Enrichment Depot – Profiting on the Net

This guest post is by Belinda of The Copy Detective.

Your blog is a good read. Everyone says so.

Although “everyone” is really just people you already know. Like your Mum.

So why isn’t your blog being found by other people? The millions and millions of people hungrily consuming blog content out there in the global online space we call the Internet?

The cold, hard truth is that Google hates your blog. And it’s nothing personal. You just don’t have anything that Google wants.

Creating high-quality, relevant content is a must if you want your blog to be noticed by search engines but it’s only part of the picture. If you’re not sure if Google really hates your blog, or whether it’s just ambivalent, then step through these warning signs.

1. You don’t know which keywords your readers are using

The very heart of search engine optimization is understanding what people are searching for online and aligning your own content to those searches. When you use the same words and phrases that your audience members use, your blog posts can be matched to online searches. If you don’t? Well, you may as well be blogging in another language.

2. You don’t know how to find the right keywords

Google has a free keyword tool that will show you different phrases being searched on, the amount of traffic they get, and how many other sites are also trying to rank for those phrases. Spend a few moments before writing each blog post to find the most popular phrases for your blog topic, or use keyword analysis to think of new topics!

3. You don’t use your keywords frequently enough

Using your keywords as frequently as is natural will help Google understand what your blog post is about. Use an online tool such as wordle.net to produce a word cloud from your blog post. Your most frequently used words will be the largest ones you see and you can quickly see if you’re using the right phrases often enough. But beware of over-using your keywords and being labelled a spammer.

4. You are trying to rank for too many keywords in every post

Keeping it simple is definitely the best approach when you are optimizing your blog posts. Focus on a single theme and choose one main keyword to avoid diluting your SEO efforts.

5. Your blog headlines don’t even mention your main keyword

Strategic marketing aims your message like a laser rather than spraying it into the wind, and the same applies to SEO. Your headlines (h1 text) and subheadings (h2 text) are given more weight than regular text, so they’re prime candidates for your keywords and phrases.

6. You don’t bother putting descriptions on your images

You might include images to catch your readers’ eyes, or to help balance your text, but Google can’t see your images and unless you attach a description of some sort, your image will be ignored. Attach an image description using the ALT tag or caption, and don’t forget to use those keywords.

7. You never link to your old blog posts

Creating links between your blog posts makes it easy for your readers to discover other content, which naturally keeps them hanging around for longer. From an SEO point of view, Google pays particular attention to links, making them the ideal location for your keywords.

8. You never link to other bloggers

Although it sounds contrary, you will also get some SEO benefit from sending your readers away from your blog by linking to other blogs. You might do this with a “best-of” list post or with a blogroll—however you do it, but Google sees you sharing high-quality content with your audience, and rewards you for it.

9. You don’t fill out your page title and description fields

Meta data is the code name for the information you can use to advertise your blog post to Google. When you search on Google, the results are displayed as a post headline in bold and a brief description underneath. Search engines can work this information out but you are better off writing these yourself and popping those keywords in.

10. You don’t make your URLs search engine friendly

Using recognizable words, especially your keywords, in your blog post URL will help Google to make sense of your blog posts. The bonus, of course, is that your blog posts will be easier to remember for everyone else. So take a minute to edit your blog URL before you publish.

11. Your blog has broken links all over the place

Broken links occur when a URL points to a page that no longer exists. It might be that you changed the URL slightly or you deleted the blog post, but broken links give the impression that you aren’t maintaining your blog. Broken links also stop Google from crawling your blog posts and when you put the two together you get a big SEO cross against your name.

12. Your blog doesn’t have a sitemap

A sitemap is a website page that has all the links and pages of your blog mapped out. Sitemaps make it easy for Google to index every page on your blog, which can affect how quickly you appear in search engine results. Most content management systems will have a plugin that will create and submit your sitemap to Google, taking all the hard work out of the process.

13. You copy your content from other bloggers

Smart people don’t try to reinvent the wheel. They draw inspiration from the world around them. Google rewards original content but “original” refers to the wording rather than the concept. If you lift large amounts of content from external sources, and Google will mark it down as duplicate content and give you no SEO points. Adapt or attribute. Always.

14. You don’t publish blog posts often enough

Google loves fresh content and new posts on your blog are a great incentive for Google to come back and visit. Some bloggers publish when they are inspired. Some bloggers write every day. The question you need to answer is how often can you publish valuable and relevant posts to your readers.

15. You never use bullet lists in your blog posts

Google loves bullet lists. Not quite as much as headlines, subheadings and links, but a lot more than regular text. That, of course, means you should use lists to break up long passages of text and pop your keywords in, especially in the first couple of words of each list item.

16. You don’t have a presence on any social media platforms

Google is always looking for ways to return search results that are valuable and relevant. Social recommendations are becoming a huge influence on how search engines view your content and that’s exactly what active social media pages are. So go and get social, and build a community around your blog.

17. You don’t share your blog posts on your social media pages

Social media pages are fantastic for building a community—see above. They are also the perfect vehicles to share and promote your blog posts! Don’t be afraid to share your new blog posts across social media and ask your community to share the love. You are building social currency that Google loves to see.

18. You don’t invite blog readers to leave comments

Comments give your blog the kind of freshness that search engines just love. Comments also show that your blog posts are still relevant to readers. Invite readers to leave their thoughts and continue the conversation or blog about something a bit controversial to get the discussion started!

