is for you because I’m going to talk about getting unstuck and building momentum. What we are going to talk about today applies to many areas of life, but we are going to focus particularly on blogging and business. I am going to share with you a simple tip to help you get unstuck. Take imperfect action is a theme that came up numerous times at the ProBlogger event.The first time I heard this term was a few years ago from Jadah Sellner of Simple Green Smoothies at the World Domination Summit, and it has stuck with me ever since. Many bloggers can relate to getting stuck. Whether it is fear, perfectionism, or analysis paralysis stopping us. Taking imperfect action can get us moving forward again. Further Resources on Feeling Stuck? Here's How to Get Moving Again Listen to this episode here in iTunes. How to take imperfect action 3 Questions to Ask When Facing Fear Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Are you feeling stuck with some aspect of your blogging business or life? If so, today’s episode is for you. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to Episode 158 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk about getting unstuck, building some momentum. What I want to talk about today really applies to many aspects of life but I guess we’re particularly focusing in on blogging and business. I want to share with you a simple tip to help you to get unstuck. One of the themes at this year’s ProBlogger event that we didn’t plan but came up in many of the presentations that happened was take imperfect action. It came up numerous times. The first time I heard the term or the phrase was at the World Domination Summit a few years ago where Jadah Sellner from Simple Greens used it. I'm not sure where it originated from, I’d love to credit the original source of it. Ever since I heard Jadah use it, it stuck with me. I shared about it a couple of years ago at the ProBlogger event. Ever since I shared it, it’s been a recurring theme at the event as well because many bloggers really relate to this feeling of getting stuck. Many times as bloggers, we feel paralyzed with different aspects of what we do. As I said before, this applies to many areas of our life. It’s a human feeling in many ways. For some of us, it’s fear that stops us and paralyzes us. For others, it’s perfectionism, that’s a big one for me. Sometimes, it’s analysis paralysis. We get so stuck in trying to work out how to do something that we never actually take action. For some of us, it’s because we don’t have a clear idea of the big picture of where we’re headed, sometimes we can’t take action because we don’t know our final destination. For others of us, we feel we need to know more. We need to develop a skill or we need to develop confidence or we need to meet more people or we need more money before we can take a certain action. For others of us, it’s a problem of comparing ourselves with others, it’s a problem of feeling like what we want to do has already been done by everyone or everyone else does it better than us so we can’t achieve a certain standard. For some of us, it’s just an overwhelming feeling not knowing what to do first. There’s a whole lot of different reasons that we could be stuck in not taking action and for some of us it’s a combination of these things. I really relate to a lot of the things I’ve just run through there. For me, I guess I sometimes get so many ideas that I feel a little bit confused about which ones to do first. That’s a strong one for me. Another one for me is fear, I often worry about what people will think about me, how I will sound, how I will come across, what if I make a mistake.

An Interview with Brian Fanzo - Perfection is a Fairytale Today, I have a great conversation to play for you. It’s a conversation that we recorded at the ProBlogger Event with our opening keynote speaker, Brian Fanzo from iSocialFanz. Brian is someone that I’ve admired for the last couple of years. I happened to stumble upon Brian on Periscope, where he was discussing using live video and high level methods of using newer social platforms. Brian knew what he was talking about at a technical level, but he also really had heart. I think that is what attracted me to subscribing and following Brian around the Internet. He not only knows video and social media like Snapchat, he also lives it in a meaningful way. That is why I wanted to interview Brian and get him on the podcast. I was busy being a host at the ProBlogger Event, so I asked Karly Nimmo of Radcasters to conduct the interview. Over the next few weeks you will hear a number of interviews by Karly that were taken at the ProBlogger Event. Today Brian and Karly cover a lot of ground, and Brian shares a lot of tips about perfectionism, fear, productivity, and more. Enjoy! Further Resources on Perfection is a Fairytale - An Interview with Brian Fanzo Brian Fanzo at iSocialFanz Karly Nimmo at Radcasters Podcasting School Virtual Ticket Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there friends, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here, welcome to Episode 157 where today I’ve got a great conversation to play for you. It’s a conversation that we recorded at the ProBlogger Event with our opening keynoter, Brian Fanzo from iSocialFanz. Brian is someone that I’ve admired for the last year or two years. I first came across him on Periscope where I just happened to stumble onto this channel where this guy wearing a baseball cap was talking at a really high level about using live video and some of the newer social platforms that were coming out at the time. Brian was a fast talker and he knew what he was talking about on a technical level but also had real heart. I think that’s what really attracted me to Brian and to subscribing to him and then following him around the internet wherever he went for a while afterwards. That’s the reason we wanted to get him out at the event today because he’s someone who not only knows a lot about live video and some of the newer forms of social media like Snapchat but he’s someone who lives it and he’s someone who uses it in a good way, in a heartfelt way. We wanted to get Brian into the podcast like a number of the other speakers that we had at the event this year, we decided that maybe we could get them in front of a couple of microphones at the event itself. I wasn’t the best person to visit the event because I was being a good host so we asked Karly Nimmo from Radcasters if she wouldn’t mind doing a few of these interviews. Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear a number of these. Today, we feature Brian who was the opening keynote, he’s probably the best one to do as an opening interview. They cover a lot of ground in the next 17 minutes. They start off talking a little bit about the event itself on what Brian talked about but then they get into some tips. Brian shares a number of these key messages of his presentations, he talks particularly about perfectionism which I found really useful. It was interesting during his opening keynote when he talked about perfectionism, people started taking notes and tweeting like crazy. He’s got some good stuff to say on that. They talk about fear, they talk about productivity, they talk about many different aspects of trying to be in lots of different places online. This is something that Brian does have some expertise on. I encourage you to sit back, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and have a listen to Karly and Brian. At the end,

11 Techniques for Writing Great Blog Post Titles Today, I’m going to talk about crafting the titles for your blog posts. This is such an important topic, and I can’t believe I haven’t done a podcast about it in the last 155 episodes. This is a topic I get asked about quite a bit. Get your title right and it will completely change the destiny of your blog post. This may sound a little bit grand and overstated, but it is true. People make a decision on whether they will read and take action on your post purely based on the title. It’s crucial that you spend time on your title and get it right. Note: this podcast can be listened to on iTunes here (look for episode PB156). Further Resources on Tips for Writing Great Blog Post Titles How to Write Catchy Headlines and Blog Titles Your Readers Can't Resist 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work 5 Easy Tricks to Help You Write Catchy Headlines Here Are The 101 Catchy Blog Title Formulas That Will Boost Traffic By 438% Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 156 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk about crafting the titles for your blog post. This is such an important topic and I can’t believe I haven’t done a podcast on it in 156 episodes so today is the day because I do get asked about it quite a bit. Get your title of a blog post right and it can completely change the destiny of that blog post. That might sound a little bit grand and overstated but it is completely true. People make a decision whether they will read your post, whether they will take action ultimately on your post many times purely based upon that title. People make decisions about whether they will share your post very often without even reading the post, simply by the title. It’s crucial that you spend some time on it and you get it right. Those few words at the beginning of your blog post that are a little bit bigger than the rest of your post, that are in bold, that are in heading tags at the top, that title of your blog post can be the difference between your post being read and spread like a virus through the internet like a wildfire or it languishing in your archives never to be read, ever. The difference is stock. A good title can really change the destiny of your post, as I said in my introduction. Your blog post title matters for a few reasons. It is going to be in search engine results. Apart from a small description underneath it, there’s very little for someone to go on as to whether they’ll click your link or the link below or above it. Your title will appear in RSS feeds. Again, depending on how much information you have in your RSS feed, they may only see the title and perhaps the opening lines of your post. It’s important to make a decision as to whether they will click through and read the full post based upon that title on that opening. Very often when other bloggers link to you in social media or on their own blogs, they simply copy and paste your title and then add the link. Again, people on social media reading other posts will make a decision as to whether they will click that link based upon the title. Of course, even on your blog, your title is really important as well. If someone clicks a certain category depending on how you have your blog designed, they very often will only see maybe featured image and the title of your post. They will click around on your site based upon the title. In each of these occasions, the title can be one of a couple of things that people will see and make a decision upon. It’s probably the most important factor in terms of getting people to read a post. If you write a boring or a complicated or a confusing title, or one that is so intriguing but doesn’t actually have any compelling reason to click on it,

