ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

Seven Areas on How to Conduct a Half Yearly Blog Review Many bloggers do an end of year review. It’s a logical time to do an audit of your blog and set goals. I also think that periodically checking in on those goals and setting new ones is a good idea. This being halfway through the year it is a logical time to do just that. This is a good time to just stop blogging for a day or just spend a few hours and do some analysis of your blog. How have you been traveling as a blogger? I’m going to run through one method I use to do a blog review, but I also have a second suggestion that ProBlogger Editor Stacey Roberts wrote in 2015 that a lot of readers found helpful. I was also thinking about the best way to conduct a blog review and I came up with seven different areas to focus on. In each of these seven areas there are four questions you need to ask. Questions to Ask in Each of the Seven Blogging Areas What were my successes? What are the opportunities that come from those successes? What were the failures? What is my plan? I’ve also developed a worksheet that is a bit of a matrix that you can use to find the seven areas and ask the four questions within each one. In Today’s Episode: Seven Areas on How to Conduct a Half Yearly Blog Review Listen to this episode in the player above or on iTunes here. Content What did well? Posts, categories, topics, lengths, mediums etc. Did I meet deadlines? Plan - set an editorial plan - CoSchedule or Spreadsheet Traffic Traffic spikes and why - social network, blogs, seasonal Promote seasonal spikes and look for opportunities Dips and ways to minimize those dips Trending traffic - up, down, plateaus Promotional activities - guests posts, social, SEO, how did it go? Reader Engagement Health of your readership Are they engaging Comment numbers, share numbers, bounce rate Open rates on email newsletters Social media engagement What are you hearing from your readers? Have you delivered value? Giving more than taking Reader Survey - ask questions Run a community project or challenge to get engagement Monetization How is income trending? What has performed well? Where is income coming from - launches or long tail sales? Other monetization methods Plan What products to develop What sponsors to approach What affiliates Review media kit for sponsors Promotional calendar for products to launch or develop Set aside time to build a product or reach out to sponsors Tech Servers, outages, downtime Security, updates, plugins, vulnerabilities Broken features, new tools or plugins Design - Overhaul, review, is it dated or need tweaking Mobile responsive Tools - email, landing pages, do my tools still serve my needs? Do I need and get value from paid tools? Productivity How do you use your time? Workflows What takes the most time? Time tool like RescueTime You How are you traveling? How are you going? Do we ask ourselves this question? How are you going with your blogging, but your life as well? Physical, spiritual, mental, your energy levels and passion Do you need a break or to change direction? It’s important to ask deeper more personal questions Are you filling your cup? Professional development - solo entrepreneurs need to do this for themselves If you are not learning and developing your blog may suffer Further Resources on How to Conduct a Half Yearly Blog Review How to Do an End of 2015 Blog Audit: Take Stock of What You’ve Achieved and Where You’re Headed by Stacey Roberts Download the Worksheet Create Content - Content is the cornerstone of your blog. Here you’ll find everything to help you create great blog content. CoSchedule Promotion - How to Get More Eyeballs on Your Blog Find Readers - If you need to know how to find rea...

When Should You Publish Your Blog Posts Today I am talking about when you should publish your blog post. What day of the week? What time of the day? For what timezone? Does it really matter at all? In the past when RSS feeds were popular, timing did seem to matter more. It matters when you publish social media, but I’m not sure if it matters with blog posts that much anymore. From the studies I link to mornings do seem to be the best time. Readers will read blog posts in the morning, but comment later in the day after business hours. Still studies need to be taken with a grain of salt. There are a lot of variables. Note: Listen to this episode above or over on iTunes. In Today’s Episode What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog Find where your readers live and you can time according to the dominant time zone My readership is all over the world, but 50% is in America, so I try to time my blog posts when the bulk of my readership is waking up Look at your analytics and facebook page insights, that can help you find out when your audience is reading, mine seems to peek at 10:00 am East Coast time I try to position my posts right before things start to heat up, so about 7:00 am East Coast time, then I promote them on social media when things are really hot Consider the type of post you are publishing, challenge posts are posted on weekends, engagement on blogs is higher on the weekends We publish tutorials and heavy posts earlier in the week, we do inspirational posts at the end of the week when people are looking for light relief If we have a key post, like a sales related post, we try to get those out on Mondays US time, plus it enables us to promote it for the rest of the week The timing of your blog posts is less of a factor than the timing of your promotion Timing of emails and social media matter We send out emails early in the week We want to get those posts in front of you earlier in the week Because we have a global audience we separate social posts around the clock - Twitter every hour and 7 or 8 facebook posts a day Timing and regularity and consistency matter a lot - people take notice of when you publish - We publish this podcast on Monday’s and Wednesdays Be consistent, get your content in front of your readers, and experiment to find the optimum times Further Resources on What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog KissMetrics Social Fresh Noah Kogan Track Maven Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 130 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rouse and today I want to talk about the question of when should you publish your blog post. What time, what day? Does it really matter at all? What are the factors that you want to consider particularly if you have an international audience as I do. That’s what I'm tackling today. You can find today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/130 where I'm going to include some further reading for you and some links to some studies that have been done on this exact question that I'm going to talk about in a moment. Welcome to today’s podcast. I am just back from Thailand. We’ve in the last couple of days come back from a break of a couple of weeks over in Thailand. This is the first page of content that I’ve created since coming back which worries me slightly, I have to say. If I'm sounding a little bit relaxed or confused, it’s probably because my head’s not quite back into work mode. We just had this great time over in Thailand, beautiful weather although we did have a couple of days of rain but really warm, beautiful, sort of tropical weather. Amazing food, very friendly people. It’s raining here in Melbourne when we returned, and it’s cold, so I'm trying to get my head back into work mode and struggle with the vari...

Note: we've now started adding full transcripts to our podcasts. Scroll down to find todays one. Three Types of Ads to Consider When Creating Facebook Advertising Today we are talking about Facebook advertising. If you are all about organic, we also have a podcast about organic Facebook reach coming up. Facebook has been putting more emphasis on advertising, and I know it something that many of you grapple with. A nice thing about Facebook advertising is that you don’t have to invest a lot, and it can have immediate results. I have done some Facebook advertising, especially when I have a product to launch. But since I’m not an expert, I brought in one of our Facebook advertising subject matter experts. Angela Ponsford from Dotti Media. Today Angela is going to share some tips on how to create our first Facebook ad. Listen to this episode above here on the show notes or check it out over on iTunes here. In Today’s Episode How to Create Your Facebook Advertising - 3 Types of Ads to Consider Boosted posts Facebook tracks everything that you do It uses the information to build a database of your interests and likes It also measures what you do off of Facebook, like clicking on links or spending time on a website As a marketer, you have that information available to you Facebook determines objectives for each type of post The objective of a boosted post is to get engagement on that post within the Facebook platform, someone liking, commenting, or sharing that post If you want to get people to a blog post on your website a boosted post is not the best way to do that At Dotti Media, we used a boosted post to get feedback from our Facebook fan page because we wanted engagement on that Facebook post Before you click on the boosted post button, be sure of what action you want to take Clicks to website ads From Facebook’s perspective, these are designed to get people to click out to your website They will show the ad to people who have historically clicked out to other websites To set up a clicks to website ad Click the link in your status update Paste the URL of your website post in the status update box Then go to the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor to set up the Clicks to Website Ad Website conversion ads The difference between a clicks to website ad and a website conversion ad is that with the website conversion ad, you want a user to take an action on your website There is a bit more to set these up because you need to install the tracking pixel - a piece of code on your website that allows Facebook to track visitors on your website This is a powerful Facebook ad, and it can give you powerful insight into your audience Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to Episode 129 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about Facebook Advertising. I know some of you are probably about to hit the stop button because you’re not interested in Facebook in terms of advertising because you're all about organic, that’s great, that’s totally fine. We’ve actually got an episode on organic Facebook reach coming up soon. But as most bloggers are aware, Facebook has been putting more and more emphasis into advertising as a way to reach your followers. So, it is something that I know many of you are grappling with. One of the great things about Facebook advertising is that it isn’t something you need to invest a whole heap of money into. It can be something that you can get into for just a few dollars and it can have immediate results on your side. I don’t do a lot of Facebook advertising, but we over the last year have put more emphasis into it particularly when we’ve been launching products or when I have a key blog post that I ne...

Note: we've now started adding full transcripts to our podcasts. Scroll down to find todays one. Getting Started With Your Own Podcast Today is this podcasts first birthday! That’s right - I launched this thing with those first 31 daily episodes back at the end of June 2015 and while we quickly scaled things back to twice a week, I managed to keep things running for a whole year thanks to the support of my team! I’ve completely fallen in love with podcasting as a medium and thought about making this a show about the lessons I’ve learned podcasting in the last year but given that I did a show like that back in Episode 50, I thought I’d reach out to a podcasting friend of mine - Brooke McAlary from Slow Your Home who started 3 months before me as a podcaster after having blogged successfully for a few years previously. Brooke has fallen so in love with podcasting that she’s fully transitioned Slow Your Home away from being a blog to being a podcast and has gone on to start a podcasting network at JackRabbit.fm. The network has 6 podcast shows in it already with more to come. Her Slow Your Home podcast just went past the one million download mark already so she’s had some real success! This chat covers a lot of ground but largely focuses upon her transition to becoming a podcaster and what practical lessons she learned along the way about podcasting. It’s perfect for anyone wanting to start podcasting and covers: Brooke's journey of going from a blogger to a podcaster Practical tips on how to get a podcast up and running The tools and technical aspects of Brooke’s setup that you should consider Thoughts on how to decide what content format to go with (interview vs talking head vs co hosted) How to push past the fear and other obstacles in your head How to launch with a bang to maximise reach How Brooke is monetising her podcast Why Brooke started a podcast network And there’s much much more! Listen to this episode above or over on iTunes. For those of you preferring to read - we’ve included a full Transcript of the show below! Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there, my name is Darren Rowse and welcome to Episode 128 of the ProBlogger podcast. Today, I’m celebrating the first year anniversary of the start of this podcast. It was exactly one year ago, 30th of June 2015 that I kicked things off. I thought about doing a show today on what I've learned since then. I did a similar show back in Episode 50, but instead of doing that I thought what I would do is pick the brains of another podcaster who used to be a blogger, Brooke McAlary from slowyourhome.com and also the founder of the Jack Rabbit Podcast network. She's an Aussie blogger who lives in Sydney, a mom, a wife, a blogger and that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Brooke has brought a wealth of information to today's chat. I interview her over the next hour so you want to grab a cup of your favorite beverage and we’re going to talk about her journey from going from a blogger to a podcaster. She's going to give you some practical tips on how to get a podcast up and running, particularly from the perspective of a blogger. We're going to talk about the technical stuff you need to know, how to decide what content format to go with. We’re going to talk about how to push past some of the obstacles that are in your head, some of the fear associated with podcasting, some of those comparisons that we feel as podcasters and bloggers as well, how to launch your podcast, how to monetize your podcast and why she started a podcast network, and then there's a whole heap of other stuff including a couple of attempts at humor which I’m not sure how that went but as I mentioned during the show, I’m getting tired, it's getting towards the end of a busy time for me and w...

Writing That Develops a Personal Connection With Your Readers Have you ever felt a personal connection with a blogger who you’ve never met and have no real reason to feel a connection with? You read their blog day after day and in time come to feel like you know them—as if their blog posts are almost written as private messages to you. This has happened to me numerous times over the years. I almost end up feeling that the blogger is my friend, even though I’ve never actually had personal contact with them. I’ve also been on the other side of that relationship quite a few times. I regularly meet people at conferences who come up and say that they feel like they know me even though we’ve never actually met. That personal connection can bring a blog to life! In Today’s Episode How can you foster this personal connection with readers? Listen to it here in the player above or over on iTunes here. Tell personal stories Sharing your own stories, not only shows you have knowledge, but you have experienced it too Stories make you more relatable to people Write as you speak This may not be everyone’s style, but I’m casual when I talk and I’m casual when I write How to Use Your Writing to Build Relationships and Build Your Brand Use personal language Incorporate language that makes the reader feel you are talking to them Use the word “you” when you write This moves the topic away from theory and makes it more applicable Picture a person while you’re writing A simple way to change the tone of your writing is to actually write your post with a person in mind. Chris Garrett talks about this a lot and encourages bloggers to visualize a person as they write. Similarly, I like to develop reader profiles, which I find helps me avoid writing for a nameless crowd of readers. Base posts upon REAL reader needs The more you write about real needs, the more you will connect People feel connected if they feel you understand what they are trying to overcome Get in the habit of asking your readers what their biggest challenge is Write about Your Readers Feelings, Fears and Dreams What really connects people is when you write about what they feel, think, fear, and dream. This makes your reader feel you are speaking to them on a deeper level An example of this was my last newsletter where I asked readers what their challenges were? The responses were fascinating, I analyzed them in a spreadsheet and even made a word cloud on the topics Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome was a topic I got from these responses After the show went live, I received messages from listeners that felt I was speaking directly to them This is the power of understanding your readers dreams, fears, needs, and challenges. Create that kind of content! Go Off Topic I try to keep my blogs on topic, but I do find ways to weave in other elements of my life My Instagram and Twitter accounts give glimpses into my life Occasionally, I’ll blog while on holiday or from my couch with a beer These things seem to show me as a real person Have an outlet to share a little about your life and “humanize: yourself as you blog Multi-media Different forms of media can also humanize you A picture puts a face with the name A podcast gives you a voice Video not only shows a face and voice, but body language too Attend events Attending events is a powerful way to build relationships Online events like a Ustream chat session or a Twitter #blogchat is also an opportunity to meet and relate with readers Get a reaction Readers will feel a connection when they comment or participate in some other way, such as polls, competitions, emails, sharing, etc. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Write from the heart One of the best things I think you can do is to allow yourself to FEEL somet...

Creating a Blogging Will Today, I want to talk about something that may come across as a little morbid or depressing, but something that I think is important - particularly for those of us who do generate a living from our blogs (or at least a decent part time income). It’s all about how to prepare a ‘blogging will’. Note: this episode is now live in iTunes if you'd prefer to listen to it there. Have you ever wondered what happens to your blog if you were to pass away? Over the years, I’ve known a number of bloggers who have sadly passed. Many of them, I only knew online and didn’t know their families. While reflecting on their lives, I often wondered how their families dealt with the bloggers online affairs after they were gone. Every time I thought about this, I also wondered what would happen to my own blogs and business if I were to pass away. Ever since 2006, I’ve had a ‘blogging will’ to help my family work out what to do if that were to happen. As a solo entrepreneur, I realized that much of what was needed to run this business was locked up in my head—a dangerous thing if something happened to that head! I remember waking up in a bit of a panic one night wondering what would happen if Vanessa didn’t know how to access my blog or understand how I’d set things up business wise. I got up and created a little document for her to use in such circumstances. In Today’s Episode What Does My Blogging Will Contain? People Names and contact emails of people I trust and work with 15 people who I have different working relationships and friendships with who could help with different aspects of my business from: Server setup Income streams Business partners Team members And more I include a brief description of who they are, where they live, and what they can do to help With the right people around my business could be sustained at least to a point where parts could be sold Business overview General business structure and overview of blogs, eBooks, courses, sister sites, job boards, teams, and income streams. Advice In the will are a few paragraphs of advice about what I’d do if I was in the situation of having to run the business without much prior knowledge of it. I explain what I’d try to sell, who I’d try to convince to run things, what products I’d release, and so on. While none of it is legally binding, I want to leave my family in the best position to be able to sustain themselves in the long term if something were to happen to me. Passwords, login details, access codes Many parts of my business are reliant upon third parties, and anyone wanting to keep things running would need to access those services. For example, they’d need my PayPal account login details, affiliate program logins and ad network access details, domain name registration access, servers, bank accounts, email accounts, social media access and of course passwords to the blogs themselves. I guess ultimately email access is key as so many of the others can be accessed with being able to reset passwords and send them to that. Without these, it would be almost impossible to keep things running profitably. While I don’t include the passwords in the document (security reasons) I give information on how she can access them! Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, this is Darren from ProBlogger. I would like to welcome you to episode 126, of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that is a little bit of a downer, in some ways. It's a little bit morbid and a little bit depressing, but it's something that I think is really important. I want to answer the question, what's going to happen to your blog after you die and do you ha...

