Blogging eBook

Communication of all types in the last 25-years has undergone vast changes. At that time cumbersome letter writing, with it’s associated slow delivery times, was still a mainstay of business communication, while the words blog, blogger and blogging did not exist.

Jamie McIntyre - Author

Fast forward 25-years and letter writing has been replaced by virtually instantaneous email communication to all parts of the world, while blogs and blogging have become an important part of both business and personal communication.

Blogging allows people to freely express a view or opinion on any topic and to receive feedback from a wide range of other people from all over the world, while at the same time promoting and raising awareness of a business or cause. Blogging also has the capacity to earn money for people who create a blog. The amount of money might be little more than coffee money for some people, while others have become multi-millionaires from their blogging activities. In this book I explain what blogging is and how readers can make six figures blogging. I also look closely at how some people have made millions from blogging and what their success secret is. “A blog is what all “websites wanted to be” updated on a regular basis, contains content that is of interest to a select or target audience and is easy to update and change.”

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR!

What readers can learn from this book: • What is a blog?

• How to monetize your blogging

• Setting up your own blog

• How  to make a 6 figure income from blogging

• Blogging for money • Generating  more hits to your blog • Overcoming blogging problems • Blogging  in the future

• How to easily get started within days • Does Facebook pay you to blog ?

• What to blog about and how often

Jamie McIntyre, CEO of 21st Century Education Jamie McIntyre has been featured in:

www.21stCenturyEducation.com.au

RRP $19.95

21ST CENTURY PUBLISHING

Every reader qualifies for the following DVD Pack Visit www.FinancialEducationPack.com.au

ST

EDUCATION

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR BY JAMIE McINTYRE

By Jamie McIntyre

“It doesn’t matter who you are, a business owner or have a corporate career, trades person or stay at home mum. Everyone should have a blog and be building up a following. Blogging and the Internet is how most of us will derive an income from in the future, so its best to be ahead of fast moving trends or risk missing out on a lucrative career choice.”

21 CENTURY

First published January 2013 Published by 21st Century Publishing Los Angeles Office Watt Plaza Business Center, 1875 Century Park East, Suite 700 Century City CA 90076 Web: www.21stcenturyeducation.com.au www.21stcenturypublishing.com.au Copyright 2013, 21st Century Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: McIntyre, Jamie How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum ISBN 978-1-921458-62-0 Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press For Wholesale Discounts or Reorders e-mail [email protected] 21st Century Education Level 9, 222 Kings Way, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Phone 1800 999 270 Fax +61 3 8456 5973

Disclaimer - Important Information This information has been prepared to provide general information only. It is not intended to take the place of professional advice and you should not take action on specific issues in reliance on this information. In preparing this information, we did not take into account the investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs of any particular person. Before making an investment decision, you need to consider (with or without the assistance of an adviser) whether this information is appropriate to your needs, objectives and circumstances. Risk Disclosure: Past results in no way indicate nor guarantee future results and results may vary for individual investors. The figures shown are examples only and should not be used as a guide to purchasing a property. One should fully carry out appropriate due diligence and vest themselves of any necessary professional advice.

Other books by Jamie McIntyre The 21st Century Publishing range of books by Jamie McIntyre includes: WHAT I DIDN’T LEARN AT SCHOOL BUT WISH I HAD WHAT I DIDN’T LEARN FROM MY FINANCIAL PLANNER BUT WISH I HAD WHAT I DIDN’T LEARN FROM GOOGLE BUT WISH I HAD WHAT I DIDN’T LEARN FROM MY FINANCE BROKER BUT WISH I HAD THINK AND GROW RICH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY TIME RICH - HOW TO HAVE A MILLIONAIRE’S LIFESTYLE INSIDE 12 MONTHS WITHOUT NEEDING TO BECOME ONE 101 LESSONS I LEARNT FROM RICHARD BRANSON 101 LESSONS THE WORLD CAN LEARN FROM STEVE JOBS INVESTMENT LESSONS LEARNT FROM WARREN BUFFETT LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM DONALD TRUMP LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM MARK ZUCKERBERG & FACEBOOK LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM OPRAH WINFREY 101 WAYS TO IMPROVE AUSTRALIA HOW TO BUY TEN PROPERTIES IN TEN YEARS AND MAKE $10 MILLION HOW TO BECOME A BITCOIN MILLIONAIRE