19.You don’t know where your biggest referrers live

Google Analytics will show you where you have the greatest numbers of people sending traffic to your blog. It’s worth knowing who they are so you can give them the attention they deserve. Your analytics will also show you the keywords that led people to your blog, how many times they visited, and which other pages they clicked on.

20. Your blog content will age like a b-grade actress: badly

Blogging about topical subjects is a great way to start a conversation but it might also date your blog posts into irrelevancy. Creating helpful, educational content, instead of editorial content, is just one way you can create a library of blog posts that will be relevant again at a later date. Mixing different types of blog posts will also keep your readers interested.

21. You don’t write about topics people are interested in

If you ever ask yourself if your blog posts are interesting enough, you’re asking the wrong person. If your blog isn’t getting much attention from readers then Google isn’t going to give it a second look. You can discover a wealth of potential topics from comments on other people’s blog, surveys, keyword analysis, trending Twitter topics, and simply asking your current readers. Don’t be shy!

22. You have advertising that is irrelevant to your blog topic

Paid advertising is more than ok but if you have a lot of advertising that is irrelevant to your blog topic then it kind of makes you look bad. Google is getting really good at picking out poor poor-quality websites and lots of irrelevant advertising can give off all the wrong signals.

23. You don’t have share buttons so people can’t spread the word

Social share buttons let your readers promote your words of wisdom without ever having to leave your blog. Apart from the extended reach, the more often your blog posts are tweeted, liked and commented on, the more value they have … and the more Google will notice you.

24.Your guest posts are replicated on other sites, word for word

Opening your blog up to guest bloggers is a fantastic way to add depth and variety to your own blog topics—not to mention giving yourself a break from writing! But if your guest bloggers publish the same content, word for word, on their own blog, then you don’t get the kudos from Google for original information. Ask your guest bloggers to give you exclusivity or at least a few weeks’ head start.

25. You write about too many topics and Google is just plain confused

If you have a lot of different passions, that’s wonderful, but blogging about them all on the same blog will get you nowhere. In fact, from an SEO point of view, your blog will look like a big pile of books on the floor: too hard to categorize. Keep it simple and Google won’t get so baffled.

Remember that Google’s ultimate mission is to match online searches with the most relevant and reputable content. You will be rewarded when you create content that focuses on your readers’ needs and you build a strong network around your blog. It won’t happen overnight nor is it a one-off process but if you keep at it, people will find you (and it will be Google that shows them).

Belinda is a professional marketing copywriter confidently walking the line between writing effective copy and creating an engaging brand personality. You don’t have to choose between them! Read her copywriting blog, The Copy Detective, and improve the way you write about your business.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

25 Reasons Why Google Hates Your Blog

@ProBlogger

Tags: Blog, Google, Hates, Reasons

This guest post is by Sean Houser of StartByDoing.com.

I hear a lot of talk directed at new bloggers. Things like, “Stay out of competitive niche markets when you’re blogging. Find smaller, less competitive niches, it’s easier to establish yourself and make money.”

Image copyright Jeanne Hatch – Fotolia.com

While it is fair to say that going into a competitive niche market and trying to establish yourself as a go-to source certainly won’t be a cake walk, it’s also important to note that trying to establish yourself in a niche with little competition has its own set of challenges.

Let’s put it this way: would you rather work a year straight on a blog knowing that there’s no ceiling on the amount of income you can generate? Or would you rather work a year straight knowing the best you can possibly do, no matter how hard you work, is $ 2,000 per month?

Small niche markets have income ceilings—there’s only so much money you can make. Also, don’t forget the fact that a lot of smaller niche markets have high levels of competition anyway, since a lot of “experts” always recommend finding smaller, less competitive niches.

So, in a lot of scenarios when you’re working with smaller niche markets, you’re still looking at an uphill struggle when, ultimately, there’s a lot less money to go around anyway.

Don’t get me wrong: I think working in smaller markets can be a good thing provided you budget your time against the income potential of the niche appropriately. Don’t spend tons of time on a niche that doesn’t provide a lot of earning potential.

Now that we’ve got that out the way, let’s talk about the reasons why going into a competitive niche is a good thing—especially when it comes to blogging and content marketing.

1. Lots of competition means there’s lots to write about

The worst-case scenario for a blogger is realizing that there’s very little if anything to write about in their niche. Especially after buying a domain name and setting up your website!

If there are 50 different blogs in the same niche, and they all have unique and compelling content, that’s a good sign that you can set up a website in this market and have a lot of options when it comes to writing content.

Do a little research when you first enter into a new niche market. Scope out the top ten or 15 blogs in the niche, and make sure they’re consistently putting out unique content, not just rehashing ideas off of each other.

2. More competition means more idea sources

It’s always a good idea to study your competition. Study how they get their backlinks, and how they first promoted their website when they were just getting started.

The good thing about competition is that you can look to them for inspiration for new post ideas. The more competition, the more resources you have to use for new content ideas.

3. More competition means more channels for your content

More players in one market means more online real estate to post your content on. Work to have your guest posts featured on as many of these sites as possible, and you’ll receive more traffic without having to rely solely on Google.

4. More business models to follow

If there was only one site in your niche that got most of the traffic, and you weren’t sure what worked well for monetization in that niche, you would only have one site to use as a reference.

On the flip-side, when there’s lots of competition, you have more people trying different things to monetize their visitors, and more ideas for you to use to monetize your own blog traffic.

5. More opportunities to partner and mastermind with top players

If you can find a way to connect with one of the top bloggers in your market, you have a major resource for information that’s proven—no guess-work required! You actually have someone to talk to who already went through everything you’re going through.