The 5 Top Tips from Full Time Bloggers Today, I want to give you some advice. It’s not advice from me. It’s advice from about 50 full-time bloggers that I surveyed about two years ago. I was testing a survey software, and I sent the survey to some bloggers that I knew. I asked all of them one simple question What is the number one tip you would give a new blogger who is just starting out and dreaming of becoming a full-time blogger? In Today’s Episode 5 Tips from Full Time Bloggers Listen to this epsiode in the player above or here on iTunes (look for episode 155). Just be you. Speak in your own voice. Consistency Be persistent Give it a go Do something meaningful. Further Resources 5 Tips from Full Time Bloggers ProBlogger Virtual Ticket Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to Episode 155 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Almost forgot what we’re up to there. Today, I want to give you some advice. It’s not advice from me, it’s advice from around 50 full time bloggers that I surveyed about two years ago. It’s about two years ago I was testing out a new piece of software for surveys. Whilst I haven’t gone on to use this software anymore, I did do one survey using it and it was a survey that I did send out to full time bloggers that I knew. I asked them a simple question, one question. Quite a few of them answered. The question was this, “What’s the top piece of advice, what’s the number one tip you would give a new blogger just starting out who had dreamed of becoming a full time blogger?” I thought when I sent this out that I would get all kinds of strategic advice, that I would get really practical, actionable advice. You know what came in? It really surprised me. I sent it out to 50 bloggers and almost all of them came back to me with five responses, five common answers. That’s what I want to share with you today, these five things that I think are great things for us to all hear as bloggers, whether we’re just starting out or whether we’re well on the road to becoming full time or whether we’re even full time. These are five great reminders that I hope will help to keep you on course towards reaching your dreams for your blog, whatever that might be. The first theme that I came up with as I looked at this 50 was to be you, just be you. In fact, this is what one person wrote. “Just be you. Speak in your own voice, and don’t try to be anyone else. Swim in your own lane.” Another person simply said, “Be yourself.” A third person said, “Keep it real.” A fourth person said, “Find your authentic voice.” Someone else said, “My best tip is to write about what you love and have experience in. Honesty comes out in your writing.” Another person said, “Only write about what you're passionate about, your own unique experiences.” An eighth person said, “Don’t copy, find your own voice and use that. Remember, cover bands don’t change the world.” Two more on this theme, “If you are passionate about something, let that shine through in every aspect of your blog. Don’t be so caught up in watching stats, gaining followers, and forget why you began blogging in the first place. Be authentic and make those connections organically because those are the people who will stick with you over your journey as you go through your ups and downs, and it will be a rollercoaster,” they said. One more person said, “Write about something that you are genuinely interested in. In a crowded space, the best way to stand out is to be you. There’s no one like you. Your story, your opinion, your voice, your humor, they’re all unique. Tap into that.” I love that advice, be you. It gets said a lot and sometimes it takes us a little while to work out who we are. I do think, as I look at successful bloggers,

Grow Your Blogging Income Today, I am going to continue on from episode 153 where I outlined a timeline of how I added different income streams over time. I felt like there was a little more I could say about diversifying your income in that way and growing your income. I think there are some principles that you can pull out of the story. I hope that you find these observations and words of encouragement helpful. Further Resources on How to Grow Your Blogging Income How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger How to Make Money Blogging Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 154 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today I want to continue on from the last episode, 153, where I outlined the timeline of how I added different income streams over time. I felt like there was a little bit more I could say about diversifying your income in that way and growing your income because I think whilst hearing a story, I think there are some principles that we can pull out of this story. I hope that you find these observations and words of encouragement helpful for you. Let me get into a few thoughts on that story I have told you. Let’s start off by talking about three ways that you can grow your blogging income. You will have heard in that story three things that I’ve done over time to grow my income. The first one, probably the most obvious one in that particular story, was that I diversified my income streams. I did this right from the start, I had AdSense and Amazon Affiliate Program. One earned me a dollar a day, one earned me a few cents a day. It wasn’t really that spectacular a story, I have to admit. Along the way, you heard me tell how I added a second ad network. That was a really important moment for me where I added Chitika on top of my AdSense earnings. That almost doubled my income over night. That was a really important moment, it was an exciting day. The same thing happened when I moved from just having advertising and affiliate promotions as the bulk of my income and then started to create ebooks. Within a couple of months, I again doubled my income streams. That was a little bit more spectacular than just going from a few cents a day to a dollar a day. Diversifying your income streams is something that I think a lot of bloggers who have been blogging for a while, most of them are really focusing in on one or two income streams. Maybe there is a way that you can exponentially grow your income in a relatively short time because you’ve done a lot of that hard work already of building your audience up. If you’ve got an audience, if you’ve got engagement, that is perhaps a bit of a shortcut. It’s still going to take you a lot of work but it’s definitely something to consider. A couple other things that you can do to grow your income in addition to diversifying your income streams. Firstly, and these aren’t rocket science but these are things that you need to be working on all the time. Grow your traffic, you heard me talk about that first year where I didn’t have any income streams, that was a year where I put time into growing my archives of content, building traffic, and deepening engagement with my readers. Growing traffic is something that’s really important. I realized very early on, literally within a day or two, that I could double my AdSense income by doubling my traffic. You can’t always double your traffic and that doesn’t always translate over because different types of traffic convert for different types of income streams at different rates. The principle applies through all the income streams that I outlined in the last podcast, all of them will grow up if you are able to increase the amount of traffic that you have and also the quality of traffic that you have as well.

My Blogging Income Streams Today, I’m going to talk about my income streams. In episode 150 I talked about how I make money blogging and broke it down by percentages. Today I want to follow that episode up with the context. People may think that my report seems big and unattainable. People also have a tendency to compare themselves which isn’t a fair comparison because it is just a snapshot at the end of a journey. In today’s episode, I am going to walk you through the last 13 years of my life, and through the timeline of how I have added income streams over that time. Update: I've continued this mini series of posts with one more in episode 154 in which I talk more about how to grow your blogging income further. In Today’s Episode How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger Note: you can listen to this episode here on iTunes (look for episode PB153). November 2002 - I get an email from a friend that says, check out this blog. I liked what I saw, and I began blogging. I had no idea that you could make money from blogging. I just did it because I enjoyed it. I spent a whole year learning about blogging. I wrote a lot of content and got better as a writer. I built traffic to my site. I built engagement with my readership. Years 2 and 3 - I started experimenting with monetizing. I built a second blog where I reviewed digital cameras. The reason I began experimenting with monetizing was that my blogs were costing me money and taking up a lot of time. Google AdSense - Text based ads that I started putting on my blog. I was earning a few cents a day. Amazon Associates Program - Link to products on Amazon and I earned a few cents a week. I was mostly linking to books. I learned that if I was going to make more than a few cents a day, I needed to grow my traffic. Optimizing income streams. Optimized AdSense - more ads, change size, change position and colors. Better placements and calls to action with Amazon affiliate ads. With those 2 income streams, my income became close to full time. Now, I’m going to talk about ProBlogger and Digital Photography School Years 4 and 5 - I added a few more income streams. Direct ad sales - Advertisers were targeted my site. I knew Google took a cut, so I reached out directly to advertisers. $20 a month on first one. Other affiliate programs Promoted eBooks and products for other blogs Added other advertising networks. Yahoo and Chitika At first, I thought it would decease my AdSense, but it held study. Light bulb moment - my income will increase with adding income streams ProBlogger Book Published by Wiley ProBlogger - 6 Figure Blogging Course Years 6 and 7 - I added 3 more income streams Paid speaking Experiment with some consulting - Blog Coaching - didn’t really suit my personality Adding in the ProBlogger Job Board - small income at first, it has grown over the years and it gets 4 - 7 new jobs a day Years 7 through 11 - I really focused on building products. First one was an eBook - For Digital Photography School - It took me 4 months and I had to learn about shopping carts and everything else involved. It sold $70,000 in the first 11 days. This was a culmination of years of building engagement and putting it all together. Launched an eBook on ProBlogger A brand new income stream in a few months. Having my own products opened my eyes to a whole new world. We have since launched 35 eBooks. A membership site on ProBlogger - a closed community with webinars etc. Not a lot of engagement, and I didn’t feel like I was contributing a lot of value. May tweak this idea in the future. 2007 - First ProBlogger Event - These have a lot of expenses, but they are an income streams. Printables on Digital Photography School Years 12 and 13 - The last two years. Extending the idea of eBooks and creating products

Embedded Content Challenge Today, I want to give you a challenge to create a certain type of content. This is in the vein of our blogging groove challenge which we did about six weeks ago. I’ve just returned from the ProBlogger Event, and I am inspired. I received a lot of listener feedback about how the podcast has helped listeners and how the challenge series have had a positive impact on listeners. I hope to do one challenge a month. Instead of completing the content in 24 hours, I would like to give you seven days to complete the challenge. The new challenge is to create a piece of content that features embeddable content. Then share it on our facebook challenge group. Further Resources 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back 31 Days to Build a Better Blog How to Cut Out the Subject From the Background in Photoshop 9 Composition Techniques to Use to Improve Your Photography Review: Light Painting Brushes – Tools for Creativity Tips on Taking Your Blog to the Next Level With Embeddable Content Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 152 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to issue you with a challenge to create a certain type of piece of content in the vein of our Blogging Groove Challenge which we did about six weeks ago. Before I tell you about today’s challenge which I know many of you are looking forward to and have been asking for, I want to just let you know that the ProBlogger event just finished in the last few days. I'm just back from it, I'm feeling both excited and exhausted. Most of my team are as well, but mainly excited and mainly inspired. I'm probably going to do an episode in the coming weeks on some of the themes of the event because there were quite a few themes that many of the speakers really referred to without us really coordinating those messages at all. Today, I want to just mention one thing that I noticed. One of the most common things I heard at the event this year was about this podcast. We did have quite a few tracks on podcasting at the event this year. I was amazed how many listeners of this podcast there are. I see the stats everyday and I know that we’ve had close to 1.6 million downloads over the years but it’s kind of nice to hear the voices of people who listen to the podcast because you hear mine everyday. It was really nice. Quite a few people told me they actually came to the event because they found ProBlogger through the podcast and that was really nice to hear. I often wondered how do people come to ProBlogger and was the podcast bringing new readers in. I knew it was reaching existing readers, so it was nice to see some new readers coming in. People typing into iTunes search terms and using iTunes as a search engine, that was a nice reminder to me. Also, people who found me through interviews that I’ve done on other people’s podcast. That was interesting to me. Quite a few people told me about certain episodes that have brought about real change in their blogging. One of the things I did notice was that many people told me that it was the series of challenges that we’ve run that really have had a big impact. The most recent one, the Blogging Groove Challenge that we did back in Episode 137 forward. It was quite a few of you who really benefitted from that. One of the old series that we did, in fact the first series that I did back in the first episodes, 31 Days to Build A Better Blog, was something that quite a few people said that they’ve been going back to and doing again and again. I thought it might be worth just mentioning that early series that I did on this particular podcast because I know many of you have not started working your way backwards and through the episodes, the most recent ones.