Foreword Blogging is one of the greatest marketing and engagement devices ever invented! If you want to become involved in blogging or have a blog of your own, or multiple blogs, then this book is for you. Many people think that the money to be made from blogging is mere coffee money. However, as you will read in this book many people have become multi-millionaires through blogging. Most people aged forty and over have a problem understanding the high tech world of twenty first century communications. As recently as the early 1960’s vast numbers of Australians had to connect all their phone calls, including local calls, through an operator at the local PMG telephone exchange. (PMG or Post Master General was the forerunner of Telstra). There was no such thing as STD (subscriber trunk dialing) for phone calls to rural or interstate areas (trunk calls); these also had to be connected by an operator. How times have changed since then. We had the introduction of staggeringly expensive fax machines the 1980‘s; these are now ‘old technology’ and have been abandoned in favour of email and can be purchased new for little more than $100. In the last twenty-five years with the advent of computers we have seen vast improvements in communications all over the world. The speed at which we can communicate with people anywhere in the world is staggering. A key part of modern day communication includes blogging, whereby people can express an opinion on virtually any topic as soon as a blog is posted. Blogs have quickly become accepted as a major form of communication. Blogs are widely utilised and accepted as an essential part of daily business communication and marketing by individuals, businesses, corporations and major newspapers to communicate their message, and most importantly to generate feedback and to engage with their client base and potential customers. Whether you are looking at helping others by sharing your knowledge, sharing your opinions and thoughts, or making one of the most successful blogs in the entire world, anything is possible if you put your mind to it. It might seem obvious, but the bottom line for bloggers who generally want to make money from their blogs is, you have to sell something on your site to make money. Another key point for bloggers to be very mindful of is, just half of blogging is writing, and the other half is marketing.

For readers who may not be familiar with me or my 21st Century Education companies, or the many other books I have written, I am the founder of a dozen companies turning over $40 million annually in diverse fields such as education, finance, media, real estate, software and publishing. I have written more than twelve books, to benefit people wishing to have a financial education and become financially independent, across a broad range of topics including property, finance, share trading, how to have a millionaire lifestyle and ways Australia could be improved. A recent series of books covers business and life lessons that can be learnt from people such as Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson, Apple founder Steve Jobs, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, real estate mogul and TV host (“you’re fired”) Donald Trump and weight lifter, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzennegger with more to follow. I have hosted people such as Sir Richard Branson, Eddie McGuire, Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Bouris, Arnold Schwarzennegger and other leading entrepreneurs and investors at my annual 21st Century Financial Education Summits which attract upwards of 6500 people. Jamie McIntyre, November 2013

Contents Foreword 1.

The 21st Century Belongs To The Rise Of Bloggers

2.

What Is A Blog?

5

Understanding Blogs 6 Early Bloggers? 8 The Impacts and Achievements of Blogs Blogs by Media Type 9

8

Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout Live blog 10 The Benefits of Blogging for Business 11 Reaching New Customers 11 Using Blogs to Develop Brand or Personality 11 Gathering Feedback, Reviews and Testimonials 12

3. Setting Up You Own Blog

13

How much does it cost to set up a blog? Pay attention to your blog’s layout 15 The most popular blogging topics 17 Current popular blog topics 17 Monitor Influencer Social Channels Measure Your Tweet Impact 20

19

What Makes A Successful Blog? 21 Blogging Strategies For Success 21 What makes for blogging success? 22 Seven Proven Blogging Strategies 23 Suggested blogging apps Blogging Case Study 25