The key point here is to learn from those who have already been through all the ups and downs of blogging and still found success. You can model your blog after that success.

6. More competition means more opinions and points of view

Common knowledge isn’t always a good thing. It can sometimes be bad information and therefore detrimental to your long-term success. The good thing about competitive markets is that people are always questioning the common knowledge in that niche.

Sometimes people question common knowledge just to get attention. But other times it’s actually a valid point that proves common knowledge to be wrong or at least not 100% right.

As an example, if the “common knowledge” on all of the blogging forums was to build backlinks to your blog a certain way, you may believe that strategy to be the best way. However, if one blogger came out with a case study where s/he found that backlink strategy A is ten times more powerful than “common knowledge” backlink strategy B, that would be extremely helpful since you wouldn’t be wasting your time on a weak link building strategy.

By questioning common knowledge and finding out what really works, you will only be working on strategies that created the biggest results for your time spent. This is why many different opinions can be a good thing (provided there is some form of proof to the claims being made).

7. Competition forces you to be the best you can be

Competition pushes you to be more creative and innovate, and to truly master your skill set. A lack of competition may lead to your skills getting stale or hitting a plateau.

Competition sharpens your skills and ultimately helps you achieve long-term success, especially if you jump into a smaller niche down the line, and you’re dealing with marketers and bloggers with lesser skills and knowledge.

Other reasons

There are three other reasons why a competitive niche is a good choice:

1. A competitive niche is a proven money-maker. A niche with a lot of competition almost always means there’s a lot of money to be made. Don’t waste your time on markets that haven’t been proven to turn a large profit.
2. A competitive niche has proven traffic volumes. If you’re researching a new niche and you see a lot of bloggers with tens of thousands of RSS subscribers and high Alexa rankings (under 30,000) then you’re dealing with a market that has a lot of traffic to go around—always a good thing!
3. A competitive niche has proven long-term stability. If you’re researching a competitive niche and you see people with five- or ten-year-old blogs that are still going strong, and still growing steadily in terms of traffic and RSS subscribers, that’s a good sign that you’re dealing with a long-term, stable niche.

There you have it! There are many reasons why dealing with competitive markets is a good choice even for new bloggers. What others can you add? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Sean Houser runs an expert marketing blog over at StartByDoing.com. To read more of Sean’s blog posts subscribe to his RSS Feed or just visit his blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

7 Reasons Why Competition is Good

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Competition, good, Reasons

This guest post is by Beth Hayden of Blogging with Beth.

You wake up in a cold sweat.

You bolt upright and gasp for air.

You’ve just realized that your blog has only one true fan—and it’s your mother.

Image used with permission

Dear old mom reads all of your posts. She comments every week with supportive but embarrassing encouragement. She even calls to tell you what a great job you’re doing with your site and how much she loves your writing.

Your mom is great. She’s always there for you. But if she’s your only true fan, you’re in trouble.

Here are some reasons your mother might be your blog’s only reader.

1. Your blog doesn’t have enough tension

A woman recently came to me for help for her blog. The site detailed the life lessons she learned from her pet. I didn’t have any major complaints about her design. The writing was a little precious for me, but it wasn’t BAD. I couldn’t figure out exactly what feedback to give her on how to make her site more compelling.

Writing and creativity coach Cynthia Morris says blogs can really fall flat if they don’t have enough tension. Tension indicates there’s some central problem you’re trying to solve, some shared issue you want to work on together. Tension helps readers know they’re not in it alone—that they’re part of a team of superheroes working together to fight bad guys.

With my client’s pet psychology blog, there was no common problem holding the readers together, no psychic tension creating a line between the author and her readers. Tension creates interest. Without it, your readers won’t come back, because their curiosity won’t pull them back to your site.

Does your subject matter have enough tension? Is there enough to keep your readers coming back for more? Your mom won’t care about this, and your readers may not even be able to articulate it—but they will care. Find the tension, find your readers.

2. You’re not connected

Are you connecting with others in your field? Are you regularly reading other blogs in your niche, and commenting on their posts? Are you talking with your peers using social media tools, and making a real effort to truly connect?

Networking with other bloggers is one of the all-time best things you can do to make your blog better. Other bloggers can inspire and transform your writing and grow your audience through online and offline support. Once you start connecting, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without your online community.

Make sure you’re using your Twitter account for networking, instead of just wasting your time. (Hint: if you have to pause to consider the last time you brought in any business or made a critical business contact using Twitter, you may be wasting your time.)

Commit to making this a regular part of your blogging life, not an afterthought. Because it’s connections—both with other bloggers and with the influx of new readers you’ll get when you revamp your blog—that will assure that your mother is not the only one cheering you on from the stadium bleachers, not the only one waving a big #1 foam finger for your blogging team.

3. Your blog’s not getting enough exposure

Is your mom your only fan because she’s the only one who knows about your blog?

Your writing can be good enough to win a Pulitzer, but if you don’t have enough eyeballs seeing it, you still have to rely on Dear Old Mom for comment love. Are you truly doing everything you can to bring traffic to your site?

If you’re developing relationships with other bloggers (see #2), you can also start to approach your new friends for guest posting opportunities. Guest posting is one of the fastest ways to grow your audience and get new readers and customers. For advice on doing your research and approaching people for guest posting spots, make sure to check out Jon Morrow, the King of Guest Posting.

You can also use email marketing in conjunction with your blog, and both will benefit. Grow your list and you can grow your blog.

Make sure you’re truly doing everything you can to get more eyeballs to your posts. As your traffic grows, your fan base will, too.