Handling Critical Comments and Attacks from Blog Readers In my recent podcast on the characteristics of successful blogging, I touched on the topic a couple of times of putting yourself out there for public comment and critique. I suggested that having a bit of a thick skin might be useful because from time to time you’ll definitely get ‘feedback’ that may not be as a encouraging, helpful or constructive as it could be - and which at times may even enter into the territory of it being aggressive, attacking and personal. While I’ve only experienced this a handful of times in over 10 years the times that it has happened to me have rocked my world a little. So how should a blogger deal with criticism of their blogging? That’s what this episode is all about! In Today’s Episode How to Handle Critical and Attacking Comments from Blog Readers Note: This episode is now live in iTunes here. Embrace it - When you’re critiqued there is potential for growth from the encounter. Feedback of any type is a sign that someone has noticed what you’re doing and reading your blog. Consider the critique - When I get a negative comment, I try to step back and do a bit of analysis of what’s going on. Here are a few questions I consider: Is the comment within the boundaries of what I think is acceptable for my blog? Is there some truth in it? Are there some improvements you can make? Is there a misunderstanding you can clarify? Is this something I’ve heard before? Is there a common theme to the critiques? Is this from someone who I have interacted before? Were they having a bad day or is this ongoing? Was there anything positive? Is there common ground you can focus on? Is this a troll or someone seeking attention? Is the feedback anonymous? Is it a trouble maker or someone you know? What is the intent of the critique? Are there any signals that can give you context for the commenters situation? Sometimes looking at the links to their blog/social, previous comments or things said in the comment can give you an understanding of the agenda of the person. A lot of this is about trying to get to the heart of what’s going on with the comment. For me a lot of it comes down to trying to understand the intent of the other person and trying to respond to that rather than just the words that they’ve chosen to use. Sometimes behind the words that come across as a personal attack is something that you can take on board to learn from/improve what you do or the opportunity to help your reader and make a positive connection. Of course it’s not always easy to do this. You may need to give yourself a little time/distance (although you may need to act faster if things are blowing up). Step away from the computer! You might also find it helpful to involve another person. Ask a friend, family member, another blogger for their take. Sometimes someone who is outside the situation can reveal something about the feedback that you’re not seeing. Respond - With analysis and feedback, you are in a better position to respond. I have taken a few options to respond. Responding to trolls Delete it - I rarely delete negative comments but on occasion if a comment is left by someone who is obviously trolling and doing so in an offensive way I’ll delete it. Ignore it - If the feedback comes on social media and its troll like I usually ignore it. Overly polite kindness - Sometimes I take a kill them with kindness type response. I don’t tend to do this so much these days - it is a little passive aggressive but it can be effective at times. If there’s even some hint that the person is coming from a non-troll place I will respond with these options: Clarification - Maybe they misunderstood your point, clarify blog post Take responsibility - If you’ve made an error, take responsibility Debate - A robust discussion can benefit both sides

Using We and I in Blogging Today we are talking about using the words we and I. This comes from a question from Sally. If you would like to join us on the Gold Coast in Australia for the ProBlogger Event, you have just under two weeks left to save $100 on your ticket. You can get all of the details on ProBloggerEvents.com. Note: this episode is also available on iTunes here. This question is from Sally (not her real name). Sally is just starting out blogging and doesn’t have a team. She has noticed some bloggers say “we” even though they don’t have a team. Is it better to use “we” or “I” when blogging. In Today’s Episode Using We and I When Blogging and Does It Matter I’m sure a lot of bloggers can relate to this question. I know I’ve slipped into the “we” in the early days of my blogs because they kind of slid into being a collaborative thing I wasn’t trying to project I was bigger than I was, it was more of the collaborative nature In time, I had regular guest writers and a forum moderator, so I guess the “we” became more justified After I started hiring more people it definitely became a “we” I struggle with the flip side of this sometimes, I use “I” on my blog when I have a collaborative team working on the site and helping out I think it is a good idea to be as transparent as possible Using “I” can make you more relatable to your audience and show that you are just like them There will come a time when the “I” becomes a “we”, this isn’t a clear cut process and the transition may be muddled Stay transparent, and share your journey. Don’t worry too much if the lines become muddled. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there, it's Darren from ProBlogger. I'd like to welcome you to Episode 124 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about "We's" and "I's." Not "we's" and "I's" but we're going to talk about using the word "we" and "I." It's a question from Sally, one of our readers. I'll play it for you in a moment. Before I do, a couple of housekeeping things that I want to mention. Firstly, I am on a beach in Thailand, just thought I’d slip that one in. I've recorded this one earlier. Today's show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/124. I'm still on a beach in Thailand. You can check out my Instagram @darrenrowse. I'm sure I'll be sharing some photos of that beach over there. Thirdly, if you'd like to join us at our ProBlogger event on the Gold Coast here in Australia, on the 9th and 10th of September, you have just under two weeks left to save $100 on your ticket for that. You can check out all the details of that amazing event and the peak of what we do at ProBlogger every year. You can check out all the details of that over probloggerevents.com. Don't wait too long because on the first day of July, to get prices, we'll go up to $100. If you're waiting for information on the virtual event tickets, hold on because after the first of July, we will release details on where you can pick up a virtual ticket. Now, I want to play you a little question from Sally. It's not her real name. She asked me to keep her real name private. I understand why. She asked this really interesting little question. This is going to be a short episode today, I promise. I do have some stuff to say about whether we should use the word "we" or "I" when blogging. Sally: Hi, Darren. Thanks for the great work you do. I'm learning so much from listening to your blog and your podcast. I have a question. I'm starting out as a blogger. It's just me. I don't have an assistant, I don't have a team. I don't really have a need to convey that I'm any bigger than I am. I'm comfortable saying, "I." I noticed all over the internet, people use, "We." Like, "Contact us. Here's what we do." Often after poking around the site,

When is a Good Time to Monetize Your Blog Welcome to episode 123. Today I am answering a question that I get asked a lot. The question is how early should I monetize my blog? I know a lot of you are starting or relaunching blogs or starting second blogs. I want to outline a couple of different approaches that I see bloggers taking, and then give you some suggestions on how I would start to monetize my blog if I was starting again today. Currently, there is a $100 off special on tickets to the ProBlogger Event in Australia happening on the 9th and 10th of September. This discount ends on midnight of July 1st. NOTE: you can listen to this episode in iTunes here. Here are a couple of the recent questions I have received about the topic of when to monetize. “How much traffic should you have to offer advertisements on your blog?” or “How early should consider monetizing my blog?” In Today’s Episode: 2 Main Approaches for When to Monetize a Blog Wait - Some people think you shouldn’t waste your time by monetizing too early before you have traffic Takes traffic Will take time to implement Ads may put some people off Do It From Day 1 - There are reasons to wait, but I always monetize right away It’ll earn you a little bit from day 1 - even if it is a little bit, you are earning something, and if you get a traffic spike that money will go up It gets readers used to ads - I’m a little skeptical about how many people are really put off by advertising on blogs. I’ve also seen pushback from readers when bloggers put advertising up even later on. People who don’t like ads, just don’t like ads. You’ll learn about monetizing blogs - You’ll also learn a lot through trial and error. By putting AdSense up, you will learn things like which ads perform better and best placement, size, etc. This will position you well for other advertising options later on. A Couple More Thoughts on Blog Monetization Firstly, don’t invest too much time into too early - do so in a low level way, some methods will take more energy and time, look for easy ways to monetize Some monetization methods will probably be out of the question early on - sponsors won’t work from day 1 because you need traffic Some ad networks let you sign up early. AdSense does have some requirements. Do affiliate marketing - this is the monetization method with one of the lowest barriers to entry. For example, Amazon’s Associate Program can have you up and running with ads in minutes. If I were starting today, I would probably start with affiliate marketing. Depending on the topic of the blog, I would probably look beyond Amazon at eBooks, courses, and software affiliate programs where the commissions are higher. I would not only be doing this to make money, I would be testing out the following things: Test out promoting different types of products Test different price points Test different marketing (banners, reviews, emails etc) Don’t obsess about monetization too early. Profitable blogs are built on a number of pillars: Great content Traffic (promotion, guest content, SEO, social) Engaged Readers (building community, building email list, social) Appropriate Monetization Strategies Consider monetization early - but work on other factors as well. I did this on dPS and it set up the foundations so I could start to: Try other affiliate marketing (eBooks, courses mainly) Reach out directly to advertisers for sponsorships Develop my own products (eBooks at first, courses, software, printables later) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to Episode 123 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I'm excited today to tackle a question that I get asked a lot when I do Q&As. That is,

Do you associate your name with your blog? Today, I am talking about whether you should use your real name when blogging or blog anonymously. Often times, bloggers introduce themselves to me and then say they blog anonymously. There are definite advantages of using your name and definite advantages of blogging anonymously. I am going to talk about some of the different options that are open to you that may be in between each choice. This is one of the decisions that bloggers face when starting a blog. Most at least ponder the question. Many use their real names straight away, but others really grapple with this decision. Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher In Today’s Episode: Using Your Real Name and Other Options Blog under your personal name and promote it prominently on your blog (this is what I’ve done here on ProBlogger). Perhaps the most extreme version of this is when you make your domain name your actual name. Blog under your personal name but don’t really promote yourself (this is what I’ve done on DPS – my name is on the about page and on any articles I wrote but not much more. Blog under an alias or just part of your name and promote that name. Some examples of this - early on on ProBlogger we had a writer who wrote for us called Skellie. Her blog was the same name - but it wasn’t her real name. Aussie blogger Mrs Woog is another good example. She blogged as Mrs Woog at WoogsWorld. An alternative to this might be using a maiden name rather than a married name if you have one - or visa versa - one for personal use and one for professional use. Blog without any name on your blog at all – letting the content speak for itself. This anonymous blogging has been done by many people over the years - for different reasons. So which is the best option? On ProBlogger I’ve always been blogging under my name, including it in the byline of my posts, I have a prominent about page, the blog is written in a personal tone, including personal details of my life and video and pictures of myself. On dPS however I took a different approach from day #1. While I always used my name as bylines on my articles and had it on my about and contact pages. I never really went out of my way to make the blog about me. I guess this was even reflected in the type of name I chose for the site. Digital Photography School communicates a brand that is a center for learning while ProBlogger feels more about a person (whether that is the author or the reader). I guess my point is to say that a variety of approaches can work and the decision is totally yours. There Are a Number of Factors to Consider: The topic - as I’ve already said - some topics probably lend themselves more to being transparent about who you are. The style of content - DPS was never a story telling type blog. It was about the content. The medium of content - if you’re purely producing text content you may run into less issues around your identity than if you’re posting pictures and video. Your long term plans - try to picture a few years forward about what you want to achieve with your blog. While it can be hard to do if you have clear goals this can impact your decision. do you want your blog to be a multi author blog? If so it might be advantageous to not make the blog fully about you if you ever choose to step away from your blog and sell. It can be quite helpful to have a blog that isn’t all about you personally. Monetization methods - some ways of making money blogging might be more suited to a more personal and transparent approach Banner ads, no worries about who you are Consultant, speaker or coach, people need to know who you are Influencer, you need a personal connection Ebook, course, etc. Better to be more open about who you are Anonymous bloggers still may be able to do these things, but it is more challenging

Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Today I’m going to talk about an issue I see a lot of bloggers struggling with. In fact, I see a lot of blogger’s really crippled by this. I am talking about imposter syndrome. Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher This is something I have suffered with quite a bit over the years. I’m going to get a little personal today and tell you about those times when I was pretty much paralyzed by it. I’m going to get a bit honest today, and tell you that these weren’t the best times of my life. If you want to hear about it, then listen on. I think if you’ve suffered with this imposter syndrome. Hopefully, you’ll get something out of my story that will help you get through it yourself. Today I am going to present to you 7 different strategies to overcome imposter syndrome. We are going to touch on fear, self-doubt and feeling like others think you are a fraud. We are going to get really raw today. Do you ever fear that you’re about to be found out and that everyone is about to discover you’re not as smart as they think you are or that you don’t really know what you’re doing in some area of your life? Do you feel this way about your blogging? If so - you’re not alone at all, but you may be suffering from Imposter Syndrome. In Today’s Episode 7 Different Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Understand that you’re actually suffering from this because you’re a high achiever At least be comforted out of the fact that you are not willing to settle for poor performance This may not fix it, but it’s good to know You need to work on self acceptance and realistic expectations There have been a number of times that I have been paralysed by imposter syndrome (World Domination Summit) I wrestled with it and became stuck I had unrealistic expectations about the results of this talk Perfectionism taken to the extreme can paralyse you Perfectionism also starts to creep into other extreme realities like being booed on stage or destroying my business I talked myself down to a more realistic reality and realized I didn’t need to be perfect I needed to be honest and true to myself Don’t be too hard on yourself, treat yourself kind Focus on your audience - I realized worrying was incredibly selfish, it was all about me and not my audience I decided that every time I was worried about how I would be perceived, I had to stop thinking about myself and focus on my audience This is great advice for anyone creating something for an audience This is also why I’m trying to interact with my readers as much as possible One of the best things you can do to show that you are not a fake or fraud is to deliver value Be Transparent - The most powerful thing you can do to smash through imposter syndrome is to blog with transparency People can only call you a fraud or fake if you are trying to be something that you are not Show people who you really are I was at SMMW a couple of months ago, and Cliff Ravenscraft talked about imposter syndrome. You are only an imposter if you are lying about who you are or what you have achieved. His suggestion was to always be honest when writing content by revealing: This is who I am This is what I have experienced to this point and what I’m learning These are my hopes, dreams and goals for the future This particularly relates to bloggers who are blogging about topics that they are not qualified to formally write about yet. I get asked about this a fair bit by readers who ask ‘“should I start a blog on a topic that I’m still a beginner in?" My answer is to always tell the story of when I started ProBlogger back in 2004 I struggled with imposter syndrome at the beginning of ProBlogger. Even though, I was on my way to being a full time blogger.

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher 22 Indicators to Help Determine If You're Suited for Starting a Blog Today I want to talk about the characteristics and qualities of professional bloggers. Lately on ProBlogger we’ve noticed a bit of a surge of readers who are what I would call ‘PreBloggers’. People asking questions about how to start a blog and even wondering if they should. As a result we’ve recently published a 5 step guide for starting a blog which walks you through some of the technicalities of how to start out. I want to step back a little from that process and tackle an important question that really should come before you start your blog. Should you start one? Today I want to suggest to you 22 questions to ask yourself if you are considering starting a blog. These are not yes or no questions. These are 22 indicators to whether or not you might be suited to blogging. In Today’s Episode 22 Questions to Ask To Identify if Blogging is a Good Fit for You Do you have a message? Do you have something you really need to say A central message Are you a good communicator? Communication skills are an advantage You can also learn communication skills through blogging Are you willing to be in the public spotlight? Blogging is a public act People will analyze what you do, say, and how you look You are putting yourself out there Once you write something online it is hard to get it removed Are you thick skinned? Can you take criticism well Someone will write about you sooner or later Are you a self starter? Starting a blog takes initiative It takes motivation to get a blog off the ground Are you disciplined? Blogging requires regular attention and motivation over time It’s good to aim for writing everyday Do you have time? You need to be able to update your blog regularly You also need time for comments, promotion and social media, etc. Do you have the ‘energy’ for blogging? Blogging takes focus After a long day at work can you still focus and be creative Do you have any technical ability? It’s not a requirement, but it’s an advantage to be able to learn and work on a technical level You don’t have to know everything to start, you just need a willingness to learn or ask for help Do you have a blend of humility and Ego? Bigheadedness abounds in the blogosphere, but the humble blogger often ends up on top Many ‘look at me bloggers’ haven’t lasted You need a healthy ego and self worth Build something of worth and have the confidence to promote it Getting the balance right is not easy Are you an organized person? Bloggers need to be organized Most successful bloggers have some type of system in place Are you a Social person? There are advantages to being a people person and liking your readers Having a genuine heart for your readers and making their lives better tends to work the best Do you enjoy ‘virtual relationships? Some people who are great face to face aren’t that great online Being comfortable with speaking to and working with people you have never met is an advantage if you’re a blogger Are you willing to learn? Blogging is a journey where everyone knows something, but no one knows everything Industries like blogging also change Are you a creative person? Creativity on the web really stands out Do you have Stick-ability? Are you a patient person? Take a long term approach

How to Decide on a WordPress Theme for Your Blog Today I have a treat for you. Today we have a special guest, one of our new subject matter experts, Kelly Exeter from Swish Design. Kelly is one of those people who produces a heap of great content and also runs a business on the side. Kelly is one of the go to people in Australia when it comes to blog design. I received a question from Nils from Soul Thoughts who asks a question that many bloggers who are starting a blog. What is the best WordPress theme to choose for my blog (and how to make that decision). I’m not a designer, so I’m going to let our design expert Kelly share her tips on choosing the right WordPress Theme. You can either listen to the episode via the podcast player above or check it out on iTunes or Stitcher. Alternatively if you prefer to read - Kelly has written up the full show below for you to keep coming back to including all the links and resources mentiond in the episode. How to Choose the Right WordPress Theme for Your Blog Hello! I’m here today to try and answer this very big question: What are the best themes to use if you have a WordPress blog? And the very short answer to this is – there is no best theme. There are many themes out there that will work well for your needs. The hard part is narrowing down the list. If you type ‘WordPress themes’ into Google you will usually end up some place like ThemeForest where, at current count, there are over 6000 themes to choose from. Even somewhere with a slightly smaller selection like Elegant Themes has 87 on offer and Studiopress, the home of Genesis themes has over 50. So – how on earth do you choose the best theme for your needs from this wealth of choice? Well, my number one suggestion is to stop looking in those theme libraries and start instead with the blogs out there whose designs you love. Most WordPress themes these days are built on off-the-shelf templates which means that blog you love, you can access the same theme they’ve used. A quick word about this however – that blog you love – is it their header you particularly love? Or their typography? Or their imagery? If so, those are design elements that can be incorporated into any theme out there. When you’re deciding on a theme, you really need to choose one based on it having a layout you like – so you like how their logo and menu are placed, how their blog archives are laid out, how their blogs posts are laid out, and most importantly, what elements they have on their home page and where those elements are positioned. For example, if you choose the Metro Pro theme from Genesis – make sure you are choosing it because you like how it’s laid out … not because the demo has. So – let’s say you love the new Being Boss blog design at beingboss.club and you’re thinking that could work well for you. The first thing you want to do is find out what theme they’re using. You do this by viewing the source code of the website. To do this, type into your browser window: view-source:http://beingboss.club/ (NB: You can do this for any site by typing in view-source:FULLWEBSITEURL) Once you’re viewing the source code do a search for this: wp-content/themes. This will come up in a few places in the source code and the word that directly follows the word ‘themes’ in the source is the name of the theme. So for Being Boss, I can see their theme is called Art Mag. If you then Google ‘Art Mag Wordpress theme’ you’ll see it’s a theme you can buy from Themeforest for $49. A word of caution. When you’re checking out your favourite website, loving how it looks and you’re thinking I’m saying just buy the same theme and your site can look like that too, there is a giant caveat here. If you’re loving how a site looks, it’s probably because they have killer imagery. If you don’t have the same killer imagery, then use the same theme as them all you like, your site won’t look like theirs.

