ProBlogger Podcast: Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. 14 Different Stories You Can Tell to Get People Reading Your Blog Today's episode is about how to work out what to write about when you feel like you have nothing left to say. It's part two on this topic, so you might like to listen back to episode 80 first. I share 14 different types of stories you can use to get people excited about reading your blog, and resources and reading you can refer to into the future when you get stuck. 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 tell a personal discovery story How to tell an illustrative or analogous story How to share a success story How to share a story about failure How to tell someone else's story How to tell 'How I did it' stories How to tell a biography story - a story about someone else How to tell your autobiography - tell your own story from start to finish How to use images or video to tell a story How to tell a story using a case study How to tell a fictitious story How to share reader stories How to tell collective stories How to tell 'Imagine if...' stories Further Reading and Resources for 14 Different Stories You Can Tell to Get People Reading Your Blog Podcast Episode 80: What to Write When You Feel Like You’ve Got Nothing Left to Say Podcast Episode 38: The Biggest Lesson I Learned About Building a Profitable Blog in 2015 Podcast Episode 67: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World How NOT to Send an Email: A Day We’d Rather Forget But a Story We Need to Tell Content Week Case Study: Carly Heitlinger of The College Prepster How A Simple Blog Led To Writing For Forbes, Mashable, and TechCrunch (and 7 Tips to Help You Do it Too!) Becoming a ProBlogger – A story in Many Parts 12 Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year ‘Overnight’ Success] How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog The Science of Storytelling: 6 Ways to Write More Persuasive Stories The 5 Things Every (Great) Marketing Story Needs Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 81 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, we're going to continue on from my last podcast where I encourage you to tell your story as a way of coming up with something unique to say on your blog. That being a struggle that a lot of bloggers have is that everyone's already said it, while no one's already said your story. You can actually listen to that last podcast episode in episode 80. But today, I want to give you some different types of stories that you might want to tell on your blog. Some of these are stories that you could tell about your own story, but some of them are also other types of stories. I'm going to give you 14 of them. You can find today's show notes where I'm going to give you a whole heap of examples of these types of stories. You may actually want to open up this link so that you can pause the podcast as we go along and check out the examples. You can find the show notes at problogger.com/podcast/81 where I'll give you those examples and you can also share your own examples in the comments. Let's get into today's episode. Let's get into the 14 types of stories that you can tell. The first one is the personal discovery story. This is where you tell the story of you discovering something for the first time, a lesson that you've learned if you like. These stories are really great because they do allow your readers to see that you ar...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. Why Your Story Will Always Be Interesting to Someone Today's episode is about how to work out what to write about when you feel like you have nothing left to say. It's a short and sweet podcast episode, designed to be quick and easy for you to listen to even if you're incredibly busy or having a lazy holiday. 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 your story will always be unique Why it doesn't matter that there are other writers out there who are smarter, funnier or more clever than you Why your experience will always be interesting to someone Further Reading and Resources for Why Your Story Will Always Be Interesting to Someone Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog The Science of Storytelling: 6 Ways to Write More Persuasive Stories The 5 Things Every (Great) Marketing Story Needs Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 80 of the ProBlogger podcast, where over the last few podcasts I’ve been trying to keep my podcast under three minutes. The reason that I’ve been doing that is that it’s January here in Australia. While it’s January everywhere but here in Australia, January means we all go to the beach. It’s summer holiday time, so I would want to create some podcasts that you could listen to really quickly on your summer holiday or wherever you are. If you are rugged up somewhere in the cold part of the world, you probably are at the beach, but I want to keep them short and sweet over the month of January. Today’s podcast is another really short one but I think it’s so important. In fact, I think it’s probably one of the most important things that many bloggers need to hear. I get asked the question all the time, what should I write about when I don’t feel like I’ve got anything unique to say. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/80. If you ever felt that way like you’ve got nothing unique to say, like it’s all been said before, like there are some so many other people out there who are smarter, funnier, more witty or cleverer than you, “Why would anyone listen to me?” you might be thinking. While if you have ever been feeling like that, you are not alone. I think that most bloggers have that moment in their story where they felt that way. Why would anyone listen to me? I’ve got nothing unique to say. Here’s my encouragement to you. Nobody, nobody at all has ever lived your life before. Nobody has your story. Nobody has faced and overcome what you’ve overcome in your life. Nobody thinks in exactly the same way that you do. No one has your story. So write, but infuse writing with your story. Your story is what makes your content unique. Your story is what has never been said before. Your story is something that nobody else could ever know better than you. Your story is why anyone would listen to you. So share your story. When you’re in doubt and you feel like you’ve got nothing unique to say, come back to your story. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/80 where I’ve got some further reading on storytelling. I hope you find this podcast helpful and I’ve still got 15-seconds to go so I would love to also hear your comments over on the show notes today. Thanks for listening and I will chat with you again soon. How did you go with today's episode? What other strategies have worked for you? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts below.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Get People to Comment on Your Blog Posts Today's episode is about how to get more comments on your blog. I share 11 tips you can use to get more attention and interaction. Today's podcast is a challenge to myself - to include as much high quality advice as I can in just 3 minutes! These are tips you can keep coming back to in future to keep improving your relationship with 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 invite comments How to write in a conversational tone, so people feel more comfortable to leave a comment How to ask a question at the end of your blog posts to increase your chances of getting comments How you can use your blog headline to get people excited about commenting The most powerful type of question you can ask for increasing comments An easy tactic you can use to get the ball rolling for comments How to respond to trolls and scammers How to respond to constructive comments to encourage those people to comment more in future How to use social media to increase blog comments Further Reading and Resources for How to Get People to Comment on Your Blog Posts 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog 19 Ways to Build Relationships with Blog Comments - Social Media Examiner 10 Blog Commenting Tips to Get Traffic from Other Blogs - Learn to Blog Leave Comments on Other Blogs [Day 20 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] - podcast Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 79 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to give you a three-minute podcast. It is another short one, but I hope it is helpful for you because it is a question I get asked all the time. How do I get more comments on my blog posts? You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/79. So let us get into the tips. Number 1. Invite comments. You exponentially increase the chances of getting comments on your blog post simply by asking for one at the end of your post. Number 2. Write in a conversational tone. The more your readers feel like you are talking to them rather than just writing a post, the more likely you are to get comments, so write in a conversational kind of tone. Number 3. Ask questions at the end of your blog posts. Rather than just saying, “Leave a comment,” include a specific question. This gives your readers a starting point when they are thinking about what to comment on. Number 4 is building upon this idea of asking questions and it is to ask a question in the headline of your post. You would not want to do it in every single post, but when you ask a question in your blog post title, it invites your readers to start thinking about their response even before they read anything at all. It really works well. Number 5. Be open-ended with your blog posts. If you said everything there is to say on your topic in your blog post, there is much less chance that your readers are going to feel the need to comment at all. Number 6. Interact with the comments left. If you are not willing to interact in the comments why would your readers. This makes your comment section become a conversation section. Number 7. Kick off the comments with your own comment. If you are not getting many comments on a post or any at all, answer your own question or add a new point to your post by leaving a comment. This sometimes gets the ball rolling. Number 8. Deal with trolls and spanners. If comments on your post are going toxic, be willing to step in and get things back on track. An unmoderated comment section can be a real put-off to those who are n...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Write Engaging Blog Posts Today's episode is about how to make sure your blog posts are really interesting. I share 11 tips you can use in your writing to get attention and maintain interest. Today's podcast is a challenge to myself - to include as much high quality advice as I can in just 3 minutes! These are tips you can keep coming back to in future to keep improving your blog. I'm also including a lot of extra resources in the show notes with examples and further ideas that you can refer to. 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 make your blog posts useful to your readers How to share your opinion How to cut out the fluff How to visualise your reader How to make your blog posts scannable How to make your headlines catchy How to show your passion How to ask your readers to do something How to tell stories well How to make your blog posts look interesting How to continuously improve your writing Further Reading and Resources for How to Write Engaging Blog Posts Usefulness – Principles of Successful Blogging #3 Write an Opinion Post on Your Blog [Day 19 31DBBB] Editing for People Who Love to Write… Too Much How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging Writing Blog Content – Make it Scannable How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog How Passion Can Transform Your Blog Calls to Action – 12 Tips To SNAP Readers Out of Passivity Tell a Story – Rediscovering Your Blogging Groove Day 7 Using Visual Content to Increase Blog Engagement 10 Ways to Improve Your Blogging through Practice Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 78 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I am setting myself a bit of a challenge to give you a podcast episode in under three minutes that has some useful content for you. Today, I am going to give you 11 quick tips for writing compelling blog posts. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/78, where there is further reading on each of these tips. So let us get into it. Number 1. Be useful. If your blog post isn’t informing, inspiring, entertaining, or making someone’s life better in some way, do not publish it until it is. Number 2. Share your opinion. Opinions are often what sets your blog post apart from what everyone else is writing about, so share them. Number 3. Cut out the fluff which is what I am trying to do in this podcast. Before you hit publish, revise your post and remove anything that does not add value. Number 4. Visualize your reader as you are writing. Writing with a reader in mind personalizes your writing in ways that you cannot even imagine. Number 5. Make your posts scannable. Only 16% of people read every word that you write. Format your post in a way where your main points stand out using bullet posts or headlines. Number 6. Work and rework your headlines. A good headline can be the difference between a blog being read or ignored completely. Number 7. Write with passion. When you share that you care what you are writing about your readers will most likely care, too. Number 8. Give your readers something to do next. Ask your readers to do something once they are finished reading. It could be reading something else, commenting, sharing, or applying the lesson that you have taught. Number 9. Tell stories. Stories are incredibly powerful at connecting with your readers in inspiring and teaching them. They will also create memories in your readers. Number 10. Give your posts visual appeal.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Set Goals That Will Improve Your Blog Today's episode is about how to set goals that will improve your blog. Research shows that by simply writing goals down, you are more likely to achieve them. I find setting goals difficult, but this has definitely been true for me! Today's episode is a special interview with Stacey Roberts, the author of the Vege Mama blog. We talk about what you can do to make sure you have the highest chance of meeting your blog goals, in the most painless way possible. 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 make goals instead of new year resolutions A question you should ask yourself to work out what you need to do to improve your blog in the next year 6 ways that goals can help you improve your blog How to make your 'to do' list more achievable 5 key areas you should set goals for your blog 6 strategies you can use to increase your chances of achieving your blog goals 3 reasons why people fail at achieving their goals (and how to make sure you avoid them) What to do right now to make sure you include goals into your blog game plan for the new year Further Reading and Resources for How to Set Goals That Will Improve Your Blog How to Do an End of 2015 Blog Audit: Take Stock of What You’ve Achieved and Where You’re Headed The Beginner's Guide to Goal Setting - Michael Hyatt An example of a blog review post, on the Money Saving Mom blog The tool I mention that's great for to-do lists, Wunderlist Keep your goals to yourself - the TED Talk by Derek Sivers that we mention Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January 2015. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Darren: Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 77 of the ProBlogger Podcast and the first episode of 2016. It feels a little bit strange to me saying that. I haven’t said that too many times yet because it (as I record this) is halfway through December in 2015 if I’m honest, but I wanted to get this one recorded because I think it’s so important. Today we are going to talk about setting blog-changing goals for your blog. Goals that are going to help you to take your blog to the next level in 2016. To help me to explore this topic, I decided to bring in Stacey Roberts who is the editor of ProBlogger and has been for the last couple of years now. Stacey has really been instrumental in helping me to take ProBlogger to the next level over the last year or so, one of the teams that I have brought on to help me with that. She is a little bit different personality-wise. We do talk about our personalities in this particular episode. It helped me, as well as a few other people in my team, too, to get a little bit more structured in my thinking about this type of stuff.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Create Your Blog Content Calendar Today's episode is the last in the 'Today, Not Someday' series of 11 podcasts and 10 challenges that you can do now to make next year your strongest year of blogging yet. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. I've included a full list of episodes below. The focus of today's episode is about how to plan what content you will post on your blog during 2016. Having a plan will save you stress, energy and time, and will make your blog more consistent, increasing your chances of attracting new readers and keeping current readers engaged. 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 thinking ahead about your editorial calendar is important Why reviewing your blog's previous performance will fast track your plan for the future 3 areas to look at to measure what your strongest content in 2015 was How to review your previous content to work out what is getting readers the most excited and engaged 11 quick questions to answer that will help you work out your blog's most popular topics, times, post types and more How to work out key themes you could cover in your content How to work out ideas for series of posts for your blog Why thinking about the rhythm of your publication schedule can help you plan your blog content How to work out how often you should post content How to decide what mediums of content you will post How to decide and schedule when you will have breaks from blogging next year Quick, easy things you can do to make your content look fresh and attractive and cut down your workload Tools you can use to help you with collecting ideas and planning content How to brainstorm great content ideas for the new year Further Reading and Resources for How to Create Your Blog Content Calendar Episode 12: How to Create an Editorial Calendar for your Blog (Podcast) A Powerful Exercise inside Google Analytics to Set You Up for a Successful Year of Blogging (Blog Post) Tools I mention in this podcast: Canva for Work BuzzSumo CoSchedule Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Part 7: How to Make Money as an Affiliate With a Best Seller List Part 8: How to Make Your Social Media Strategy More Effective for the New Year Part 9: Grow Your Blog's Traffic and Income by Creating a Resources Page Part 10: Map Out Next Year’s Monetization Strategy for Your Blog Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Create a Schedule for Your Promotions Today's episode is part 10 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. I've included a full list of episodes below. The focus of today's episode is about how to map out the next year’s promotional or marketing calendar for your blog. If you want to build a profitable and sustainable blog you need to put effort into thinking about how to make your blog profitable, and this is a key part to making it happen. 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 evaluate your blog's performance and achievements for the past year Why you're losing income if you don't create a promotional calendar for your blog How to create your blog's promotional calendar 4 key areas of activity to include in your promotional calendar How I use SmartSheets to create promotional calendars for my blogs 5 ways your blog will improve if you take the time to create your promotional calendar today, not someday Further Reading and Resources for How to Create a Schedule for Your Promotions How to Do an End of 2015 Blog Audit: Take Stock of What You’ve Achieved and Where You’re Headed A screen shot of how I use SmartSheets to create the Digital Photography School blog promotional calendar: Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Part 7: How to Make Money as an Affiliate With a Best Seller List Part 8: How to Make Your Social Media Strategy More Effective for the New Year Part 9: Grow Your Blog's Traffic and Income by Creating a Resources Page Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and I would like to welcome you to episode 75. Today, we are continuing our series of challenges that you can invest a little time in today and hopefully, they'll pay off for the long term on your blog. The hashtag we are using over at Twitter is #TodayNotSomeday and the idea is that these are things that you've probably got on your someday list. Things that you have been putting off that you really need to do today because they have a lo...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income Today's episode is part 9 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. I've included a full list of episodes below. The focus of today's episode is about how to create a resources page to help your readers, grow traffic, and grow income. 