4. You’re not engaging your readers

Your readers need to feel like you truly understand them and get their problems. If you’re writing about the care and feeding of guinea pigs, then make sure you know everything there is to know about guinea pig owners and their needs.

Stop talking about you. Start talking about them.

One way to start doing this is to write a post and ask your readers some questions. What’s your biggest problem with X? What are you struggling with right now? If you don’t have a ton of readers, then publicize the heck out of this post via social media, email and forums on your topic. Get as much feedback as you can.

Then make sure to use the feedback you get from that article to write more posts that answer their questions or address their frustrations. The more you can let your potential readers know you understand their needs and can truly give them answers to their biggest and most pressing questions, the more they will love you.

Inquire, get feedback, respond. A simple and powerful recipe for great content that will keep people coming back over and over again.

5. You’re not posting enough

Posting once a month is not going to get you lots and lots of readers. If you’re not happy with the amount of traffic you’re getting—if your comments section is filled with lines like “Go, honey! We love you!” then make a change in your posting schedule, and make it today.

If you’re hesitating to hit “Publish” because you’re waiting for your post to be perfect, you need to let go of the idea that that there IS such a thing as a perfect post.

Write a couple “good enough posts.” Get your thoughts down on paper, make sure your grammar and spelling are as good as they can possibly be, correct typos, then put your posts out there. Allow yourself to feel vulnerable and scared. It builds character and helps your blog.

Then let all those “good enough” new posts start to build a road right to your doorstep. It’s a simple fact—the more you publish, the more traffic you will get.

6. You’ve got a site design only a mother could love

One of the things that really turns people off a blog is ugly site design.

If your site is so filled with peek-a-boo social media widgets, flashy banners and Google Adsense ads that your readers can’t tell what your site is about, you need an overhaul. If you’re still using a template from four years ago, and it wasn’t that attractive when you originally put it up, you need an overhaul. If your readers can’t tell in under ten seconds what the topic of your blog is, you need an overhaul.

Build your design using lots of white space—it truly puts the spotlight on your content and allows your readers to absorb what you’re trying to say. Add a gorgeous, professional banner with your site name and a great tagline that tells them exactly what you’re about.

Then add a few classy, attractive graphic elements to the design. Remember that they say “less is more” for a reason.

Web professionals can really help you create an amazing design that represents who you are as a blogger, writer, and businessperson. Consider consulting a design professional who can help you bring your site’s design in line with your content and your business goals.

7. Your writing needs work

If your site is filled with run-on sentences and spelling errors, people will notice. And they will leave you alone with your mother in a sad desert of bloggy loneliness.

Clean up your writing by brushing up on your grammar basics—Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is a great start.

If comma placement and spelling still confound you, find a great editor. An editor will not only help you with grammar and punctuation, but can truly help you make your writing better.

Editors also give you someone to mentally speak to on the page when you’re struck late at night and don’t know what to write. Editors are your best friends. And no—it doesn’t matter if your mother is the world’s greatest editor. You need someone else, someone not related to you, to help you clean up your writing.

Bring it home

Mom’s a fantastic fan. But you need more people supporting what you do and cheering you on—but put some effort behind these seven areas, and you can get them, one new fan at a time.

Pretty soon you’ll have a stadium full of fans, all waving #1 foam fingers with your name on them. And your mom will be standing there with them, yelling at the top of her lovable lungs.

Beth Hayden helps business owners make more money by helping them create fabulous websites, blogs, and social media campaigns. Get her best tips for achieving blogging nirvana by downloading her free report, From Blah to Hurrah: 25 Ways to Make Your Blog Bigger, Better and More Profitable.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

7 Reasons No One Reads Your Blog (Except Maybe Your Mom)

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog, Except, Maybe, Reads, Reasons

This guest post is by Lina Nguyen of Words That Influence.

Influential bloggers are being paid top dollar to write sponsored posts (thousands of dollars per post is not unheard of). They’re gifted with luxury items, cars and overseas trips, and invited to events previously exclusive to A-List celebrities and long-established journalists.

Bloggers worldwide are proving to be fierce competition for mainstream media, as companies decide how to get the best return on investment for their marketing buck.

If you have the following seven things, then your blog and social media networks will be highly valuable digital assets, sought after by major companies.

Even if you don’t quite have the same reach and clout as some of these bloggers, you can still apply these principles to negotiate your own deals with smaller businesses in your niche.

ProBlogger Training Day event speakers Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace are travel bloggers who landed a corporate sponsorship deal with a major airline, to cover a high profile international sporting event. At the end of this post, we’ll see these seven points in action, as we take a look at their success in attracting sponsorship from a major brand.

1. Your audience is a profitable niche market

The people in a profitable niche for major companies tend to be decision makers, consumers or influencers in the buying process, for either highly priced items (like cars, technology, travel or finance), or highly consumed items (like food, health products, household goods).

How do you know if your niche is profitable? Just take a look around in mainstream media. If companies are already paying big bucks to advertise to your audience on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers, then you’re in a profitable niche.

2. You’ve built a community

If you’ve created a group of people who gather on your blog and social media networks, then what you’ve created has the potential to be extremely financially valuable.

Companies always want to know where their target market is hanging out and get in front of them. Trouble is, as outsiders, whose primary motivation is to sell, they’re not exactly welcomed.

That’s why they’re willing to pay to get access to your tightly formed online community, which has its very own culture, rules and etiquette. Your intimate knowledge of how your community thinks and behaves has a valuable price tag on it.