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher Seven Ways to Find Time to Create Your Blog's First Product Today I am talking about the topic of juggling priorities and finding time to do the work we need to get done. In our last newsletter, I asked two simple questions. What is your dream, and what is your biggest challenge? The recurring theme of the replies is that for many bloggers a lack of time is an issue. It’s about juggling priorities. There was also tension around the topic of monetizing blogs. One of the emails I received was from Bradley. He writes: “I’ve been building an audience on my blog for the past two years, and to this point have made money with sponsorship and a little affiliate marketing. My dream is to shift my monetization strategy to selling information products like ebooks and courses. I’ve started writing my first ebook. My challenge is that my schedule is full. Between a full time job, kids, writing blog posts, promoting my blog, and looking after my readers, I just don’t have enough time. To get this ebook finished something has to give. I’ve been working on this ebook for the last couple of weeks, when I can, but at this rate, it’s going to take me another six months to complete. I can’t give up my job or my kids, so the only thing I can really give up is the blog itself. Should I put writing new content on hold while I write the ebook?” This is a great question that really taps into what a lot of our readers are struggling with. So today, I am going to talk about seven things that might help Bradley get that product created without giving up on his blog. Further Reading: Check out Episode 67 where I talk about why creating products is something bloggers should consider doing. A Summary of the Advice in Today’s Episode: 7 Ways to Find Time for Product Creation Don’t put your blog on hold completely - I understand why, but I would encourage you not to do it. When you go back to promote your product, your audience will have gone cold. Plus, you need a warm audience to sell your product too. Scale back on some of your blogging activities - There are times and seasons in most blogs. You may be able to pull back a little and have more time for product creation. The same goes for pulling back a little on social media. Think about batching the creation of content and other blog activities - Do two or three posts or podcasts at a time. Batching your time is really useful. You can also do the same thing with the creation of your book. When I was writing my book, I set aside weekends for purely writing. I even went as far as booking a cheap hotel and locking myself inside. Use some of the product content you are creating as blog content - When I was writing my book, I put some of the archives of ProBlogger into the book. I also published book excerpts as a blog post. This made writing the book easier and kept my blog going. Set an aggressive deadline - Parkinson’s Law - Work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion. If you give yourself a year and it will take a year, give yourself a month, it will get done in a month. Create accountability. Accountability partner Announce it to your readers Take pre-orders - once you take money, it really ramps up accountability Create version 0.1 or a beta version - If you are creating a big product, get it to the point where you can sell it as a first version. Break it down and release it as modules. Get the minimum viable product out the door. Can you break it down? Get some help - If you are at your absolute limits and need help, you may need to get someone else to work with you and help you. Get someone to help with the product - find a coauthor or get help with design, editing or marketing Get some help with your blog or business, have a guest post or hire someone to write, edit or proof a post.

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. A Blogger Shares How She Made $28,000 Using The 4 Stages of Warming Her Readers Up Today I’m wrapping up the mini series we have been going through that is all about warming your readers up. We have been talking about how to take readers from being completely unaware of who you are or cold to being fully engaged with you or warmed up. I’m going to wrap this series up by sharing a case study of how one blogger, who had a relatively small list of readers, used the principles that we have been talking about in this series to generate over $28,000. She did this by using a single blog post, a SlideShare presentation, a lead magnet, an email sequence, and a webinar. Recap of Episodes in Warming Your Readers Up Series Episode 112 I walk you through the 4 stages of warming your readers up First getting their attention Second getting them interested Third getting a connection Four getting engagement Episode 113 This episode was all about getting that first eyeball on your site Using Guest Content (and how to work out where you could put it) Creating Shareable content on your own blog (gave tips on how to work out what to create) I spoke about Repurposing content Talked a little about SEO - particularly in search engines beyond Google like iTunes, App Store etc Episode 114 All about getting people to look twice at you and your blog. Getting them interested, and getting them to realize that you are doing something relevant to them. How to make a big promise about how you’ll relieve a pain or help bring about a gain I shared some tips on how to differentiate yourself I talked about creating ‘fist pump content’ that gives readers a quick win Spoke about how to funnel readers to this quick win content through your site navigation, start here pages or portals Shared some tips on using social proof to make people look twice Episode 115 All about getting a connection with your readers. How to get them to subscribe, and I shared practical strategies on that. Using pop ups, welcome mats and other ways to call readers to subscribe Creating great lead magnets through creating content specific upgrades (gave you some examples of this) Talked about how to create lead magnets that create momentum and build anticipation Talked about the importance of content that builds desire and content that builds anticipation Talked about cross promotion of your connection points to get secondary points of connection Episode 116 All about deepening engagement with your readers Particularly emphasises how to ‘onboard’ your readers How to create content that promotes engagement and a sense of belonging How to use ‘content events’ to build engagement Today, I want to give you a case study that picks up on many of the strategies that I’ve talked about, so you can see how these might come together to help your readers flow through these stages. To walk us through it I want to introduce you to Donna Moritz from SociallySorted.com.au I was sharing these 4 stages of warming up readers on my FB page a few weeks back, and Donna shared with me a great example of how she brought them together. In Today’s Episode Donna Moritz Shares How She Made $28,000 Using The 4 Stages of Warming Her Readers Up Donna’s Blog Post - 21 Pro Tips for a Packed House at Your Webinar or Live Event Using Visual Marketing She knew big blog posts were effective, she was asked to be an affiliate for Amy Porterfield, so she decided to create a “firecracker” blog post to get the most webinar attendees She knew people interested in this topic would be interested in the event, priming readers for a topic The post took a couple of weeks of collecting information from influencers, then about a day to write To get the attention of influencers,

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. How to Move Readers From Passive Lurking to Engagement Welcome to episode 116. I am working through a series that helps you to warm your blog readers up. In episode 112, I introduced the four stages of warming your readers up. In episode 113, I talk about how to get the first eyeball to your blog. In episode 114, I talk about getting people to give your blog a second look and become interested. In episode 115, I talk about how to get readers to subscribe and connect with you. This is crucial for building an ongoing relationship with your audience. Today, I am talking about the final step which is getting engagement. In the process of getting readers warmed up, we have people who subscribe, but they often never actually comment or connect or engage with us. Today, I will be giving strategies for getting our readers to talk back to us. Next week, In episode 117, I will be going over a case study that pulls together all four stages, and I will be interviewing somebody who has developed a system for taking people from becoming aware to becoming fully engaged. In Today’s Episode How to Snap Readers out of Passive Lurking to Become Engaged We need to be the community that we want to have. If we want engagement, we need to be engaging. This is the challenge that bloggers have. Help your readers to get onboard - onboarding, helping your readers to get onboard with your blog Set up an autoresponder with an email list Email list of Ytravel Blog Thanks you for joining (Email #1) Tells a little bit about what the email will be used for Sets expectations of when emails will be sent Encourages people to add email to address list Gives free audio download (optin) They invite their readers to apply Email #2 - Similar things generosity How they are going to help their readers Suggestion of 3 links, to get the readers back to the site They point out useful stuff Another invitation to reply Email #3 - They really tap into the pain of their readers and give them a series of posts to help Create engaging content as part of your regular production Ask for engagement Create blog posts that are all about engagement - A discussion post Digital Photography School - How would you photograph a funeral? I wrote a post about this question and opened it up to my readers This goes beyond getting a comment, it shows my readers that I am interested in helping other readers Weekly Challenge - Modes of Transportation On Digital Photography School we issue a weekly challenge to our readers I would do these writing challenges on ProBlogger too Run a poll or survey and share the results in another post Have a weekly editorial strategy and focus on different areas - attention, quick wins, engagement Personal mediums are effective - live streaming is very engaging Engagement is about you, your readers, and your readers to each other When I live stream readers leave comments for each other Twitter Chat having a # party allows readers to engage with one another Real life events - tweetups and meetups and having readers come together Our annual events - the relationships formed are amazing Content Events - A series that goes for longer than a week Engagement levels went through the roof because there was a challenge and then an invitation to share Readers were engaging with one another This brought a lot of life to my blog and built stickiness People respond well to events - fear of missing out, defined start and end Vanessa’s Blog Style and Shenanigans Vanessa’s Last Challenge Event Vanessa runs events on instagram featuring a color or print for someone to wear and show a photo of themselves wearing that Every week of the event traffic goes up and engagement goes through the roof

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. Getting Blog Readers to Subscribe, Follow and Connect Welcome to episode 115. Today we are continuing our series on warming up your readers. This series began in episode 112 where I presented 4 stages of warming your readers up. Taking them from being completely unaware of you and your blog to taking them to becoming highly engaged readers. In episode 113, I talk about getting the first eyeball on your blog. Getting the visitor to your blog for the first time, and I talk about some practical techniques to do that. In episode 114, I talk about how to get people to take a second look and become interested in your blog. I gave some techniques for getting readers to pause and take that second look. Today I am talking about building a connection with your readers. Even when you get that first eyeball or a second look, chances are, they will leave your site and never return. Today I am giving some practical tips on how to get them to subscribe or give you permission to connect with them again. In Today’s Episode: How to Get More Subscribers, Follows and Connections From Your Blog Readers Think carefully about where you want them to connect with you For me, the best place to connect with blog readers is email Social media is important too, but it is secondary and there is more risk Have prominent calls to action on your blog to get the reader’s email Have at least a subscribe form in the sidebar or in the navigation somewhere Find other ways to get the reader’s email (some of these may be controversial) Use popups or welcome mats Lead Magnets, content upgrades, or op-tins Cutting edge bloggers are moving away from having one lead magnet or op-tin and are creating multiple op-tins depending on the content the reader is browsing Get an ongoing opt-in like our 6 months of blog post ideas Create inspirational posts, like image posts - these seem to get more subscribers - add stronger calls to action if they are getting higher subscriber numbers Create a series like this we are doing now - daily, weekly, even yearly to keep readers wanting to subscribe for the future content series Promote your secondary connection points - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Where ever you and your readers are most active. Secondary connection points can be promoted in your emails, put links in welcome email Promote secondary points in blog navigation, sidebar or blog posts Promote from other social networks, use a tool like SumoMe or Hellobar, cross promote Opportunity to get the connection even when someone has left your blog - retargeting - Facebook Advertising using a facebook pixel on your blog which enables you to retarget with an ad that goes back to your blog Examples of Content Upgrades and Lead Magnets Amy Porterfield Ian Cleary from Razor Social Screw the Nine to Five Facebook Group Checklist Screw the Nine to Five Sales Funnel Emails Further Resources on How to Get More Subscribers, Follows and Connections From Your Blog Readers Our ongoing Opt-in Example of Inspirational Content 21 Surreal Levitation Images (Inspirational Content) SumoMe HelloBar OptinMonster Episode 68: How to Increase Your Email List Subscribers By 100% Or More Today Episode 69: Create an Opt-In to Increase Your Email Subscriber Numbers Episode 35: Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog How did you go with today’s episode? We love to learn from you. Let us know what you have done to connect with your readers and get them to subscribe. Never miss an episode - Subscribe to the ProBlogger podcast on iTunes Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi, there. My name is Darren Rowse and I'd like to welcome you to episode 115 of t...

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. How to Turn First Time Visitors Into Interested Readers of Your Blog Today I’m talking about getting readers to take a second look at your blog. In episode 112, we started this mini series on warming your blog readers up to your blog. In that episode I presented you with four different stages of warming your readers up. In the last episode, number 113, I talked about how to get the first eyeballs on your blog, how to get the reader to take a first look. The first step of warming up your readers is to get their attention. Today I’m going to give you some strategies on getting readers to take a second look at your blog. Getting people to take a second look can be a massive challenge. Looking at statistics, we can tell people land on our site and then bounce away. We need to do something really quickly to show them why they should stick around. In Today’s Episode We Talk About Getting Blog Visitors to Look Twice Make a big promise to get people interested Exercise to unlock the promise you should make - List the pain points of your reader - List the gains that your readers want to make Have a tagline that makes the reader look twice. At ProBlogger we will show people how to make money with their blog. Differentiate yourself in some way Is there something in your branding that can show people you are a bit different Ask why you are different and communicate that reason in some way Create content that gives your readers a quick win Create fist pump content Have you ever read content, and thought yes, that is exactly what I was looking for? Fist pump content moves people from one place to another in their lives After writing this content, funnel readers to this content that is relevant to their needs Audit your site navigation, and think how to get people to the best content for them One way to get people to the right information is to have a Start Here page Another way is to have a portal for your readers to find the content that applies to them. On ProBlogger we have a portal that links to eight of our surveyed blog readers pain points. Portals on ProBlogger Create content that is more personal in nature - storytelling and video Video makes people look twice, especially live streaming - this has become really popular with brands and influencers Live video grabs people’s attention and gets them immediately interested Facebook live, Periscope, etc Storytelling and personal content with photos Use social proof - when people come to your blog, seeing social proof makes them look twice Have an expert or celebrity say something nice about you Testimonials from influencers Quotes from readers and users work too Wisdom of the crowds, using numbers instead of individuals, if you have 1000 readers highlight it Further Resources on Getting Blog Visitors to Look Twice ProBlogger Event Episode 105: How to Write Effective Sales Copy Episode 111: How to Create an Effective Start Here Page for Your Blog How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps Start a Blog Portal LeadPages CoSchedule How did you go with today’s episode? In the next episode, we are going to talk about how to get people to connect, and then in the next episode we talk about how to get people to engage with you. Please subscribe if you don’t want to miss any episodes of the series. Never miss an episode - Subscribe to the ProBlogger podcast on iTunes Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 114 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind ProBlogger, a blog, an event, a podcast, a job board, and all kinds of things to help bloggers to monetize thei...