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 a resources page can be good for your blog 4 reasons why I created the first resources page for my blog 7 things you can include in your resources page 7 tips to make sure your resources page grows your traffic and income 7 real life examples of highly effective resource pages you can refer to when you are creating your own Further Reading and Resources for How to Use a Resources Page to Grow Your Traffic and Income The resources page on ProBlogger, a page where I list useful tools, services and training for bloggers (since recording this podcast we've begun updating this page - but we'll further refine it for visual appeal in the coming weeks). Examples of effective resource pages: Matt has a fantastic page with different pages of recommendations: nomadicmatt.com/travel-resources Caz and Craig take a similar approach on their page: ytravelblog.com/travel-resources Jane takes the approach of breaking her page down into categories with a sentence about each recommendation: janefriedman.com/resources Tsh has a ‘useful things’ page that then links to 3 other resources pages: theartofsimple.net/useful-things Steve Huff has put together a page of the photography gear he uses: stevehuffphoto.com/my-gear-the-gear-i-own-and-use-on-a-daily-basis I like how this page takes common questions and gives a resource for each: talkaboutcreative.com.au/free-resources-small-business Stacey tackles a variety of topics in her page at: theveggiemama.com/resources Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Part 7: How to Make Money as an Affiliate With a Best Seller List Part 8: How to Make Your Social Media Strategy More Effective for the New Year Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Optimize Your Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Today's episode is part 8 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. I've included a full list of episodes below. The focus of today's episode is about how to give your social media workflow a good going over to prepare you for the new year. I share tips about how to get bigger reach, more traffic, and higher engagement, and how to maximize productivity so that you save 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: Why optimizing your social media is so important for growing your blog 4 common social media mistakes Why I decided to make changes to my social media strategy 3 key questions to ask yourself to optimize your social media How to build a social media system that will save you time and increase engagement How Periscope can improve your social media engagement and make your work more fun Social media tools you can use to increase engagement, reach, and traffic and save you time Further Reading and Resources for How to Optimize Your Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Great tools to help you automate and manage your social media: Edgar CoSchedule Slack Great tools to help you make the best of Periscope: Fullscope - for stats Katch - for replays and embeds Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Part 7: How to Make Money as an Affiliate With a Best Seller List Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi, this is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 73 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, we're continuing our series which is all about doing things today that you have on your someday list. It's truly about getting those things that you dreamed about doing or you know you really should be doing into the things that you are doing, particularly focusing upon things that are going to have long-term benefits for your blog and set you up for a great year of blogging next year. This is the 7th challenge of 10 in this series. If you want to go back and listen to the first one,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How You Can Make Money on Your Blog From Being an Affiliate Today's episode is part 7 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. I've included a full list of episodes below. The focus of today's episode is how to make money as an affiliate by creating a best seller list. I've earned over half a million dollars from the Amazon affiliate program during my blogging career. I share tips about how you can make money as an affiliate on your blog. 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 best seller lists work 4 different types of best seller lists you can use on your blog Examples of effective best seller lists Examples of effective Facebook posts I have used to promote best seller list blog posts A challenge for you to create a best seller list on your blog (and an opportunity to share it) Further Reading and Resources for How You Can Make Money on Your Blog From Being an Affiliate How to Dramatically Increase Amazon Affiliate Sales with Bestseller Lists Examples of best seller lists: The 20 Most Popular DSLRs Among our Readers The 20 Most Popular DSLR Lenses Among our Readers The 19 Most Popular Compact System and Mirrorless Cameras with Our Readers Examples of the Facebook updates for these posts that did well: https://www.facebook.com/digitalps/posts/10153392909148049 https://www.facebook.com/digitalps/posts/10153393727943049 https://www.facebook.com/digitalps/posts/10153395622903049 Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Hi and welcome to episode 72 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and we are motoring through our series of little challenges that I'm giving you to do before the end of the year, that are going to help get your blog in tip-top shape before 2016. Some of you have been asking, do you have to do all of the challenges? No. That's not the way I designed this little series. I'm hoping that at least two or three of them are going to be things that you could achieve. Just a reminder,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Today's episode is part 6 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. Part 2 was about why you should sell a product on your blog (and how to do it). Part 3 was about how to increase your subscriber numbers for your email list. Part 4 was about how to get readers excited to join and stay on your email list. Part 5 was about how to use auto responders to drive traffic and profit with your blog. The focus of today's episode is how to refresh the design of your blog to maximise your chances of making people feel what you want them to feel and doing what you want them to do. 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 the design of your blog is so vital 4 areas of your blog design that you should review and update How to refresh your blog sidebar How to tackle your blog navigation How to tackle your calls to action How to work out if you need to upgrade your blog design completely 5 key principles of effective design that you should implement in your blog design Further Reading and Resources for How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Where to find a new blog theme StudioPress has a great range of options for wordpress themes. Check out what StudioPress has to offer here (ProBlogger affiliate link). Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Hi there and welcome to episode 71 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, we are going to talk about your blog’s design. This is part of our ongoing series of challenges that I’m giving you every couple of days over the month of December, to go away and do something today that you have probably got on your someday list. Design is something that many of us, as bloggers say, “Yeah, one day I’ll redesign my blog,” or, “One day I’ll look at that navigation area,” or, “One day I’ll give my sidebar a spring-clean.” Well, I have got some news for you. Today is the day. We are using the hashtag #TodayNotSomeday” over on Twitter and a lot of you have been sharing the things that you have be...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement & Profit Today's episode is part 5 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. Part 2 was about why you should sell a product on your blog (and how to do it). Part 3 was about how to increase your subscriber numbers for your email list. Part 4 was about how to get readers excited to join and stay on your email list. The focus of today's episode is how to use auto responders to drive traffic and profit with your blog. 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 is an Autoresponder? Why you should use autoresponders on your blog Tools you can use to create autoresponders 9 types of emails you can use autoresponders for on your blog How to create successful, engaging autoresponders How often to schedule autoresponder emails What other types of emails you should send to support your autoresponders Challenge - set up an autoresponder for your blog Further Reading and Resources for How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Tools you can use to create autoresponders: Mailchimp - automation workflow aWeber - campaigns Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for your free one month trial at meetedgar.com/problogger. Here's a video of how I use Edgar: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 70 of the ProBlogger podcast where today, we’re going to talk about autoresponders. Something that many of us have on their someday list but we don’t get around to ever setting up. Today, I want to talk about what an autoresponder is, why you should set one up, and give you some practical tips on how to do it. This is part of our “today, not someday” series of podcasts, a series where we are walking through some of those things that we never quite get around to doing, that have the potential to bring a lot of life and profit to our blogs. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/70, where you’ll also find some information about our show’s sponsor, Edgar. You can find more information from Edgar at meetedgar.com/problogger. It is a tool that I’ve used really successfully over the last year. This brought a lot of life to my social media strategy and I’ll talk more about that at the end of this podcast, but for now,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Today's episode is part 4 of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. Part 2 was about why you should sell a product on your blog (and how to dot it). Part 3 was about how to get people to sign up onto your email list. The focus of today's episode is about how to create the most effective 'opt-in', or 'lead magnet' for your blog, or if you already have one, how to make it even more powerful. An opt-in is a free special offer that you can give to people who join your email list. Having an opt-in is one of the most significant things you can to do to increase your subscriber numbers and grow your business. 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 having an opt-in or lead magnet for your email list is so powerful How to create an opt-in for your email list What format your opt-in should use More than 20 ideas of what you can offer as your opt-in gift How to decide what your opt-in gift should be about How I created an opt-in for my Digital Photography School blog this year Why you should update your opt-in Why you should have more than one opt-in How you can give people something that will still make them want to stay on your list, even after they have their gift What your opt-in should look like Tools you can use to help you deliver and promote your opt-in Where you should mention your opt-in Further Reading and Resources for How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Tools you can use to deliver and promote your opt-in These tools are great and I use them for my blogs: SumoMe is the tool I use on dPS to make our new Opt-in Offer. They are offering a special offer for ProBlogger readers, a free month of ‘Welcome Mat Pro', which is pretty amazing! Access the special offer here. LeadPages is another tool you can use to make your Optin Offers by creating great landing pages for your offer. Here's a post where we make our latest opt-in offer for a Photographing the Holidays Guide over at Digital Photography School. Meet my new friend, Edgar I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for it at meetedgar.com/problogger. Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there! This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 69 of the ProBlogger podcast where today we’re talking about something that you’ve probably been putting off doing that you really should do today that has potential to bring a lot of life to your blog.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How I Increased the Subscriber Rate on My Blogs by 80-1000% Today's episode is the second of the new 'Today, Not Someday' podcast series. The focus is actioning your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. Part 2 was about why you should sell a product on your blog (and how to dot it). The focus of today's episode is about why and how you should have a good system to allow people to subscribe to your email list. I have spent lots of time over the years experimenting with different ways to let readers subscribe across my blogs. I share the technique I use that increased my email list subscribers by over 100% so you can use it on your blog. 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 I started using email as a way to communicate with my readers Why email is a valuable communication tool for your blog The 3 keys to increasing the subscriber numbers on your email list An invitation to complete a challenge to improve your blog 5 things you should test in your email list sign ups The tool that has increased my email list sign ups by more than 100% Further Reading and Resources for How to Increase Your Email List Subscribers By 100% Today The email list providers that I use: Aweber Mailchimp SumoMe, the email list tool I use for pop up and Welcome Mat subscription forms (and a SPECIAL OFFER) The great thing about SumoMe is that: It allows you to test different types of popups, hello bars etc. in combination You can target people coming from different sources of traffic with different tools, different CTAs, different frequency of seeing the tools etc. I've seen between 80%-1000% increases in subscribers on every site I've tested it on. Check out the increases in subscribers I've seen to a couple of my sites. First Digital Photography School. Next - here's the increase in subscribers here on the ProBlogger Podcast show notes page. My wife even saw a 1000% increase in her subscribers on her blog! The feature I specifically mention working very well for me on my blogs (and being responsible for these increases in subscribers) is the 'Welcome Mat'. SumoMe has a special offer for ProBlogger readers, a free month of ‘Welcome Mat Pro', which is pretty amazing! Access the special offer here. Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Update: check out Part 3 which continues the theme of growing your subscriber numbers by creating an opt-in for your blog. Meet my new friend, Edgar (and a SPECIAL OFFER) I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for it at meetedgar.com/problogger. As promised in today's podcast - here's a video of how I use it: If watching videos isn't your thing - here's a blog post I wrote on how I use Edgar. Full Transcript

How to Develop a Product to Sell on Your Blog Today's episode is the second of the new 'Today, Not Someday' series of podcasts that will take us up to the end of the year about what you can do to make your blog ready for success in 2016. The focus is your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. For details about how the series works, check out episode one here. The focus of today's episode is about why having something to sell is so important, and tips about how you can develop a product to sell on your blog. 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 having something of your own to sell is so important 9 ways you're losing opportunities if you don't offer products on your blog How I made my first product - the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned 8 steps to follow to create your first product Update: you might also like to check out this followup episode on how to create more time to create your first product. Further Reading and Resources for How to Develop a Product to Sell on Your Blog Other episodes in the Today, Not Someday Series: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series The 'creating products' series on the ProBlogger blog This is the series of blog posts I mention about ‘creating products’ that Shayne Tilley and I shared on the ProBlogger blog: Creating Product Week: How to Create and Sell Products On Your Blog Creating Products Week: Before You Even Think About Creating Products, Think About This Creating Products Week: Which Product Should I Create? Creating Products Week: How to Create Products for Your Blog Creating Products Week: The Launch Countdown Creating Products Week: Making Products Happen – Getting Your Ideas off the Ground Meet my new friend, Edgar I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for it at meetedgar.com/problogger. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there, and welcome to Episode 67 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and today, we’re continuing our series of podcasts on things that you can do today that will help to improve your blog forever. These are all things that have been, and are currently on my ‘someday’ list, things that we often put off as bloggers that we really should do today because they have so much potential to bring our blog alive. For the next 10 episodes, I’m going to give you 10 different things you can do today to improve your blog. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/67. You can listen to the introduction to this series in the last episode, Episode 66. This episode is sponsored by Edgar, a tool that I’ve been using since January of this year, that does pretty much what this whole series is about; help you to improve your blog by doing something today that’s going to pay off forever. Edgar allows you to create social updates for your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts that will continue to be able to be used forever and it cues them up automatically for y...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. Introducing The New 'Today, Not Someday' Series of Podcasts Today's episode is the first in a new series of podcasts about what you can do to make your blog ready for success. The focus will be your 'someday' list, the things you've always wanted to do to improve your blog but have struggled to make happen. I've realised many of the things on my 'someday' list are things that could significantly improve my blog and my business and lead to a rise in income, things I really should be doing and could be achieved with a concerted burst of effort, if only I could get past my procrastination. This series is about me sharing my journey to turn my 'someday' tasks into things I make happen today. I'll share with you what works and what doesn't, and give you tips and resources to help you work through your 'someday' list too. We're all more likely to make these changes if we're not doing it alone! 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 I'm focusing the next 10 podcast episode on #TodayNotSomeday blogging tips How the #TodayNotSomeday series will work How you can be a part of the #TodayNotSomeday journey How to begin your #TodayNotSomeday journey Resources for How to Transform Your 'Someday' Tasks Into Things You Make Happen Today I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10 part series, my friend ‘Edgar'. Edgar is a tool I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term. You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates highlighting the great content in your blog’s archives and Edgar goes to work to share them to your followers not just once but by queuing your updates to keep delivering to into the future. The team at Edgar have put together a special deal for ProBlogger readers which gives you a free one month trial. Sign up for it at meetedgar.com/problogger. How did you go with today's episode? How did you go with writing your 'someday' list? What has worked for you in the past with moving tasks from your 'someday' list to your 'today' list? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. The hashtag I'll be using to talk about this journey on social media is #TodayNotSomeday and I encourage you to share your journey too, using the same hashtag. Update: the rest of this series has started - listen to the next episodes at: Part 1: Introducing New 'Today, Not Someday' Series Part 2: Why You Should Create a Product to Sell On Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It) Part 3: How to Increase the Subscriber Numbers to Your Email List Part 4: How to Get Readers Excited to Join and Stay on Your Email List Part 5: How to Use Autoresponders to Fast Track Engagement and Profit Part 6: How to Refresh the Design of Your Blog For Maximum Impact Part 7: How to Optimize Your Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Part 8: Grow Your Blog’s Traffic And Income By Creating A Resources Page Part 9: Map Out Next Year’s Monetization Strategy For Your Blog Part 10: Work On January’s (Or The Full Year’s) Content Calendar Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there! This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 66 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I am very excited to be starting a new series of podcasts that’s going to take us through pretty much until the end of the year. It’s something that’s going to hopefully help you to really set yourself up for a great year of blogging in 2016. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. Tips to Help You Make the Best Decisions For Your Blog's Success Today's episode is about how you can learn to make decisions for your blog more quickly and with confidence, freeing you up to focus your time on what really matters most. One of the most common questions I'm asked is how I manage to fit everything in - blogging, social media, speaking appearances, product development and family life. The truth is, I don't get to do everything I would like. But I have learned skills and developed habits that make me feel less overwhelmed and stressed about making decisions about how to spend my time. If you're feeling like you don't have enough time to fit everything in, this episode is for you. I share tips that will help you get more focused about how to choose to spend your time to make your blog a success. 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 I juggle blogging, social media, speaking appearances, product development and family life without going crazy Tips you can use to help you decide what opportunities you say 'yes' to Why learning how to say 'no' can free up your time and energy and make you more productive 10 questions you can ask yourself to help you make decisions about what tasks you will focus on and what to let go Further Reading and Resources for How to Make the Best Decisions For Your Blog's Success Episode 40: 7 Productivity Tips For Bloggers (it includes my ideal schedule and my workflow for creating this podcast series) Time Management for Ridiculously Busy Bloggers The Curse of the ProBlogger – Time Management and Scaling Yourself Up Time Management for Travel Bloggers … and Others Do You Know These Time Saving Blogging Tips? 9 Habits of Bloggers Who Have Huge Audiences How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 65 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I want to talk about answering a question I get all the time, "How do you work out what to focus your time upon as a blogger?" You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/65. Do you ever feel like you don't have enough time to fit everything in? Like there's some opportunity staring you in the face to start something new, but to take it on would mean everything else you are already doing would suffer. You know that feeling I'm sure. You’re working away on your blog, creating content, updating your Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn accounts everyday, responding to comments and emails from readers, then you got to read other people's blogs and comment on those, watch other people's Periscopes and create the occasional product for your blog and update your advertising page. The list goes on and on and on. The things that we all do as bloggers everyday, but then comes along an opportunity. Sometimes the opportunities are real ones. Someone asks you to do something, “Would you like to guest post on my blog?” or, “Can I interview you on my podcast?” or, “Would you like to come on my Blab?” “Would you like to speak at my events or work with us as a brand?” Then some of the opportunities that come along are more perceived opportunities. Everyone else seems to be doing something, so maybe you should be doing it too. Maybe it's a new social network like Periscope, MiChat, or Blab, or maybe everyone else seems to be podcasting and you wonder if you should be doing that too, or this other blogger has a second blog and maybe you should start a second blog as well. Invitations, whether they are real opportunities or perceived ones,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Build Your Business with a Content Machine Today's episode is about how to build your business using content marketing. It's an interview with Dan Norris, a serial entrepreneur and popular blogger. Dan has used content marketing as his key strategy to building his successful businesses. He shares his experience and insider tips so that you can turn your blog into a successful business 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). Today's episode is sponsored by our event partner Telstra Business. Telstra business is there for advice on all your technology needs like cloud and communications, so you can do your thing. If you're in Australia visit your local Telstra Business Centre or 'Do Your Thing'. In today's episode: How Dan went from an unsatisfying office job to becoming one of Australia's most successful online entrepreneurs What is content marketing and why it is so powerful Real life examples of companies and individuals who do content marketing well The elements that a successful content marketing strategy needs What makes content great Why 'sharing' is the only metric Dan really looks at to evaluate the success of a piece of content Why Dan suggests going outside your niche can be a good strategy Why Dan doesn't have a reader 'avatar' to aim his content at The 3 types of content that always seem to work on the WP Curve blog Why Storytelling is such a powerful tool in content marketing What to do when you start to build traction The importance of having a 'great business' if you want to do great content marketing What 'monetization logic' is, and why it matters How to differentiate yourself as a blogger How to get content in front of people once you've created it How Dan has scaled his content marketing by building frameworks and identifying great tools to use. Further Reading and Resources for How to Build Your Business with a Content Machine Dan's Content Machine resources page (including some great free frameworks that he mentioned in the interview) Dan's book, 'Content Machine: Use Content Marketing to Build a 7-figure Business with Zero Advertising' Dan's website for WP curve The fantastic WP curve blog The Black Hops brewery website You can connect with Dan and more of his tips on: Twitter @thedannorris The 7 Day Startup Facebook Group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 64, an episode I'm really excited about. It's my second ever interview and it's with Dan Norris. Some of you who know Dan, he's a serial entrepreneur who founded (among other companies) WP Curve, which is a service that gives you access to WordPress developers for unlimited small jobs. It’s also got an amazing blog which Dan and his team have used as part of their content marketing strategy to build his business. Dan recently spoke at the ProBlogger event in Australia as part of our small business boot camp that we ran in partnership with Telstra Business. For those of you who are from an international audience who don't know Telstra, they're Australia's largest telco and have been a great supporter of ProBlogger. In this interview, I talked to Dan about content marketing and a bunch of some of the content that he presented in his presentation at the event. It was actually one of the most highly-rated sessions at the event this year. It's something I wanted to circle back to and share with a larger audience. In this interview, he gives some really great tips on how to create great content marketing, how to differentiate yourself from literally hundreds and...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Transform an Embarrassing Mistake Into an Opportunity to Increase Your Blog Readership Today's episode is about how to write a blog post about a mistake you have made. Across my blogs, the most popular posts ever have been the ones that include 'mistake' in the title. Writing a confessional post about a mistake you have made gives your readers the opportunity to learn from your experience, but will also increase your blog traffic if you set it up well. I share how to write a 'mistake' post to make sure you get the most blog traffic possible and to deepen the relationship you already have with existing 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: Why 'mistake' blog posts work 6 tips for writing a powerful confessional 'mistake' blog post Examples of 'mistake' blog posts that have got a lot of traffic Why it's much most effective to write a 'mistake' blog post using the first person How to use your 'mistake' blog post to increase reader engagement The opportunity to write and share a link to your own 'mistake' blog post to increase your blog traffic Further Reading and Resources for How to Transform an Embarrassing Mistake Into an Opportunity to Increase Your Blog Readership The most popular 'mistake' post on my blogs: Top 10 Mistakes that Cause Blurry Photos More examples of my most popular 'mistake' blog posts: My Top 5 Mistakes as a Blogger Beginner Week: We Asked Veteran Bloggers to Reflect on Mistakes Made in Their Early Days 5 Pop-up Creation Mistakes You Have to Avoid for Better User Experience 10 Common Mistakes in Long Exposure Photography 10 Common Mistakes Made by New Photographers 7 Landscape Photography Mistakes That Could be Ruining Your Photos 4 Mistakes New Photographers Make and How to Avoid Them 10 Common Photography Mistakes and How to Overcome Them The 5 Biggest Mistakes Newbie Car Photographers Make Warning: Don’t Make These 5 Mistakes in Lightroom 10 Most Common Mistakes in Landscape Photography – and How to Overcome Them Avoid These 10 Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Image Quality The ProBlogger podcast example of a 'mistake' post that I mention: Episode 46: Do You Recognize These 21 Blogging Mistakes? Examples of popular 'mistake' blog posts by other bloggers: 11 Common Blogging Mistakes That Are Wasting Your Audience’s Time 8 Mistakes Most Beginner Bloggers Make (And How to Avoid Them) Participate in More ProBlogger Writing Challenges Previous blog writing challenges, full of tips on how to write different styles of posts (you could use one or more of these formats to help you write your own 'mistake' blog post): Episode 2: Write and Publish a List Post [Day 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] Episode 7: Write and Publish a Link Post [Day 7 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] Episode 19: Write an Opinion Post [Day 19 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] Episode 23: Write a Post That Contains a Call to Action [Day 23 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] Episode 28: Write a Review Post [Day 28 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] Episode 47: Write a ‘How I Do It’ Blog Post Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 63 of the ProBlogger podcast, where today, I want to give you a writing challenge. We've done a number of these in the past and I'll give you some links to some of those in today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/63. For those of you who don't know, a writing challenge is where I give you a type of post to give away and write in your own blog.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Diversify Your Blog Traffic Sources to Make Your Blog Stronger Today's episode is about how I almost lost my blogging business overnight. It was right after I had decided to blog full time and had quit my part time job. My traffic fell by 80% and my income fell by about 85%. It was an awful feeling and I'd like to share this story with you to make sure you know what to do if disaster ever strikes your blog. I share why it happened, what I did to recover from it, and what I do now to prevent it ever happening again. 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 relying solely on one source of traffic or income source is risky How working out who you want to read your blog can make finding readers easier How creating content that solves the needs of readers can make your blog stronger How to appear on other peoples' blogs How and why collecting email addresses of people who visit your blog is so important Why having an email newsletter is so important How developing a presence on social media can strengthen your blog Why networking with other bloggers helps your blog, and how to do it Why, when and how you should share your blog posts with social influencers Why a content event can help your blog and how to do it Further Reading and Resources for How to Diversify Your Blog Traffic Sources to Make Your Blog Stronger The Day I Almost Lost My Blogging Business By Having Too Many Eggs in the One Basket Episode 33: 2 Questions to Ask to Help You 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 Episode 35: Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Episode 61: How to Build a Culture of Community on Your Blog How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money How to Pitch to Bloggers – 21 Tips This graph shows my blog traffic at the time that it dropped overnight: Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and you are listening to episode 62. Today, I want to tell you a story of when I lost (I think it was) about 81% of my traffic literally overnight. It was back in 2004 just after I'd gone full-time as a blogger and it completely threw my blogging business, my brand new blogging business into a tailspin. I want to talk to you about what I did to recover that traffic by diversifying my traffic sources and ask you a really important question that I think could potentially help you if a disaster was to strike you. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/62. I want to tell you this story. It happened back in 2004. I think it was the 17th of December, literally a week before Christmas. I was in that winding down mode that particularly us Aussies do at that time of the year. Christmas is a time where we take our summer holidays, so I was getting ready to take a week or two off blogging and to relax. In the last few months, I’ve gone full-time as a blogger and quit my last part-time job to completely dedicate myself to blogging. I had no other forms of income, my wife was a brand new lawyer and not making a whole heap of money, so my blogging was now my family's main source of income. Then, it happened. One morning I woke up—a week before Christmas—I checked my blog stats and something was wrong. I knew it immediately as I saw it. My stats for the day which was nowhere near what they normally were. At first,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. 7 Practical Strategies for Building Community With Your Blog Today's episode is about how to build relationships with the readers on your blog. Having a community around your blog gives your blog social proof and makes your blog more useful and satisfying to you and your readers. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Part one was an in depth look at why you should spend time and energy trying to build community. Today is all about practical strategies and tips for how to build community. 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 build a 'culture' of community How to map out what you want your blog community to look like How to write in a conversational voice instead of talking AT your readers 7 different ways to invite interaction from your readers How a dedicated community area or forum can help you build blog community How using interactive and accessible mediums like video and live streaming can build community How to use projects and challenges to give readers the chance to show off and to connect with each other How you can use real life events to strengthen your blog community 7 ways putting your readers in the spotlight can build blog community Further Reading and Resources for 7 Practical Strategies for Building Community With Your Blog Episode 60: Why You Should Make Building Community a Priority in Your Blogging Episode 5: Email One of Your Blog’s Readers [Day 5 Of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog] Episode 52: 10 Writing Tips to Help You Sound More Human Episode 19: Write an Opinion Post [Day 19 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog] One of the 7 day challenges on my wife's blog, Style and Shenanigan Photo a Day challenges on the Fat Mum Slim blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 61. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I want to talk about how to build community on your blog. In episode 60—the last episode—I talked about the benefits and some of the costs of building community on a blog, but today, I want to get a little bit more practical and give you seven practical strategies and tips on building community on your blog. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/61. Today we’re talking about building community on your blog. As I said in the last episode, this is so important. It has the potential to really build your blog, to build social proof, and make it easier to find new readers for your blog, but also to make your blog more useful and satisfying for you. Before I get into today’s seven strategies and practical tips. I want to talk a little bit about some overarching tips that I think are really important to acknowledge before we get into the practical stuff. Firstly, what I’m talking about today is not just about getting reader engagement. I see a lot of people talking about reader engagement. I like the idea of engagement, but for me, that’s not ultimately what I’m aiming for. What I’m aiming for is a culture of community on my blog. For me, an engagement from a reader is more about getting a comment, more about getting a like, more about getting a share, or a vote in a poll. All of those things are good, but in my mind, they’re just stepping stones to a real community. Engagement’s great, but most successful bloggers that I’ve come across go beyond getting those moments of engagement to something deeper with their readers where their readers not only interact with them or engage with them. But their readers actually have a sense of belonging, a sense of ownership. When the reader almost embodies and lives out the valu...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Make Your Blog Stronger by Interacting With Your Readers Today's episode is about how to deepen relationships with your readers on your blog. One of the most common questions I get from my readers is "how do I get my readers to interact with me?" Not all bloggers spend a lot of time trying to build community but most of the successful bloggers I know of do. This is the first of a two-part episode. Today is about why building engagement with your readers matters so much. 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 blogging is more than just producing content Why you might want to encourage interaction from your readers My personal story about what has and hasn't worked for me in growing community on my blogs How building community makes your blog more useful for your readers How building community builds social proof for your blog How building community makes your blog more attractive to advertisers How having a community can make it easier to create and sell products How having a community can make your blog more attractive to sell How having a community can create an army of advocates and evangelists How having a community can help you generate new content How building community can improve your personal blogging satisfaction The costs you might encounter in building a community around your blog Further Reading and Resources for How to Make Your Blog Stronger by Interacting With Your Readers Episode 35: How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 60 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today I want to talk about building community on your blog, deepening reader engagement with your readers, and particularly I want to focus on some reasons why this is important. This is a two part podcast series. I'm going to follow it up with some really practical tips on how to build community, but I think it's really important first to address some of those mind shift paradigms around building community on your blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/60. Creating great content, finding an audience, building engagement, monetizing your blog. This is ProBlogger. Do you ever feel as a blogger like you're talking to an empty room? I know I have. Day after day we publish our blog posts only to have them greeted by [bird sounds]. If that's how you feel, you can relate to that, then I want you to know that you are not alone. In fact, one of the most common questions that I get from readers is how do I get my readers to interact with me? How do I get them to leave a comment, to acknowledge that I've even written something? In the next couple of episodes, I want to talk a little bit about how to build community on your blog. Before I do it, I want to talk a little bit about why it's so important to deepen reader engagement because not all bloggers actually spend a whole heap of time on this. There are different approaches to this, I'll say that right up front. I know someone like Seth Godin on his blog, doesn't have comments, doesn't respond to comments, and doesn't engage on Twitter. In an engaging way, I think his only social media presence is broadcasting and he's got his own good reasons for that. I think for most bloggers, there's a really good case for building community on your blog. There's no one way to do it, but in most cases, I think most of the successful bloggers that I've come across have invested time and energy into building community on their blogs.