4. Blogging For Money

24

27

How To Make Money From Blogging Analysing The ZCars Blog Success Continuous Posting 31

28 30

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1

Turning Your Blog Into A Business

33

Common Blogger Mistakes That Can Lead To Failure Turning Blogging Mistakes Into Successes 36 Publication or Posting Schedule 37 Six Pillars of a Successful Blog 37 Learn From Failures and Mistakes 40 Blogging to Launch a New Product

40

5. Generating More Hits To Your Blog Why Do You Want to Blog? 42 Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs

41

43

Use Social Media 44 Have A Clear Purpose 45 Repeat Visitors 45 Keep Visitors Coming Back to your blog for more Consider The Titles Of Your Blog Posts 47

6.

34

45

Using Blogs To Promote Your Business Promoting Services 53 Case Study - Blogging For Beauty

51

54

Key Factors to Consider When Reaching Out to Bloggers Why Start Up Companies Should Blog 55 Case Study - Dolly 59

7.

Overcoming Blogging Problems

61

No Comments from Visitors/Readers 62 Low Income/Revenue 63 Don’t Rely Only on One Source of Income 64 Focus on Building Search Traffic and Repeat Visitors Personal Privacy and Safety 65 Don’t Blog For Harassment and Defamation

8.

54

65

67

Case Studies - From Blog To Commercial Success Seth Godin 70 What Can You Learn From Seth Godin?

69

71

Japanese Hostess Takes Up Blogging and Becomes a Star Writer

76

Understanding the Market Power of Blogging From Blog To Successful Start Up 78 Why Blog-First Might Be Right For Your Startup Ten Successful, Multi Million Dollar Bloggers

9.

Blogging In The Future

77 82 82

87

Multinational Blogging - Make Your Website Multinational Do’s and Don’ts to Make Your Blog a Success 91 Conclusion 94

Index

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1. THE 21ST CENTURY BELONGS TO THE RISE OF BLOGGERS We are about to create a revolution to enable a level playing field and spread the billions in ad revenue into the hands of thousands of bloggers.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

I recently attended an internet blogging conference in Los Angeles where I witnessed first hand hundreds of people who are making a full time living from blogging and dozens more who are making in excess of $100,000 per month, let alone per year. So am I confident that others can make a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars a month from blogging. I have seen it first hand time and time again, even from total newbies as long as they have two key ingredients - a successful blogging platform to use and the correct training and skill. The exciting thing about blogging is anyone can learn the skill sets on how to become a blogger, though you may ask, “What could I possibly blog about?” My answer is anything and everything, particularly those things you are passionate about, things you have an interest in such as a hobby or sport, a cause you believe in, what you do for work, what your business does and why, your life story, your day-to-day happenings, what you eat or like to cook and so on. Anything, the choices are endless. It’s a big world out there and many people are interested in many things. We like to hear about real life stories as this is how we relate to our own lives, and why reality tv has become so popular. Thus as humans we like stories. Why? Because stories are what we learn from. For instance what is a movie or a book generally? It's usually a story. So when blogging, the more you tell your story and be as authentic and real as possible the better. As you are about to discover most people already are bloggers and fail to realise it. The problem is they are amateur bloggers and are making no money from their efforts, often because their intent isn't even to make money. This book is about how to become a professional blogger and ideally make $100,000 per annum or more. However even if you fail at that and only achieve a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand dollars a month is that still a good outcome? I would say yes.