Build Trust With Your Blog Today, I’m talking about how to build trust with your blog, podcast, YouTube channel, and social media. This question came in from Stacie. “I’ve heard that blogs are great for building trust with potential customers - how would you suggest speeding that up?” - Asked by Stacie I’m going to tackle this question today and talk about how trust is built using content online and give you some tips on how to maybe speed it up a little bit. Although, it does need to take some time, but I will give you some thoughts on how build trust with your blog. Further Resources on How to Build Trust With Your Blog Strategies to Help Convert First Time Visitors Into Interested Readers of Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to Episode 151 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk about how to build trust with your blog, podcast, YouTube channel, and social media. This question came in over the last couple of weeks from Stacey. She wrote, “I’ve heard that blogs are great for building trust with potential customers. How would you suggest speeding that up?” I want to tackle this question today and talk about how trust is built using content online and give you some tips on how to maybe speed it up a little bit. I think it does need to take some time, there’s a bit of a spoiler. I'm going to give you some thoughts on how to do that. Today’s question came in from Stacey and she’s touched on a really big reason that many businesses start blogs. They hear that blogs help to build trust with customers and potential customers and as a result can drive sales. It reminds me of Bob Burg famous quote who once wrote, “All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people that they know, like, and trust.” It’s become a bit of a mantra in marketing circles. Ultimately, Bob here is talking about relationship, about connection as being the basis of how people make their decision on where to spend money in many instances. If you’re anything like me, you know this is true for you. We look at our own spending habits and we know that there’s some truth in this, we don’t just make purchasing decisions based upon features or prices, we often make our purchasing decisions based upon other factors including whether we feel a connection with the brand, whether we feel we trust the brand, whether we like the people selling us the product or creating the product. What’s this got to do with blogging, you might be asking. I found that this exact principle applies to blogging. My experience with blogging over the last almost 13 years now has been that it is one of the best ways by far of building a connection with potential customers and people. When you create content on a daily or even just a regular basis that brings about the change in the life of those who read it, then over time they really do begin to feel like they know you. They really do feel like they like you and that they trust you. Some kind of relationship opens up, as virtual as that might be. As strange as that might seem, people do feel this connection to you when you enhance their lives with regular content. I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been at a conference and I've literally just got home from the ProBlogger Conference, it happened again. People come up to you at a conference when you’ve been blogging for years and they speak to you in such a personal way that sometimes it can be really confusing as to whether you’ve met that person before, whether you’ve had some memory lapse which is quite common for me because memories are not my strong suit. Many times, there’s people who talk to you and you realize you never met them before. This is the first time they’ve met you but they feel like they...

Profit Streams Revealed: How I Make Money Blogging Today, I’m going to go through exactly how I make money blogging. I’m going to talk you through the income streams that I use to monetize my blogs and build an income for my family. This is something that I have done on the blog, but today I’m going to give you the information on the podcast because some of you don’t read the blog. Today’s podcast is based off of this article on ProBlogger, “My Blogging Income Breakdown for the First Half of 2016”. This report is for my total business including ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. I will give you a little insight as to what site each income stream I mention is generated from. I will also be talking about profit as opposed to revenue. I will also be talking in percentages because I don’t generally reveal my actual income. In Today’s Episode How I Make Money Blogging - My Profit Streams Revealed Affiliate Income - There aren’t a lot of direct expenses from affiliate income, so it is profitable. On dPS we do two big promotions every year. We have our 12 days of Christmas sale and our mid year/summer sale. In each of these, we have daily deals on photography products. On ProBlogger we have been focusing on affiliate income from some of the tools we use. Plus links to hosting and themes. On dPS we regularly link to Amazon. Products - These are eBooks, lightroom presets, courses, and printables. In 2009, I decided to invest time into creating my first products which were eBooks. AdSense - dPA has a large amount of traffic, so it pays to use AdSense along with other income streams. Sponsorships On dPS we offer sponsorships to advertisers who want to work directly with our audience. On ProBlogger we have done a handful of sponsorship campaigns with companies like Meet Edgar and 99designs. Job Board On ProBlogger we have had the job board since 2006. At first, it was a trickle, but it has now grown to 6000 ads places. We plan on releasing an update to the job board in the coming weeks. Take a look at the How to Make Money Blogging page on ProBlogger for a good overview. Event This year will be out 7th ProBlogger Event held here in Australia. The event generates a large amount of revenue, but the expenses are huge, so the profit is about 3% of my blogging income. This year there is a virtual ticket available for those people who can’t make it to Australia. This should offer a revenue increase. Other - I have a couple of other small income streams. Speaking Book Royalties Other Royalties/Copyright payments such as when my content is used in schools in Australia. A Word on Expenses Even though our revenue has went up in the past 12 months so has our expenses. In the last 12 months we invested heavily into the development of our sites. Such as with the ProBlogger redesign. I’ve also expanded my team to include: 2 editors (one for each site) 2 business unit managers (one for each site) Admin/customer service team members (one for each site) Marketing (one person for dPS) All team members except for one are part-time. We also have a huge array of contractors who help with product creation, proof reading, podcast editing, etc. We also have to have dependable servers and a number of software subscriptions to keep everything running smoothly. You can find these on our resources page. To make money you have to spend it! Further Resources on How I Make Money Blogging - My Profit Streams Revealed The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program Recommended Blogging Resources & Tools How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Discover Your Camera’s Potential With DPS Resources Digital Photography School Featured Presets Digital Photography School Featured Courses

The Pros and Cons of Long Posts Today, we have a question from Emma Cameron. “Hi Darren, I love your podcast! I found your 7 day intensive blogging series very helpful, and it led me to write a post I might never have gotten around to otherwise. In answering my most frequently asked question, which is 'What is Art Therapy'? This has turned into an incredibly long post which covers things which are not easily found elsewhere online. I have a question for you: is it better to leave it as a single, very long, authoritative and useful evergreen post, or should I split it up into several shorter posts? Which of those would be better for getting my website seen by more people, ranking higher in Google etc?” In Today’s Episode the Pros and Cons of Long Posts Writing a long post - Pros Readers get all of the information on one post It can increase reader satisfaction They can be quite comprehensive and authoritative Long posts get shared a lot Long posts can rank well in Google - possibly because of increased links or a ranking preference Writing a long post - Cons Long form content takes a lot of effort to research and write Unless you are an amazing writer, some of the readers may not get all the way through it Can be draining to the author when it comes to ideas for the long run Series of posts - Pros More posts to sustain you over time SEO advantage - the more focused your posts are there can be SEO advantages - A series of posts all linked to each other may rank for smaller key phrases Interconnected posts can help with SEO - Internal links A series can build momentum and give your readers a sense of anticipation A series may help build subscriber count Can help build more page views - good for stats A series may motivate a blogger to write more Can be used like a free course for your readers Series of posts - Cons Some readers will prefer to get it all at once Can sidetrack your whole blog for a bit Another option is maybe you can do both. Run a series, then compose all of it into a particular piece of content. This content can be used for an optin form or even sold as a PDF version. Further Resources on the Pros and Cons of Long Posts ProBlogger Event: Live Ticket ProBlogger Event: Virtual Ticket 7 Days to Get Your Blogging Groove Back 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view This week, I received a great email, a lovely email from Emma, one of our listeners of the podcast who asked me this question. She wrote, “Hi Darren, I love your podcast! I found your seven day intensive blogging series very helpful, and it led me to write a post I might never have gotten around to otherwise. In answering my most frequently asked question, which is 'What is Art Therapy?’ this has turned into an incredibly long post which covers things which are not easily found elsewhere online. I have a question for you: is it better to leave it as a single, very long, authoritative and useful evergreen post, or should I split it up into several shorter posts? Which of these would be better for getting my website seen by more people, ranking higher in Google?” Great question Emma, and thanks for listening. I really do love that you enjoyed the Blogging Groove Challenge. I had a lot of very positive feedback and still can see in the Facebook group a lot of people still working through those seven challenges. This is a great question and I do have some thoughts on the topic and it’s one that I think bloggers should really ponder because there’s many times where it probably does make sense to write a long post and there’s some times where a series makes more sense too. I want to give you some thoughts on how to make that decision. Before I get into that,