How to Decide What Your Blog Should Be About Today's episode is all about how to decide on the focus topic for your blog. Having a niche topic for your blog helps you focus but it also helps new readers find you and current readers to understand more easily what you and your blog is about. I share 15 questions that you can ask yourself that will help you work out possible themes for your blog and help you choose a niche to focus on. 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 I show you how answering these questions can help you unlock what the focus topic of your blog should be: What interests do you have? What experiences have you had? (work, personal, life, relationships) What expertise and skills have you developed? What are your passions? What are your dreams What gives you energy? What is your ‘pet peeve’? What do you find yourself talking to your friends, colleagues, customers and even strangers about? What are your most frequently asked questions? How do people introduce you, talk about you or describe you to others? What is your super power? What do you wish your friends, family did differently, knew or understood? If you could write about anything what would it be about? What are you learning at the moment? What are you most interested in learning more about? What is your ‘mission' in life? Bonus Question: What type of person do you most feel for? Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi, this is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 59 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today I want to talk about starting out with your blog, particularly what should your blog be about. I want to give you 15 quick questions that you can ask yourself to help you to define what your blog’s focus or niche might be. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/59. Defining what your blog is about is something that is well worth doing particularly when you’re starting out with your blog. It’s probably a question that you will want to revisit every now and again as well as your blog develops. It’s okay to change direction and to change the topic of your blog at times. Most successful blogs do have a niche or a topic. Some also have a variety of topics that they cover but they usually have some way of focusing on what they do. In many cases, it’s more about the reader and their particular demographic rather than a specific topic. You might have a blog for moms and talk about parenting, fashion, and other interests that moms might have. Or you might have a blog for retirees and talk about travel, finance, and being a grandparent, or a variety of topics that are relevant for that particular audience. Generally, you either have a niche, a topic, or a demographic as the focus of your blog. Today I want to give you 15 quick questions that will help you to define what your blog’s niche or focus should be. What I would encourage you to do is to jot down these questions and I will share them over on the show notes to work through them one by one and just simply answer them with a few keywords for each question. Hopefully, by the time you get to the end of the 15 questions, you will see some themes emerging which might give you some hints as to where to focus your attention in terms of a niche or a topic. So, let us get into them. They are relatively quick. Some of them are pretty obvious and some of them are a little bit different. Hopefully, we’ll give you some fresh insights. Question number 1 is one of the more obvious ones. What interests do you have? What is it that you find yourself thinking about when you have got the spare time? What magazines do you read?

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Decide Whether to Include the Date on Your Blog Posts Today's episode is all about how to decide whether to include the date on your blog posts. I received this question from a listener, who noticed that I use timestamps on one of my blogs, but not on the other. Dates can either add or take away from your blog. I share how I decided what to do with each of my blogs and tips for you 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: Why including the date on your blog posts can be a good or bad thing How to work out if the date is relevant to each blog post Why I don't include dates on my blog posts on the Digital Photography School blog Where to include dates on your blog posts Why it might be useful to include dates on some blog posts but not others Why some bloggers choose to include dates on blog posts for 3-6 months and then remove them Why some bloggers include dates on the front page of their blog but not on each individual blog posts Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 58 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, we're talking about timestamps on blogs. I received this question from Bernadeth who wrote, "I'm in the process of redesigning my blog and was wondering if I should use timestamps on my blog posts. When I look at your blogs, I noticed that one does and one doesn't. Can you tell us why you made that decision?" You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/58. Bernadeth's question is one that I get quite a bit. A lot of my readers do read both of my blogs, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School, and have realized that on one, the date that the post was written does appear on the blog, that's ProBlogger and over on Digital Photography School, there are no dates as to when the post was written. My theory is that dates can either add to or take away from your blog posts. Let me explain that a little further. When you put a date on your blog post, you signal to your readers when the post was written. There are no record signs there, that's pretty obvious, I know. This is useful to your readers who want to make a judgment on how relevant the post is for them at any point in time. It signals to them that a post is either current, recent, or that it is dated when the year is older and dated. There's a problem here and that is when you have a timeless or evergreen piece of content. By that piece of content, that doesn't really date. The principles that you write about today might still be relevant in 10 years’ time. When you put a date on that type of content, it can act as a distraction to your reader. When they arrive at a blog post and see it was written in 2007, like many of the posts on Digital Photography School, a little warning bell goes off in their mind that they are reading a post that is not current. I've had comments on this type of post, numerous times, saying, "This post is out of date," or, "This post is old," even when the content in the post is still completely relevant for today. When a reader has this reaction, no matter what information your post contains, it'll seem old to them and they lose engagement with the post. This may not happen to everyone, I suspect, most of us listening to this going, "No, I'm willing to learn from old stuff," but I reckon it happens to most of us, at least on a subconscious level. On the flip side of this, time dates can be good on evergreen content when the date is recent. If you arrive at a post and you see that it was written last month, psychologically,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Keep Growing a Successful Blog When It All Seems Too Hard Today's episode is about how to face the things that you are struggling with on your blog and how to make it successful despite the challenges. There are many hurdles to building a successful blog. Every blogger encounters their own unique combination of challenges. I share 9 of the major hurdles I've faced with my blogging and how I've got over them. 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 I managed to start a blog without even knowing how to make text bold! Why you need to make peace with the fact that you will never know it all How you can get other people to help you with your blog, even when it's not making any money yet Why being willing to learn new things will help you, even if you decide to pay other people to do the things you can't do How to keep blogging when you're scared of looking stupid How to find a focus for your blog How to get new ideas when you can't think of anything How to keep blogging when you feel burnt out Why taking care of your wellbeing and physical How to deal with personal attacks or criticism How to build your blog readership How to build a profitable blog (how to choose which monetization model is right for you) Why relying too much on advertising can hurt your blog How to find time to blog even when you're working other jobs and have a young family Further Reading and Resources for How to Keep Growing a Successful Blog When It All Seems Too Hard I’m not Technical Enough to Blog [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #4] How to Blog: How to Choose a Blog Niche [6 Tips] 3 Ways to Define What Your Blog Is About 11 Tips to Breaking Bloggers Block Through Solving Reader Problems Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed Previous podcasts in this series on the topic of Finding Readers 12 Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year ‘Overnight’ Success] Previous podcasts in this series on the topic of Making Money 'Blog Wise' - our eBook on becoming a more productive blogger that features advice from 9 successful bloggers Episode 38: How One Humiliating Experience Gave Me a Wake Up Call That Helped Me Build a More Profitable Blog Episode 40: 7 Productivity Tips For Bloggers Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 57 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. Today, I want to talk about some of the hurdles that I've faced as a blogger and how I got over them. It strikes me that many bloggers who listen to this podcast are at different stages in their journey. Because we're all at different stages, we're all facing different challenges right now. Today, I sat down for a good couple of hours and thought back over the last 13 years of my own blogging and some of the major hurdles that I've faced along the way. I want to share them with you today because many times when I talk to people, people see the end result of what I've built and what other bloggers have built. I've got ProBlogger, I've got Digital Photography School, but the reality is that those two blogs, well, ProBlogger started in 2004 and Digital Photography School in 2007. Whilst you see the finished result or the result of 2015 today, you haven't seen the journey along the way. I'm really aware that perhaps it's useful to share some of the challenges that I faced along the way because I know many of them are similar to what you're facing today too. Today, I want to present to you nine hurdles that I've faced as a blogger and how I got over them.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Finish Your Blog Posts in ways that leave Lasting Impressions, Build Relationships and Deepen Reader Engagement Today's episode is all about how to finish each blog post. How you end your blog post determines people's final impression of you and whether they will choose to take action, like buying one of your products or connecting with you on social media. It's an opportunity to deepen the relationship between you and your reader. I share 8 ways you can finish each of your blog posts to make a lasting impression. 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 sum up each blog post succinctly and powerfully 7 ways to get people to comment on your blog How to get people to share your blog posts How linking readers to other posts on your blog can make them more interested in reading more How to build anticipation about future blog posts Examples of incentives you can use to get people to subscribe to your blog How to get readers to do what you'd like them to do next Further Reading and Resources for 8 Ways to Finish Your Blog Posts to Make a Lasting Impression 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and this is episode 56 where today, we're talking about how to end your blog post. It's something that has an incredible opportunity that I think a lot of bloggers are missing. The way you end your blog post can potentially deepen the relationships that you have with your readers, make your post useful to those readers, and create a lasting impression that can have ongoing benefits for you and your blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/56. Today, we're talking about how to end your blog posts. This is a really important topic. It's something that really I am a bit surprised that there hasn't been more written about. If you look around all the blogs about blogging, you will find the never-ending supply of articles about how to start your blog posts. There are all kinds of templates, formulas, articles, with heaps of advice on how to title your blog posts. That's for good reason because the way you title a blog post will hook people in. It can be the difference between people reading it or not. But there's very little written about how to end your blog post. I actually think the way you end your blog post is just as important. In the same way that a title hooks people into reading, the way you end your blog post hooks people into how they're going to do something with what you've written and whether they'll take action upon what you've written. This has benefits for both readers when people go away and do something as a result of reading something you've written, that can benefit them. Also, it has an impact on your blog. If people go away and do something as a result of reading your article, their life (hopefully) is going to be changed for the better. They'll have a lasting impression of you and the advice you've given them. It's also going to have other impacts upon your blog because some of the things you might do at the end of your blog post will get people to become more sticky to your blog—to subscribe to your newsletter, to follow you on Facebook, to leave a comment, to or not buy a product. There's a whole heap of things that you can do at the end of the blog post that not only helps your reader but also you. During this podcast, I want to give you eight things that you can potentially do at the end of a blog post. I will say upfront, you probably don't want to do all eight for every part...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Let People Know What You Have to Offer Without Being Annoying Today's episode is all about how to promote yourself without coming across as an arrogant jerk. It's in response to a question from a reader, but I know that this is something that a lot of people struggle with. It can be tricky conveying your talent, experience, and expertise without being annoying, but it is possible. I share 13 tips to make it less daunting. 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 serving others is more important than pushing your talents How you can use your passion to stimulate questions and conversation Why sharing what you don't know can be a powerful way to attract new readers How you can grow your own reputation by crediting other people Why it's important to accept help How modesty can undermine your message How to know when to stop talking about what you can offer The most powerful thing you can do to create a positive impression Why comparing yourself to others can be toxic The secret to being a great influencer Further Reading and Resources for How to Let People Know What You Have to Offer Without Being Annoying The study I mention that shows that 'self superiority claims' could be one of the worst things you can do Other episodes with tips for finding new readers: 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 35: Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Episode 36: Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships 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 the ProBlogger Podcast episode 55, where today, I want to answer our reader's question about promoting yourself without coming across as arrogant or as you put it, a jerk. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/55. I received an email this morning from Samantha, at least we'll call her Samantha because she did ask to remain anonymous. She writes, "I've been blogging now for a few months and have built up an archive of posts that I think are useful for those who might find them but I'm struggling with one big question, how to get people to read? I've listened to some of your episodes on growing readership and I understand the techniques that I probably need to use but my problem is that I'm scared to start. Most specifically, my issue is that I don't want to get too self-promotional and come across as a complete jerk by overdoing it and always being in people's faces. Can you help?" This is a great question and it is one that I've heard many times over the years and it's something that I've struggled with as well over the years. Many of the times that I've been asked this question, it's come from Aussies and I'm not sure whether it's tall poppy syndrome which seems to be something that we struggle with as Aussies; we don't like to be seen to be self-promotional. I think perhaps cultural issues do come into this, at least in part but it may also be a personality type of thing as well. Some people seem more comfortable promoting themselves than other people. As Samantha does say in her email, we have talked in previous episodes about finding readers. Specifically, if you want to get into some of the techniques to finding readers and promoting yourself, you might want to look at episodes 33–37. Those five episodes, we do talk about the topic quite a bit.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Improve Your Blog by Facing Your Fears Today's episode is all about fear. Fear holds a lot of people back from engaging. If you let it, fear can hold you back from being an effective blogger, podcaster, live streamer or social media user. I share some strategies for recognising, harnessing and overcoming your fear so that you can use it to your advantage. 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 fear can actually be a good thing for your blogging I share some of my real-life fears and how I got through them 3 questions to ask yourself when you're facing fear Why trying to smash or eliminate fear could be unhelpful How you can be behave bravely even though you're scared Further Reading and Resources for How to Improve Your Blog by Facing Your Fears Top Tips to Let Go of Fear 3 Questions to Ask When Facing Fear [And Why Wobbly Courage Is Enough] The 7 Deadly Fears of Blogging and How to Overcome Them 6 Practices to Overcome Your Fears of Playing Bigger Beat Your Fear of Technology, and Grow Your Blog Blogging and Insecurity: Conquering the Fear of Presenting Your Big Ideas 10 Hurdles I’ve Faced as a Blogger and How I Got Over Them The podcast episode I mention where I did my first ever interview: Episode 52: 10 Writing Tips to Help You Sound More Human Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 54. My name is Darren Rowse and I am the blogger behind ProBlogger and the ProBlogger Podcast. It's great to have you with us today. Today, I want to talk about fear, which is something I know holds a lot of bloggers, podcasters, live streamers, and pretty much any social media participant back from engaging. In fact this morning I was talking to someone and encouraging them to get on to Periscope and fear was the major factor there. I want to talk about some strategies for overcoming fear and moving past fear. Not ignoring it because I think it has its place, but getting past it and getting to a point where it doesn't hold you back, and even being able to harness it a little bit. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/54. I also want to briefly mention before I get today's podcast, episode 52 which is my first ever interview with Beth Dunn. I've had so much positive impact on that particular episode and if you haven't listened to it yet, I would encourage you to go back and have a quick listen to it. It's not long, it's an interview in which Beth shares some [...] tips; ten simple, practical, actionable tips. But that's not the reason I'm mentioning it today although that was a good episode. I want to get your feedback on who you want to see interviewed in future ProBlogger podcasts. Now, I'm tempted to get some of my big blogging friends that you would have heard before on and I may do that, but one of the things I've heard about Beth's interview was that she was someone you perhaps hadn't heard from before. I am trying to unearth some of these smaller bloggers and people who have expertise in some of these fields that are useful to bloggers, whether that be promoting your blog, finding reader's marketing, visual content, writing tips, these types of things. If you know someone that would be interesting in the ProBlogger audience, can I encourage you to fill in the survey that we have on today's show notes? There is a question in the survey that asks specifically who you'd like to see interviewed or present on this particular podcast, as well as some other questions that give us ideas on content for future podcasts. Anyway,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Make Money With the Amazon Affiliate Program Today's episode is all about making money with the Amazon Affiliate Program. In episode 51 I introduced the topic making money through affiliate marketing and gave some practical tips on how to do it. Amazon's Associates Program is the first affiliate program I started making money from and I continue to earn money from it today. I share my experience and top tips that you can use to generate your own income from the Amazon Affiliate Program. 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: My start with using Amazon's Affiliate Program Why many people don't use the Amazon Affiliate Program (and why I do) 20 Practical Tips to Make Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program 10 More Tips on Using the Amazon Affiliate Program Further Reading and Resources for How to Make Money With the Amazon Affiliate Program Episode 51: How to Make Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program Google’s AdSense program and Amazon’s Affiliate program 9 Reasons Why I AM An Amazon Affiliate Also here are a couple of the charts I mentioned in the show: The first is my annual income from the program for the first ten years. The second shows the income on a quarterly basis so you can see the spikes around the holidays. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 53, where today, I want to talk about making money with the Amazon Affiliate Program. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/53. In episode 51 of the ProBlogger podcast, I talked about making money through affiliate marketing. In that episode, I talked a little (in passing) about the Amazon Associates Program which was the first type of affiliate marketing that I did. It was back in April of 2003 that I first heard about Amazon’s Affiliate Program. I’ve been blogging for about six months at that point and realized that this hobby of mine was growing to the point where it was starting to cost me because I had to pay for servers, I wanted to get my blog redesigned, and I really want to get off the dial-up internet which I was still on at that point. I wanted to upgrade my computer and the list went on. Because I was newly married at the time and we were on a bit of a tight budget because I was working a number of part-time jobs and my wife was a young lawyer who was just starting out and wasn’t being paid a whole heap. We realized that if I was going to keep blogging it needed to pay for itself. I began to experiment with a couple of different ways of making money from my blogs. This is back in 2003 and no one was really talking about monetizing blogs at the time. I started to do searches online for how people were monetizing other types of sites and came across two methods. Firstly, it was Google’s AdSense program which had only been out for a few months (I think) at that point. It was pretty simple and pretty basic. I put some code on my site one night and the next morning woke up and it made a few cents. The other one was Amazon’s Affiliate Program which I did see a few other bloggers using. It was a program that I saw mainly bloggers promoting books from Amazon because back then, Amazon was pretty much a bookstore, it wasn’t what it is today. I occasionally wrote on my personal blog about books, so when I mentioned those books I decided to link to Amazon’s Affiliate Program. Of those two methods (Google AdSense and Amazon), AdSense certainly was the biggest earner and to this day it c...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use Your Writing to Build Relationships and Build Your Brand Today's episode is all about using your writing to build relationships and your brand. It's a special interview with Beth Dunn, Product Editor-in-Chief at HubSpot. In today's podcast episode, Beth shares really practical tips and strategies you can use for helping you sound more human in the way you write your blog content. 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 every word you choose affects how you are perceived by others 10 things you can do to make sure your writing portrays exactly what you want it to say How to write to show that you are human How to write to show that you are honest and trustworthy How to make your readers excited How to approach acronyms and formal language How to make sure mistakes don't slip through Why a style guide can be so powerful in improving your writing How to find an editor How to tap into the power of pronouns The power of imagining your reader in a really bad mood How to convey humour without accidentally coming across as snarky or sarcastic Further Reading and Resources for How to Use Your Writing to Build Relationships and Build Your Brand How to be a writing god: https://youtu.be/S8Q3vnPM6kk How to fix your writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzkXcZcayA0 More writing tips and resources from Beth: Conversational Contractions Lay Off The Exclamation Marks, Buddy Hubspot’s style guide The User Is The Hero You can connect with Beth and more of her writing at: bethdunn.com twitter.com/bethdunn instagram.com/therealbethdunn Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there. This is Darren Rowse. Welcome to episode 52 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I'm conducting my very first interview of the ProBlogger Podcast, an interview with Beth Dunn, who's the Product Editor-In-Chief at HubSpot. I came across Beth recently at the Inbound Conference at Boston where she gave a fantastic talk. The talk was titled Use Your Words. The idea of the talk, in short, was the words we use in our content really have the potential to grow or pull-down and destroy our brand. She gives you 10 tips during this particular podcast interview to help you come across in a way that builds your brand. We just talked in an episode recently on Building Your Brand. While a lot of us know a brand we want to build, we still don't achieve building that brand through the words that we use. Hopefully, in today's podcast, you'll get some really practical tips that you can go away and apply, both in the creation of new content of your blog but also looking at the last post that you've written. You may actually want to go back and do some editing on some of those posts once you've listened to this particular episode. There are some really great practical takeaways for you. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/52 where there is a whole heap of links and further reading based upon some of the stuff that Beth talks about in today's interview. Thanks for joining us, Beth. It's so nice to finally be talking to you. Beth: Delighted. Thank you for inviting me. Darren: No problem. I think I first came across you earlier this year when I was invited to speak at the Inbound Conference which was run by HubSpot. I ran across a video from you speaking at HubSpot. Two videos, actually. One was called How to be a Writing God which grabbed my attention. The other one was How to Fix Your Writing, both of which grabbed my attention because I think I can do some fixing.

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. My Tips for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing Today's episode is all about how to make money as a blogger through affiliate marketing. Making money through affiliate marketing is not easy money, but there are things you can do to increase your chances of earning a regular stream of income from it. I share insider tips about what's worked for me in making money through affiliate marketing on my blogs. 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 is affiliate marketing? Why affiliate marketing works Why the rewards from affiliate marketing can be greater than advertising Real-life examples of affiliate marketing 3 different types of affiliate programs you can use 3 things you can do to make sure affiliate marketing will work on your blog Further Reading and Resources for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing What is an affiliate promotion (infographic): The affiliate sweet spot graphic mentioned: Here’s the Promotion Sequence mentioned: Best Seller List Examples: The 30 Most Popular DSLR Lenses with our Readers The 19 Most Popular DSLRs Among our Readers The 19 Most Popular Compact System and Mirrorless Cameras with Our Readers Affiliate Networks Mentioned: Rakuten/Linkshare Commission Junction Avangate Clickbank Shareasale Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 51. Today I want to talk to you about affiliate marketing and how to make money as a blogger using affiliate marketing. Today will be a bit of an introduction to how I do it. I want to talk a little bit about what affiliate marketing is, but then get into some tangible tips that you can take away, and put into practice for your first affiliate promotion or to improve the affiliate marketing that you're already doing. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/51. Creating great content. Finding an audience. Engagement. Monetizing your blog. This is ProBlogger. Let's start with the question: what is affiliate marketing? I don't want to spend too long on this because I know many of you already do some affiliate promotions on your blog. In short, as a blogger, when you do an affiliate promotion, you promote a particular product. It might be an ebook, or it could be a physical product. Really, there's a whole heap of things that you can be promoting. When you promote it, you're promoting it to your readers with a special link which has a tracking code in it. Or, you might be using a coupon code, which also tracks the sales that you send. If the reader buys the product, they go to the business's website that has that product. They buy it as a result of clicking on your link which has that tracking code. The business knows that you referred that business, and then they pay you a commission for promoting that product. In my digital photography site, occasionally, we will mention a camera. It might be a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V camera. Bit of a mouthful there, but that's what a camera is called there. When we mention that camera, we link to Amazon. Amazon, the bookstore, but also has a whole heap of other products. When someone goes to Amazon and buys that camera—it might be a $300-camera—and someone buys that, we earn a 4% commission on that. We might make $15 or so dollars for that sale. It doesn't sound like a lot but when you refer a lot of business to Amazon, that adds up over time. Other affiliate programs might pay you a higher commission. For example, on an ebook that you might be promoting,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. My Tips and Tools for Creating Your Own Podcast Today's episode is all about podcasting. We usually talk about blogging in this podcast, but to celebrate reaching the milestone of 50 podcast episodes, I thought I might share what's worked and what hasn't worked in my podcasting journey so far. In just three months my podcast series has hit #1 in iTunes Australia, was in the top 10 international chart for the first weeks, and is hovering in top 10 for Business/Marketing categories for Australia and America. I still have a lot to learn, but I've been getting asked a lot about how I create this podcast series, so I decided to share what I've learned so far (and am sharing my most listened to podcasts and the tools I use below). 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 I share: the benefits of starting a podcast how I measure my podcast's success my podcast statistics what types of content have been most popular so far on my podcast series the most effective ways to deliver podcast content the details behind my experiment of completing 31 podcasts in 31 days the tools I use to create my podcast series how you can use a podcast series to build an audience how to monetize a podcast Further Reading and Resources for Tips and Tools for Creating Your Own Podcast The most popular episodes in my podcast series so far: Episode 32: Can you really make money blogging? Episode 38: How One Humiliating Experience Gave Me a Wake Up Call That Helped Me Build a More Profitable Blog Episode 11: How to Come Up with Hundreds of Blog Post Ideas for Your Blog Episode 18: How to Create a Page That Propels People Deep Within Your Blog Episode 29: How to Develop a Plan to Grow Your Readership Episode 35: How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Episode 40: How to Become a More Efficient and Productive Blogger The videos I used to help me in setting up my podcast, by Pat Flynn: How to Start a Podcast – Pat’s Complete Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial The podcasting tools I use: Libsyn - hosting podcast episodes Auphonic - levels things out in the audio BluBrry PowerPress - mp3 player, iTunes integration etc. MyPodcastReviews - to see reviews people are leaving in iTunes and Stitcher (globally) Rode Podcast Mic - the microphone I use Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 50. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I’d like to talk about podcasting. We usually talk about blogging here on the ProBlogger show but to celebrate my 50th episode, I thought I talk about what I've learned in those first 50 episodes. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/50. Well, we made it to episode 50. It was something I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it to and I was halfway through the first 31 days because it was so much work in those early days. While I enjoyed it, it was tough going and we finally did make it to episode 50 which has been fantastic. As I've been wondering how to celebrate the milestone, a number of you suggested maybe I should talk about the journey so far. As I recalled this episode, it’s actually been three months to the day since I started, so 50 episodes in three months and it has been a wild ride. It’s become a bit of an obsession, something that I've really enjoyed, become a bit addicted to. Today, what I want to do is talk a little bit about some of the benefits of starting a podcast. I’ll talk a little bit about the content, what’s done well, what hasn’t done well, talk a little bit about some tips on how to deliver g...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Work Out How to Brand Your Blog Today's episode is all about how to build your blog's brand. Many bloggers don't think about branding, they let their brand happen to them, instead of building it. Your blog brand sets the scene for the relationship you will have with your readers and how they will perceive you. If you have a clear brand, it also has a flow on effect of making it easier to make the right decisions about your design, your content, and the way you build community. I share my tips and some exclusive advice shared by Clare Hillier (from Checks and Spots) recently at the 2015 ProBlogger Event. Man with a Note and a Single Word Branding by Kenneth Sweet on 500px 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 is a brand? What is a blog brand? Why does having a brand for your blog matter? Exclusive excerpt of blog branding tips from Clare Hillier's presentation at the 2015 ProBlogger Event How to define your blog brand Further Reading and Resources for How to Work Out How to Brand Your Blog Clare Hillier's blog, Checks and Spots Clare's Questions about Building Your Brand Questions to ask about your Brand Essence Who are my readers? Why do people visit my blog? How do people feel when they read my blog? How do my readers benefit from my blog? What do I do that makes me stand out from everyone else? What would people miss if my blog was no longer there? What do I want to be known for? Questions to ask about your Brand Values What values do you express? What values do you want your blog to live by? What values do you think resonate deeply with your audience? Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to the ProBlogger podcast episode 49 where today, I want to talk to you a little bit about building your blog's brand. This is such an important topic. It really determines so many things and really sets the same for the relationship that you have with your readers and how they will perceive you. It has a flowing effect from many aspects of your blog, the content, your design, the way you build community. It's something you really do need to think through and it’s something I see many bloggers not thinking through at all. They let their brand happen to them rather than building their own. This is a really practical episode. I got a special guest who's going to give you practical things you can do to build that brand and to set that scene. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/49. Today, I want to talk about building a brand for your blog. Jeff Bezos says, "Your brand is what people talk about you when you are not in the room," which I think it's a really interesting quote. It's how people perceive you in many ways and that's a quote that many of us know, use, and understand to at least some level. But if that's the case, what do you want people to say about you when you are not in the room? How do you want to be perceived? Many of us have an idea about how we want to be perceived, but we are not as intentional as we could be in actually setting the scene for what that brand might be. We don't have complete control over how people will perceive us, but we can certainly do things to build that brand. Today, what I want to do is share with you a five-minute recording from the ProBlogger event that just happened six or seven weeks ago here in Australia. Those of you who are in Australia probably know of our event. We have an annual event, this was our sixth year this year and we had about 714 (give or take a few) people co...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Make a Full Time Income From Your Blog Today's episode is all about how to make a full time income from your blog. There are no guarantees, but earning a full time income from your blog is not an unrealistic goal if you're willing to get very specific about your money goals, be patient and consistent, and break the work down into achievable chunks. I share my own personal journey, and my tips for how you can work out a realistic journey for making a full time income from your own blog. 