2

The 21st Century Belongs To The Rise Of Bloggers

For those who might be running a business saying,”I don't have time to be blogging as I have a business to run.” I say wrong. If you own a business then you must be blogging. With the leading edge mobile apps and blogging platforms in existence you can blog without needing to spend a lot of time at it. As a business owner, or career minded person you cannot afford not to be blogging. If you would like to eliminate thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars currently spent on marketing then blogging can provide a solution. I personally run a group of companies turning over as much as $40 million per annum and our ad budget for advertising is virtually zero. Why? Because blogging to build up a community and database, and then keeping your community updated and growing is the future of marketing in the 21st Century. It is also the future of media as well. Blogging is, and will, reshape the way we communicate and the way we access media and the way we grow companies and the way most of us will derive our income in the 21st Century. Never in the entire history of time has there been so much wealth and abundance available for the average person to generate and transform their financial lives. We are living in the richest time ever in history. If you are not rich yet then I suggest you decide right here,right now, to leave poverty and poverty thinking behind. You are about to discover a whole new world that can reshape your life and your finances and career forever. This book will show that it is now possible to monetize your blog without having anything to sell. Let me explain.

3

2. WHAT IS A BLOG? One of the best business marketing tools is a blog. Blogging is a major part of my business and marketing plan.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Did you know that successful blogging has created a number of multimillionaires, who in many instances sold their blogging business to huge technology focused corporations? Blogging is a computer and technology age way of life for many individuals as well as businesses and corporations. A blog is a discussion or informational site published on the world wide web (www) consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first).

Why is a Blog called a Blog? The word blog appears to have originated from the term Web Log. A blog can be defined as a type of website or part of a website often maintained by someone making regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. A blog is a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Understanding Blogs Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format forms a large part of a blog.

When Did Blogging Commence? The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990’s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users. A recent survey showed there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. 6

What Is A Blog?

Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common web sites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, and became more popular with the nearsimultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools. Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently “multi-author blogs” (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, interest groups and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other. It is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. Blogging can be seen as a form of social networking. Bloggers not only produce content to post their blog, but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers. Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries; others function more as online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines texts, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to it’s topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. There are many different kinds of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written. Personal blogs are an ongoing diary or commentary written by an individual. Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content - which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media - on the Internet.

7

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many and has captured the public imagination. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules.

Early Bloggers An early milestone in the rise in importance of blogs came in 2002, when many bloggers focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond. Lott praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott’s critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond’s presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. Though Lott’s comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as a majority leader.

The Impacts and Achievements of Blogs The impact of many stories created by bloggers gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts are blogging, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis.

8

What Is A Blog?

Corporate and Organizational Blogs A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities.

Blogs by Genre Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political issues, health, travel, gardening, house and home, fashion, projects, education, niches, classical music, quizzing and legal blogs. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs.

Blogs by Media Type A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog, or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumbleblogs. Fairfax Media provide good examples of these with their coverage of Test Cricket, Royal Shows (“Join in as we travel round live blogging on the opening day of the Sydney Royal Easter Show) and the Bathurst 1000 car race among other blogs.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout Live Blog On the weekend of the Bathurst 1000 V8 Supercar race in October 2013 Fairfax Media set up a live blog with up to fifteen colour pictures.

The blog read in part, “Drive is live from Mount Panorama as the V8 Supercars battle it out for pole position. “11:56am: Welcome race fans to Fairfax Media's live coverage of the 2013 Bathurst 1000. I'm Stephen Ottley and I'll be here trackside at Mount Panorama today and tomorrow to bring you all the action as it happens. I've got a few things to give away so we'll play some trivia and if you have any questions email them to [email protected] and I'll do my best to get them answered. “The final practice session has already finished for the day so now the teams have turned their attention to the race - except for the 10 drivers in this afternoon's Top 10 qualifying shootout. I'll bring you live coverage as the 10 drivers fight it out for the glory of pole position at 5pm. “In the meantime you can read our form guide for the race here.” Of course there are many other sporting blogs - in fact most sporting codes have at least one: the more important and popular the sport, the more sophisticated the blog.

Blogs By Device Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. 10

What Is A Blog?

Reverse Blogs A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write.

The Benefits of Blogging for Business There are a wide range of benefits for businesses that use blogs for promotion and marketing. A blog is an additional tool that is not only capable of reaching new customers, but can also build a dynamic community which exchanges information, solutions, reviews and opinions about a business and its products, services and reputation.