Finding a Balance Between Family Life and Blogging Life Today, we are talking about family and blogging. One of the reasons I was attracted to blogging was because it seemed like something that would allow me to have some flexibility in my life and time for family. Today, I’m going to talk about how that turned out, and the struggle and tensions that can arise when blogging with family around. My blogging career didn’t turn out quite as we expected it would, but my full-time blogging does allow me flexibility and to be involved with day to day family life. By working at home, I can greet my kids at the door after school, attend daytime school concerts, give my kids rides when needed, and take my son to a cafe on Fridays. There are also challenges with working at home and being so close to family all of the time. Family and blogging demands can pull on each other and achieving balance can be a challenge. In Today’s Episode Family Life Blogging Life Balance - Tips on Getting it Right Set aside time for blogging or your business and set time aside for your family - Carve out times where you are 100% focused on each Become as organized as you can be - I get more done when I have less time because I plan better Communicate your boundaries - The schedule doesn’t work unless you communicate it to those around you I talk about my work and share with the kids Set up signals and reminders that I am focusing on work, if I’m in my office I am working - this will eliminate distractions - physical separation and signal - if the door is shut, I am not to be disturbed Have the ability to work outside the home - cafes, libraries, I rented a room in a church, I also found a co-working space - mixing up the working environment helps with creativity and eliminates distractions Have a way to capture ideas on the run - ideas and inspiration in the middle of family time - use a notebook or phone with apps like Evernote Extended time away from blogging is useful - I spend 3 or 4 weeks a year where I don’t check my blog at all - good to unwind - good for business to come back fresher Delegate and outsource - Getting other people involved in some of the work of my business has helped me considerably Get help in other areas of your life - a cleaner or a gardener Make peace with the tension and be mindful and keep priorities in mind, there will be times that you get out of balance. Further Resources on Family Life Blogging Life Balance - Tips on Getting it Right Virtual Ticket for upcoming ProBlogger Conference Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: You can do it. Mr. Five: I can’t getting it. Darren: Hi there, welcome to ProBlogger. Mr. Five: Hi there, welcome to Progg… Darren: Say it again. Mr. Five: Hi there, welcome to Pro…dagger Darren: ProBlogger. Mr. Five: Pro…B…Blogger Darren: ProBlogger. Mr. Five: ProBlogger. Darren: Pro, I said it wrong. ProBlogger. Mr. Five: Plo…Blogger. Darren: We should change the name to something else, what should it be? Mr. Five: Hi there, welcome to the Rowse Family. Darren: The Rowse Family, that would be much easier and nice to say. Mr. Five: Today we’re talking about family and blogging. Darren: Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. That was Mr. Five, we’ll call him. He’s my five year old son. He’s home with me today. It made me think about a question that I get asked quite a bit. How do you juggle family life and blogging life? Ever since I’ve been in blogging, I blog from home. This has been a bit of a juggle for me because I started blogging when I was newly married. We were dreaming of having a family, having kids. Once we didn’t have them yet, one of the reasons that I was first attracted to the idea of blogging as a way of earning money and build...

Tips on How to Manage Incoming Email Is email sucking away all of your time, and taking away from your blogging? Today’s topic comes from one of our readers. Phil says, “I’ve been blogging a couple of years now and in the last 6 months have seen quite a bit of growth in traffic to my blog. This is great but I’m noticing with it is coming a significant rise in the incoming emails I get. I feel like I’m drowning in it and that it’s taking me away from my blogging. "Do you have any systems or tools to help you manage incoming email?” Email is a challenge for most of us - whether we're bloggers or not. But for those of us who have blogs with growing traffic it can quickly get out of hand. Today, I’m going to share how I deal with email. Listen to my thoughts in the player above or here on iTunes. In Today’s Episode Tips, Tools and Techniques for Managing Incoming Email I use gmail for my email I use canned responses in gmail - there is a setting under the labs link - canned responses save you time when you are asked the same question over and over again Have a FAQ frequently asked question page - Anyone who sends an email has access to the link to the FAQ page - this answers many common questions Contact Form - Have a contact form, where people can contact you with a link to the FAQ page - ProBlogger uses Gravity Forms Have a dropdown menu that directs where or who the email should go to. On dPS we have a dropdown menu with 5 options that the user can select after filling out the other fields. Have folders in gmail setup for each incoming email area - use filtering You can also put the answer to the frequently asked question on your contact form Link to social sites on contact form - or even push readers to your facebook page - be clear and set expectations Have help to respond to email - hire someone to help - customer support - We use a paid tool called zendesk, which also has canned responses - ticketed system Use filters on gmail - I have hundreds of filters on gmail - bulk for emails on products sales - keep records to serve customers - quick gmail search of transactions to see if customer purchases a product or not - emails you want to keep, but don’t want to read Tell gmail to skip inbox and mark it as read and put it in the ebooks folder - very powerful Filter emails for reading later - receipts for monthly subscriptions - only want to read these at tax time Unroll.me scans inbox and shows you subscriptions - give you choice to unsubscribe in bulk - or continue to receive them - or roll them into a digest Boomerang Chrome extension - set emails to appear in your ebox later or in the morning so that they don’t get lost - you can tell it when to send your emails - I don’t want to send email at night - tell boomerang to send email in the morning Further Resources on Tips, Tools and Techniques for Managing Incoming Email Tell me in 200 words or less your bravest story Canned responses in gmail ProBlogger FAQ page ProBlogger contact form page Gravity Forms dPS contact form with dropdown menu Zendesk Unroll.Me Boomerang for Gmail I would love to hear what you use to manage your incoming emails. What are the tools and techniques you use? How many unread emails are in your inbox? Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Is email sucking all your time and taking you away from your blogging and other important aspects of your life? Today, prompted by a reader question, I want to share some tools, techniques, and tips for handling the overwhelming amounts of email that you will start to get once your blog begins to grow. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to Episode 147 of the ProBlogger podcast. The topic I wanna tackle today comes from a question from Phil, one of our readers, who says,

How Being a Good Listener Can Help You Write Effective Sales Copy Today, I want to talk about writing great sales copy. Whether that would be blog post, sales emails, creating a sales pages, or even selling on social media. A lot has been written about the topic particularly focusing upon techniques to use in headlines or titles, keywords, power words, and getting the call to action right. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever had when it comes to writing sales copy is something that doesn’t really involve writing at all. It doesn’t even involve saying anything or communicating anything. I want to talk about that today. What I want to talk about is to shut up and to listen. In Today’s Episode How to Write Effective Sales Copy Listen to this episode in the player above or subscribe and listen in iTunes here to get it delivered to your phone. The advice I’m giving today is to shut up and listen. It may come across a little bit blunt, and I hope I don’t offend anyone. I was given this advice many years ago. I came across a post written by Robert Bruce on CopyBlogger that really sums this up. The post says that before we do anything, we should take the time to listen to what our readers want and what we should focus on. The post is fairly short, but it sums up three different areas where we should listen before we write that blog post. Listen to whoever created the product you are selling. Ask why the product was created Who it is for What are the benefits of the product How does the product work What problem will it solve What are the limitations How can it be misunderstood Listen to your audience What are they telling you directly or indirectly Understand your audience Their needs, challenges, and words Who is the audience What are their pains and challenges What gains are they hoping for What dreams do they want to come true What are their fears, questions, and objections Listen to your competitors Have a view of the entire battlefield Competitors can also be collaborators Further Resources on How to Write Effective Sales Copy The Best Damn Copywriting Advice I’ve Found Everything You Need to Know to Master Lightroom ProBlogger Virtual Ticket Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to Episode 146 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I want to talk a little bit about writing great sales copy, whether that would be blog post, sales emails, creating sales pages, or even selling on social media. A lot has been written about the topic particularly focusing upon techniques to use in headlines or titles, how to use particular keywords or power words, how to get your call to action right, how to use video or change the color of your buttons or split test your pages. All of this advice is great and I really do encourage you to do a lot of reading and research on that. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever had when it comes to writing sales copy is something that doesn’t really involve writing at all. It doesn’t even involve saying anything or communicating anything. I want to talk about that today. What I want to talk about is to shut up and to listen. The advice I want to give you today is to shut up and listen. It’s a little bit blunt and I hope I don’t offend anyone by saying it. The advice I was given many, many years ago from numerous people and today came across an old post over at Copy Blogger which really summed up this lesson really well. It’s a post that Robert Bruce wrote three or four years ago now called The Best Damn Copywriting Advice I’ve Found. It really is a great post, it’s only a few hundred words long, it’s quite short. Really in this particular post, Robert Bruce says the same thing.