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. How to Get More Eyeballs on Your Blog Today I am talking about how to get more eyeballs on your blog. How to get more attention for your content. How to get people on your blog for their first view. This is part of my current series on the 4 different steps you want your readers to go through if you want them to be fully engaged. The 4 steps were about taking your readers from being cold about your brand to becoming fully engaged with you and your brand and becoming raving fans of your site. Today is all about the first stage - Helping People to Become Aware of Your Brand Getting attention isn’t for those just starting out, it needs to be incorporated for the long haul. Note: listen to the next part in this series in episode 114 which is all about converting first time readers into people who keep coming back. Challenge: Getting readers to know that your blog exists. Objective: To get the eyeballs, and have your blog seen. 4 Techniques to Get More Eyeballs and Attention on Your Blog Create guest content - leverage other people’s blogs, forums, and sites to get eyeballs on me Go through the exercise of listing the top 5 blogs, forums, groups, podcasts, media, books, events, tweets, pins etc that your ideal reader is reading Find out who your ideal reader is Then get permission to interact with your ideal reader at these places they frequent Look for opportunities to create content, even comments and forum posts count Guest posting on blogs still has opportunity for exposure if not SEO Shareable content - this is just one more way to get eyeballs on your site Mythbusting posts get shared a lot Humor gets shared Debates this versus this Research and poll results List posts Cheat Sheets Infographics Long Form Content Beginner’s Guides Use BuzzSumo Always link to other content in your site Look for opportunities to take readers to the next level Repurpose your best content - this is a great way to get fresh eyeballs on our site. Can You Really Make Money Blogging (Example) Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? [7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging] Episode 32: Can you really make money blogging? Can you REALLY Make Money Blogging YouTube Video Can you REALLY make money blogging? SlideShare Search Engine Optimization YouTube is a search engine - I made a video of me talking about a camera and put it on YouTube and it has been viewed 60,000 times App Store - Content aggregation app Jarrod Robinson, he gets 1000s of downloads from this app, plus push notifications every time he publishes a new blog post iTunes - Starting a podcast is one of the best things I’ve done for ProBlogger in a long time Google SEO - Featured Snippets answer to your question put into the search results, we optimized an older blog post so that it would get a featured snippet Further Resources on Helping People to Become Aware of Your Brand Jarrod Robinson Exercises for Coming up with Places for Guest Content BuzzSumo How to Optimize Your Content for Google's Featured Snippet Box How To Get Featured Snippets For Your Site Episode 94: SEO Podcast with Jim Stewart Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, welcome to episode 113 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to talk about how to get more eyeballs on your blog, how to get attention on your content, how to get people onto your blog for that first view. This is part of a series that I'm currently doing. It started in the last episode, episode 112, where I outlined four different steps that you want to take your readers through if you want them to become fully engaged. The four different steps were about taking your ...

Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. How to Warm Up Your Blog Readers to Become Fully Engaged Welcome to Episode 112. Today I am kicking off a mini-series of podcasts that are designed to help you to move your readers from being cold towards you and your blog, to being fully engaged towards you and your blog. I’m going to talk about the benefits of getting your readers warmed up, and walk you through a series of steps to do that. Then over the next four upcoming episodes I’m going to get strategic and tactical and give you some practical exercises that you can do to help move your readers through these four stages. In the sixth episode, I am going to give you some case studies and examples. Go to iTunes and subscribe to the podcast, so you don’t miss any episodes in the series. In Today’s Episode - How to Warm Up Your Blog Readers and Make Them Raving Fans Why readers may be cold towards us Blog readers can be incredibly distracted They might be a bit suspicious of us They are just clicking links in a Zombie like state Short attention span Benefits of warm readers Readers that have warmed up to your blog return again and again This reinforces your brand and makes you more memorable Warm readers contribute to your site and comment or answer asks questions Builds social proof Share content and help to promote They trust us and take action on our calls to action How to warm up our readers Steps readers need to go through to get to this point The 4 Stages for Warming Our Blog Readers Challenge: Readers that are completely unaware that we exist. Objective: Get their attention. Challenge: The readers are not interested. Objective: Get them interested. Challenge: They are about to leave our site. Objective: Get their connection, or else they are gone. Challenge: Our readers remain passive. Objective: Get engagement. Where Is Your Weak Link? I’m going to get into these tactics in the next episodes. Before I get into them I would like for you to ponder the question of “where is your weak link”? You may have had success with one or two of these tactics, so we want to focus on getting all of these stages working towards your blog. How did you go with today’s episode? I would love to hear your feedback of where you think your weak link is. I would also like to see examples of how you have overcome these weak links. Never miss an episode - Subscribe to the ProBlogger podcast on iTunes Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it’s Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 112 of the ProBlogger podcast. Today I’m kicking off a little mini series of podcasts which is designed to help you to move your readers from being cold towards you, and your brand, and your blog, to being fully engaged, to be raving fans of you and your blog. I’m going to talk to you about the benefits of getting your readers warmed up and walk you through a series of steps to do that. And then over the upcoming episodes of this little series, the next four episodes, I’m going to get strategic, I’m going to get tactical, I’m going to give you some practical things that you can do, some exercises that you can do to help you move your readers through these four stages. And then in the fifth episode, at the end, I’m going to give you some case studies as well. It’s really important that you subscribe to the ProBlogger podcast to get all of this content. It’s all completely free, but if you don’t subscribe you’re not likely to get the message that the new episodes have come out. Hit us on iTunes and hit that subscribe button. Subscribe to the ProBlogger Plus Newsletter on today’s show notes as well. I look forward to walking you through this journey.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher Why You Should Create a Start Here Page for Your Blog Today's Show Is Sponsored by the Problogger Event - Probloggerevents.Com - save $100 until 1 July Today I am talking about start here pages. This topic comes from a question by John at TheResourcefulCommunity.com Why a Start Here Page? John wants to know why we should have a start here page and the best way to create one. We recently put a start here page on ProBlogger. For us, the start here page has replaced the about page. If you have been blogging for awhile, it becomes challenging for a reader to know where to begin. A start here page can help a new reader find the most relevant content to them, and direct them on how to use the site. It is also very clickable. Start here is a compelling call to action. What you should put in your start here page will vary depending on the goals for your blog, but here are some compelling ideas. In Today’s Episode 7 Things to Consider Adding To Your Start Here Page Make a Personal Connection - Who are you? What is your story? Use things like story, picture and video. Communicate who your blog is for - Who are your readers? What are their pains? Who are you trying to help and what are their needs. Communicate what your blog is about - How does your blog help change the lives of your readers? Point people to the right content for them - Get people to the content that gives them a “quick win” where they may have a challenge. Call to Connect - It’s really important to create a connection with first time readers. Depending on your goals. you might also like to highlight your products, services or other key converting pages on your site (affiliate pages). Social proof works too - Something that shows your site is active, numbers or testimonials or comments that show you’re helping readers. Formatting Your Start Here Page When it comes to format, there really are no rules. I would use whatever medium you usually talk to your readers with. If your blog is primarily text, then write your start here page. If you’re a podcaster, then add audio. Use whatever voice your readers are used to hearing you in. We have found video to be particularly effective and that can be a great choice too. How To Create a Start Here Page Create a “page” in WordPress or write a blog post and link to it LeadPages - There are great templates in LeadPages or you could build your own Other landing page tools - many have templates you can use You could also find someone to custom design a Start Here Page for you My Start Here Page You can see our new start here page here. Statement of what the site is about Call to subscribe Video Who I am Why I started ProBlogger The Content areas on ProBlogger How to find the right content. The benefits of reading Call to connect to our newsletter and social The Written Content Tells my story of starting a blog and building it into a full time living Tells why I started ProBlogger Talks about the site and what it’s become and points to the podcast, blog, job board, book, ebooks etc Taps into the ‘dream’ of making a living from blogging but also the ‘pain points’ of our readers Introduces our portals and asks our readers what they need help with - points them to the portal relevant to those pain points. I know if I can get them to a portal page they are going to find some ‘quick win’ content Calls them to subscribe to ProBloggerPLUS and our social pages Points to our ‘resources’ page Again reinforces the portals Further Resources on How to Create an Effective Start Here Page for Your Blog Episode 105: An Exercise to Help You Write Sales Copy Examples of Great Start Here Pages Michael Hyatt Taps into his readers dreams Immediately makes a connection with the readers he c...

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher Learn All About the ProBlogger Training Event 2016 Today we are talking about the ProBlogger event. I’m going to tell you the story of how the event came about, and run through what will be happening at the event. For those of you interested in coming - you can grab your ticket (and save $100) here. If you aren’t able to make it to the live event in Australia, we also have an option to purchase a virtual ticket. The first ProBlogger event in 2010 started on an impulse. I had just come home from Blog World Expo, a discontinued event in the States. I was so excited about what happens when bloggers got together. I tweeted about having a mastermind blogger event in Australia. More people than I realized were Australian bloggers. I got a cheap hotel convention room, and we put on the event about six weeks later. It ended up being a great day. The common question was “when I we doing this again” and things grew from there. Last year the event was at the Royal Pines Golf Course and about 800 people attended. In Today’s Episode What Will Be Happening at the Problogger 2-day Event Friday September 9th and Saturday September 10th These are the two main days of the conference We do have some things going on the thursday before and the Sunday afterwards Thursday night we kick things off with orientation for newbies This will kick off around 3:30 and I’ll give you a brief overview of how things will run, it’s also great to socialize and get acclimated, and network with people in your niche There will also be a master class by Shayne Tilley on Product Creation (additional ticket) Friday kicks off with a full day of content for Friday and Saturday - starting with Keynote Speakers Keynote Speakers Brian Fanzo - Digital storytelling, leveraging multiple platforms to tell your story Natalie Sisson - getting the most from the event Daniel Flynn - Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones Dan Norris - How to blog like an entrepreneur Emilie Wapnick - How to combine your many passions in one blog Me - Opening on Friday and Closing things out on Thursday In between the keynotes, we have sessions. The amount of choices can be a bit overwhelming, but we record everything. We will divide these into tracks. Fundamentals of Blogging Tools, Tactics and Techniques Strategy, Ideas and Inspiration All of our session ideas came from feedback from previous attendees. Some of the session topics will include: How to Create Amazing Content without Killing Yourself Youtube session SEO tools and how to use them How to create Online Products How to create great content How to find readers for your blog Visual storytelling Email list building tactics How to build community on your blog Affiliate Marketing Strategy Writing Great Sales Copy Sponsored Content How to write great blog content Social good Instagram Session Intro to Monetization Legal Issues for Bloggers New Media for Small Biz, Brands and influencers (live streaming) How to increase your organic reach on FB Blog Design Sexy Sales Funnels that Sell FB and Instagram Advertising We are also adding a fourth stream. These will be in smaller rooms and will give you the opportunity to ask questions and dig deeper into the topic. Some of these will run twice so everyone will have a chance to attend. How to choose what products to create Getting the back end of your blog in order Photography workshops with our amazing partner Olympus How to build online courses Copywriting FB Ads Freelance Writing Marketing your products Google Analytics SEO Mistakes and how to fix them Podcasting - sound, presentation skills, launching See the Full Schedule and Run Down of Speakers at the ProBlogger Event in Australia

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher The Benefits of Having a Personal Blog Today’s question comes from Dorothy K from DorothyK.com.au and she asks: “I'd love you to talk about the "usefulness" or "value" of personal blogging. There has been a bit of a discussion about this lately on a few blogs.” I think this question is relevant to a lot of people. I frequently get this question when I am doing Q & A sessions at conferences. People want to know if they should have a personal blog as well as a niche focused blog. I actually think having a personal blog is a good thing. Just about everyone at one point or another should have a personal blog, and I’m going to give you 15 reasons why. In Today’s Episode 15 Reasons Why You Should Consider Having a Personal Blog to express yourself to record your life to see if you like blogging to get used to the idea of putting yourself ‘out there’ to learn the technology of blogging to experiment with different topics and test different ideas/niches to try different writing styles/voices to improve your writing to improve your thinking to help you connect with others to help you develop habits/structure to see life differently - when you’re writing regularly about your life you become more intentional and are more on the look out for the things that happen to you that you could write about. Small precious moments don’t pass you by as much. to find what is meaningful to you… and to do something meaningful to others to serve, inspire, give hope, teach, give hope, encourage others - a blog need not stick to a topic to do this. Your personal blogging can be useful without it necessary solving a problem, teaching something, staying on topic. to let off steam, talk about passions, record what you’re learning on topics that don’t relate to your ‘professional blog’ So why do people say personal blogs are not recommended? Why is the common advice to go for a niche. The main reason many people recommend niche blogs over personal blogs is because personal blogs are more difficult to monetise. Still, it is possible to blog about a range of topics relevant to a group of people and monetise around that. Most bloggers, I know, who make a living from a personal blog do a couple of things: they either write for a demographic - a range of topics appealing to a certain group they tend to end up specialising in or becoming known for a certain topic - and morph into a niche blog Lastly - there are no rules of blogging. Your blog might evolve. You might start out for self expression and end up doing something else (or vice versa). Blog On! Further Resources on 15 Reasons Why You Should Consider Having a Personal Blog I Went for a Drive and I Thought About Stuff Say Something Completely Useless Blogging for Bloggings Sake A Useless Blog Post Thomas v Chuggington: being a very useful engine isn’t enough My Blog’s Purpose Heather Armstrong Dooce Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, it's Darren from ProBlogger and I'd like to welcome you to episode 109, where today I'm going to talk to you about personal blogging. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/109. This week I had a great question come in from Dorothy K from dorothyk.com.au who wrote, "I love you to talk about the usefulness or value of personal blogging. There has been a bit of a discussion about this lately on a few blogs and I'd love your thoughts." It is a great question. If you were in Australia, you may have seen some of the discussion. I think most of the discussion that Dorothy is talking about relates to some of the Australian bloggers who are writing about this particular topic. I think it may even be started by Stacey Roberts ...