Reaching New Customers For a business, the ultimate use of a blog must be to reach and gain new customers. Using a blog as a key element of an online marketing and promotion initiative gives a business a chance to reach new customers, and to present a new business face to your existing customers. The interconnected nature of social media, where a single customer can share an experience with their own network, presents opportunities to reach many more people. Also, the dynamic nature of a blog, which is always being refreshed and updated, helps achieve higher Internet search result rankings, which in turn attracts new customers.

Using Blogs to Develop Brand or Personality The personal nature of blogging, and the ability to generate online conversations and interactions, allows a business to develop and project a personality, or specific traits, such as being innovative, or focused on customer service. Such characteristics, however, need to be defined and managed through clear planning to ensure consistency over time.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Blogging To Catch Out Political Rorts In October 2013 Fairfax Media reported, “An investigation by blogger Stephen Murray uncovered that Senator George Brandis had spent $12,808 of taxpayer money on publications between July 2009 and December 2012. “Along with newspapers and law reports were books on Byzantium, the Tudors and the Spanish Civil War, as well as biographies of Stalin and Trotsky and the author Christopher Hitchens. The explanation from Brandis bordered on the absurd. He said he was billing taxpayers for the fictional political thriller The Marmalade Files because it was a thinly veiled account of real events in which he was involved.”

Gathering Feedback, Reviews and Testimonials Blogs and readers comments are a key source of information for your business and for other readers and customers. Reader comments, and particularly customer comments, provide detailed and immediate feedback on your business activities, products and services. Positive feedback gives confidence to other potential customers, while negative feedback gives you the chance to respond to concerns, defend your product/ services or improve your business processes.

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3. SETTING UP YOUR OWN BLOG As the blogging industry has matured, it seems like there are fewer and fewer gems to read. Or are there more, that are lost in the chaff?

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Plan to Write Your Blog in a Tone Appropriate to Your Blog Topic The most important part of any blog is what you have to say and how you say it. People will inevitably return to your blog if the subject you write about and the style in which you write it appeals to them. Keep it personable so as to invite interaction through blog Encourage comments and links back to your blog from other bloggers who like what you write.

Choose a Niche Market and Domain Name If you are setting up a blog with the intention of making money, you need to find a profitable niche. Let’s assume that you have identified selling a range of carved wooden statues as a potentially profitable niche. A possible search term that someone might use for carved wooden statues might be “carved wood”, or “wooden statues”, so an appropriate domain name would be “carvedwoodenstatues.com”. You can check domain name availability at Hostgator.com or other similar sites, and you can also register and purchase your domain name there.

Choosing Blog Software There are a number of popular blogging software available, including Blogger and Wordpress. Wordpress is very simple to use, and it has many powerful features including plug-ins and web template system that uses a template processor. See the end of this chapter for some suggested blogging apps

How Much Does It Cost to Set Op a Blog? Apart from the cost of registering a domain name and possibly purchasing some dedicated software, there should be no other costs involved when you set up your blog. To be a very successful blogger though you will need to invest a lot of time researching and understanding other blogs.

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Setting Up Your Own Blog

Consider your writing style. If you are used to writing in a technical, academic, or formal way, blog writing might come as a bit of a shock. Blog writing style tends to be more conversational, peppered with a lot of your own opinion (however outrageous), and above all, it needs to be interesting. The writing style best suited for you will come down to the content of your blog and its likely readership. Clearly, a blog that is more technical in nature can carry more technical writing but even then, your readers will want you to break down the latest techno-whizz gadget to terms that they can understand and digest quickly. Be careful to avoid preaching at your readers. Your blog readers are looking for you to meet with them eye-to-eye, not to sermonize, scold, or seem superior to them. Treat them as equals. Expect to be humble and to share foibles that each of us experiences in daily life. A sense of humor and humility are always important for a good blogger. Political blogs can easily become bogged down in angry rants or intolerant tirades if you wear your heart on sleeve without involving your head. Seek to maintain a serious tone in such blogs without resorting to name-calling and deprecating comments. Be very careful when cursing. If your blog suits or encourages cursing and the occasional swear word and makes great sense in the context, then go ahead and use it. However, a blog peppered with abusive commentary and little else than cursing will put readers off. Letting off steam is one thing, being a swear-o-holic is quite another. Remember, cursing all of a sudden when you have never done so before will probably lose some of your readership.