Is Your Blog Being Hurt by Your Obsession to Create New Content? Today, I want to talk about an obsession that many bloggers have - an obsession with creating NEW content and want to suggest that we all take a little step back from spending quite so much time on that task and pay attention to something that might have a better payoff for us. I’m going to share with you a practice that I’ve build into my daily rhythm. You can listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. But before I do - a couple of quick pieces of house keeping. Blogging Groove Update: Facebook group will remain live. We will do some ongoing challenges. You can take the challenges any time. I know a few people who have decided to keep doing them one a week indefinitely. If you enjoyed the challenge let us know by leaving an iTunes review. Virtual Ticket: ProBlogger Event Virtual Ticket 50 sessions - 6 keynotes, 24 breakout training sessions, 20 workshops Great speakers like Brian Fanzo (live streaming), Nathan Chan (growing your email list), Natalie Sisson (Sales Funnels), Nicole Avery (starting a blog), Emilie Wapnick (building community on your blog) and many more including me (3 sessions this year). Topics - beginner to advanced. Creating content, building your readership, monetization. Blogging, Podcasting, YouTube, Social (paid and organic). You Also get access to our exclusive event networking and accountability group on FB Immediate access to all the recordings and slides from our 2015 event (with Jadah Sellner, Heather Armstrong, Dan Norris, Ruth Soukup and many more). 23 sessions. $USD229 ($299 AUD). All 50 sessions from 2016 and 23 from 2015 are yours to keep and refer back to time and time again. A simple daily practice that I do: Every day we publish new content on dPS - two posts a day. We work on making the content as good as it can be. Useful, practical, well laid out, as few grammatical errors as possible, well illustrated, optimised for SEO, good headline, great CTA etc. We then think about how we share it - visual content, timing on social, craft the descriptions, get it into the newsletter etc. Our authors are then thinking about engaging with readers who come - trying to get good discussions going, watching social comments etc. A lot of effort goes into these things in the lead up to and for the days after a post gets published. This is all pretty normal - most bloggers do that. But here’s the thing - your blog post is on the web for a lot longer than that first week. That first week can definitely bring you a spike in traffic - but it’s just the beginning of the content’s life. I touched on this in episode 136 where I gave tips for creating Evergreen content for your blog - but today I want to share with you a daily practice that I’ve developed over the last 5-6 years that helps me to stay in touch with my archives. Your archives quite likely contain a lot of really useful content that your readers have probably not read - particularly your newer readers. If your blog is anything like mine your archives are what gets most of the eyeballs on your blog on any given day - not the new posts. I just looked at Google Analytics for today’s traffic on dPS - we’ve published 14 posts in the last 7 days and as I look at today’s traffic - those 14 posts got around 15% of my site’s traffic. 85% of my traffic was hitting my archives. I suspect most blogs are similar - yet most of us spend most of our effort focusing upon our new posts. Most bloggers spend 99% of their time focused upon their fresh content but their readers spend most of their time focused upon the archives. I think bloggers should allocate time to focusing upon their archives too. The daily practice that I do does just that. In Today’s Episode The Daily Practice I Have Built Into My Blogging Rhythm It happens at the end of my day (late afternoon or early eveni...

Challenge: Create a Link Post This is 7th and final challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 137. You can listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes (please take a moment to give us a rating and review if you could). If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on FB on this thread. All week hundreds of bloggers have been creating some great posts and today I’m going to present you with a last post in the challenge that has the potential to share the love around our community a little. Before I tell you about today’s challenge…. I also quickly want to tell you about something that is happening in a couple of days time - we’re putting virtual tickets on sale for this year’s ProBlogger event. We hold an annual event for bloggers here in Australia each year and this year - by popular demand - we’re bringing back our virtual ticket so that those of you unable to get out to Australia can come along virtually and get all the amazing teaching we offer live attendees. Today my challenge for you is to create a piece of content that links to someone else’s content. A link post. One of the reasons I was first attracted to blogging was its collaborative nature. Blogs linked from one to another freely and regularly. We linked out when we were inspired by another blogger, when we agreed with another blogger, when we disagreed, when we wanted to encourage them and sometimes just to be useful to our readers. That was back in 2002 but since that time link sharing has gradually gone to other mediums more and more. Today more sharing of links happens on Twitter or Facebook but less so on blogs. This is possibly for good reason, but I sometimes fear that perhaps in losing the link post that maybe we’ve lost something as a community and maybe our readers have too. Benefits of Linking Out to Good Content You Didn’t Create: If you link to good stuff it serves your readers It can show that you’re well read and add to your own credibility It helps you to get on the radar of others that you link to - good things can come from that - great for networking If groups link to one another it can help to pass traffic around I’m told it can actually help your Search rankings if you link to quality sites Approaches You Might Take with Today’s Challenge: Write something inspired by another blogger Find a collection of things to link to on a common theme Create a “reading roundup” Another idea - why not head over to the FB Challenge Group and find a few articles from this last week to be the basis of your link post. Find half a dozen articles that are relevant to your niche or that you got some inspiration in and create a post based upon that. The key 3 things I would encourage you to keep in mind: Keep it relevant to your audience/topic/niche Make sure you link to quality content Add a little something of your own - tell people why they should read it, add a thought or two etc. This makes it unique and shows you’ve actually read what you’re linking to and have your own thoughts on the matter. The challenge: Challenge - create a link post. It could be a blog post, video or social media post Share it in our FB Group Check out some of the other link posts that others have created - encourage, support etc. Lastly - thanks SOOO much for this last week. I hope you’ve got back into the groove. I’m going to keep the FB group open for at least a few weeks and I’m thinking about doing some more of these in the future so may keep the group open. We won’t do them daily but maybe once or twice a month. I’ll run a poll in the group in the coming week or so to get you...

Challenge: Create a Discussion Starter This is 6th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 138. You can listen to it in the player above or here on iTunes. If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook in this thread. It’s Sunday for most of us as this goes live and so I’ve decided to make it a challenge that is potentially a bit more bite sized for most of us! Before I tell you about today’s challenge…. I also quickly want to tell you about something that is happening in a couple of days time - we’re putting virtual tickets on sale for this year’s ProBlogger event. We hold an annual event for bloggers here in Australia each year and this year - by popular demand - we’re bringing back our virtual ticket so that those of you unable to get out to Australia can come along virtually and get all the amazing teaching we offer live attendees. The virtual ticket will be available early next week at ProBlogger.com/virtualticket where you can now sign up to be alerted when they go on sale. My challenge for you today is to start a discussion and to create a piece of content that attempt to get your readers engaging in some way. Now this might be a bit daunting for some of you just starting out who might not have much of a readership yet - but it’s something that I used to do in the very early days of my blogs that I’m glad that I persisted with. You might only have 2 readers - but when you show them that you’re interested in engaging it can have a big impact. And remember - this challenge isn’t just about writing blog posts. You might choose today to create content in another format. Live stream Instagram Facebook Twitter 5 Quick reasons why asking your readers questions and starting discussions can be good: It gives readers a sense of Community and Participation - if you follow up when you do get an interaction it could be the beginning of a long term reader! It increases Blog Stickiness - people are more likely to come back once they’ve interacted These posts don’t take a whole lot of effort to write (although can take some moderation) They are great for helping you to gauge where your readers are at on certain topics and can even give you ideas for future posts. They open up opportunities for followup posts as you summarize the answers, pick up conversations and even answer the question yourself etc. What question should you ask? Keep it relevant to your blog’s topic Ask a question that builds on a previous post Ask questions that are answerable Ask questions that readers will want to know the answer to Suggest some possible answers Either or questions can be great for starting a debate You can use a poll plugin to give your readers a way to vote on options Controversial questions can be great for starting a debate Be willing to share your own answer Do this in the content itself Hold off and let your readers respond first Do you have a frequently asked question that you don’t know the answer to Sometimes more personal questions can be worth asking What is Your Favorite DSLR Lens? Most Popular DSLR Lenses Answer your own question in comments, specifically ask people to answer (friends, influencers, regular commenters), promote the discussion The Challenge: Create your discussion starter - publish it Share the link in this thread in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook - please look for day 6’s thread to do it in Check out what others are doing - please engage with as many as you’re able to - help each other get some discussions going Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in th...