3. You have reach

Being in a commercially attractive niche and having impressive reach in numbers (in terms of blog traffic, subscribers and social media followers) makes your community really valuable. A big corporate client will be after the exposure you can give them.

What kind of numbers are valuable? That all depends.

Essentially, it comes down to the demand to reach your niche, how targeted your audience is and what other advertising avenues are available to the company to reach that specific audience.

The more profitable the niche, and the harder those communities are to access, the more money a company will be willing to pay you to get in front of them.

4. Your community is highly engaged

This is what makes a blogger much more appealing to companies for advertising potential than say, television, print media, billboards and flyers.

Bloggers engage with their audience, who eagerly share their thoughts and feelings. In addition, they actively give bloggers permission to communicate with them, by following or subscribing.

Engaged communities also show clear signs of activity, through comments, posts and tweets. This is valuable in the eyes of a potential marketer, because an active community gives the company a way to evaluate and measure a campaign’s success.

An indicator of a successful marketing campaign is one where the target market responds to it, hopefully positively (although a highly engaged negative response can also be seen as successful, depending on the company’s objectives).

5. You have influence

A blogger with a highly engaged and active community is more likely to have influence, which is what’s really going to make a company take notice.

A company will pay for your ability to help get the word out, your referral or your endorsement.

If you can do all three, to an audience who will listen to you and believe you, then you are in a very strong negotiating position to command a price.

A bigger company with a large marketing budget is most likely interested in building brand awareness, exposure and chipping away at a longer-term objective to improve market perception.

The good news for a blogger is that they’re unlikely to expect a huge spike in sales from working on a one-off campaign with you. This eases the pressure off you, relieving expectation that you’ll influence your readers to rush out and buy the product.

Having said that, if you do have the clout to change attitudes, beliefs and market perception about a particular product or service—or you can get people to buy in noticeable numbers—then that will clearly make you extremely valuable in the corporate marketplace.

6. Your brand is strong and clear

If you have all of the above advantages, then what a company wants is to align with your brand. You’re obviously credible and your brand says something that they want to be perceived as being.

They want your audience to think they’re worthy of attention, too.

7. Your prices are competitive

Is your going rate less than the cost of advertising with traditional media power houses, or a celebrity endorsement? Most bloggers are. You’re instantly more appealing, price-wise—especially if you’re willing to accept non-cash payments which the company can offer you at low cost to them.

More importantly, if a major company is willing to do business with you, then they see you as a profitable return on investment.

To demonstrate these seven points, let’s take a look at a blog that’s had success in attracting big-brand sponsorship.

Case study: the yTravel blog’s and Qantas sponsorship deal

yTravel Blog's Caz and Craig Makepeace

After blogging for a little over a year, Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace secured a sponsorship deal with Australia’s leading international and domestic airline, Qantas, to travel around New Zealand and cover the Rugby World Cup.

If you would like to hear more about the specific steps they took to secure this sponsorship, you can listen to my exclusive interview with Caz on my blog, Mother’s Love Letters.

Blog: y Travel Blog
Niche and Community: Travelers, world-wide.
Sub-niches: Independent world travel, working holidays, family travel.
Reach: 

• 50,000+ visitors a month
• 70,000+ Page Views per month
• 3,000+ Facebook fans
• 5,000+ Twitter followers
• 1,200+ subscribers

Level of engagement: Average 15-20 comments per blog post. Daily social media interaction. Reply to almost every blog comment. 12,000+ Tweets to date. Facebook fan page is the most interactive and engaged in this niche.
Influence: Klout Score: 70

Brand:   Fun-loving, friendly travellers who are about making your life a story to tell. They believe life is all about the memories, so they make sure they live their life in a way that creates many memories through travel. Their goal is to help people get inspired, get informed and get going.

The deal: All expenses paid 12 day tour of New Zealand, doing activities and attending Rugby World Cup matches. Qantas will also be promoting the bloggers. In return, all Craig and Caz have to do, is have fun, blog, Facebook, and Tweet!

What impressed Qantas most: The bloggers’ level of engagement with their active community.

A key secret to their success: Guest posting. This was key to growing traffic.

Their top tips: Be clear about your brand and make it authentic. Network and build relationships in order to build your community. Social media is crucial, but look at offline networking opportunities, too. Value yourself. Consider how short-term income opportunities for advertising and sponsored posts that compromise content quality may affect your blog perception and brand in the long term. Learn how to write a sponsorship proposal. Don’t be limited by the fact that you’re a new blogger. Every big blogger starts off by being a new blogger.

Is corporate sponsorship for bloggers something that’s common in your niche? Are you looking at aligning yourself with a company, as a monetization strategy?

Lina Nguyen is a blogger in the Australian Mummy Bloggers niche. She is also a copywriter, digital media consultant and online communications expert at Words That Influence.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

7 Powerful Reasons Why Companies Will Pay for You to Blog

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog, Companies, Powerful, Reasons

In my search for a better health insurance policy,  I got quotes through one of my affiliate links. Going through the process reminded me that testing and re-testing merchants and vendors on your site remains one of the most basic things you can do to build a site with repeat traffic.

I did end up finding an amazing policy, but the lead generation form I filled out also led  to my phone number and email address getting sold to every third-party vendor they could sell it to. Lesson learned.

If you want an affiliate site that has repeat visitors and can become a trusted brand, you cannot partner with advertisers who don’t respect the customer. No matter how much you like the affiliate manager or the company, you can’t tolerate abuse of your site visitors and their personal information.