Pay Attention To Your Blog’s Layout Carry out a lot of in-depth research on this to find what works best. Use the lessons others have already learned; some key things to get you started include:

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Genre: Generally it pays to stick to one genre per blog if you are an individual. Unless you have an amazing knack, readers are likely to be less enthused by a blog that combines everything from political opinions, literature, movie reviews, and second hand furniture all in the one blog. The exception is for instructional sites that put themselves out into the blogosphere with a mix of writers writing across different fields. If you want to spread yourself more broadly, there are two avenues - either have a variety of blogs if you have the time to maintain them, or dedicate one blog to the "selfintrospective" stuff for a hobby and maintain another serious single genre or topic blog separately, with an eye to making it popular with readers. Length of posts: There is no hard and fast rule because it depends on the content, the quality, the message, and the audience. Much has been written about brevity being important, but so is getting the full picture where this is warranted. Bear in mind that most online readers have fleeting attention spans, judge length by how your readers respond, the utility of your information, and the subject matter. Consider mixing up lengths of posts, to give readers a break in between lengthy and erudite ones! Layout: Headers are useful; subheadings help break up large topics and pictures and give the eyes a rest. Block quotes can work well, and leaving space allows the reader to feel relaxed, not rushed or overwhelmed. Try to use short paragraphs, no matter the length of the post. Use bolding to draw out important points and to capture the attention of the reader (bolding also interests the search engine but that's another matter). Frequency: Too few posts and people may think you have moved on; too many and you will wear readers out – remember that they have other things to read and do! Reader and writer burnout is a real issue when you over-post, so think through carefully what works best for you. Keep in mind the reality that Search Engines like frequent regular posts.

16

Setting Up Your Own Blog

Editing: Never underestimate the importance of checking your spelling and grammar. Your expertise in the blog content won't shine if your spelling is questionable. Revise: Cut it out if in doubt and say it with less. The polishing aspect can sometimes take longer than the original write-up but it's worth the effort to ensure that your readers remain engaged.

The Most Popular Blogging Topics You may be struggling to come up with blog posts that attract the right type of visitors, and unsure where to turn for new article ideas. Your social connections may help you discover the topics that will perform well on your business blog. Here are four easy steps to help you find great topics that will resonate with your audience simply by looking within your social networks for inspiration.

Current Popular Blog Topics Personal Improvement Blogs People in our high powered, modern society have to work more and get less time to think. Thinking and learning is an important aspect of self development, it is also essential for professional success. A blogger writing about such topics will have the opportunity to build readership in quick time as many people will be interested in a regular dose of self development that they do not have to think about for. Making Money With Online Blogs Making money online is becoming popular these days. This trend is supported by increased awareness and also the growth in good online opportunities for a person to earn money from the web. A blogger writing about this topic will gather serious readers. People nowadays do not only think of earning money but also think of growing money by applying numerous financial management ideas. Professional financial management advise that includes investment tips and guidance, insurance advice etc. is a need people busy have in earning money and having less time to study these topics. Blogs relating to wealth improvement offer great 17