Challenge: Create a 'How to' Post This is 5th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off back in episode 138. If you’re new to the challenge - this week I’m nominating a different style of content for you to create each day over the week and the challenge is to create a post within 24 hours of hearing about it and then sharing it with us in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook. Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. This week has been amazing so far. In the first few days we’ve done ‘list posts’ (there were something like 300 posts written), FAQ posts, Review posts and Story posts. I’m LOVING reading as many of them as I can and encourage you to keep going. The weekend is upon us now so for some of us its about to get tough - but I encourage you to keep at it! Good things are happening - keep it up! Before I tell you about today’s challenge…. I also quickly want to tell you about something that is happening in a couple of days time - we’re putting virtual tickets on sale for this year’s ProBlogger event. We hold an annual event for bloggers here in Australia each year and this year - by popular demand - we’re bringing back our virtual ticket so that those of you unable to get out to Australia can come along virtually and get all the amazing teaching we offer live attendees. The virtual ticket will be available early next week at problogger.com/virtualticket where you can now sign up to be alerted when they go on sale. Today your challenge is to publish a ‘How to’ post. How to posts work well because: It’s one of the main reasons people go online - to learn, seek help As a result they tend to rank well in Search and can be really shareable They also tend to be evergreen in nature When you teach someone how to do something they tend to remember who taught them and have gratitude towards them. They also become evangelists They build credibility How to content can come in any form you like: Written - blog posts, articles, list posts, essays Video - can be great for walking people and showing them how to do something rather than just telling Screen capture video - for something you do online Images - a series of good images Gifs - putting a series of images into a gif Slideshow Podcast - most of my podcasts are how to Infographics A few approaches you might like to take: How you do something How to Build an Efficient Social Media Workflow to Increase your Traffic How you did something $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned Share it in a story Analysis of someone else’s technique Content on the result of your research How to Cut Out the Subject From the Background in Photoshop Write about a very simple concept How to Hold a Camera Write about a very advanced topic 6 Advanced Composition Techniques to Improve Your Photos It could be a very practical tangible thing How to Clean Your Camera Sensor and Lenses It could also be something less tangible How to Overcome Fear of Speaking, Podcasting, Live Streaming, Webinars and More A post on straight theory, without inserting yourself How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps A few quick tips: Base it on a real world need Base it on an FAQ Break it down into steps Show as much as possible A Powerful Exercise inside Google Analytics to Set You Up for a Successful Year of Blogging Anticipate questions Add a call to action Add depth The Challenge: Create your ‘how to’ post - publish it Head to the ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and share the link with us on this thread Check out some of the other ’how to content people have written. Comment, like, share Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in the Blogging Groove Series Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Her...

Challenge: Create a Story Post This is 4th challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that challenge - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post on this thread and to check out the other posts others are submitting. Today your challenge is to publish a ‘story’ post. You can listen to this episode in the player above or look for episode 141 on iTunes. The challenge with stories is finding a way to tie into the rest of your blog and make them relevant and to ensure that they have some point to them that is useful to your readers on some level. In Today’s Episode 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell on Your Blog Personal Discovery Stories The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew Into a Business Stories as Analogies and Illustrations My Search for the Perfect Cafe [And What it Taught Me about Blogging] Success Stories How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World Failure Stories How NOT to Send an Email: A Day We’d Rather Forget But a Story We Need to Tell Biography/Tell Someone Else’s Story Beginner Week – Katie180’s success story How I did it Stories $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned Autobiographies Becoming a ProBlogger – A story in Many Parts Picture Stories Case Studies 12 Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year ‘Overnight’ Success] Fiction Reader Stories Collective Stories Imagine If…. Stories How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause A day in the life - Walk your readers through a typical day The Challenge: Create your story post - publish it Head to the ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and share the link with us on this thread Check out some of the other reviews people have written. Comment, like, share Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in the Blogging Groove Series Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 2: Create a FAQ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 3: Create a Review Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 4: Create a Story Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 5: Create a ‘How to’ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 6: Create a Discussion Starter Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 7: Create a Link Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there friends, it’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to the fourth challenge in ProBlogger’s Seven Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back. This is Episode 141 of the ProBlogger Podcast. As I said, I'm Darren Rowse, the founder of ProBlogger, a blog that’s dedicated to helping bloggers to get the most out of their blogs to create blogs that change the world but also sustainable blogs, blogs that are profitable. We’re over halfway not through this seven day challenge, a challenge where I'm giving you a challenge everyday for seven days to create a piece of content that has a different style. Everyday I'm giving you a style of blog post to create and allowing you to choose the topic and then asking you to publish that challenge within twenty-four hours and share it over with us in the ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook. It’s been great to see so many hundreds of bloggers participating in this particular cha...

Challenge: Create a Review Post This is the 3rd challenge in ProBlogger’s 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that content - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post here and to check out the other posts others are submitting. Today’s challenge could be a life changing moment for some of you. That’s a big statement I know but I say it because I am where I am as a full time blogger today because I once wrote a review post on one of my early blogs. I had no idea at the time how writing that post would change my life but it did. In Today’s Challenge: Create a Review Post Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. Why a Review Post They get read! They have transactional value They are great conversation starters They build credibility Today’s Challenge Find something relevant to your niche/topic/audience to review. Write your post - publish it Head to the ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and share the link with us on this thread Check out some of the other reviews people have written. Comment, like, share Further Resources on Creating a Review Post How to Write a Must-read Product Review How to Write Amazing Product Reviews Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in the Blogging Groove Series Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 2: Create a FAQ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 3: Create a Review Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 4: Create a Story Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 5: Create a ‘How to’ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 6: Create a Discussion Starter Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 7: Create a Link Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren here from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 140 of the ProBlogger podcast and to the third channel in our Seven Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge. Today, I want to issue you with a challenge to create a piece of content that is in some way a review. To recap, everyday for this next week I'm going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. You choose the topic, I choose the style. My challenge is to create and publish that content within twenty-four hours if you can and then to share it over in the ProBlogger Challenge Group which I’ll link to on today’s show notes. Once you’ve shared it there, to check out some of the other posts that others who are participating in this challenge have also shared. Today, my challenge to you is to create and publish a review post. Again, you can do this as a written post, a video, a podcast, anything that you choose to do. I’ll probably talk a little bit more about writing, but you translate that into the medium that you want to use. Today’s challenge could be a life changing moment for some of you. I know that’s a big statement but I say it because where I am today as a full time blogger is because I once almost accidentally wrote a review post on one of my early blogs. I had no idea at the time that what I was doing was literally changing my life but it did. It was 2004, I’ve been blogging for a couple of years on my first personal blog. But on this day, I impulsively decided to start a second blog. It was a photo blog in which I wanted to share photos from a trip...

Challenge: Create Content That Answers a FAQ This is the 2nd Challenge of our 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap - every day for the next week I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. My challenge is to create and publish that content - to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share your post on this thread and to check out the other posts others are submitting. In Today’s Episode Challenge: Create Content That Answers a FAQ Listen to this episode above in the player or here on iTunes (look for episode PB139). Some of my most popular blog posts have been in response to reader questions. If one reader is asking a question, it is likely that many readers have the same question. How to Find a Question to Answer Ask your readers Check your comments and email Check other blogs and forums Go to question sites like Quora Find and talk to a beginner in your niche Answer a question of your own Think back and answer a question you once had Today’s Challenge Write and publish a FAQ post Head to the FB group (search for ProBlogger Challenge Group on FB) and share your link on this thread. Share the link. Only new posts please. Take a few minutes to check out, like, comment on and share other people’s lists. Further Resources on Creating Content That Answers a FAQ Facebook Group ProBlogger Challenge How to Hold a Camera - Post that answers a question What is a Blog? - Post that answers a question Quora - Question site Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in the Blogging Groove Series Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 2: Create a FAQ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 3: Create a Review Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 4: Create a Story Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 5: Create a ‘How to’ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 6: Create a Discussion Starter Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 7: Create a Link Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, this is Darren from ProBlogger. Today, I want to issue you with a challenge to create a frequently asked question post for your blog. This is day two or the second challenge in our seven days to get your blogging groove back challenge that we kicked off a couple of episodes ago. To recap, everyday for the next week I'm suggesting a particular style of blog post for you to create. The challenge is to create and publish that post on your blog and then to join our Facebook group which is called the ProBlogger Challenge Group over on Facebook and to share the post that you created and to check out the post that others are submitting as well. Yesterday, I asked you to create a list post and it’s fantastic to see all of those list posts being submitted to the group. I'm reading every one that I possibly can and there’s been some great posts submitted. Today, I want to challenge you to write a post that is an answer to a frequently asked question. In today’s podcast, it will just take ten or so minutes. I'm going to tell you why I think this is a great post and give you a few tips on how to work out what question to answer. You can check out today’s show notes with all the details of the challenge as well as some further reading that I’ve got for you today over at problogger.com/podcast/139. Let’s get to the challenge. One of the easiest ways to find something to blog about that connects with your readers...