1) Affiliate Marketing is a Business

To demonstrate what I’m talking about, let’s look at two types of affiliate sites:

• Affiliate #1 builds out a URL with a ton of keywords and hyphens that no one will remember.
• Affiliate #2 builds a site with a memorable URL and tries to get repeat visitors and referrals.

Both models have their pros, but for the brandable URL, which is built for long-term success, you need to be cautious.

As an example, I’ll use my original search for insurance. SEO can be hard for terms like “insurance for lead programs.” When you do get your branded URL to rank, you start getting traffic and building a following, which can then refer friends to you. However, if your lead gen partner starts selling your visitors’ information, or lets their vendors and third parties sell their information; your loyal visitors stop becoming loyal then your brand takes a hit when they bash you online.

You have to remember that affiliate marketing is a business. Even if you love the manager, you need to make money, and you also have to make sure that your website visitors and blog followers are having a great experience. So you need to be extra cautious when you work with lead programs and quote programs. Another thing you may want to think about is the lead vs. sale model that you’ll see on many of the CPA networks and some affiliate networks.

2) You Need Trust to Build Your Site Traffic

Lead programs usually pay very high referral fees, but you may make a smaller commission with a per-sale program. Certain lead programs, especially when it comes to supplements, pay so much more because they sign the person into a continuity program. This sign up scenario then allows them to charge the heck out of the person’s credit card once the free trial is finished. The company will also probably send the person through a large up-sell process, which can create a horrible user experience and a lack of trust for your recommendations.

If your visitors end up registered for five shopping clubs and their credit cards are charged a huge amount of money when they only wanted a free, 30-day trial, you may end up getting the blame instead of the merchant. You’re the brand they trusted and the website you sent them to is probably a one-off landing page.

3) Your Visitors Must Come First

The insurance quotes program that sold my information to third parties, which weren’t even related to what I was shopping for, not only lost my trust, but I’m now pulling them from my site. The sad part is that the program is well known, run by a knowledgeable manager, and I previously considered them trustworthy.

I have to think about my readers, and if I want to put them through the same hassle that I went through. It was absolutely ridiculous.

I got calls for everything from going to school online to wondering if I needed auto insurance. I didn’t mind getting calls from the health insurance people because that’s what I needed. I did mind all the spam emails and phone calls I kept getting after from the third-party vendors that bought my information. Getting an extra 40+ spam emails a day and lots of spam phone calls is enough reason to never trust that company and to trust that particular affiliate manager even less.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you tested your merchants to see how they treat your readers and visitors.

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Tags: Check’em, Merchant’s, Prior, Reasons, Service, Test, Them, Working

Affiliate Summit is running a free webinar on why you should podcast on Wednesday, July 6 at 2pm EDT.

Register for 5 Rock Solid Reasons to Podcast to get five good reasons why it makes sense for you to podcast.

This webinar is being presented by Daniel M. Clark, a podcast production consultant and the founder of QAQN, a collection of informative and entertaining podcasts. A resident of the internet since 1992, he either is or has been: a t-shirt designer, an art reviewer, a system administrator, a video game designer and programmer, a blogger, an affiliate marketer, a podcaster, a space cowboy, and a gangster of love. He has, in fact, gotten his lovin’ on the run. Mostly what Daniel is right now is a work-at-home dad, raising two kids, ages 5 and 2 with his wife, Angela.

There are limited spots available, so please register for the webinar only if you can make the live event.

Affiliate Marketing Blog

Tags: Free, Podcast, Reasons, Rock, Solid, Webinar

Previously, we looked at 5 of 10 reasons why you might consider outsourcing some of your marketing to an agency. In that last installment we explored factors such as specialized expertise, bandwidth, outside perspective, education, and R&D as potential reasons to outsource.

Well, in this installment, we look at 5 more reasons you should consider outsourcing some part of your marketing to an agency. Now, whether this means outsourcing your SEO, PPC, or affiliate management is up to you to decide. After all, you know your business better than anyone else and only you can judge how much weight each of these factors carry within the context of your business.

6. Maintaining Best Practices

An agency’s expertise, moreover, goes beyond the latest and ground-breaking. It also extends to what is possible, and what’s advisable — and there’s a big difference.

For example, the laws might let you make all kinds of claims in your TV ads, but that doesn’t mean that your customers will accept you making those claims. Similarly, just because you can blast everyone with an email address in your database doesn’t mean you should.

An official Mom badge?

Consider the controversial Motrin Moms commercial. Here, Motrin tried peddling pain killers to moms by trying to commiserate with the aches and pains they get from wearing their babies. Instead, they got a backlash. If Motrin’s agency of record (Taxi of NYC) had done its job, they would’ve either advised against calling baby-wearing a fashion statement, or not suggested in the first place. It ran against best-practices insofar as it offended not only potential viewers, but the target market audience of the ad spot itself.

When you work with a credible agency, you get more than their expertise. You get their insight and experience. They’ll help you understand what’s kosher and what’s not, and that can help you carry your marketing dollars much, much further.

7. Collaboration of Competitive Advantages

So Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus had a take on Hegel’s dialectics where the thesis gives rise to an antithesis, the two collide, and the result is a synthesis. Well, working with agencies can often help you refine your marketing strategy in a similar way.

You know your industry and business, and what works and doesn’t work internally. Agencies know their channel inside out, including best practices.

But just as they challenge you to rethink your position and push the envelope, you can challenge them. They might help you learn and understand their channel, but you’ll help them learn and understand your industry.