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher Seven Steps That Can Combat Content Thieves Today’s podcast was inspired by a question from Grant. He asks:“I just discovered another blog is republishing my content in full on their site. They seem to be scraping every post using my RSS feed. Can I stop them and is it worth my time to do that?” Is it worth your time to do anything? In the past, I would try to chase down sites that stole my content to avoid duplicate content penalties, but Google has gotten better about knowing who the original author is. Now, I just do a couple of things to identify that the content is mine when it is being scraped. I include links to other posts in my blog I include a link back to my blog in the footer of my RSS feed When the content thieves strip out my links and don’t acknowledge the source, I still go after them and try to get the content taken down. Below are seven steps that can be taken to combat content thieves. In Today’s Episode What To Do When Someone Steals Your Content Contact the site concerned - First step, contact the webmaster and explain they are in breach of copyright and ask them to remove the content immediately. Whois - Run a Whois check and find out the name of the person the site is registered to, their email, their registrar, and the name of their host. Contact the site’s host - If you don’t hear back from the webmaster concerned, you can contact the host and issue a DMCA takedown notice. Contact the site’s advertisers - If they still won’t cooperate, you can hit them where it counts and contact the advertisers on their site. Losing revenue will get their attention. Shame the suckers! - If all else fails, and they are especially egregious. Name and shame is an effective way to deal with them. Highlighting their activities is the first step in getting the site removed. File to get them banned from Google and other search engines - Getting banned from search engines will get their attention. File a notice of infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Google. Legal Action - This is the last and most difficult course of action, but it is an option that is always open. Simple Whois information should be enough to begin the process. Usually, a polite notice and conversation with the offending blogger or webmaster is enough to get the content taken down, but if they don’t respond the above tactics can be applied. Further Resources on What to Do When Someone Steals Your Blog Content Yoast’s SEO Plugin Copyscape Whois Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Google Copyscape 6 Months of Blog Post Ideas How did you go with today’s episode? Let us know if you have ever encountered this problem and what you thought of today’s show. Never miss an episode - Subscribe to the ProBlogger podcast on iTunes Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, and welcome to Episode 108 of the ProBlogger podcast, where today I want to talk about what to do when someone steals your content. Not a very nice thing to happen; it does happen a lot though. I want to suggest a strategy that you can use when someone does use your content in a way that you're not happy with, that you want them to stop doing, and you want to take that content down. I also want to address the question of whether it's worth tracking down people stealing your content. My answer might surprise you a little bit. Today's show notes can be found over at problogger.com/podcast/108, where you'll find some resources and tools that we recommend you do check out on this particular topic. You'll also find information about a new little resource that we've created over a ProBlogger where we're willing to give you six months of blog post ideas for free.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher Affiliate Marketing Tips and What Links to Use in Your Emails Today I’m going to talk about affiliate marketing and where the links should point to when sending an email promoting a product to your list. This topic was inspired by a question from Scott. “I want to try my hand at some affiliate promotions and have selected an eBook to promote. I have heard to say that your affiliate promotions work best when you email your list but I am wondering if I should email that affiliate link or send them to my own blog where I review the product.” “I’d love your guidance - how do you promote an affiliate product?” Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money with a blog. If you are not familiar with the concept you can learn more from Podcast Episode 51: My Tips for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing. In Today’s Episode Affiliate Marketing Tips and What Links to Use in Your Emails Linking directly to the sales page of the product you are promoting This eliminates steps and gets the buyer closer to the buy button If the sales page is good and likely to convert If we do the pre-selling in the email and don’t have to do much more to convert Sending the potential buyer to your own blog The product has a sales page, but a little more pre-selling is required which we will do on the blog If you think a review of the product will be useful to sales If you want to promote the product several times over a few weeks Email 1 - announces the product/deal with reasons to buy and features Email 2 - an email linking to a review of the product - talks about pros and cons and links to sales page Alternatively link to interview of ebook creator Alternatively get ebook author to write guest post Email 3 - Last chance reminder linking directly to the sales page How did you go with today’s episode? Ideally, you want as few clicks as possible, but there are times when some extra clicks and pre-selling will get your readers in the buying mood. I hope that answers the question. I would love to hear what you do with sending readers to landing pages or pre-selling on your blog. Got a Question You'd Like Me to Answer? I base many episodes of this podcast upon questions answered by ProBlogger Podcast listeners and Blog readers. You can use the following widget to ask a question. Please include your name and blog name (if you have a blog). Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts below. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. Welcome to episode 107 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I'm the blogger behind problogger.com which is a blog and podcast to help bloggers and online entrepreneurs to blog more effectively, create more useful content online, and also to work out how to sustain that. One of the ways that many of our blogger’s readers sustain their blogs and make a profit from their blogs is through affiliate marketing. That's what I want to talk about in today's episode. In particular, I want to talk about where the links should point to when you send an email to your list promoting an affiliate product. This question comes in from Scott who asks, “I want to try my hand at some affiliate promotions and have selected an ebook to promote. I've heard you say that your affiliate promotions work best when you email your list, but I'm wondering if I should email that affiliate link or should I send them to my own blog where I review the ebook?” This is a great question from Scott and I want to tackle it today, giving you a few insights into when you should do each of the options that Scott mentions.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher 7 Things That Contributed to Allow Me to Be a Full Time Blogger Today I’m going to talk about going full time as a blogger. I received this question from Charlotte. “When did you make the transition from blogging being just a hobby to blogging as a profitable business? What was the turning point for you and/or what were the major changes you made to get where you are now?” Today I’m going to share the 7 things that happened when I went full time. These aren’t a blueprint or a step-by-step, these are just what happened with me and my blog. For a little context, I started blogging in 2002 as an experiment and a hobby. After a while, I got hooked on the idea of creating content and interacting with readers. After about 12 months, I started dabbling with AdSense and Amazon ads. Gradually after about another 12 months, it became a part-time job. Two years in things started to escalate, and I knew this was going to be a full-time job for me. In Today’s Episode The 7 Things That Contributed to Going Full Time In this episode I want to share 7 things that contributed to me taking my blog from part time to full time. Note: I also highly recommend you listen to episode #48 How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging in which I talk in very practical terms about building different income streams up to make a living from blogging. Partly it was a tipping point in traffic - Once I started making money, I became more pro-active about traffic. Growing your traffic is important. Thinking more about my readers than me - I started to write for my readers, instead of writing for self expression. I started paying attention to what they are searching for and tried to anticipate their needs. There was also a bit of a mind shift - If you want your blog to be a business, you have to treat it as one. pushing harder with finding advertisers thinking more strategically about content thinking about diversifying traffic streams starting new blogs/projects looking what others were doing learning more about SEO Setting a deadline and treating my blog like a business Diversifying income streams - I decided not to just rely on AdSense, and added other networks like Amazon. I also started exploring direct ad sales and affiliate marketing. Later on, I even created my own products to sell. Work towards finding a second income stream. Another thing that I think contributed was that I focused more on what others were doing, collaborating with other bloggers - I became more of a collaborator with other bloggers. I went to conferences, invested in my learning, and started partnering with other bloggers. I partnered with Andy Wibbels on Six Figure Blogging. There are still opportunities for other bloggers to promote each other. Having a product to sell - My income streams really began to escalate when I had a product to sell. My first product with Andy didn’t last that long, but it was a great learning experience. Think about how you can create something to sell on your blog. Thinking not just about search traffic, but about a longer term connected reader strategy - Nothing wrong with SEO, but it is risky. The customer is also gone forever once they leave. Building a relationship that keeps readers coming back is a great strategy. Search strategy can open the traffic door. The next step is to hook your reader in some way. Further Resources on How to Go Full Time As a Blogger Episode 103: How to Blog Smart - 9 Areas to Think Strategically About in Your Blogging Episode 48: How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging How to Make Money Blogging Episode 67: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) How did you go with today’s episode? I hope these tips were helpful in going full time. If you have made the transition, we would love to hear your story.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. An Exercise to Help You Write Sales Copy Today I’m going to share a simple exercise that will benefit your blogging and help you with writing sales copy. You can do this exercise in as little as four minutes, and I found it to be effective. Ed Dale of The Challenge and MagCast recently shared this idea at a conference. His talk was brilliant, and I took pages of notes on copywriting and sales because these are things I’ve struggled with. For most people, selling doesn’t come easy. Ed made a lot of sense when he said that selling shouldn’t be about getting people to buy, it should be about “pain relief” and “gain creation”. If you are trying to sell a quality product that will enhance other people’s lives, you might want to give this exercise a try. In Today’s Episode A Simple Exercise to Write Effective Sales Copy For 2 minutes - List as many pains of your readers that you possibly can. Big, small, tangible pains, something personal, anything you can think of. Pause for 2 minutes and list these pains For 2 minutes - List as many gains as your readers may want. What results and outcomes do they have? What are their dreams? Pause for 2 minutes and list these gains Key Takeaways After the exercise we wrote our sales copy. Sales copy is most effective when it aims to bring pain relief or gain creation After the conference, I used this technique to write a sales email Before Ed’s talk, I was stuck on this email writing process I went through the exercise, and highlighted top pains and gains, then I began writing Now I wasn’t writing about the product, I was writing about my readers pain and dreams and how this product would help them This process changed the email and the energy I wrote it with This email not only converted well, my readers thanked me for selling them that ebook This exercise really helped me, and I would encourage you to give it a try This exercise could also be useful in a whole heap of other places Best place to try this is before you create the product - what are your readers pains and desired gains Thinking about starting a new blog or niche When choosing categories for your blog When creating opt-ins for your blog When brainstorming and deciding what to write about When writing a post - get in touch with the specific need Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 105 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog and podcast designed to help you to blog better and build profit around your blog. Today, I want to talk to you about writing a sales copy. It’s a task that many of us as bloggers avoid and don’t feel comfortable doing. We’d much prefer to write a blogpost than to sell something, but it is an important skill to develop. Today, I want to suggest to you a simple exercise that can help you to do it—to get you into the right frame of mind to write a sales copy. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/105. The exercise I want to share with you today should only take about four or five minutes. It’s something that, as I’ve mentioned before, is going to help you to get into the right frame of mind to write sales copy. It’s something that I learned a couple of weeks ago now at a conference from a guy called Ed Dale. You can find Ed at eddale.co and he’s the founder of The Challenge, MagCast, and numerous other businesses. Ed gave a really great talk at the conference, SuperFastBusiness, which was all about practical tips on copywriting. I literally took pages and pages of notes on his talk, mainly because selling is something that I’ve always struggled with. If you’re anything like me,

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. A Walk-Through of Reasons Why My Recent Top Posts Have Done Well Today I'm going to talk about some posts that have worked for me in the last month on Digital Photography School, my main blog. This episode comes about from a question received by one of our readers, Matthew. He asks if I could walk through a number of posts that have recently done well and why they have worked. We have done this before on the blog and it worked really well, so let's try it for the podcast. In the last month, these four posts have all been in the top 20 on Digital Photography School. I checked Google Analytics for the most read posts, and I tried to pick ones that I haven't talked about in the past. In Today’s Episode 4 of My Most Viewed Blog Posts This Month and Why They Worked 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know Written in 2010. It’s always been a strong performer. Over 100,000 views this month. It’s shareable. It’s a sneeze page - it links to 21 other posts Topic - good big picture overview Generates a load of page views Makes a bit claim Generates curiosity Gets a lot of shares - over a million, people recommend this post to beginners they know Feature image - has been tested and honed, something our readers love about dials works great on social because it signals topic and builds reader anxiety/curiosity This post promotes our course which solves a problem What we could do better - specific opt-in for the post Better formatting - looks a bit tired Replicate this format for specific niches of photography 11 Stages That Every Photographer Goes Through This was written by James Maher a guest writer. I had reservations about this post. It wasn’t a tips post. It was written tongue in cheek a humour story It didn’t have a “hero” image or hit the inspiration angle It worked because it was relatable - I shared on facebook with a question of which stages do you relate to? Touches on a pain point, stage 6 everything sucks Key lesson - you don’t have to always solve a problem, you can create content that shows the reader you know where they are at and can relate to that Everyday Carry – Must-have Tools for Photographers This one surprised Bulk of our articles are tips related This is an accessory or gear article Writer put all of these things in a small tin, which created a strong visual The items were affordable and accessible We claimed must have tools - the word tools works well The post has a hack/DIY perspective EveryDayCarry - is a movement that people are obsessive about, possible share on EveryDayCarry forums How to Make Colors Pop in Your Portraits – Without Using Photoshop I had a feeling this would work well It connects with something people want to make their photos pop It has strong visuals - uses beautiful images with gorgeous kids and color which would be great for sharing The topic - Photoshopped images can be a polarising topic to photographers, some think of using Photoshop as evil, a technique that makes a claim to not use Photoshop will attract readers in that segment Simple but useful techniques Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to Episode 104 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to talk about some posts that have worked for me in the last month on Digital Photography School, my main blog. This episode really comes about from a question that I received via email from one of our readers, Matthew, who asked if I could walk you through a number of posts that have done well for us recently, and talk about why they have worked. We've done this in the past on ProBlogger on the blog.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. 9 Different Things to Help You Blog Smart ProBlogger is designed to help bloggers reach their potential along with how to monetize and build a sustainable blog, but I am also interested in blogs that change people’s lives. Today’s show is a continuation of episode 102 where I talked about how many bloggers start out blogging from the heart while others have a strategic, clinical formula. The last podcast told the story of two bloggers who took these very different approaches. Both were ready to give up because neither approach tends to work alone. You have to blog with heart and have a strategy for success. In the last episode I suggested 7 ways to add heart and soul to your blog, and today I’m going to suggest 9 different ways to be strategic with your blogging. In Today’s Episode 9 Different Ways to Be Strategic with Your Blogging If you want your blog to be a business - treat it as one, change your mindset and treat your blog as a business today Have goals - If you don’t know what you are aiming for you won’t get far, define what success means to you, write down your goals then use as a filter for what you do Be strategic about your reader - do some work to understand who your reader is and what their needs, challenges, and dreams are, create an avatar as in episode 33 Know about your brand - What do you want your brand to be, define what you want people to say about you when you are not in the room Develop an editorial strategy - Don’t just write whatever pops into your head, put some strategy behind your content Define the change you are trying to bring about and map out the strategy What type of content will your readers respond to, think strategically about what mediums get the best response Think strategically about the length and frequency of content Experiment, learn and adapt Think about marketing - move beyond the build it and they will come strategy Where are your potential readers gathering? How can you participate in those places? What new technologies are they using, adapt your approach. What type of content do you need to create to attract these readers and get them to share. Check out episode 34 on shareable content. Hooks - How will you get them to connect and keep coming back. Find a hook to get your readers to come back. Ask them to subscribe, (for us email lists are always #1) and find secondary points of connection. Keep in mind what comes after they subscribe, find a process to lead them through Monetization - How are you going to make your blog sustainable? Research available strategies, I give a money map in episode 37 that lists a whole bunch of different ways to monetize. Building something of your own is a good option. Diversifying is a good strategy. Constantly be experimenting, tweaking and evolving - Run constant experiments on all of these different areas. These strategies may sound overwhelming, but just pick one area to focus on. Goal setting or branding can be great methods for kicking off your blog strategy. Then move on to the editorial strategy, or marketing, or whatever you need to fill in the gaps. Further Resources on Strategic Blogging Combined with Blogging from the Heart Episode 102: How to Blog from the Heart Episode 100: 10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Blogging Episode 33: 2 Questions to Ask to Help You Find Readers for Your Blog Episode 34: 2 Types of Content that Help You to Find Readers for Your Blog Episode 37: Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 103 of the ProBlogger podcast.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. Blogging From the Heart and Soul I had a recent meetup with two local bloggers and they both said that they wanted to give up blogging. They each had different reasons for wanting to give up their blogs and different reasons for starting their blogs. Their blogging strategies were also opposites. Blogger #1 was under the impression that all she needed to do is blog from the heart and everything else will take care of itself. I could relate to this, because that is how I started out. I just wanted to express myself. She had been blogging from the heart and telling her story, but she hadn’t built an audience, and didn’t have any sustainable opportunities coming her way. Blogger #2 had been told that to have a successful blog all he needed to do was follow a formula. He had been in a program that said that great content, plus good branding, proper ad placement, SEO, following a social media formula, and creating clickbait titles, all combined with good design would lead to blogging success. He followed the formula, but his blog had no heart and soul. It was built with clinical precision. I would argue that it is possible to blog smart while still blogging from the heart. Today I am going to talk about blogging from the heart, and next episode I will talk about smart blogging strategies. In Today’s Episode 7 Different Ways to Blog from the Heart Be passionate - blog with passion Tell stories - storytelling is the number one thing we can do to build deeper connections with our readers Build community - people want to contribute and belong and connect Create inspirational content - inspire your readers with ideas of what could be Be personal - we have all of these amazing tools that allow us to connect on a personal level through different mediums like podcasting and video Be playful - use humor to surprise and delight your audience, share hobbies and passions Create content that changes lives and makes the world a better place - it should be your desire to change your readers lives for the better Further Resources on Blogging from the Heart Episode 80: What to Write When You Feel Like You’ve Got Nothing Left to Say Episode 81: 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. Welcome to Episode 102 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/102 where you’ll find some further reading on today’s topic, the topic being how to blog from the heart. I recently had a conversation with two bloggers. It was a meetup that I’d arranged with these two local bloggers who are both saying that they wanted to give up blogging. It was a fascinating conversation because they both came from completely different perspectives. Both were thinking about giving up blogging because they had very different reasons for doing it. In fact, their reasons to stop blogging were quite different as well. The whole strategy of building their two blogs were almost opposite. Blogger one—I’m not going to reveal who these bloggers are—but blogger one had had this attitude when she started her blog that all she needed to do was to blog from the heart and the rest would look after itself. She’d heard from other bloggers that that’s what you needed to do. “Just bog from your heart. Just tell your story. Just be yourself and opportunities will come to you to build a profitable blog.” That’s the attitude that she’d had. I related to this particular blog because that’s the way I started out. I just blogged from the heart, I didn’t even know that you could make money from blogs. I started back in 2002. I think many bloggers probably relate to that.

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. Tips and Resources to Generate Consistent Content for Your Blog Today I’m talking about being more consistent with your blogging. This topic originated from a question by Jason Stevens from Digital Tools of the Trade. Jason wants to know how to maintain consistency when blogging? This is an important question, because consistency matters when creating content for a blog or any medium. There are so many blogs out there that were started with energy, passion and enthusiasm for a topic. Eventually, the enthusiasm fades and those blogs are neglected or even dead. Today we are going to discuss tips and resources that will prevent your blog from ending up in the blogging graveyard. Also, don’t forget to check out our new resource of 180 Blog Post Ideas. This will give you six months worth of idea prompts and blog post ideas, and that’s if you blog daily. For most people, 180 prompts will last a year or more. Today’s Tips for Being More Consistent With Your Blogging Don’t bite off more than you can chew, or commit to a rate of publishing that is beyond what you can actually do Generate Ideas for Content Ahead of Time (Episode 84 and 180 Blog Post Ideas) Block out time to create get a daily or regular writing rhythm (Episode 86) Block out time to polish and complete your work (Episode 87) Consider creating “easy posts” some posts take less time than others Reader Discussions - ask a question Polls - take a reader poll Challenge your readers to do something Link post - Links on a theme Best of archived posts - link post on content you have written Embedded content post - embed content and add thoughts (Episode 97) Guests posts and interviews - THE KEY is to keep these posts relevant Weekly Rhythm: Monday - Guest post Tuesday - Reader discussion Wednesday - Longer thoughtful post Thursday - Video of the week Friday - Longer thoughtful post Saturday - Link roundup post Sunday - Challenge post or reader homework Use a tool like Coschedule or others to come up with an editorial calendar - be able to visualize ahead of time Write out of relationships - create your content for real people - get to know your readers Batch write - getting ahead of writing relieves the pressure Be spontaneous - some of the best writing occurs when an idea pops in your head Create content that is meaningful - don’t lose sight of what your blog is about Understand what kind of content drives you - not just topic, but format and medium For me, podcasting has been a huge game changer Links and Resources for Being More Consistent With Your Blogging 180 Blog Post Ideas Episode 84 How to Come Up With Fresh Ideas to Write About On Your Blog Episode 56 How to Get into the Flow of Creating Great Content for Your Blog Episode 87 9 Questions You Should Ask Before Hitting Publish On Your Next Blog Post Episode 97 How To Lift the Quality of Your Blog Posts with Embeddable Content CoSchedule Blab Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey and welcome to episode 101 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse, and I am the blogger behind problogger.com, a resource to help bloggers and other content creators to monetize their blogs, to monetize their podcast, to monetize the content that they create. Today, I want to talk to you about being more consistent with your content creation, particularly talking about blogging. But a lot of what I’m talking about today can be applied to other types of content as well. You can find today’s show notes and listen to this particular episode if you so choose at problogger.com/podcast/101. You’ll also find there some details of our brand new resource that we’ve ju...