Challenge: Create a List Post This is part 1 of our 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Challenge that we kicked off in the last episode of this podcast. To recap - Every day for the next week, I’m going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. Create and publish the challenge post Share your post on This Thread in our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook, and check out other posts fellow challengers are submitting. Today’s Challenge: Write a List Post In this episode I talk about different types of link posts that you might consider writing and given you a number of examples from my own archives to check out. Listen to it in the player above or check out episode 138 on iTunes here. Write and publish a List post Head to the FB group (search for ProBlogger Challenge Group on FB) and look for the update I’ve done there were I call you to share your list posts. Share the link. Only new posts please. Take a few minutes to check out, like, comment on and share other people’s lists. In Today’s Episode List Posts Can Take a Number of Forms A Simple List Post 21 Ways to Write Posts that Are Guaranteed to Grow Your Blog Longer List Posts How to Take Great Group Photos Wedding Photography – 21 Tips for Amateur Wedding Photographers Lists Within Posts Here's one Vanessa published yesterday - 50 Family Friendly Dinner Ideas - which is a longer post with a series of lists and other content around it. Further Resources on Writing List Posts The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program 10 Steps to the Perfect List Post Update: Here are the rest of the Challenges in the Blogging Groove Series Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 2: Create a FAQ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 3: Create a Review Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 4: Create a Story Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 5: Create a ‘How to’ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 6: Create a Discussion Starter Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 7: Create a Link Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to Episode 138 of the ProBlogger Podcast. This is challenge number one of our seven days to getting your blogging groove back challenge that we kicked off in the last episode of this podcast. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I really do strongly recommend that you go back to Episode 137 which just goes for 13 minutes, and it gives you an overview of what we’re doing in this challenge. To recap, everyday for the next week I'm going to suggest a particular style of blog post for you to create. It can be a written piece of content, it can a video, it can be a podcast, whatever you choose to do. My challenge to you is to create and publish that piece of content and to join our ProBlogger Challenge Group on Facebook and to share the post that you’ve written so that we can check out each other’s blog posts. You can find all the details of the challenge and today’s transcript and show notes at problogger.com/podcast/138. Let me tell you what today’s style of blog post will be for you to create in the next 24 hours. Today, I want you to create a list post. This is the easiest type of post that I could come up with for day one to help you ease into this particular challenge. I decided a list post would be a good one for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s something most of us are familiar with, we’ve all read them.

Challenge: 7 Days to Getting Your Blogging Groove Back Have you lost your blogging groove? It’s easy to do - particularly in the middle of a year when so many other aspects of life compete for your attention and where motivation can sometimes go missing. If your blog is feeling a little stagnant - today is for you. In fact this whole week is for you because this episode starts a week long daily series that is all about getting back into the groove of creating great regular content for your blog. Whether you’re feeling disillusioned, uninspired, uncreative or just a little bored with your blog - over the next week I want to invite you to tune into this podcast for a series of short daily challenges to create some great pieces of content. Note: this episode can be listened to here on the shownotes (the player is above) or in iTunes here. Update: Take this Challenge at Your Own Pace This challenge was originally created to be taken as a group of bloggers live over the first week of August 2016. Over 1400 bloggers participated. Now that the live week has ended I'm leaving this series up live here for bloggers to take at their own pace. I encourage you to work through each of the challenges (listed below) and create the blog posts as I recommend. You can do them daily as we did in the live version or take it a little slower. The Facebook Group is still live and we'll be doing ongoing challenges there - so feel free to join up here. How the Challenge Works Each day I’ll suggest a particular style of post to write. I’ll share a few tips on how you might like to tackle it and in the shownotes share a few examples of posts others have written in that style. Your Task Will Be to Do 3 Things: Write Your Post - Come up with a relevant topic for your blog and write a post in the style of the challenge and publish the post the same day Share with Other Challengers - Join the ProBlogger Challenge Group and share with others participating in the challenge. The group adds accountability and networking opportunities. Visit Other Challenger Posts - Leave a comment or follow on social media To Get Started: Join the FB group (search for ProBlogger Challenge Group) Make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast so you get notified when each episode goes live Clear a little time in your diary each day to listen to the challenge (I’ll attempt to keep them short) and to create your post. Update: Here are the Challenges Challenge 1: Create a List Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 2: Create a FAQ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 3: Create a Review Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 4: Create a Story Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 5: Create a ‘How to’ Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 6: Create a Discussion Starter Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Challenge 7: Create a Link Post - Listen on iTunes here - Submit to the Facebook Group Here. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Have you lost your blogging groove? It’s really easy to do particularly in the middle of the year when so many other aspects of life compete for your attention and where motivation can sometimes go missing. If your blog is feeling a little stagnant, then today is for you. In fact, this whole week is for you because this episode starts a week long daily series of podcasts that’s all about getting back into the groove of creating great, regular content for your blog. My name is Darren, I'm the founder of ProBlogger. Today, I want to kick off seven days to getting back your blogging groove. You can find today’s show notes with links and all th...

Why Evergreen Content is the Best Investment of Time for a Blogger "If you could only write one type of content on your blogs - what would it be?" I was asked this question while on a Q&A panel back in 2007 while at a conference in Las Vegas. It’s a question that I go back to again and again, and the answer hasn’t changed a bit. I also think writing this type of content is why I have had success over the last 13 years. One of the most important things I’ve done in my blogging has been to focus on writing one particular form of content above all others - that being evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that stays fresh for your readers. It’s as relevant years after being written as it was the day it was written. In Today’s Episode Examples of Evergreen Content This episode is available to listen to on iTunes here. ISO Settings in Digital Photography - I wrote this in 2007 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits - Introductory type guide post Rule of Thirds - Posts with varying lengths How to Make An Inexpensive Light Tent - Classic step-by-step post Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples - 15 inspirational images Posing Guide: 21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Women - Part of a series and all about images Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? [7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging] - A frequently asked question The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program - A mega-guide How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause - Introduction to a 10-part series How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World - Guest post that doesn’t ‘teach’ it ‘tells’ 10 David Ogilvy Quotes that Could Revolutionize Your Blogging - A light topic, but a popular topic when it comes to searches - quotes from David Ogilvy Examples of Evergreen Content Submitted by Facebook Followers What is the best age to go to Disneyland? 11 Habits of Successful Women DIY: Upcycle regular jeans into skinny jeans! Bunting Tutorial The Ultimate Guide to Airline Baby Bassinets The Two Types Of Data You Need To Know About Cleaning Mould off Canvas Fairy Playdough Recipe Foods vs. Supplements: The Turmeric vs. Curcumin Edition All of the Examples Submitted on Facebook Further Resources on Evergreen Content the Best Investment of Time You’ll Ever Make as a Blogger Tim Ferriss - Evergreen Content - 78th Episode Snippet Paleo Salted Choc Caramel Slice Recipe - Content people come back to 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work - Content I’d go back to MacRumors Buyer's Guide - Frequently updated Lifehacker Pack for Mac: Our List of the Essential Mac Apps - Updated Bali: Where to Shop - Updated annually The 19 Most Popular DSLRs Among our Readers - Most Popular on dPS The 30 Most Popular DSLR Lenses with our Readers - Most Popular on dPS The 19 Most Popular Compact System and Mirrorless Cameras with Our Readers - Most Popular on dPS Make Money Blogging What New (and Old) Bloggers Need to Know about SEO How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Types of Posts That Can Be Evergreen Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples - Inspirational Content Choosing a Blog Platform - Advice Different Mediums Secrets of Making Money Online - YouTube Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples - Image Collection Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to Episode 136. “If you could only write one type of content on your blogs forever, what would it be?” This is the question that I was asked back in 2007 while I was in Las Vegas at a blogging conference. I was in this Q&A Panel and I was asked this question by someone on the floor,...

Setting Goals to Grow Your Traffic and Income Today’s podcast is about setting goals to grow your traffic and income. Pamela, one of our readers asked this question: “Darren I’ve been blogging now for 12 months and I’ve seen some growth in my traffic and more recently income - but I’m finding it hard to know whether I’m going well or not because I don’t know where a 12 month old blog should be at? Maybe it’s too hard to give a number but do you have any advice on what kind of goals I should be setting myself for my blogging when it comes to traffic or income?” This is a great question that ProBlogger readers often ask. It may be a bit hard to answer when it comes to specific numbers because no two blogs are alike. There are many factors that go into blogging. I do think it is useful to have goals. Today I’m going to make some suggestions on how to set those goals based on how I did it back in 2004 when I began to monetize my blog. In Today’s Episode Setting Goals to Grow Your Traffic and Income Listen to this episode in the player above or here on iTunes. In 2004, I started to experiment with AdSense ads and Amazon’s Affiliate program I noticed my traffic was growing, but I wondered how much traffic I actually needed This is before Google Analytics - most blog stats were freely viewable through Site Meter I knew I needed to do something different and stop comparing my blog to other blogs I decided to compare my monthly traffic to the traffic of my blog from the previous month My initial goal was any uptrend - I was happy with this for the first few months I realized my blog was growing about 5% every month - gently trending up over time I decided to set goals that were a bit more aggressive My first goal was to double my traffic percentage or to go up 10% instead of 5% There were times when 10% growth was easy, there were also other months where it seemed possible, but by having that goal, I could see if I was on track and it helped me grow my blog faster I did the same thing with my AdSense income - I knew AdSense income would increase with traffic increases, so I made my income goal more aggressive - if my traffic goal was 10%, I would make my income goal 15% I did this because I knew there were a number of ways to increase AdSense by using it better - changing placement, size, color, optimizing ads I also started selling ads directly through advertisers and using other networks like Chitika I found that by running other networks and optimizing AdSense sometime I increased my income by 50 or 100 percent Compare monthly stats from month to month or each month from year to year See how you are trending, then set goals that are slightly more aggressive Percentages will vary, at some stages growth is easier You can apply these techniques to many different stats - social media, subscribers, bounce rates, the goal is to be better each month Setting goals is fantastic - being aggressive and having something to aim for can stretch you Think about the strategies to get to those goals - not just the end result - where will the traffic increase come from? What blogs, content, posting frequency, etc. Further Resources on Setting Goals to Grow Your Traffic and Income How to Find Readers For Your Blog How to Use 2 Types of Content to Find Readers for Your Blog How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog How to Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events How to Make a Full Time Income From Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to Episode 135 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. Today,