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 the exact dollar amount you need to earn from your blog to make a full time living Why it's useful to work out a daily target for how much money you want to earn from your blog 9 different ways to earn money blogging 3 case studies of how different types of bloggers can earn their full time income from blogging - a fashion blogger, photography blogger, and recipes blogger Further Reading and Resources for How to Make a Full Time Income From Your Blog 12 Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year ‘Overnight’ Success] My April Blogging Income Breakdown How I Diversified My Blogging Income Beyond Having All My Eggs in the AdSense Basket 11 Ways I Diversified Traffic Sources for My Blogs to Become Less Reliant Upon Google [With a Surprising Twist] Here is the breakdown of my blogging income streams when I hit my $50,000 a year target: Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Good morning and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 48 where today, I want to outline a plan for you to make at least $30,000 a year from your blog. Now, I’m not going to guarantee you’re going to get hit that, but I want to break down how you might go about doing that. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/48. A few years ago, I was chatting with a blogging friend who was feeling completely overwhelmed with their goal of making a living from their blogging. Through the conversation, I asked him a whole series of questions, but one that started this conversation going was getting them to identify how much they actually wanted to make from blogging. They had this goal that they wanted to be full-time, but I really pushed them to try and come out with a figure, to actually work out what full-time meant for them. This is actually where I would encourage you to start with your goal of making a full-time living. What does it actually mean for you? For this particular blogger, they said that they wanted to make about US$30,000 a year. That was probably not what they ultimately wanted to make. They wanted to make more, but that was the point where they had in their mind that they would be able to quit their current work to focus fully upon blogging. For some of you, $30,000 a year sounds like way more than you’d need to be able to quit your job and go full-time. For others of you, it’s not enough. It doesn’t really matter what the amount is, but what I want to talk about today is actually starting with that figure and then try to work out what does it mean to be able to achieve that because for a lot of people, even with that figure in mind, still feel completely overwhelmed and doesn’t really help to have that figure, but it’s a great starting point. Here’s my advice for you. Firstly, if you’ve got your figure in mind, don’t give up your day job yet as a lot of people who do give up their job to start blogging. I’m not sure that’s the wisest move because it’s actually going to take you a while to get to whatever point you have nominated in your mind, and there are no guarantees either. So,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Write a 'How I Do It' Blog Post to Grow Your Readership Today's episode is all about how to write a very simple but extremely powerful style of blog post - the 'How I Do It' post. Smart woman researching info by Ryan Jorgensen on 500px 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 'How I Did It' blog posts are more powerful than other posts The powerful difference between 'How I Did It' and 'How I DO It' posts Real life examples of successful 'How I Did It' and 'How I Do It' blog posts - from my own blogs and others How to come up with ideas and write your own 'How I Do It' blog post to grow your readership Further Reading and Resources for How to Write a 'How I Do It' Blog Post to Grow Your Readership Tips about writing different types of posts (these are previous podcast episodes): Write and Publish a List Post Writing Challenge: Create a Link Post for Your Blog How to Write an Opinion Post to Draw People in to Your Blog How to Write a Post That Contains a Call to Action How to Write a Review Post Examples of 'How I Do It' blog posts: The post I mention that Vanessa (my wife) wrote about travelling to Bali with Young Kids $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned How to Build an Efficient Social Media Workflow to Increase your Traffic Vanessa’s ‘How to Style Your Bed’ blog post A Powerful Exercise inside Google Analytics to Set You Up for a Successful Year of Blogging Step By Step How to Do a Head Shot on a White Background More examples of 'Step By Step' (How I Do It) blog posts on the Digital Photography School Blog Nicole Avery regularly shares 'How I Do It' posts on her blog, including her family morning routine, her kids homework boxes and how she preps food for her 5 kids’ lunch boxes each week. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 47 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to give you a writing challenge. It's been a while since we've done one of these and they're always popular. Today, we're going to talk about creating a how I do it post. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/47. It has been a while since we've done a writing challenge. In fact, the last time we did it was in episode 28, which was day 28 of the 31-day challenge that I ran at the start of the podcast series. We've actually done five of these in the past. If you want to go back and listen to some of the previous podcasts, you can go back to episode 2 where we talked about writing list posts, episode 7 where we talked about writing link posts, episode 19 where we talked about writing opinion posts, episode 23 where we talked about writing a call to action post, and then in episode 28 where we talked about writing review posts. I will put links back to all of those episodes in today's show notes. The thing I love about these particular episodes is that a whole heap of ProBlogger readers went away and did the challenge. They created a post on a particular type of post. We had a whole heap of people sharing their list posts and their link posts in the comments on those show notes. That's what I want you to do today. Today is not a theoretical podcast, it's a challenge. Are you up for that challenge or not? If not, you might want to stop listening, but if you're up for a challenge and you want to write a post today and then come back and share that post with us, then here's what I want you to do. Write a post that is a “how I do it” or “how I did it” post. There are two variations really today. This is a very simple style of post,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Avoid Making These 21 Blogging Mistakes Today's episode is all about the mistakes I see bloggers making, and an honest look at the mistakes I've made along the way in my own blogging journey. Big Mistake by Frank Daske on 500px 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: 21 mistakes that I see bloggers making The mistakes I've made in my own blogging journey How to avoid making these mistakes Further Reading and Resources for How to Avoid These 21 Blogging Mistakes How Bloggers Make Money Blogging Ways to Make Money Blogging How to Start a Blog How did you go with today's episode? What did you learn from today's episode? What mistakes are you making? What's one mistake you're going to work to avoid in future, and how will you make it happen? We'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Don't forget to share a link to your blog. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Good morning and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 46. My name's Darren Rowse and today I want to talk about mistakes that I see bloggers making. If I'm honest, which I'm feeling today, mistakes that I have made along the way in my own blogging journey. We're going to go through about 21 different mistakes. At the end of this episode, I’d love to hear what you would add to this list. You can do so by going to problogger.com/podcast/46. One of the most common questions that I'm asked when I'm interviewed about blogging, whether that be in media or other podcasts, is the age-old question: what mistakes did you make that you wish you hadn't made along the way or what mistakes do you see other bloggers making? I've got this stock standard three or four mistakes that I see all the time, but every time I answer that question, a whole heap of other mistakes sit in the back of my mind. Recently, I sat down and tried to write down all of the mistakes that I've made and all of the mistakes that I see other people making. I very quickly learned that there are literally hundreds of them we could talk about today. Today, I'm just going to pick about 20 of them, 21 maybe. Like I said in the introduction, most of these things are not just things that I see other bloggers making in terms of mistakes, but they're also mistakes that I've made along the way. I want to say right upfront, some of these things I could even work on right now 13 years after starting blogging. We could all improve. I'm just like any other blogger in that regard. These are listed in no particular order. They're things that I'd encourage you to just ponder, is this something that I could improve on as I go through this list. As I say, there are a whole heap of other ones that I could add and I've got another list of about ten others, but I kind of want to leave some room for you to add your own mistakes to what I've come up with today. Let's get into mistake number one. This is something that I see a lot of bloggers, or at least pre-bloggers, struggling with. The mistake is putting off starting the blog altogether. This is something that many bloggers struggle with because many of us are perfectionists and we want everything to be just right before we launch our blog. We want to have the perfect topic, we want to have the perfect first post, we want our design to look perfect. We want to have all the social media accounts set up, we want to have our hosting all set up, we want to have everything ready to go. Whilst there's nothing wrong with being prepared and having everything lined up, the reality is that if we wait for everything to be perfect before we press go,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Develop the 7 Habits of Lucky Entrepreneurs Today's episode is all about how to increase the chances of lucky things happening to you. Some people believe luck is random or based on personality, but I believe luck is a choice. You can choose to increase the chances of lucky things happening to you by creating conscious habits. Today I share the habits you can choose to develop to grow your own luck as a blogger and 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: How one email changed the trajectory of my life How to be in the right place at the right time How to gather information and knowledge to increase your luck How lucky entrepreneurs respond to problems How lucky entrepreneurs practice curiosity How to set aside time to watch for sparks that you can fan into big flames of success How to create and develop things instead of spending all your time reacting How to make small changes today that will take you to a different place in the long run, helping you to evolve Further Reading and Resources for the Habits of Lucky Entrepreneurs The 2 Questions to Ask Yourself Every Day: What gave me energy today? What did I do today that seemed to give other people energy? My ideal weekly schedule that I created to remind myself to regularly focus on cultivating the habits of lucky entrepreneurs (note: this is an updated version from one I shared a few episodes ago): Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 45 where today, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to get lucky. No, not quite luck. You might be thinking I want to talk about getting lucky in business as an online entrepreneur or as a blogger. I'm going to tell a little bit of my story of luck in my journey but give you also seven tips to increase the chances of lucky things happening in your own journey as a blogger. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/45. Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? I certainly have been, numerous times along that way in my own blogging, right back at the first moment when I first discovered the first blog. I did have a little bit of luck. I was in the right place at the right time. It was a rainy afternoon in November 2002. A Friday afternoon, if I remember correctly, and I was sitting at my computer at one of the part-time jobs that I was doing at the time. A voice came out of my computer. It was a bit of an embarrassing voice, now that I think about it. It said, "Master, you've got mail." I was a lot younger back then and a bit more immature. I’m not sure why I installed that little plugin. But I went and checked my Hotmail account and there was an email from a good friend of mine, Steve. It was the kind of email that I normally would've probably passed over and not paid a whole heap of attention to because it only had four words in it. It was one of those emails where someone sends you a link and you never quite know what you can end up on when you click those links. The email basically said these four words, "Check out this blog." I never heard the word blog before. It was 2002 and I wasn't familiar with that term, so it made me a little bit curious. I clicked the link and I ended up on this blog called tallskinnykiwi.com. Now, the blog itself, I was interested in. To cut the long story short, it was this medium of blogging that really grabbed my attention on that day. To cut that long story short, 3½-year long story short, I started a blog that day. In doing so,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. What I've Learned From Using the Blab Live streaming Service Over the last few weeks I've been experimenting with a new live streaming service by the name of Blab - a tool that I think has the potential to be as useful (if not more useful) than Periscope. In this episode I share my experiences of Blab so far and talk about how it differs from other Live Streaming tools. Update: in the next 24 hours I'm doing a Blab here. Subscribe to check it out live. Curious woman listen with tin can phone by Lars Hallstrom on 500px Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. 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 this podcast episode I share: How Live Streaming Can Help you to Build Your Blogging Brand How Blab is useful for helping you to come up with ideas to blog about How Blab helps you to create content that you can repurpose into blog posts, YouTube content and Podcasts How Blab Differs to Periscope Mentioned In this Episode Check out my Blab page here (where you can follow me and be notified of future Blabs that I run). As promised in this episode here is an embedded version of the recent Blab broadcast that I did: You can also see this episode as a replay over on Blab here (where you can see the rest of the interface). Here's the LinkedIn post that I used as a basis for this Blab. I also mentioned ManyCam in this episode (a tool to enable you to do some fun and useful things with your webcam). PS: Shoutout to Joel Comm who has been a great support on Blab. Check him out here - he's doing great stuff. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and this is episode 44. Today on the podcast, I want to talk about a new tool for bloggers and for other content creators called Blab. You may have heard about it; there's been a lot of buzz. It's a live-streaming tool. It's like the love child of Google Hangouts and Periscope. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/44. I'm recording this podcast a couple of weeks before you actually hear it because I'm trying to get a little bit ahead. We're going to the Inbound Conference in Boston on Monday, just a few days away from now, and so I'm recording a few ahead of time, and I am really excited today because I've pretty much spent quite a bit of my time today on this new tool called Blab. It has been around for a few weeks now, but as usual, it takes me a little while to get on it. I usually pay attention to it too when I start saying multiple other people who I respect and who I listened to using a new tool. It's usually not the first person who's on that I hear it from that piques my interest, but it's multiple people. Within about 1½ days, I saw four people that I really respect jumping onto Blab and trying out this tool. I think the first person was actually Cliff from the podcast man who jumped onto it one night and he said, "I'm going for a walk, do you want to come with me," on his Facebook page and I clicked this link. Suddenly, I was watching him have this conversation while he was on his walk. Now it's kind of like Periscope for those of you who know that except that had this difference. Not only was Cliff on the screen, but so are three other people and now having a conversation together. Three of them were sitting at their desktop computers, and they were live streaming from there and Cliff was out and about on his mobile phone, and there was these chats stream going on alongside it at the same time, almost like a backchannel if you want of people watching and asking questions,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. We Answer Your Questions About How to Create Great Blog Content Today's episode is all about answering your questions about how to create great content for your blog. We've had so many questions on this topic that we've had to split the answers into two episodes. This is part 2. You can listen to part 1 here. Don't be shy about asking us questions in the comments below! Your question could be featured next time. Question Mark by Dejan Krsmanovic on 500px 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). Today we answer these listener questions: What are your 3 best blog posts ever and why did they work? What type of content do you find most resonates with your audience? Is video or the written word more important and why? When you first started taking on paid writers, how did you recruit them? How did you include them in your schedule? What are the pros and cons of outsourcing blog content? Is there an optimal length or word count for a blog? Further Reading and Resources for Creating Great Blog Content 5 First Year Posts that Led to Over 6 Million Views ProBlogger Jobs Board Our 3 most popular blog posts ever: How to Hold a Camera 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits (and the follow-up post: 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography) Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 43 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I want to continue our question and answer on the topic of content creation that I started a couple of episodes ago in episode 41. I got so many questions on the creation of content, I couldn't possibly fit them into a single episode. If you want to go back and listen to that when I do tackle about seven different questions there. Today, I've got another five for you that all center around content creation. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/43 where I'll include some further reading and you can also let us know what you think about today's episode. I'd also love to get your feedback on the podcast in general with a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever other medium that you are listening to this on. Those reviews certainly help us to shape this show but also help us to find new listeners which I do appreciate. Let's get into today's questions. The first question I want to tackle today is a fun one, it's from Samantha who asks, "Tell us about three of your best posts ever and why they worked." This is actually something I've done before on ProBlogger and I'll give you a link in the show notes to a post I wrote almost on the identical topic. In it, I actually talked about five different posts that I wrote in the first year of Digital Photography School, that led to a combination of over six million visitors to those five posts. I'm going to actually three different posts today because I don't want to replicate that. You can go and check out that post. That does give a whole heap of information, but I want to just talk about three and these all do come from Digital Photography School which is my main blog. The first one is probably a post that I almost didn't publish at all. I thought it was too basic to really be published. It's on the topic of How to Hold a Digital Camera and I will link to all of these posts in today's show notes. As I said, this is a post that I almost didn't publish because it is just so basic; how to hold a camera. I mean, everyone knows how to hold a camera, don't they? Well, the reality is they don't. The reason that I did write this post and hit publish on it was I could tell that among...