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. What I Have Learned About Blogging Welcome to episode 100. Today I would like to take a look back, not over the last 100 podcast episodes, but back to when I first started blogging 13 ½ years ago. I’m going to talk about some important lessons, and identify ten things that I wish that I had known when I first started blogging in 2002. I hope to share some of the things that will help you get over the bumps in your blogging venture. My blogging journey began when my friend Steve sent me an email with these four simple words, “check out this blog” and a link to TallSkinnyKiwi.com. I had never heard of blogging before, and I was curious about who the tall skinny kiwi was. I clicked the link and loved the content that Andrew Jones had created, but I also fell in love with blogging. I was intrigued with the idea of building a community around a blog, and I dove in with no experience or credentials. In Today’s Episode My introduction to blogging and different jobs I tried before blogging My first blog called Living Room and how I just got started People found my blog by me commenting on other blogs I met some bloggers that taught me some HTML and how to make things bold Rachel Cunliffe from New Zealand helped me redesign my first blog I learned a lot just by starting and reaching out to others Over time the blog evolved and I became addicted to it A year later I started a blog about digital cameras I made a little money with AdSense and the Amazon Affiliate program A few dollars a week, grew to a few dollars a day, to a part-time income After about a year, I realized I was going to be a full-time blogger and really ramped things up I started ProBlogger in 2004 and went full time with blogging In 2007, I transitioned my digital camera blog into Digital Photography School The 10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started In 2002 If you want your blog to be a business, you need to treat it as a business Identify who you want to read your blog - Spend time to understand your reader An email newsletter is a very powerful thing - Build a list - Popups increase conversions There are so many ways to make money from blogging - Diversify your income Create something to sell - My first ebook The Essential Guide To Portrait Photography Content - Create content that informs, inspires, and interacts Look for Sparks - Most big things start as small things (glimmering sparks) To be active - What action will I take today that will grow my blog? Let your worlds collide - It’s OK to let your readers see what you are passionate about beyond your niche Aim to have a big impact upon the readers you already have - I am incredibly grateful to you for listening to these podcasts and for the emails I get from you. Further Resources on 10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Blogging Episode 64: Content Marketing – Secrets From an Entrepreneur Who Has Used It to Build a Successful Business Episode 37: How to Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events Episode 67: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Talk at World Domination Summit in Portland Oregon - Paying Attention to Sparks Darren Rowse from Chris Guillebeau on Vimeo. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 100 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. Today, I want to look back. Not over the last 100 episodes (although that was tempting to do), but over the last 13 ½ years of my blogging. I want to pull out some of the important lessons from that time. I want to identify 10 things that I’d wish I had known when I was starting out b...

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. Strategies for Better Conversions with Tim Paige from LeadPages Today I am speaking with Tim Paige. Tim is the conversion educator for LeadPages. With LeadPages, you can publish an optimized landing page in five minutes. They also offer other great conversion tools like LeadBoxes, LeadDigits and LeadLinks. Tim is the guy that educates everyone about how to use LeadPages and its products and how to create the best performing landing pages. On this show, Tim shares time-tested strategies for better conversions with or without LeadPages. Including Reverse Value Bomb opt-ins to really increase your subscriber count. He also shares how to use “content upgrades” as an opt-in strategy. Tim discusses the latest emerging trends for marketers, and gives his best tips on email segmentation. He also shares a special offer with ProBlogger listeners. In This Episode How Tim as a Conversion Educator, shares everything LeadPages as a company has learned over the past few years He speaks at live events, hosts the ConversionCast Podcast, and he has presented over 450 webinars in the last two years Tim’s background from musician to sales to online marketing to LeadPages The power of connection, John Lee Dumas introduced Tim to Clay Collins of LeadPages which led to becoming the conversion educator Listener Questions What exactly are landing pages and how do they fit in with blogging? What would be the advantage of LeadPages over just doing them in WordPress? Primary function of bloggers is to take away overstimulation of information overload and too many choices A landing page focuses on getting a visitor to do one thing like sign up a newsletter LeadPages is a software tool built with billions of data points about how to get a visitor to sign up, buy or convert in some form It enables a blogger to have a landing page that has already been tested and proven to get results Types of Pages Opt-in landing page Webinar registration page - Webinars are a great way to connect with an audience and they convert really well Home page - Let the first connection be something that can help your reader, offer a guide or resource LeadPages Tools LeadBoxes - Fastest way to grow an email list. It’s a pop-up opt-in form that is triggered by a link or image. Tested across 35,000 customers and it had a 32% conversion increase Content Upgrades - Include a LeadBox or opt-in form that gives away something made specifically for that blog post, PDF checklist, PDF blog post, etc. As an example the yellow button at the end of these show notes is a LeadPages LeadBox LeadLinks - A tool that allows inserting a link in an email that adds the subscriber to a list or webinar, used for segmentation, webinar registration, and growing a list though partners by sharing a link on their list LeadDigits - Allows collecting opt-ins via text message, great for public speaking Can I use LeadPages to build up my list, while I’m in the process of the design and setup of my new site? Yes, even if you don’t use LeadPages, grow your list with at least a simple landing page that speaks to your target audience Giveaway a simple one page list of tools or resources that you use to accomplish your blog topic Link your domain to a simple landing page and direct readers there You will have a ready built audience when your blog launches You can also use this tactic when developing a product This method can even be used as part of your market research Value Bomb Reverse Landing Page You create something of massive value, tons of content, takes a long time to create Once you have this content it will be a big lead generator for years to come An example: Year End Social Media Report from Social Media Examiner Create a big report, with a couple of pages free and then an opt-in for the rest

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. Blogging is Alive and Well and Remains Relevant Today, there are so many new mediums that people often ask if blogging is dead. I certainly don’t think blogging is dead, but it has changed. Today I’m going to talk about why blogging is alive and well, and the benefits of blogging. I received this listener question on Anchor, from Marcus Boswell. What does the modern blogger get out of blogging? This question is common, because there are so many other things we could be doing with our time. Let’s explore why blogging is still relevant today. If you have a business or are starting a business, the reason to have a blog really boils down to this quote by Bob Burg. “All things being equal, people do business with, and refer business to, people that they know like and trust.” In This Episode How to be known, liked and trusted Blogging generates trust - people actually talk to you like they know you Creating and publishing useful content on a regular basis creates relationships Besides building trust and relationships with readers, there are many secondary benefits of blogging. Secondary Benefits of Blogging Blogging is great for SEO It can drive traffic to your business Great for converting traffic to leads Great for building authority and credibility Blogging helps personalise your brand It provides fuel for social media These secondary benefits are fantastic, but the relationship building and showing your customers that you really understand their problems and know them is really why blogs are so powerful. "Honest and transparent content is the greatest sales and trust building tool in the world. Period.” Marcus Sheridan from Sales Lion Creating great content on a regular basis that changes people’s lives helps us, but is blogging the only way? Podcasting, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social outlets can all help build trust. Why Blog? Your style and voice should dictate what medium you use to create your best content. Where is your audience? How do they prefer to consume content? What medium works best with your topic? Always consider using a blog. You can embed any medium on your blog. With a blog you have complete control, avoid using a third-party for a home based You can always use other hosts, but point back to your home base Examples of people using different mediums, but pointing back to a blog as a home base: ZenPencils.com - Gavin has created a home base for his preferred medium - cartoons, all based around a blog. LisaEldridge.com - A blogger using YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to highlight her make up examples and tutorials. JayBaer.com - A speaker and author who uses podcasting to drive traffic back to his blog and content. iSocialFanz.com - You can find Brian Fanzo on every live streaming network, but he posts the replays on his blog. Resource Mentioned Anchor.fm - 5 Ways Bloggers and Content Creators Could Use Anchor Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 98 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com and today, I want to tackle a question I get asked a lot. Is blogging dead? There's heaps of other mediums around at the moment and I constantly hear people saying, "You know, blogging is dead. It's been killed by," and you can insert your favorite medium here. I want to tackle that. I want to talk about the benefits of blogging today because I obviously don't think that blogging is dead, but it has changed and that's what I want to talk a little bit about today. You can find today's show notes with some links that I will mention in today's show at problogger.com/podcast/98.

Tips on Taking Your Blog to the Next Level With Embeddable Content Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. Today I am talking about an opportunity to lift the quality of your blog posts using embeddable content. I also list a heap of resources for finding great embeddable content, and deciding which resources to use. Using embeddable content is a great opportunity to lift the quality of your blog. Many bloggers take it for granted and overlook using it, but this content can increase the quality of your work. It will potentially serve your readers better and even help your blog to rank higher in search engines. I was recently asked to help judge a blog contest by my friend Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. The blogs that stood out to me were ones that were using embeddable content to really make the posts dynamic. This is something that is often done on social media blogs and blogs about blogging, but there is a real opportunity to take advantage of this concept on blogs in other niches. Last week, I was speaking at a conference in Sydney, and this concept was fresh in my mind, so I produced this slide on the 17 types of embeddable content. Reasons Why Smart Use of Embeddable Content Can Lift Content Quality It lifts the usefulness of the content This content can appeal to different learning styles and personality types Plus it shows your readers that you are willing to go the extra mile It can also add other voices, opinions and experiences to your blog It increases page time - gives you more time to create an impression and build your brand Page time also helps with SEO - longer page time is a signal to Google to rank higher 17 Types of Embeddable Content Video - YouTube etc. easiest and best way to add audio and visual Slides - Slideshare easy way to turn list post into slide deck Tweets - Every tweet can be embedded in a blog post Facebook - posts, status updates, videos and images Audio Files - Anchor - file to quickly put thoughts out and reply Cartoons - Andertoons Live-Streaming or Replays - Periscope, Blab Instagram - Pictures and videos Slideshows - Flickr and from other photo sharing sites Infographics - Infogr.am Bookmarks - Pinterest and pins Google - Maps or Google Earth Polls and Quizzes - Qzzr Mindmaps - MindMeister Google - Docs, forms and PDFs Podcast - Podcast players Animated Gifs - GIPHY You can create or curate embeddable content. I challenge you to create one blog post this week that uses embeddable content. Share your post links in the comments below or share any other ways you use to create this content. Before you publish your next blog post, ask yourself these questions: What can I create or curate that will add value Make sure it is useful quality content Don’t over do it. One or two embeds are fine, you don’t need 20 Think about what additional content would enhance the topic You could also start with a piece of embeddable content and put it into a blog post and add to it. It becomes the “hero” of the topic. You can also curate and summarize someone else's content with further reading etc. Resources and Examples Mentioned Example of adding to someone else’s content - 9 Composition Techniques to Use to Improve Your Photography The blogging competition I judged - Top 10 Social Media Blogs the 2016 Winners Using a livestream replay - How to get your Readers to become more Engaged, Loyal and to Share your Content Post using Anchor - 5 Ways Bloggers and Content Creators Could Use Anchor Quick post published using SlideShare - 10 Quick Tips for Entrepreneurial Bloggers A post turned into a SlideShare and then embedded - What it Takes to Go Pro – Lessons from 10 Professional Photographers Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript

How to Create a Business Blog When You Don't have a Dedicated Team Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher. Welcome to episode 96. Today we are talking about business blogging and using your blog to promote your business or products. One of the most common questions I get asked when I’m speaking at conferences for business people and blogging is how do I create a business blog without a team to dedicate to the task. Often times, this question is asked by the person assigned to create the blog or the business owner. Here are a few tips that can be used to build a business blog on a shoestring. In This Episode You can listen to today’s episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (if you have a moment, we’d LOVE to get a review). Here are a few tips designed to help you create a business blog and have a regular and consistent workflow. Make one person responsible as the editor. Give someone the authority to blog and get content produced. Establish a publishing rhythm. Work out how often you are going to publish, and give the editor authority to make it happen. Brainstorm ideas ahead of time. Know who is going to write what and implement that into the publishing rhythm. Set up an editorial calendar with all of this information. Writing in batches and stockpiling posts can make things easier. Dedicate time to create, complete and promote your content. Time has to be allocated to creation, editing, comments and social media. Look beyond your business team for content opportunities. People you know and network with may help with content or interview scenarios. For content creation look at everyday activities. Customer questions, team meetings, and interesting things that happen can be content topics. Experiment, track and evaluate. Take the time to analyze the impact of the content and your return on investment. Further Reading: Today’s further reading is an article I wrote for LinkedIn about 56 ideas to use for business blog posts. I have heard back from a number of people who actually used this article as a basis for their yearly blog post ideas. 56 Ideas For Blog Posts for Your Business Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 96 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today I want to talk about business blogging. Blogging, if you are a business wanting to use your blog to promote your business, to promote your products, rather than using the blog as the business itself. I get asked to speak a lot at conferences for business people on the topic of how to build a business blog and one of the most common questions I get asked is, "How do I create one when I don't have a team that I can dedicate to that task?" The question is often asked by the person who has been assigned to get the blog up and running or by the business owner. They know it's a good idea, but they don't really know how to do it when they’ve got a fairly small business, or even a solo business. I want to give you a few tips on how to build that business blog on a shoestring. I'm not going to talk so much about the content that you need to publish, but rather how you get that workflow going, how do you get yourself regular and consistent as a business blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/96. Let's get on with today's show.. Before I get into some tips on building a business blog on a shoestring, I do want to mention I have a little bit of further reading for those of you who want to talk more about content. I wrote an article from LinkedIn a year or so ago now with 56 Ideas for Blog Posts for your Business blog. I have heard back from a lot of business, I should say, that are using this as the basis for almost an annual calendar of blog posts,

Note: this episode is available to listen to here on the site but also on iTunes and Stitcher. Do These Things Before You Launch Your Blog Today we are talking about launching your blog. I’ve been getting a lot of questions in terms of content and design and what types of things you should have ready before you launch your blog. Pre-bloggers often want to know how much work should they have done before launching their blog. They ask questions like how much content should I have ready? How many posts should be live? Should I have a customized theme? Should I invest in a logo? Sometimes excitement kicks in when launching a blog, and it gets launched before it is completely ready to go. Today we are going to talk about the ideal blog launching scenarios. In This Episode I used to be a partner in a blog network, and what we would do content wise is what I’m going to share with you today. We aren’t going to talk about choosing a blog platform, hosting, or choosing a domain today, but we have a post here on how to Start a Blog that walks you through those decisions. Brainstorm post topics - if you can’t come up with 20, your niche may be too narrow Write 10 blog posts, make 3 live and 7 drafts Ideally have a unique design - put your own logo and colors on a premium theme Setup your email newsletter before you launch - having an email list is gold Setup social outposts - choose most relevant social network and set it up You can register social accounts on all of the networks, but focus on the main one Tools and Resources for Launching Your Blog Premium WordPress Themes StudioPress Email Providers Aweber Mailchimp ConvertKit Email Opt-Ins SumoMe OptinMonster Note: I am an affiliate for some of the tools and resources listed above. Problogger Resources ProBlogger Training Event 2016 ProBlogger Job Board Further Reading for Launching Your Blog Home Bases and Outposts – How I use Social Media in My Blogging How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 95 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com. You can find all of our stuff at problogger.com. We've got this podcast but there's also a blog, there's an event that we run which we will be releasing tickets for in the coming weeks, on the 27th of April. You can find information about that over at problogger.com. Follow the link to our events page where you can subscribe to get further updates about that event. There's also a job board. Many of you have been letting me know lately that you found some great jobs for bloggers over on the job board. You can, again, find that if you head to problogger.com, you'll be able to see a link there to that job board. There are new jobs being advertised there every day. If you're looking to hire a blogger, check out the job board as well. I had an email from someone yesterday who said, "Please take down our job." This is 24 hours after they posted it, because they'd had 50 applicants, and they said they could've hired about 20 of them. The quality was really high. We're actually in the process of relaunching that job board at the moment. About $50 to have your job advertised there for 30 days. There's a whole heap of stuff going on over at problogger.com, check it out, that's in addition to this podcast. The best thing you can do, of course, is to subscribe to the ProBlogger PLUS newsletter which you'll find a link to there as well. Today, I want to talk about launching your blog. I want to respond to some questions I've been getting lately about what should you have ready to go on your blog in terms of content, in terms of design, and some of those types of things.