How to Decide if a New Social Network or Medium is Right for You Today I’m going to help you decide if you should start on that new social network or that new medium like a podcast or a YouTube channel. As bloggers, we are constantly bombarded with choice as to how we can spend our time. There is an unlimited amount of things we could be doing to support our blogs, but not all of them are right for us. I am going to go through some areas where we can ask questions to determine where we really should focus our energy. Today, I received an email from a reader who was wondering if they should get on facebook live. It’s an emerging medium that many bloggers have been experimenting with. This is a very common email that I get. People are wondering if they should get on different social networks or take advantage of new mediums. In Today’s Episode Is It Right for My Audience, My Content and for Me? My Audience? Note: Listen to todays episode on iTunes here Is my audience there? Obvious example - LinkedIn is a great place if you’re wanting to reach a more business focused niche. (survey to find out) Not just where do they have accounts but also: where are they most active what are they using it for? (catching up with friends, research, sharing links etc) How long do they stay there? People’s intent and habits are important and will inform how you should use it but also if it’s right for you. For example - we noticed a lot of our readers use FB to share photos - so we started a FB group purely for photo sharing. If your readers are on a network more for personal reasons it could be a signal that it’s not a great place to sell. Rather - take a more conversational tone. If your readers are there to search for info - treating it as a Search Engine - then it might be a good place to be posting reviews, news, how to content. Are others in my niche using it? If so - how and with what results? If not - is there a reason (which might signal that it’s a place to avoid) or an opportunity? How much work does it take them? Do they use systems/automation? Are they around the clock or just certain hours? Are there certain techniques that they use that get results or that don’t? If you can ask someone that’s probably best - but you can learn a lot by observing what they do. Follow the biggest in your niche and see what they’re doing. What is working that you could emulate but what isn’t being done that you could try? Is the network/medium trending up or down? Is it a good time to position yourself for a mainstream audience. My Content? Does it suit my topic? eg in the photography space we need to engage in networks and mediums that are visual. Blogging, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, FB, G+ in its day, Twitter etc - but to this point I’ve avoided podcasting as it doesn’t seem as natural a fit (although there are successful photography ones that talk gear or video ones that do well that talk technique). Eg ProBlogger we’re talking more about concepts, ideas, techniques that don’t require visuals, so podcasting suits more for some - although there are some things that are easier to show with a screenflow video, a webinar etc. Does it suit the the style/voice of content I produce? Eg - I teach people - which lends itself to some networks and mediums better than others. I think it’s a good fit for podcasting. Eg - dPS is very visual so we’ve invested more time into Instagram. It also lends itself to longer form content as we produce a lot of tutorials which is why our blog is the main thing we do. Can I repurpose the content I create on the new network/medium in some way to make the investment of time I put into it doubly valuable? Eg - video you create on FB Live could end up on Youtube or you could pull the audio from it to put into your podcast or you could transcribe it a...

The Seven Secrets of Making Money Blogging Today, I am traveling back in time and playing for you the audio of a video I made back in 2010. This video is called The Secrets of Making Money Blogging, and I share seven different secrets on how to make money blogging. Of course, these aren’t secrets at all since I shared them in 2010. A lot of this may be stuff that you have heard before, but I put it together for a friend that was really struggling and grappling with whether he should continue to blog or not. I put this video up on YouTube, and it is one of the most viewed videos that I have ever done. This video has about 50,000 views, and it also got me banned from YouTube for about a month. I assume it was because of the title. I guess secrets to making money could have been considered a little bit spammy in some ways. As you listen to this, you will hear that it is not a spammy get rich quick video. In fact, that is one of the points I make quite often. The things I do say are important for bloggers of all stages to hear, and they should help you along your path. In Today’s Episode The Seven Secrets of Making Money Blogging Try to do something online that you really love - choose an area you have passion for Easier to stick with Readers will feel drawn to your passion Be as useful as possible - tell the world something important Be confident - work on confidence - be able to sell yourself and things you do Approach and make offers confidently Diversify what you do - don’t focus on just one income stream Diversify topics Diversify income streams Take a long term view - money can be made fast, but it comes years after building a foundation - working and building relationships and content With investments - you don’t get the return for a number of years Treat it as a business - not as an event Most online entrepreneurs see it as a business Grow over time Releasing products - find a way to grow overtime Be strategic about how to monetize and think of it as a business Build products into what you do Develop systems around those products to sell them I hope you found that interesting. It’s kind of weird to go back in time six years. Just for a quick recap these are the things I found useful. Passion Useful Confident Diversify What You Do Long Term View Strategic Thinking Create Products Secrets of Making Money Online Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it's Darren from ProBlogger here, welcome to Episode 133 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to travel back in time and play for you the video that I recorded back in 2010 on the topic of The Secrets of Making Money Blogging. I get asked all the time what's the secret, what’s your main secret, as if I'm holding something back. I always find it really difficult to answer that question. What I want to play for you today is my attempt back in 2010 to answer this particular question in which I share seven different secrets about making money blogging. Now, of course, none of these are secret, I put them online in 2010 and a lot of it is stuff you have all heard me talked about before. I put this video together in response to the question that I got from a friend who is really struggling and who was really grappling with whether he should continue to keep blogging or not. I put this video up on YouTube and it’s one of the most viewed videos that I’ve ever done. It’s not gotten a million views or anything but I think last time I looked about 50 thousand views which for me is pretty good. The other thing about this video is that it got me banned from YouTube. This video actually got me banned from YouTube for about a month I think it was. I think it was because I had the title Secret of Making ...

How to Use Subheadings to Add Structure to Your Blog Posts Today we are talking about written content. I have one of our regular contributors Ali Luke, from Aliventures.com on the show today to talk about subheadings. I haven’t talked much about using subheadings, but as I was listening to Ali it struck me that it is one of the most important techniques we can use when writing content today. Listen to this podcast in the player above or here on iTunes. Some of the Subheading Related Topics Ali Covers Today Include: Reasons to use them Why people don’t use them Should you use the on every post Tips on how to use them 2 good examples of posts with subheadings (one simple and one more complex) Technical tips for using them I’m turning the show over to Ali and giving her 10 minutes to share as much good advice as she can. I think it would be well worth your while to listen to what she has to say. In Today’s Episode Ali’s Tips on How to Give Your Blog Posts Structure By Using Subheadings Subheadings stand out because they are like mini titles. They make your post stand out and make it more readable. Subheading Not Formatted: Subheading Formatted: Benefits of subheadings: Break up the text on the screen, making it more attractive at a glance – long blocks of dark grey text aren’t very attractive to look at Add extra white space – so that’s the blank space above, below, around the subheading – to make for easier reading Act as “signposts” in the text, so that readers who are skimming through can easily stop at relevant points – would be lovely if everyone read every word but they don’t! Come out of your planning, which makes it easy to write the post Give the post a strong structure, so it’s easy for readers to follow – they don’t get lost or confused in the middle, so they’re more likely to keep reading So why don’t some bloggers use them? They forget! They don’t plan in advance of writing Do all posts need subheadings? No – a very short post probably doesn’t. I’d suggest using at least one subheading in any post over 500 words long, though. Think of subheadings as the key points in your plan. If you write a plan for your post and you’ve got four key points, you’ll likely need four subheadings. Basic structure with subheadings: Classic list post, with a subheading for each of the 7 Ideas. Each starts with a number too – ALWAYS DO THIS IN A NUMBERED LIST POST. I imagine that when Charles sat down to think about this post, he came up with a working title, then drafted a list of ideas – maybe the 7 in the finished post, or maybe he came up with a couple of extras then cut the weaker ones. He might have played around with the ordering of ideas. Then each of the ideas became a subheading. More complicated structure: The 4 Rs That Show a Brand Your Blog is Influential Again this is a list post with the 4 Rs: Reach Resonance Reaction Relevance But also has an extra section at the end of each of these four parts, with its own sub-subheading – “Reach Metrics”, “Resonance Metrics” and so on. The fourth R, Relevance, is a long section so has two of these sub-subheadings. This is really handy technique when writing a list post, especially if you want to go more in-depth than typical list post. You can add an extra section to every item – try to make it consistent. This should offer something extra, added value to the reader. Laney used “Metrics” here, but you could try: Further Reading Recommended Tools Top Tip Watch Out for Try This Techy bits about subheadings: Header 2 for subheadings. Header 3 for sub-subheadings. Techy tip: if you write posts in MS Word, “Heading 2” style corresponds to the “Header 2” – you can copy and paste your post from Word into WordPress and your subheadings and sub-subheadings remain intact! In wordpress, click on the subheading.