The result will often be that both of you will end up working more efficiently. For example, just as you might revise your brand guidelines so that your ad agency can roll out an ad campaign that will actually resonate with consumers, by understanding your supplier/vendors, and competition, your SEO agency might find new and powerful link-building opportunities.

The point is that being forced to re-examine your position from a new vantage point often enriches our perspective. But when we’re forced to re-examine that vantage point from the perspective of someone with a similar goal (increasing your sales), we often discover or realize new, more efficient and profitable ways of doing business.

8. Overcome Internal Politics

Scapegoating good ideas…

One of the things that slows down many organizations is internal diplomacy. Different departments often compete for resources, and sometimes, the wrong priorities get pushed to the top of the to-do list, while revenue generating activities get pushed down the list because they haven’t even had a chance to prove themselves.

When a project is outsourced it is often freed from internal politics. An external entity is heading it up and able to plan and execute it with less interference from internal stakeholders. After all, once an agency has been contracted to undertake a project, that project has already received a fast-tracked rubber stamp.

9. Gatekeeping Projects

Just as passing some project off to an agency is like giving them a fast-track rubber stamp, involving an agency in some project creates a de facto gatekeeper for that project. Essentially, that agency has one reason for living vis-à-vis your company: to roll out that PPC campaign, ad campaign, website, etc.

Your agency has no other purpose other than to execute whatever it is you have hired them to. This means that the project will be broken down into deliverables, and those deliverables will be managed independently of the daily distraction and exigencies of running a business. So just as internal politics are less likely to slow any given outsourced project, so are all the other unforeseen hitches that suck up your internal bandwidth.

10. Culture & Skill Set

The last reason why it might make sense to outsource some part of your marketing comes down to a blend of expertise (#1) and collaboration (#7). Basically, every company has its own unique culture and excels in some special regard (even agencies).

Some apples are oranges…

This is why Microsoft hired a Mac to take over their advertising. They needed an agency that wasn’t only known for making brands hip, but one that used their competitor’s products. That’s because that would be an agency that understood the real appeal of Apple products, and could find ways to not only make Microsoft products look hip, but look hip to users that were hip and already using Apple products.

On the cultural side of the coin, it’s a no brainer: every organization is a unique blend of mandate, industry, employees, and management, and that manifests in very unique ways of doing things.

On the skill set side of things, every company maximizes productivity in different ways. For example, two competing manufacturers might have very different ways of maximizing profitability. One might minimize manufacturing costs, and the other might have a more efficient and responsive supply chain. The point is that both can probably learn something from the other.

Well, agencies are organizations that live and die by two sets of criteria: results and reporting. Agencies have to both produce results and be able to report them in a way where their value as partner is clear and evident. Different agencies also have different cultures and ways of approaching these criteria.

So not only will your marketing department learn how to better measure the performance of any given marketing activity, but they’ll gain new perspective on priorities. And that’s something that will not only better inform their internal decisions, but help them better manage the expectation of the other internal stakeholders and departments that they interact with.

To Outsource Or Not To Outsource

When it comes down to tackling any marketing channel, the first question that your business should ask itself is: how important is this channel to your core business. If it’s something you just want to test out for a bit, then hiring an agency for the short term is probably the way to go. If it’s something that promises to be a consistent source of revenue, then you’ll probably want a relatively savvy internal marketing staff providing goals and guidelines to a trusted, third-party agency that understands your business model and has a short, medium, and long-term strategy in place that you’ve approved.

However, if some channel generates the majority of your sales (or close to it), then you might want to consider having an internal team dedicated to just that channel. Here we’re probably talking more about something like SEO, PPC, or social media, than advertising. But the point is that you don’t want to outsource the majority of your revenue.

That said, you may still choose to maintain an agency on retainer for advanced projects or to take on projects where your internal team doesn’t have the bandwidth. After all, if some channel drives a significant proportion of your sales, you want to ensure that the channel is working full-steam at all times, and having a trusted and proven agency in reserve to pick up slack when your own team is overloaded is more than a marketing decision — it’s a management one.

ReveNews

Tags: marketing, Outsource, Reasons, Some

This guest post is by Eugene Yiga of eugeneyiga.com.

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour.”
—Henry David Thoreau

It happens every year. We wake up on January 1, and decide that this is the year things will finally change. But a few months later, all the gyms empty out and life goes back to normal. It’s the same with our blogs. All our intentions to finally succeed are met with nothing but more of the same. What’s up with that?

In this post, I’ll cover three reasons your resolutions are doomed to fail (assuming they haven’t already) and what you can do to avoid this:

Reason 1: You don’t know what you want

The problem here is that most resolutions aren’t specific. We say we want to grow our subscriber base or make more money but never actually define what this means. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant and say, “I think I want some food. And maybe something to drink. Or whatever.” So why do it when setting goals? We need to know exactly what we’re working toward. Otherwise we’ll keep wandering around aimlessly in the dark.

So what exactly do you want for your blog? Exactly how many subscribers do you want? Exactly how much income would you like to make? Sit down and put some concrete numbers to your goals. What’s also essential here is to attach a date. Not having a deadline means no urgency to get things done. Ultimately, if you don’t know where you’re going or when you want to get there, how can you possibly know you’ve arrived?

Reason 2: You don’t know why you want it

Once you know what you want, you need to figure out why you want it. This is probably the most important part and yet it’s one a lot of people skip. As Carl Jung said, “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”

Spend some time figuring out the motivations behind your goals. Saying you want to increase your subscribers by 20% in the next year isn’t very motivating. But discovering what achieving that will mean to you is. This is why having a mission statement for your blog is critical. For me it’s all about sharing my love for reading. That’s why everything about my new blog is focused on books. It’s also why I was particularly pleased when my first Twitter follower joined my quest to read the 100 greatest books of all time.