What New (and Old) Bloggers Need to Know about SEO In today’s episode we talk about search engine optimization, and in particular, the five mistakes bloggers make with SEO and what to do about them. My guest today is Jim Stewart from Stewart Media. Jim has years of experience with SEO and has helped me with my SEO for ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. He is currently helping us with SEO while we move ProBlogger to a new domain, and he is also going to be a speaker at this year’s 2016 ProBlogger event. In This Episode In this episode (which you can listen to above or on iTunes or Stitcher) we discuss the five SEO mistakes bloggers make, and then we move on to some reader questions from our Facebook page. Jim adds that one thing that bloggers are getting right is creating great content. Here are the five mistakes and how to correct them: Understand what Google is crawling on your site, so you can eliminate duplicate content. Type SITE:domain.com in the Google search bar to see what pages are being crawled. The number of pages being indexed should be equivalent to your number of posts. If additional pages are being indexed such as archives, tags, etc., install and configure the Yoast plugin to prevent this. Setup Google Search Console (previously called Google Webmaster Tools) This will tell you everything Google sees on your site. You can use it to find and fix errors and submit sitemaps. Optimize your permalink structure. You want DomainName/PostName. If you change your structure, you have to go back and 301 redirect old posts. Use good post structure. The page title should be in the URL and enclosed in h1 tags. Use descriptive names in images. Interlink your posts using a series of posts or sneeze pages. How to Create a Page That Propels People Deep Within Your Blog Reader SEO Questions Answered What is keyword stuffing and how to avoid it? What is the best beginning blogger SEO tool? What to focus on when using Yoast? What numbers to measure and how to check volume in search console? How many keywords to target on a blog and a blog post? How important are onpage ranking factors, and should I bother focusing on them? How popularity may be replacing linking factors in search results? Is there value in getting links from social media? Should time be invested in getting links from other sites? If a site scrapes your content, should you issue a DMCA notice? What are some tips when moving from Blogger to WordPress? How to look for change of address settings in search console after a 301 redirect? What to expect time-wise when ranking a new domain? Why speed is such an important factor when choosing a host? Tools and Resources Mentioned In This Post Yoast Plugins for SEO Google Search Console Screaming Frog SEO Tool Moz Tools SEMRush Google Keyword Planner Hosting Recommendations Stewart Media BloggersSeo.com ProBlogger Training Event 2016 Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to episode 94 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com; a blog that is designed to help bloggers to achieve everything that they can with their blogs and to build income streams from their blogging. Today, I want to talk about search engine optimization and in particular, examine five mistakes that bloggers make with their SEO and then what to do about those mistakes. My guest today to walk us through this is Jim Stewart from stewartmedia.com.au. Jim is someone who has years of experience with SEO and has helped me with ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. In fact, at the moment, he is working on some SEO stuff with us as we move our blog at ProBlogger over onto a new domain. We're going to walk through these five mistakes t...

Do you want to create content that lives on in th ememories of those who read it? If so - this episode is just for you. This episode is brought to you by the ProBlogger Training Event. Sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale here. Tickets go on sale 27 April 2016. Create Content that Makes a BIG Impression on Your Readers I get to meet a lot of ProBlogger readers at conferences and often when I meet one who has been reading for a while I ask them if there's a blog post or podcast that we've published that stands out in their memory. It struck me recently that a number of blog posts get mentioned more than others and it got me wondering why? In This Episode In this new episode (which you can listen to above or on iTunes or Stitcher) I share 7 types of blog posts that seem to create memories in your blog readers. We talk about: Story Posts: The Number 1 Reasons My Blogging Grew into a Business Playful Posts: 5 Things You Should Know about My Dad the ProBlogger Emotive Posts: Dear Youtube: You Broke My Heart, An Open Letter to Amazon Associates Program and My Open Letter to AdSense Inspirational Posts: 12 Blogging Income Streams and How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World Opinion Posts: (see examples above) Personal Posts: Tips on Getting the Family Blogging Balance Right and A Story I told About My Own Health Journey (podcast) Vulnerable Posts: How NOT to send an Email: A Day We'd Rather Forget But a Story We Need to Tell. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view I've put the examples of the posts that I mentioned as examples in the podcasts above but would love to see examples of such posts that you've written in comments below. Good day and welcome to episode 93 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger. Today’s podcast, I want to talk about how to create content that lives on in the memories of your readers. It’s a special topic content because it helps to build your brand and it helps to build a personal connection with your audience. Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/93. I can’t believe we’re at 93 already, almost at a 100. Today’s podcast is actually brought to you by the ProBlogger event. It’s my own event. We’ve been running it now for, I think this is now our seventh year. Those of you in Australia, many of you have been along to that event. Last year we had 750 bloggers and speakers. We did have quite a few people fly in from around the world, some of our speakers but also a few attendees. So if you are overseas, we do welcome you at this event, and we hope to try and arrange some sort of a virtual pass for you this year if you can’t make it live. But if you are in Australia or if you’re willing to come—it’s a great place to come—the event is on the 9th–10th of September this year. Tickets are going on sale on my birthday, 27th of April, so just a few weeks away now. You can subscribe to get updates about our speakers which we’ll be starting to announce over the next week or so, and our schedule. You can get those tickets over at probloggerevents.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes. There’s also a Facebook group if you want to do a search on Facebook for attendees of that event. So we do limit that just to Australians or people willing to come out to the event in Australia. It’s purely for an event kind of discussion, so it’s not a general work for everyone. Okay, let’s get into today’s show. Speaking of events and conferences, I do get to go to quite a few of them. I’ve got one coming up next week, actually, in Sydney. One of the things I love about going to events to speak is I get to meet ProBlogger readers, and that’s a great opportunity, (1) because you get to learn who’s reading your blog and that enables you to serve them bett...