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Launch a New Product Successfully Today's episode is about how we reached six figures launching a new product. We share what worked and didn't work, and some of our takeaway learnings for future launches. 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). Today we talk about: How partnering with other people can help you launch your product successfully How to identify a potential partner for a product launch How long it takes us to produce our new products How we spread the news about our product launch Where the majority of our product sales come from What we have planned to keep the product selling well into the future Further Reading and Resources for Launching a New Product Successfully What to Do BEFORE You Launch A Product On Your Blog 5 Tips for Launching a Product On Your Blog Without Annoying Your Readers Trial by Fire: a Beginner’s Attempt at a Product Launch The 3 Emails You Must Send During a Launch … and a Fresh Alternative for Bloggers Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 42. My name is Darren Rowse. Today, I want to talk to you about our latest product launch on Digital Photography School. It was a new product for us. I want to talk a little bit about how we came up with the idea, how we marketed it, how we developed the product, how we launched it, and also how it actually went. You can find today's show notes where I will link to the product and give you some further reading at problogger.com/podcast/42. Today, I want to talk about a product that we launched four weeks ago on Digital Photography School, which is my main blog. This particular product was a new one for us. It's actually a Lightroom presets pack. For those of you who aren't familiar with presets, Lightroom is a post-production tool for photographers to manipulate their images and to get their images looking great. They have the ability to use presets within that, which—the way I describe it to people—is like on Instagram where you manipulate a photo with a click. You just say, “Here's a filter that I want to put onto this particular photo.” In some ways, it's similar. A preset enables you to say, “I want to treat this photo in this particular way.” It takes a whole process of manipulations to an image and puts them into a single click. You take the whole heap of things that have adjustments and then you can click a link or a button and it will change your photo. This is a tool that's been built into Lightroom. You can actually develop your own presets, but you also can download other people's and install them into Lightroom. We developed this presets pack as 101 presets that enable you to change photos in 101 different ways. We developed them and bundled them together into different areas. There's presets for landscape photos, there's presets for portraits and different types of presets. The idea for this pack came really out of some affiliate promotions that we had previously done. This is actually something I would really encourage you to think about no matter what kind of product you are thinking about developing for your blog. One of the best things that you can do before you develop a product is to test it by promoting someone else's product. This might sound a little strange but you will learn so much by doing an affiliate promotion of someone else. This is something I've done time and time again. Before I developed my first ebook, I promoted someone else's ebook. Before I developed my first course, I promoted someone else's course. There's a number of things you're going to learn by promoting someone else's ...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. We Answer Your Questions About How to Create Great Blog Content Today's episode is all about answering your questions about how to create great content for your blog. Don't be shy about asking us questions in the comments below! Your question could be featured next time. So Many Questions That Answers My School by Alice Zed on 500px 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). Today we answer these listener questions: Should I share personal posts on my business blog? How often should I be posting on my blog? How do you develop compelling content? What days of week/time of day are best to post? How did you come to have the great writing skills that you use to blog? Did you ever get any formal training? What have been your most effective techniques for engaging readers? What types of posts have generated lots of authentic comments from your readers? Where do you get your ideas for content? Do you have any techniques/tips to share? Further Reading and Resources for Creating Great Blog Content How Many Posts Should a Blogger Post? [Pros and Cons of Daily Posting] How I Generated Over 6000 Ideas to Write About on My Blog in 15 Minutes Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi. This is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 41 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today, we're going to do something a little different. I'm going to answer some questions I asked on our Facebook page at facebook.com/problogger a few days ago for people to submit questions that they'd like me to answer on today's show. I had quite a few questions submitted but also had a number of people email me questions as well. I want to tackle some of those today, particularly, questions around content. There were quite a few questions on other areas that I'll tackle on the future show, but today, I want to focus on the content creation side of blogging. You can find today's show notes where I'll include some further reading on each of the questions where I can find it at problogger.com/podcast/41. Today's first question comes from Stephanie Hammond from the Motherhood and Sex blog. I haven't checked that one out yet—it sounds interesting—but the question Stephanie asked is, "How often should I be posting on my blog?" There's no one answer to this. Really, it will depend upon your situation, the topic that you have, and a whole heap of other factors. There are a few things that I would say. There are certainly some pros and cons of different frequencies. Quite often I'm asked, "Should I be posting daily?" That seems to be the most common question that I get. There are definitely some benefits to doing that. Daily or even more than daily can help you get into the groove with your writing. If you're writing or posting frequently, you'll be needing to write frequently. That can help you certainly to get into that groove. I personally find that if I go away for a couple of weeks and don't post for a few weeks, I find it a little bit hard to get back into that groove. Regular posting means regular writing which is good for you as a writer. It also means that you're producing more content. Hopefully, because you're practicing more, you'll improve in your writing. I also find that more regular posting helps you with reader engagement and reader expectations. If a reader knows that every day, for instance, that there'll be something new on the blog or every weekdays—Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—they begin to show up at those times. That can help with engagement. Also, the more you post, the more doorways you have into your blog over time. If you're posting everyday,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Become a More Efficient and Productive Blogger Today's episode is about how you can create more time to create great blog content by becoming more efficient in the way you manage your blog. 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). Today we talk about: 7 steps to becoming a more productive blogger 3 simple tools I use to manage my time How to analyse how you're spending your time How to design your ideal schedule and learn how to stick to it Further Reading and Resources to Become a More Efficient and Productive Blogger The to do list app I mention - wunderlist The calendar I use from my phone, computer and watch - Fantastical 2 The tool I use for writing and sorting content - Evernote The tool I use for team communication - Slack The social media management tool I use - Meet Edgar Also - here is the 'ideal schedule' that I developed for my own situation earlier this year. It has already evolved a little since this point but hopefully it's helpful to see. It was created in a Google Calendar. Lastly - as promised in the episode here is my process for creating podcasts (created in wunderlist)! Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello. This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 40 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today, I want to talk to you about productivity and using your time wisely. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/40. In the last two episodes of the ProBlogger Podcast, I've been asking you questions. These questions came from a talk I recently gave at the ProBlogger event here in Australia. The first question was how are you? Behind that question was the idea that if you want your blog to shine, you need to make yourself shine. The well-being of your blog is tied to the well-being of you. I talked a little bit about well-being and as bloggers, if we want to be producing great quality content, we need to be looking after ourselves. The second question was in the last episode. That was the simple question, what is your why? It was designed to get you to think about what is your purpose, tap back into why you started blogging, and talk about some benefits of having a why. Today, I want to ask you one last question. Again, this was a question I asked at the ProBlogger conference. This one in particular really seemed to get a reaction from attendees. The question is this, how are you using your time? Knowing your why, which was what we talked about in the last episode, we'll definitely get you started. Having a strong purpose gets you going. It motivates you, particularly in the early days of your blogging. How you spend your time in the day to day, that will get you to your destination. Let me say that again. Knowing your why gets you started, but how you spend your time day to day gets you to your destination. This is where the rubber hits the road. You can have all the dreams, goals, and purposes in the world, but unless you're using your time effectively to take you towards those goals, dreams, and your why, then it's always going to be something that stays in your head and what becomes a reality. One of the things I learned over the last year is that I really need to do some analysis of how I'm spending my time and come up with some proactive ways of using time more effectively. My personality type, for those of you who are into personality type, particularly if you are into the Myers-Briggs Personality Types, I'm an INFP. We could break each of those parts down but I want to talk about the P part of that. I am a perceiver. I don't really like that word. On that spectrum,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How Getting Clear About Why You're Blogging Can Grow Your Blog Today's episode is about how getting clear about why you're blogging can help you and your readers. dog puzzled by Danilo Biancalana on 500px 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). Today we talk about: How defining your 'why' can help you get clearer about your 'how' and 'what' How having a clear understanding of your 'why' can motivate you through challenging times and improve your productivity How having a clear understanding of your 'why' can help you make tough decisions How to get clear about your 'why' Further Reading and Resources to Help You Work Out Your 'Why' 'Start With Why', the Ted Talk by Simon Sinek (it's about business but it's very relevant to blogging too) 'Fully Charged', the book by Tom Roth that I mentioned I'm currently reading (I'm finding it so useful that I've become an affiliate. This is an affiliate link.) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hello and welcome to the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and this is episode 39. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/39. In our last episode, episode 38, I asked you a simple question which I think has a lot to do with the health of your blog. The question was how are you? I put forward the idea that if you want to make your blog shine, you need to work on making yourself shine and the well-being of your blog is tied to the well-being of you. Today, I want to extend this idea a little bit further. In that last podcast, we are talking about your well-being and we touched on things like health, exercise, movement, diet, rest, relationships, and brain health as well as part of helping yourself to shine, which has a flowing effect for your blog. Today, I want to ask you another question that is tied to your well-being and is going to directly impact your blogging. The question is one that also will impact other areas of your life so it's a good one to ponder every now and then. The question is what is your why? Most of us know that our well-being, our health is tied to things like health, movement, diet, rest, relationships, and brain health, but increasingly over the last few years, studies have also found that purpose has a massive impact upon our health and well-being. Purpose directly impacts our physical health but also impacts our longevity. Studies show that it increases our productivity and has an impact on our happiness as well. Purpose significantly impacts our health and also (in my experience) impacts our blog. I know that when my blogs have been firing, have been hitting the mark with readers the most, and have been growing, it's often during a time when I'm really tapping into my why, my purpose. When I started ProBlogger back in 2004, I did it really strongly out of purpose, out of my why. Back in 2004, I could see that blogs were changing the world and bloggers were changing the world. It was happening in all kinds of different ways. In small ways, bloggers were teaching, they were sharing inspirations, they were sharing knowledge, but we are also seeing it in politics and global issues as well. Bloggers were using blogs to make the world a better place and I wanted to be a part of that. I want to resource that. That was one of the reasons I started ProBlogger. The other reason I started ProBlogger was that I saw that not only could bloggers make the world a better place with their blogs, but they can also build businesses and this is something I discovered through my own blogging that I could not only teach people and help people, but I could sustain that by building a busines...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How One Humiliating Experience Gave Me a Wake Up Call That Helped Me Build a More Profitable Blog Today, I talk about the humiliating wake up call that changed my life and my blog. 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). Today I talk about: My humiliating wake up call 3 simple changes I've made to my life that have improved my blogging The most powerful question you can ask yourself to improve your blog Further Reading and Resources My New Project: Project Me I mentioned this standup desk option that you can sit on your normal desk. Learn more about Intermittent Fasting in this podcast episode on the Vitality Hackers (episode 36) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view How are you? Really? Are you already in the habit of asking yourself this question? What changes could you make to your life to support you in improving your blog? I'd love to hear your experience. Let me know in the comments below, and share a link to your blog. Good morning and welcome to episode 38 of the Problogger Podcast. It's Monday morning here in Australia, and I'm getting into my week. Today, I want to talk about something that I think has the potential to transform your blogging and not only that it can transform many areas of your life. I want to tell you a little bit about my own personal journey for the last nine months. Before I do, I want to encourage you to check out today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/38, where I’ll give you some further reading, and also, you have the opportunity to leave a comment and let us know what you think about today's show. If you do enjoy today's show, we'd love you to leave a review on iTunes. Also, there's been some fantastic reviews coming in over the last couple of days. Quite a long one came in from Get Fit Now with Cheryl, who wrote in part—I'll just read the first part—"I've watched my email and podcast list every day for the next episode of ProBlogger. If there's a new episode, no matter what else I'm currently listening to, I switch to ProBlogger." I really appreciate that Cheryl. I got this one from Sharon, which I really enjoyed as well. This is from Sharon Bogan. "Darren Rowse's strength is that he can take massive complex information and break it down into small actionable pieces of advice. None of it is rocket science, but it's all doable and useful.” I love that comment because I think it actually illustrates a point that I try and get across in my teaching all the time. None of what I teach is rocket science. Most of it is quite logical, but the reality is, most people don't apply the simple truth that is behind most successful blogs. Most successful bloggers that I've come across don't do amazingly cutting-edge things. They consistently produce useful content on a day-by-day basis. They interact with their readers. They get off their blogs and interact in other places on the web. Those three things build the foundations for a profitable blog. None of it is rocket science but it is all so important. That leads me to today's topic. Today, I want to pick up a theme that I talked about at the ProBlogger event just over a week ago. My opening keynote, my topic was Three Ways to Make Your Blog Shine. We had a party on Friday night and the theme was shine. Everyone was encouraged to come wearing something a little glittery or shimmery. I myself wore a Michael Jackson glove. That was my touch of shine, but I picked up the theme of shining in my opening keynote because really, that's what the point of the conference but also ProBlogger is about. We want to help bloggers to shine, their blogs to shine,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Grow Traffic to Your Blog Through Guest Posting and Creating Content for Other Blogs, Forums, Media and Events Today's episode is about how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the forth of a series of podcasts on this topic. In part one we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers to read your blog. In part two, we talked about how to use two types of content to find readers for your blog. In part three, we talked about building a blog that readers will want to return to again and again (a 'sticky' blog). In part four, we talked about how to find readers for your blog through commenting and relationships. Today, we talk about how to grow your readership by posting and creating content for other blogs, forums, media and events. hands up by Ricardo Tavares on 500px 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). Today we talk about: 6 different channels you could be creating and guest posting content How to choose the most appropriate channels for guest posting content How to build a strong portfolio of content to show people what you can do How to pitch irresistible content to other blogs, forums, media and events How to make it impossible for people to miss your guest content once it's published Further Reading and Resources For Finding Blog Readers Buzzsumo - a tool you can use to see what content performs best for any topic or competitor Why You Have a Better Chance of Landing a Guest Post Than You Think (and How to Do It) A Quick and Dirty Guide to Your First Guest Post How to Get Your Guest Posts Accepted Every Time How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog Stat-Driven Tips on How to Pitch to Big-Name Publishers in Your Niche Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast. This is a podcast for bloggers who want to make the world better through their writing, who want to grow their audience, and build profitable businesses around their blogs. Today, we're going to continue our series on growing your blog's readership. I'm going to particularly focus upon techniques around creating content for other destinations on the web including, but not limited to, through guest posting. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/37. If you enjoy today's show, we'd love to see your review on iTunes. We had some really great ones come in so far. Here's one from James. He says, "James here from Borderless Blog. I took the challenge," he's talking about the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, "and did many of the things Darren suggested and had the best month I've had yet. I look forward to continuing to implement his advice to take my blog to the next level." There's Carrie from Carrie Harris Photo. She says, "I've been blogging for over five years. I've learned a lot during that time. This podcast does re-energize me to take another look at my blog and find areas I can improve in terms of content, design, and layout. It's perfect for beginners and experienced bloggers. I always look forward to new podcasts from ProBlogger." Thank you so much, Carrie, and thanks to you, James. I'd love to see your reviews, too. Do feel free to leave your blog's name. I'm more than happy to check out your blog if you do that in your review. I do read them all and value them all. Let's get on to today's episode. Today, we're talking about how to grow traffic to your blog through creating content for other parts of the web. Also, we're going to touch on some other methods as ...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships Today's episode is about how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the forth of a series of podcasts on this topic. In part one we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers to read your blog. In part two, we talked about how to use two types of content to find readers for your blog. In part three, we talked about building a blog that readers will want to return to again and again (a 'sticky' blog). Today, we talk about how to grow your readership by commenting and networking. 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). Today we talk about: How to identify the places your ideal readers are hanging out online How to leave comments on blogs and social media to grow your profile How to network informally with other bloggers to build opportunities to grow your readership How building a blogging alliance can grow your blog How to pitch to influencers (people who are already getting noticed) How to feature influencers Further Reading/Listening For Finding Blog Readers Let me Show You Inside a Secret Blogging Alliance How to Grow Traffic through Forums and Social Media Group How to Grow Traffic with Blog Commenting Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to episode 36 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, we'll be looking at two techniques to find readers for your blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/36. Before we get into today's show, I just wanted to give you a little update. Today is Monday, the 17th of August as I record this and literally, just last night, I got home from the ProBlogger event for 2015. We had 700+ attendees come up to the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia where we got together for two whole days to talk blogging. There's a whole heap of people there, it was quite amazing. The previous year we had I think I was close to 540–550 people so it was quite a bit larger than the previous year, almost 200 larger and we had a great time together. We did a few new things, we had a few more networking events at this particular year, we had a great party on Friday night, but the main reason we were there was for some great content. We had, I think, it was over 24. It might have been closer to 30 sessions this year. We had speakers fly in from around the world: Jadah Sellner from Simple Green Smoothies, Heather Armstrong from Dooce, Pamela Wilson from Copyblogger, and Ruth Soukup from Living Well, Spending Less. Then, there was a whole heap of amazing Australian bloggers there speaking as well. We had Dan Norris, Claire Healy, Nat Kringoudis and many more. You can actually find them all listed at probloggerevents.com, but it was really just a fantastic time. I'm, right now, feeling simultaneously, incredibly energized and incredibly exhausted as well, physically exhausted but mentally really energized and really looking forward to what comes next for particularly the Australian blogosphere. This year, we also had people flying in from India, quite a few from New Zealand, and even attendees flying in from other parts of the world including the Middle East and America. It was quite a diverse group of people, all kinds of niches. We had quite a few younger bloggers this year as well as older bloggers. As usual, a lot of women. It was in the 90% range of male to female ratio but it was just a fantastic time. Despite my croaky voice today, I'm feeling really great about the state of the Australian blogosphere and als...

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog Today's episode is about how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the third of several podcasts on this topic. In part one we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers to read your blog. In part two, we talked about how to use two types of content to find readers for your blog. Today, we talk about building a blog that readers will want to return to again and again (a 'sticky' blog). i don't understand this Hamlet!!! by David Pereiras on 500px 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). Today we talk about: Why it's so much easier to hook readers into become regular rather than having to find fresh readers every day 15 ways to make it difficult for readers to leave your blog How to get readers to subscribe, follow and connect Further Resources For Finding Blog Readers A Secret to Finding New Subscribers for Your Blog Add an ‘About’ Page to Your Blog Target different readers with different messages. We use Opt In Monster, which enables us to show different popups/calls to action to subscribe to different types of traffic (this is an affiliate link). Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 35 of the ProBlogger Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you build better blogs. Today's show notes can be found at problogger.com/podcast/35. Today, we're continuing our series on finding readers for your blog. It's a topic we're all interested in as bloggers. In the last two episodes, I've been building some foundations for finding readers for your blog. In episode 33, I've talked about two questions to ask about the potential readers you're trying to attract. In the last episode, episode 34, I talked about two types of content that can help you to find new readers for your blog. Today, I want to suggest one more thing to think about as a good foundation for building a blog with lots of readers—building a sticky blog. You might be asking, what is a sticky blog? A sticky blog is one way a first-time reader of your blog finds it difficult to leave. That might sound like you're going to try and trap them or send them a virus to their computer or something like that. It's nothing like that at all. It's because something in your blog motivates them to explore it further and/or they make a decision to return and keep connected in some way. The goal of what we're talking about today is to get people deeper into your blog, viewing more pages, subscribing, connecting, and following in some way. The reality is that most people who arrive on your blog surf away and they're gone again within seconds. It's less than 10 seconds (I would guess) in most cases. How are you going to hook them? How are you going to keep them on your blog longer? These questions are questions that I think are really important. I'm surprised how few posts there are in blog tips on this particular topic. It makes sense to me that it's better to find a reader and keep them coming back once a week for the rest of the year—52 times—than to go way out and have to find 52 new readers. Turning that one reader into a regular reader will pay off in the long term. This is actually how I think it's best to grow your readership. If all you're doing is promoting your blog to new readers and not convincing any of them to hang around, you're going to hit a ceiling as to how many readers you can have. But if you continue to add new loyal readers into your blog every day by hooking them in,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use 2 Types of Content to Find Readers for Your Blog Today's episode is the second part of our series on how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the second of several podcasts on this topic. In part one we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers to read your blog. Today we talk about one other thing you need to consider before you go hunting for readers - the content on your blog. Read Me by Kevin Carden on 500px 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). Today we talk about: How to Create a Blog that is Worth Being Found How to Create Great Cornerstone Content The Key to Creating Shareable Content Further Resources For Finding Blog Readers How I came up with ideas for the first 200 posts on my Digital Photography School Blog The successful series of cornerstone content I published on the Digital Photography School blog about exposure: Introductory post - Learning about Exposure – The Exposure Triangle Introduction to Aperture in Digital Photography ISO Settings in Digital Photography Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography Also relevant to this topic: 5 First Year Blog Posts that Led to Over 6 Million Views The Ultimate Guide to Creating Amazing Content that Draws Readers Into Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi, this is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and welcome to episode 34 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, we're continuing our series on finding readers for your blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/34. Now, I would encourage you to listen to the last episode, episode 33 before you listen to today because, in part one of this series, we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers for your blog. Those two questions (briefly) were, who do you want to read your blog and what change are you trying to bring in those readers' lives. These are really important questions, and we're going to build upon them in the next episodes in this series. Today I want to talk about another thing you need to consider before you go hunting for readers. Now you might be really itching to get into some of the techniques that we've got coming up in future episodes. This one is so important and it's going to make promoting your blog so much easier. He says, "I look back on my own journey of finding readers for my blogs, and I've got around five million people reading my blogs every month today. I can see that the techniques and strategies for growing readers,” that I'm going to talk about in a couple episodes' time, “were important, but they weren't as important as the actual content on my blog,” and that's what I want to talk about today is content. Most of the techniques I'm going to talk about in future episodes work so much better if you've got two things happening on your blog. Firstly, you need to have solid useful content on your blog that serves your readers. Secondly, and this probably isn't as essential, but it's certainly useful. You need to have some shareable content that you can use when you're promoting your blog. In today's episode, I want to talk about content. I want to suggest that you need to create these two types of content. I want to share some ideas on how to do that, which will put you in a great position to promote your blog in future episodes. The first thing I want to talk about is building a blog that is worth being found. You can go and promote your blog as much as you like, but unless there's something worthwhile on your blog,

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Find Readers For Your Blog Today's episode is about how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the first of several podcasts on this topic. We will be getting into some tactical and very practical ways to build readerships over the next few episodes, but before we do that, today we look at the two questions you must ask yourself if you really want to get blog readers. abstract concept of education by Oleksandr Lysenko on 500px 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). Today we talk about: How I damaged my blog by chasing traffic instead of trying to create meaningful relationships The 2 questions you must ask yourself if you really want to get blog readers How to find out who your current readers are and what their problems are - so you can solve them How to create reader avatars for your blog The 3 secret ingredients of blogs that change peoples' lives Further Resources For Finding Blog Readers How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging - includes examples of my first reader personas. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. My name's Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 33 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today, we're talking about finding readers for your blog. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/33. Today, we're starting a series of episodes on the topic of finding readers for your blog. This idea came from you. We ran a survey recently of podcast listeners (which we really appreciated the responses of) and by far, the number one challenge that you asked us to produce podcast episodes on was finding readers for blogs. This was absolutely no surprise to me whatsoever because it's always the number one thing that people ask us to produce content on at ProBlogger. When we run sessions at our events on finding readers, the rooms are always packed. When we write posts on the ProBlogger blog, those posts are always most read and most shared. When I talk to bloggers, this is always the question I'm asked, “How do I find readers for my blog?” It's also something I've experienced myself—the frustration of not having readers or not having enough readers and wanting more. Even from day one on my blogs, it was something I wanted. I put time and energy into creating content. I wanted people to read that, it's only natural. The same thing when you create a podcast, when you've got a Twitter feed, when you've got a Facebook page, you want people to consume the content that you create. For the next few episodes, I want to share with you some ideas on how to find readers for your blog. This will probably go for four or five episodes. Later on in this series, I'm going to get really practical and share some actual techniques, some very practical things you can do. Before I get into those practicalities, I want to just step back a little, get you to ask a few questions, and talk about some principles of finding readers for your blog. I think if you rush into it, you may actually end up with a whole heap of readers who really don't convert to anything. They're not the right readers. This is particularly what I wanted to talk about today. I want to suggest two questions to ask yourself before you go hunting for readers. I think if you ask these questions, you'll be in a much better position to be effective in finding readers for your blog. The techniques I talk about in the next few episodes will convert much better if you've asked these questions first. The first question is this, who do you want to read your blog? When I started blogging,

Note: you can listen to this podcast above or load it up on your device on iTunes here. Is it Really Possible to Make Money From Your Blog? Today's episode is about whether it is really possible to make money from your blog. We take a close look at how many bloggers make money, the methods you can use, and the realities of earning money as a blogger. Money text on euro bills by Dani Rönneberg on 500px 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). Today we talk about: How much money bloggers make 37 different ways to make money blogging How I make money blogging 11 examples of bloggers who make money blogging The 4 things it takes to build a profitable blog Further Resources 37 Ways to Make Money Blogging How much money ProBlogger readers make from blogging Not all of our readers try to make money from blogging. This is how much money our readers who DO try to make money from blogging say they make (based on results from a survey we ran recently): 4% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make over $10,000 a month 9% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make $1,000 - $9,000 a month 7% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make $500 - $999 a month 17% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make $100 - $499 a month 25% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make $10 - $99 28% of bloggers who try to make money blogging make made under $10 a month 10% of bloggers who try to make money blogging say they don’t make anything Examples of bloggers making money blogging Nikki Parkinson - stylingyou.com (style and fashion) Tsh Oxenreider - theartofsimple.net (simple living) Chris Hunter - bikeexif.com (motorbikes) Christie Burnett - childhood101.com (parenting) Gavin Aung Than - zenpencils.com (cartoons) Lucy Feagins - thedesignfiles.net (design) Caz and Craig Makepeace - ytravelblog.com (travel) Brooke Schoenman - herpackinglist.com (packing/travel) Christina Butcher - hairromance.com (hair) Jadah Sellner - simplegreensmoothies.com (smoothies) Michaela Clark - tradiesva.com.au (tradies, va’s) Further Reading Can You Really Make Money Blogging? 7 Things I know about Making Money Online Ways to Make Money on Your Blog: The Money Map Theme Week: Make Money on Your Blog by Partnering with Brands Partnering with Brands: Advertising 101 Partnering with Brands: Ways to Collaborate and Earn an Income Partnering with Brands: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Kit Partnering with Brands: Marketing Yourself Partnering with Brands: Putting it All Together and Getting Started The Full Blog Monetization Menu: 60+ Ways to Make Money with Your Blog Creating Product Week: How to Create and Sell Products on Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. It’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 32 of the ProBlogger podcast. Today, we’re answering one of the most frequently asked questions that I get about blogging. The question, can you really make money blogging? It’s a question I get a lot and it’s one where there’s a lot of misinformation going around the blogosphere. I want to clear that up and give you a realistic answer to it. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/32. Hi. My name is Darren Rowse and today, we’re answering the question, can you really make money blogging? This is an important question and I want to answer right up front in this podcast series because there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I see a lot of bloggers coming into blogging with expectations that I just don’t think are realistic, so I want to give you a realistic answer to the question.