So close your eyes and visualize exactly what success looks and feels like. What would achieving this goal mean to you? And why does this matter so much? Getting in touch with the positive emotions of where you want to be (as well as the negative emotions of where you currently are) creates a compelling picture that will guide you day by day. Once you have a strong enough “why,” the “how” is much more achievable.

Reason 3: You don’t know how to get there

Once you know what you want and why you want it, you’re ready to get going. But most of us blindly rush out with giant leaps, installing all sorts of plug-ins, only to find ourselves exhausted and unmotivated to try again. You wouldn’t start your first day of exercise by running a marathon. Remember to take your blogging actions one small step at a time.

Schedule your life so you can do one thing every single day that takes you a little closer to your goal. Nowadays you can outsource your tasks and free up time to focus on what you do best. You can also surround yourself with the right people and a supportive environment when you subscribe to websites like Copyblogger or enrol in courses like the A-List Blogging Bootcamps.

Create healthy rewards to motivate even the slightest progress as you constantly strive to learn, adjust, and improve along the way. Most importantly, always remember why you’re working on this goal. If the reasons you created were strong enough, finding the motivation to overcome obstacles won’t be hard. Soon you’ll gather momentum; before you know it, you’ll be there.

Are your resolutions doomed?

We all have a desire for growth and development, and this must be satisfied throughout our lives. Yes, it’s scary to try for something better, but wouldn’t you rather risk failure than guarantee regret? We live in a world of tremendous opportunity. That’s why we all have the potential to be, do, and have absolutely anything. As long as we know exactly what we want, know why we want it, and know how to get there, it doesn’t have to be more complex than that.

So let’s go out and make this year a success. It’s never too late! Are your blogging resolutions in need of some tweaking? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

Eugene Yiga shares his love for reading by publishing book reviews at eugeneyiga.com. He also gives away free stuff without making you join his mailing list. Follow him on Twitter for instant updates and alerts.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Three Reasons Your Blogging Resolutions Are Doomed to Fail

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogging, Doomed, Fail, Reasons, Resolutions, Three

While there are valid complaints, search marketers shouldn’t lose sight of all the benefits of using the new Google Keyword Tool. …

Search Engine Watch

Tags: 2010, Best, Better, Google's, Keyword, Reasons, Tool

This guest post is by Jiyan Wei, director of product management for PRWeb.

Creating content on a blog is just one aspect of being a productive blogger—you’ve written the content, but now what? How are you going to promote your blog or specific posts within it?

Companies, businesses, and individual blog owners try out many tactics, but few consider using a press release as a promotional tactic for their blog. It’s an idea many blog owners simply forget about, underestimate, or don’t even know exists.

Why a press release?

1. Quality links

An external link to a website is like a vote of confidence—imagine how powerful those votes could become with targeted anchor text. Press releases with anchor-text links can help increase the authority of your blog in search engines, whether in the release itself, or reused in original content by an influencer. Not only are you using targeted anchor text, but you also gain domain authority from websites that your blogging competitors who aren’t using press releases may not have.

Remember not to fall into the trap of overdoing your links in press releases. Include too many links, and it’s obvious to the reader and to search engine robots what you’re trying to do. The reader will be put off by too many links and feel advertised to, while the search engine bot will recognize that the document contains way too many links and won’t value them highly. The links in press releases can be powerful, but only if they’re used when necessary. My recommendation (conventional wisdom) is one hyperlink for every 100 words.

2. Exposure to media

Press releases are still a format that’s preferred by mainstream media, so promoting your blog through press releases may grab you an inquiry from a mainstream media outlet. The media will be looking for something unique, so promote the most eye-catching or attention-getting content on your blog (or even your blog itself).  Even if media don’t write up the story from your release, if that release exposes an influential journalist to your blog and they become a subscriber, they could easily write about you later on.

3. Qualified traffic

Releases from the major wire services which have large channels of distribution will send your blog fresh, niche-specific traffic. The larger the site, the more channels and categories of distribution there will be (which is what you receive with the paid wire services vs. the free). Remember, press releases reach a community of influencers. Journalists and other bloggers from your niche could see your release and send you highly targeted traffic as a result. This is also the power of the new direct distribution model—it gives you the ability to create your own audience.

4. Influential subscribers

The days of actually visiting a site to obtain information are long behind many of us, and the best press release distribution services have kept up with the evolving demand for content. Since categories are prevalent in large distribution sites, web savvy influencers subscribe via RSS based on their interests. By promoting your blog to an audience that’s already using RSS, and sharing your feed within the release, you can increase your subscriber base of influencers significantly.

5. Search engine exposure

Press releases can rank well in major search engines, providing a great entry point for a new niche blog. Sometimes just one highly optimized press release is all it takes to get on the first page of a search engine for a competitive term, drive consistent organic traffic, and creating increased awareness about your blog.

Release resources

New to press release writing?  These resources will help you get started:

• Press Release Writing Tips From the New York Times
• Press Release Writing Tips (From Journalists)
• 5 Tips for Writing a Great Press Release
• Press Release Writing Tips And Resources
• Five Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses

Jiyan Wei is director of product management for PRWeb, leader in online news distribution and online publicity. For more tips on using press releases, follow @PRWeb on Twitter.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

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Tags: Blog, Press, Promote, Reasons, Releases