How to Maximise How Many People See Your Posts and Deepen Reader Engagement If on publishing a blog post you immediately start thinking about the next - this episode is for you. Most of us spend a lot of time on the content we publish but if we don't take a few simple steps AFTER publishing much of that hard work will be wasted. This week I received a question from Susan - a long term listener of the podcast. She asked: Darren, thanks for your podcasts so far. I have a question that I hope you might have some insight on. I’ve been working hard on my blogging workflow after hearing your podcasts about bloggers block. I feel like my idea generation is going well and that the writing and completion phases are great but I can’t help but wonder if there is more that I should be doing after I hit publish and wonder if you could give me some tips into what I should be doing before I move on to writing the next post. This is a great question and one I wanted to dive into with a podcast. Before I do you might like to listen to the series on Beating Bloggers Block that Susan mentions where we discuss how to come up with post ideas, give some tips on getting into the writing flow and talk about how to get your posts polished and published. In This Episode In this new episode (which you can listen to above or on iTunes or Stitcher) I want to suggest 5 things that you should do AFTER you hit publish on your next blog post to help your post to get seen and read by more people and to help draw those readers into your blog and to start to engage with you. In this episode I share tips on: How to Socialise Your Blog Posts for Maximum Effect Optimising your Posts for SEO (I've got an episode digging more into this 2 episodes time) Repurposing Your Content (I spend quite a bit of time on this) Deepening Relationships with Your Readers Extending Your Ideas in Future Content Tools Mentioned In This Post I mentioned a few tools in this episode (also check out my 19 Blogging Tools Episode) CoSchedule Edgar Further Reading As promised - here are some articles we've published on the ProBlogger blog and a podcast that I previously recorded that go deeper into some of what I covered in this episode. How to Choose Which Social Networks to be Active On How to Build An Effective Social Media Strategy for Your Blog (podcast) How to Optimize Your Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog (podcast and video of how I use Edgar) How to Socialize Your Posts for Maximum Effect Publish Your Blog Post Without SEO and 1000's of Visits Will Be Forever Lost SEO Best Practices: On Page Ranking How to Repurpose Your Content and Why You Should Do It (includes links to many of the tools and sites I mentioned) You've Got Readers to Your Blog: This is How to Keep Them There How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog (podcast) How to Extend Your Ideas with Future Blog Posts Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to episode 92 of the ProBlogger Podcast, where today, I want to talk about what to do after you hit publish on a blog post. I had a question this way from Susan, which reads, “Darren, thank you for the podcast so far. I have a question that I hope you might have some insight on. I've been working hard on my blogging workflow after hearing your podcast about blogger’s block. I feel like my ID generation is going well and that the writing completion phases are great, but I can't help but wonder if there's more that I should be doing after I hit publish, and I wonder if you could give me some tips into what I should be doing before moving on to writing the next blog post?” This is a great question from Susan and I've got five things that I would encourage you to consider doing as you hit publish on ever...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use Tools to Save Time and Make Your Blog Stronger Today's episode is about the top tools and resources we use on the ProBlogger and Digital Photography School blogs. I share what they are, where you can find them, and how we use them behind the scenes to keep my blogs running smoothly, so you can use them to simplify your blogging life too. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: Why we use apps and tools to help us run the ProBlogger and Digital Photography School blogs More than 10 tools that I've found useful for my blogs that you can use too Links to all the resources and tools I mention Further Reading and Resources for How to Use Tools to Save Your Time and Make Your Blog Stronger Recommended Blogging Resources & Tools page on the ProBlogger website The previous podcast episode I mention that includes detail on how we use SumoMe - Episode 68: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Apps and tools that I use (please note, I am an affiliate for some of these) Email Opt-Ins SumoMe OptinMonster Email Providers Weber Mailchimp ConvertKit Landing Pages LeadPages Communications Slack Trello Organization Evernote Social Edgar - As promised, here's a video of how I use it: (Or if watching videos isn't your thing, here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar.) Editorial and Social CoSchedule Other Essentials Google Analytics Feedblitz Canva and Pic Monkey WordSwag Fantastical - great calendar app for Mac and iOS Mars Edit - desktop blog editor Easy Digital Downloads E-junkie Episodes in my recent miniseries on the important things bloggers/online entrepreneurs should do to find success: Part 1 - The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Do as an Entrepreneur - Podcast Episode 88 Part 2 - The Second Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Do as an Entrepreneur - Podcast Episode 89 Part 3 - 4 Questions to Ask Before Quitting Your Blog or Online Project Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to episode 91 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I want to talk about the tools and resources that we use and recommend over on ProBlogger. I get asked this question all the time, “What tool should I use for _____?” Fill in the blank and it's always different. What tool shall I use for SEO? What should I use for my hosting? What blogging platform should I be on? But then also questions around what email provider should I be using? What communications tools do you use? How do you organize yourself? Today, I want to whip through around 10 to 15 tools that we use on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. There are many options out there and I will give you a few different options for some of these different categories. You can find today’s show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/91 where I’ll link to all of the tools mentioned in this episode, and where I would love to hear the tools that you use as well in the comments of those show notes. Creating great content, finding an audience, building engagement, monetizing your blog, this is ProBlogger. Today, we're talking about tools and resources that you can use to improve your blog. As I mentioned before, there are hundreds of blogging tools out there. There's probably thousands of things, if you add in all the plugins that have been built. I'm not going to so much touch on plugins today, although some of the tools that I will mention do have plugins connected to them for WordPress. I'm going to cover all the categories of tools and reso...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Decide When to Give Up On Your Blog, Business, or Project This is the third podcast in a miniseries about what you need to do to find success as a blogger on online entrepreneur. The first episode was about the importance of establishing the habit of starting new things, instead of just coming up with great ideas and thinking about them. The second episode was about the importance of persisting. Today's episode is about how to decide whether now is the time to quit your blog, business or project. There is definitely a time to quit a project; it's a part of life. But timing your quitting can be important! I share my own personal experience, as well as questions you can ask yourself to work out what is right for you. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: Inspirational quotes about the benefits of persistence Why you should ask yourself if it's time to quit 4 questions to ask yourself to help you decide if it's time to stop How to decide if you should be quitting, or just slightly changing direction - and real life examples of people who have done this successfully Further Reading and Resources for How to Decide When to Give Up On Your Blog, Business, or Project Other episodes in this miniseries on the important things bloggers/online entrepreneurs should do to find success: Part 1 - The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Do as an Entrepreneur - Podcast Episode 88 Part 2 - The Second Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Do as an Entrepreneur - Podcast Episode 89 Real life examples of people who have successfully 'pivoted' or changed direction: Ignite Your Blog Growth to Take off with These Actions, by Donna Moritz at Socially Sorted 5 Most Important Writing Lessons Learned After Pivoting Our Blog Twice, by Buffer Social Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 90 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse. Today, I want to talk about quitting. I think it’s actually an important thing that most bloggers and online entrepreneurs need to do at one time or another. I want to talk about how to decide whether now is the right time to quit or whether there’s a different approach that you can take in the situation that you find yourself in. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/90. Let’s talk about quitting. It’s not something that really is the most uplifting topic in some ways and it’s something that a lot of people avoid really talking about. As we’ve talked about in the last podcast, persisting is something that is very common in entrepreneurial advice. This podcast really comes about because I wasn’t satisfied that the last two podcasts had it all in it. Those of you who are joining us now might want to go back and listen to episode 88 where I talked about the most important thing online entrepreneurs need to do and that is starting. Then in episode 89, I talked about the second most important thing we need to do as entrepreneurs and that is persisting, and I told the story of the Cavanagh brothers who struck gold simply because I persisted longer than anyone else. I truly believe that those two things are just so important and as entrepreneurs, we really need to focus upon those things. We need to be starters, we need to have a mindset of starting, we need to be ‘persisters’. This is good solid advice and it’s no wonder that it features in many entrepreneurial teachings. I found some quotes as well; I was going to share in the last episode as well. I love this one from Albert Einstein, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” He persists.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How the Story of the Cavanagh Brothers Can Help You Find Blogging Success In today's episode, I share the inspiring story of the Cavanagh Brothers. It's a tale of finding success and glory through stamina and dedication over a long period of time, something that holds true for finding blogging success. It reveals the second most important thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: The story of the Cavanagh Brothers How the story can help you find blogging success The second most important thing you’ll ever do as an entrepreneur The Story of the Cavanagh Brothers The year was 1851 and two brothers stood by a bend in a creek that had wishfully been named by gold prospectors 'Golden Point' in days gone by. The two brothers' surname was Cavanagh and they'd been digging, along with around 600 other miners, in their 'claim' at Golden Point for days. Some gold had definitely been found on this particular bend in the creek. In fact numerous miners had made good, although not spectacular, money from their finds in previous weeks. Most of the gold had been found in the sandy ground to a depth of around 1 meter (3.2 feet) but at that point everyone who dug hit a hard layer of clay and received no reward for their effort. Digging through the sandy ground wasn't hard but as soon as they hit clay it became back breaking work. The result was that the area was littered with abandoned claims. Holes in the ground were everywhere, all dug to a depth of around 1 meter. Miners around the Cavanagh brothers that day were beginning to talk of rumors coming from further up creek of richer pickings and in the 24 hours that followed most of the men had moved on. But the brothers Cavanagh had a hunch. They wanted to see what would happen if they dug deeper and so began the arduous task of digging into the hard clay that everyone else had stopped digging into. They chose an abandoned claim from another miner and began to dig. The work was hard and unrewarding. They dug and found nothing but more clay. Inch by inch they chipped away at the clay only to find more clay. All day they dug. The second morning they continued to dig as the last miners around them abandoned their claims and moved on to chase their dreams up creek. I can just imagine the other miners abandoning their claims shaking their heads as they looked at the Cavanagh brothers and laughing at their foolhardy efforts. But the brothers had a belief and kept their focus. As sunset approached on the 2nd day, and after hours of back breaking work the brothers finally broke through the last of the clay at around the depth of 2 meters. Under the clay they found what centuries ago been the old bed of the creek and in it were pockets of gold which had been washed down the creek from the mountains over hundreds of years. The brothers worked into the night feverishly until the light from their lamps gave up. Imagine how they must have felt as they attempted to sleep that night! The next day they rose early and assessed their work. In the light of day the full reality of what they’d uncovered started to sink in. There was gold down below that clay, and lots of it! In a single day alone the Cavanagh brothers found 27 kilograms (60 pounds) of gold. That day's takings alone earned the men over £3,500 which was more than enough to set the two brothers up for life. Word quickly spread of the brothers' success. One month later, 10,000 miners worked in the area around Golden Point and the wider Ballarat area and it became known as the richest known gold field in the world for that time. You can bet that those who followed the brothers dug deeper than they had...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How Doing This One Thing Will Help You Become a Successful Blogger In today's episode, I share the most important thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur. Thirteen years ago I opened an email that changed my life forever. I share the story of what it was I read, why it changed me, how it helped me become the entrepreneur I am today, and how it can help you to become the successful blogger and entrepreneur you want to be. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: The 'sliding doors' moment that ignited my blogging career How I began as a blogger, even though I wasn't a writer and didn't know anything about how to do it Why it's so important to start things Why starting isn't everything How to turn ideas into real, finished results and change peoples' lives for the better, including yours Further Reading and Resources for How Doing This One Thing Will Help You Become a Successful Blogger The blog I mention, TallSkinnyKiwi.com The tweet I mention: Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to episode 88 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today, I want to share with you perhaps the most important thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/88. It was a completely unremarkable moment in an unremarkable day, 13-and-a-half years ago, but it completely changed the trajectory of my life. The moment was when I opened an email. A friend shot me this email that I could quite easily have deleted. It only had four words in it and then a link but something in those four words made me curious. He wrote this, “Check out this blog,” and then the link tallskinnykiwi.com. I've not heard the word blog before, so I clicked the link to find out what it was and to find out who the Tall Skinny Kiwi was as well. Two hours later, I was completely hooked—hooked on the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog—written by a guy called Andrew Jones, but more so, I was hooked on this blogging thing that I saw Andrew and many other people doing. To cut the long story short, I started my first blog that very day. I did so despite a very long list of reasons why I probably shouldn't have started that blog. I wasn't a great writer. I've never designed or set up a website before, I didn't know how to code, I had no money for a domain or hosting. I didn't know any other bloggers. I'd never even heard the word two hours beforehand. I was worried about what people would think about my ideas. I wasn't very technical. I didn't have a niche or any idea that would be central in my blogging. I had this long list of excuses and reasons why I wasn't qualified to start blogging, but I did. In doing so, I changed the direction of my life. That might sound like a big statement but it's completely true. I didn't know it at the time but just a few years later, I would be a full-time blogger. I'd be offered a book deal. I'd be speaking around the world—at conferences—and have millions of people every month reading what I wrote. Now, by no means am I the biggest or the best blogger going around, far from it, but every day I pinch myself at the opportunities that have opened up as a result of starting that day. I often speak about this day and some of you have probably heard me tell that story before as a bit of a sliding door moment in my life, but it struck me a while ago that this a life changing moment, but it wasn't just that moment that changed my life. Starting has been something that I've actually done a whole heap of over the last 13-and-a-half years. Starting wasn't just something that I did on that November afternoon in 2002;...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Beat Blogger's Block: Part 5 - How to Finish Every Blog Post Every Time Today's episode is about how to get into the habit of finishing what you start. It's part 5 in a mini-series of podcasts that looks at how to be more productive with your blog and beat common blocks. In today's episode, I'm sharing how I managed to switch from regularly starting but not finishing blog posts, to finishing and publishing them most times. I share my strategy, tools and process so that you can finish every blog post every time. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: 4 common reasons why you might be struggling to complete a blog post Why scheduling time to finish blog posts will help you complete and publish more blog posts! How to improve the quality and consistency of your blog posts How to build a system, checklist and schedule that you can follow to streamline your blog post process 9 questions you can use as your blog post completion checklist How involving others can help you improve your blog post completion rate and quality, and ways to do it Further Reading and Resources for How to Finish Every Blog Post Every Time How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause Podcast Episode 40: 7 Productivity Tips For Bloggers (includes my schedule with the time I dedicate to finishing blog posts) 9 questions you can use as your blog post completion checklist: Does the post ‘matter’? Is it meaningful? Will it be valuable to readers? Is the title good? Have I got a good opening line? Have I clearly explained my main points/teaching/opinion? Have I added an appropriate conclusion and call to action? Could I add more depth? (further reading, quotes, examples)? Have I invited my readers to interact/respond/share? Have I proofread it? Could I add more visual appeal through images, multi media or better formatting? Other episodes in this series about beating blogger's block: Podcast Episode 86: How to Get into the Flow of Creating Great Content for Your Blog Podcast Episode 85: How to Get Entrepreneurial Ideas Out of Your Head - Pat Flynn Interview Podcast Episode 84: How to Come Up With Fresh Ideas to Write About On Your Blog Podcast Episode 83: How to Beat Writer’s Block: Part 1 – Working Out Why You’re Stuck Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Good morning and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 87. My name is Darren Rowse. I'm here in Melbourne, it's cold, well not too cold, it's a rainy day and the kids have just left the house, so I've jumped on straight away as I tend to do in the mornings. Today, I want to finish out a little series on blogger's block. We started the series back in episode 83 where I talked about three different types of blogger’s block. We talked about that blockage that you have in coming up with ideas. We talked about the block that you have sometimes when you're creating content, and also completing content. Actually hitting publish and this is something a lot of bloggers actually struggle with, they end up with a whole heap of drafts or they sit on posts for a long time before they publish them for a variety of reasons. You can go back and listen to the previous episodes in episode 83, 84 and 86. There was an 85, it was Pat Flynn's interview to catch up on the series. Today, I want to talk about this idea of completing content. I want to talk about some of the reasons why people don't complete that content. I want to give you three quite practical tips on how to get through that block if that’s something that you struggle with.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Beat Blogger's Block: Part 4 - 10 Ways to Get Your Writing Flowing Today's episode is about how to get into the flow of regularly writing great content for your blog. It's part 4 in a mini-series of podcasts that looks at how to stop blogger's block. I get asked about it all the time and suffer it too! In today's episode, I'm tackling the challenge of hitting the wall in terms of creating content, traditionally known as ‘writer's block’. I share 10 key strategies you can use to beat writer's block. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: What causes writer's block How mixing up your environment could cure your writer's block How 'free writing' might get you unstuck How writing to someone can help you - and 3 different ways to get you started How getting in touch with someone else's pain or need can free up your writing Why the time you choose to write matters so much How setting deadlines and creating an editorial calendar can save you angst and prevent writer's block Why stimulating and inspiring your mind is vital if you want to prevent writer's block How preparing an outline can break down writer's block - and a template some bloggers find helpful How writing a different style of blog post can get your creative juices flowing Why 'speaking' your blog post might help you get it written down (and how I use this technique) Further Reading and Resources for How to Get Your Writing Flowing Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post - Michael Hyatt My Experiment with Early Morning Free Writing Sessions CoShedule - the tool I use for scheduling blog content Other episodes in this series about beating blogger's block: Podcast Episode 85: How to Get Entrepreneurial Ideas Out of Your Head - Pat Flynn Interview Podcast Episode 84: How to Come Up With Fresh Ideas to Write About On Your Blog Podcast Episode 83: How to Beat Writer’s Block: Part 1 – Working Out Why You’re Stuck Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, it's Darren Rowse here from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 86 of the ProBlogger podcast. Today, I want to continue our series on blogger's block. Back in episode 83, we talked about three different types of blogger's block. Coming up with ideas was one of them, writing content was another, the third type was completing the content. Episode 84, I talked about how to come up with ideas for what to write about. Today, I want to talk about how to actually get in the flow of writing and creating that content. You can find today's show notes with some further reading and some tools at problogger.com/podcast/86. Today, we're tackling the challenge of hitting the wall in terms of creating content. This is probably traditionally called writer's block but it applies to different forms of creating content as well. I know bloggers or podcasters who get podcasting block. YouTubers have YouTubing block or whatever it might be. Coming up against that wall of creating, it can come about for a variety of reasons. There's probably different types of writer's block in the midst of it. Sometimes, you get too many ideas and they all jam together that you can't get anything out. Sometimes it's just things that aren't flowing, your words are getting jumbled up, things just don't seem to sound right. Sometimes it's more about being out of rhythm. For instance, I have to find it really hard when I come back after taking three or four weeks off for a holiday, vacation, or travelling for a conference. Sometimes I find it hard to get back in the flow of writing every day. Sometimes you're just tired.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Turn Your Product Daydreams Into Reality Today's episode is a special interview with Pat Flynn about how to turn your great ideas into real life products. Pat Flynn is a blogger at Smart Passive Income, speaker, podcaster, author and entrepreneur, widely known for the great tips he shares about how to increase your income. Many bloggers have great ideas for generating income but don't end up following through due to fear, or being unsure about how to go ahead. Pat shares his tips and answers your questions so that you can transform your product ideas into reality. Pat has also just released his brand new book - Will it Fly. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: Why you should care about what Pat has to share The roadblocks many bloggers face when it comes to monetising through products How to come up with product ideas How to choose which ideas to focus on Exercises for developing product ideas How to identify which idea will make the ‘best’ product Things you should consider for choosing your first product How to feel the fear and do it anyway How to choose which way to develop your product, e.g. should it be an ebook? A course? Something else? How to deliver your product Things you should consider before building your product How to create your product The 3 things Pat recommends you should do first if you're starting from zero The one thing that will take you longer than anything else in making your product a reality Pat's top 5 apps/sites he uses for business Pat's top 3 podcast tips The biggest change Pat plans to implement for his business in 2016 Further Reading and Resources for How to Turn Your Product Daydreams Into Reality Episode 67: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Episode 54: 3 Questions to Ask When Facing Fear Pat Flynn's book, 'Will It Fly?' Pat Flynn's website My first interview with Pat from January 2010 (the audio quality isn’t fantastic, sorry!) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to episode 85 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. I am really pleased to have a special guest on today’s podcast, Pat Flynn. Many of you will be familiar from his podcasts, his blog, his ebooks, and the products that he has created over the last few years. He is the blogger at smartpassiveincome.com, a blog where he documents his journey of building an income. He has been doing it since 2009, I think. I first interviewed Pat on ProBlogger in January of 2010 and I am going to include a link to that interview on today’s show notes. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/85. That interview is kind of a bit of a funny one. The audio is not great but it’s me and Pat talking about what we knew back in 2010 about making money blogging, and it kind of gives you a bit of an introduction to Pat and how we started out. I think it’s kind of a funny but also kind of interesting interview, so I have included it in today’s show notes. Also on today’s show notes, there’s a whole heap of links to things that Pat mentions, some of the projects that he runs, and also a link to his brand new book which we talked about in quite a bit of depth today. His book is called Will It Fly. It’s all about trying to work out whether that crazy idea you’ve got in your head will fly, and really that’s what we’re talking about in today’s podcast. Getting those ideas out of our heads, and testing them, and working out whether they are valid or not, and taking them to that first step,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Beat Writer's Block: Part 2 - How to Come Up With Fresh Ideas to Write About Today's episode is about how to beat writer's block. It's the second in a mini-series of podcasts that looks at how to prevent writer's block holding you back from making your blog a success. Writer's block is very common. I get asked about all the time and suffer it too! In today's episode, I share tips about how you can come up with fresh ideas to write about and keep your blog exciting and useful for your readers. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: How to identify the ‘change’ you are trying to bring to readers Why identifying problems you can solve for your readers will give you fresh blog ideas 8 ways to identify problems you can write about to help your readers 4 ways to make solving reader problems and getting fresh ideas easier in future Further Reading and Resources for How to Beat Writer's Block: Part 2 - How to Come Up With Fresh Ideas to Write About Podcast Episode 83: How to Beat Writer’s Block: Part 1 – Working Out Why You’re Stuck Podcast Episode 11: How to Come Up with Hundreds of Blog Post Ideas for Your Blog Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping A Powerful Exercise inside Google Analytics to Set You Up for a Successful Year of Blogging Daily Exercise - Update an Old Post A tool for mind mapping ideas - Mind Node Podcast Episode 81: 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog Podcast Episode 80: What to Write When You Feel Like You’ve Got Nothing Left to Say Battling Bloggers Block 11 Tips to Breaking Bloggers Block Through Solving Reader Problems 10 Ideas for Finding Blogging Inspiration Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi, there. Welcome to episode 84 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name's Darren Rowse and today, we're continuing our mini-series on tackling blogger's block. In the last episode, episode 83, we talked about three different types of blogger's block. Those were coming up with ideas for your blog post, writing the blog post themselves, then completing your blog post. Three areas where I know bloggers do get stuck. Today, I want to tackle coming up with ideas to write about for your blog. You can find today's show notes with some further reading at problogger.com/podcast/84. This whole series is really about getting unstuck, battling that blogger's block that so many of us face. This particular area of coming up with ideas to write about is probably the most common area that I find bloggers are struggling with. After it happened about a year into your blog when you've been through many of those initial ideas that you had when you started out, you generally have a whole heap of ideas. Sometimes, too many ideas. Then, you run out. You feel like sometimes, you've written everything there is to say, you've written everything that you know to talk about, and everyone else has already written everything and you come out against, "What could I write that's fresh? What could I write that's going to have any impact upon my readers? What could I write that's going to stand out from everyone else?" This is something that many of us struggle with. It's actually one of the reasons a number of bloggers that I've come across over the last year or two have given up blogging. It’s actually like they have nothing left to say. I would really encourage you to push past this particular type of blogger's block. All of us do have all kinds of things to say. There are always new ways of saying things that perhaps we've said before as well, and that's a mind shift that you need to push thro...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Beat Writer's Block: Part 1 - Working Out Why You're Stuck Today's episode is about how to beat writer's block. It's the first in a mini-series of podcasts that looks at how to prevent writer's block holding you back from making your blog a success. Writer's block is very common. I get asked about all the time and suffer it too! In today's episode, I share tips about how you can work out why you are stuck in the first place, along with solutions that will help you move forward. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: 3 types of blogger's block What to do when you are completely stuck for ideas What to do when you have the ideas but just can't get into a good writing rhythm What to do when you find you have no problem starting blog posts, but you can never seem to get them finished Further Reading and Resources for How to Beat Writer's Block: Part 1 - Working Out Why You're Stuck Podcast Episode 81: 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog Podcast Episode 80: What to Write When You Feel Like You’ve Got Nothing Left to Say Battling Bloggers Block 11 Tips to Breaking Bloggers Block Through Solving Reader Problems 10 Ideas for Finding Blogging Inspiration Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 83 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. Today, I want to talk about Blogger's Block. In fact, this is the start of a miniseries on the topic of blogger's block. It all came about because Sally emailed me. Sally shot me an email just a couple of days ago. She asked me this question, "Darren, do you have any tips for bloggers with blogger's block? I really want to take my blog to the next level in 2016, but I'm completely stuck. Every time I sit down to write, nothing comes, and the more that happens, the more stressed I feel and the less it seems to flow." Sally, you are not alone in your blogger's block. It's something that affects all of us as bloggers at one time or another and I've had many bouts of it over the years. So today and in the coming episodes, I want to share a few different tips and to help you to tackle it from a number of different directions. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/83 where you can also subscribe to the ProBlogger PLUS newsletter. It's just a simple newsletter that I send out every week, usually on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, depending on what part of the world you're in. It has our latest podcast episodes, but also anything else that I've produced over the week, including blog posts, periscopes, and other live streaming. There's also the occasional promotion of a new ebook that we might be producing or one of our events, but it's largely just updates of content from ProBlogger. You can subscribe to those show notes. Again, it's at problogger.com/podcast/83. Let's get into talking about blogger's block. As Sally says, a blogger's block is something that really does hit us as bloggers at different times. It can be incredibly frustrating and I feel that frustration in Sally's email. She actually went on to write a little bit more about the problem she was having and I really relate to it. It's why I put aside the other podcasts that I had planned for the next few weeks to really tackle it because it's something that I know impacts a lot of us. Particularly it can be frustrating at this time of year when we're in January and we're excited about taking a blog to the next level, but it's just not flowing and we can't make it flow. So today, I want to talk a little bit about different types of blogger's block. In the coming episodes,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. 8 Ways to Make the Most of Your Blogging Time Today's episode is about how to make the most of the time you have. Juggling time to blog with other things in your life is one of the most common challenges that bloggers experience, including me. I recently got together with 5 other bloggers where we talked about this, and I've spent a lot of effort myself in trying to get better at managing my time. In today's episode, I share eight tips and strategies you can use to make fitting blogging into your life less stressful. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: How to work out what your life priorities are How to work out how you're currently spending your time How to work out what your blogging priorities are (and the 4 priorities I focus on for my blogs) How to change your schedule to increase blogging effectiveness Why batching your tasks is so important How 'mental blogging' can save you time Why setting aside time for idea generation can save you time How to break down big jobs into small bites How to embrace slow blogging - why less can be more Why putting time into preparing for the next week can save you time Why setting aside time for rest, inspiration, and well being should be a regular part of your blog schedule Why NOW is the perfect time to review your priorities and redesign your blog and life schedule Further Reading and Resources for 8 Ways to Make the Most of Your Blogging Time Episode 40: 7 Productivity Tips For Bloggers (includes my ideal weekly blogging/life schedule) Blog Wise: How to Do More with Less (ebook) How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping Webinar Recording: 10 Things I Wish I Knew About Blogging Before I Started Kemi's blog Tools I use to save time: To track how I spend my time - Rescue Time Mind mapping ideas - MindNode (other bloggers also use Trello) To do list app – wunderlist Calendar I use from my phone, computer and watch – Fantastical 2 Writing and sorting content – Evernote Team communication – Slack Social media management – Meet Edgar, CoSchedule Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. My name's Darren Rowse. Welcome to episode 82 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to take a break from the shorter podcast that I've been doing over the last couple of weeks and talk about something that I think is particularly relevant for this time of the year. That is juggling the time that you have from blogging. I want to give you eight tips today for busy bloggers on how to make the most of the time that you have. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/82. I had a recent coffee with five other bloggers. It's kind of an end of year breakup of sorts for those of us who have small businesses and don't get a chance to have a big Christmas party. As we're having our coffee, we went around the circle, and we talked about our biggest successes over the last year but then talked about our biggest challenges for the year ahead. Every single one of us as we went around and talked about challenges for next year, mentioned that we were struggling with time in one way or another. Most of us had busy lives not just with our blogging but many of us had families, some of us had other commitments to churches, community groups, sporting groups, and other priorities. Most of us have friends as well. This juggle of how to fit blogging into the rest of our lives was a common thing that many of us faced as we went around. Our conversation then moved to what tips could we gi...