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

opportunities for a blogger to earn more money due to the high paying advertisers in this category. Online Shopping Blogs Think about the growth online shopping has shown and is supposed to show in future. Online shopping is still something new for many users in the world and a blogger writing an online shopping guide will be always needed. Writing about great money saving, value for money offers and other attractive deals will always be popular. Travel, Leisure and Lifestyle Blogs The life of people throughout the globe is becoming full of stress and a solution to this problem is to spend a part of income on leisure, lifestyle and traveling. A travel guide blog has the potential to be great resource. Fashion Blogs Fashion blogs are very popular on the web and fashion is always in trend and it can be worked along with current ideas. People across the globe are always wanting to learn new things about the latest developments in fashion. Internet Technology Blogs about blogging and social media Many people have a need to learn about the Web. Huge numbers of people using the Internet are not familiar with the basics and concept of the Internet. A blogger writing about Internet resources, social media and blogging will always be searched. Bear in mind though, this is a high competition blogging topic. Educational Information Blogs Students are the most regular users of Internet, and the Internet is a great resource for students for many things. A blogger writing about educational things will be always popular. In future the trend of students using the Internet will most certainly increase. Technology Blogs about Mobile Phone Gadgets and Devices

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Setting Up Your Own Blog

Technology is the all time popular topic on the web. There is considerable scope for bloggers writing about mobile devices and gadgets and devices of being found on the web as these are trending topics these days and will continue to be so.

Monitor Influencer Social Channels Not all blog post topics are created equal. A great topic immediately catches readers’ attention with a snappy headline that speaks to their needs and conveys an obvious value proposition to them. One of the easiest ways to find out which topics have this type of impact is to find articles that are performing at a high level for the big brands and leaders in your industry or niche. To do this, identify influencers within your industry and monitor their Facebook and Twitter feeds to find posts and updates that attract an unusually high level of engagement. Take a hint from your community The topics that are popular for influencers might not resonate with your readers. Instead of following in big-brand footsteps, ask your followers what they would like to read about on your blog. Bear in mind that questions like, “What do you want me to write about next?” are too broad. Instead ask a specific question to help readers give you an answer you can work with, such as, “Which of these do you struggle with most on Facebook - creating ads, using insights or creating custom tabs?” To ensure your topic is tailored to the needs and interests of your target customers, create blog posts based on your readers’ feedback. Check your top posts on Facebook One way to determine whether a topic is of interest to your target audience is to research your top posts on Facebook. The Facebook insights program compiles data on how well your individual Facebook posts are performing based on their overall reach, the number of users who have engaged with the post, the number of people talking about it and the post’s overall virality.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Find common factors in different entries in your top post list on Facebook and use them as inspiration for a single blog post topic or a series of articles on your blog. You can also use this data to identify topics that don’t resonate well with your audience, and remove them from your content plan.

Measure Your Tweet Impact If your marketing efforts are geared more towards Twitter, you might choose to use a tool such as Sprout Social to find out which of your tweets have had the biggest impact on your target audience. Sprout Social’s bloggers could use this information to conclude that the topic of integrating social media into sales is of particular interest to their company’s followers. This insight could then be spun into a series of blog post tutorials that are practically guaranteed to capture the attention of their readers. These are not the only ways that your business can use information derived from social channels in order to develop successful blog posts, but they do represent a great place to start. Pay attention to what the influencers in your industry are saying and consider asking your followers for feedback on what topics your blog should cover. Then as you share posts generated using these techniques on your social channels, use Facebook Insights, Sprout Social or similar social media monitoring programs to see which topics stick and which ones fail to attract interest. Good business blogging is all about flexibility and commitment. Make it a priority to invest in writing about the topics most likely to appeal to your target audience and you will see sustained growth and increased profits.

What Makes A Successful Blog? A simple answer is a good blog is one that people want to read and talk to and blog to others about. It is one that people are enthusiastic about and look forward to reading and interacting with, and one that they tell others about.

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Good blogs must have a voice. It’s not an easy thing to do without writing for a long time. It's easy to fall back on the easy solution of writing formally, but with no spirit. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. Bloggers who are extremely knowledgeable about a specialised field, or are just weirdly obsessed with it will usually produce interesting content. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Use paragraphs; any readers eyes will hurt reading continual unbroken text. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. This is almost a golden rule. Readers should be so excited to read your blog, and so energized that they want to try to emulate you. So clean up your messy writing, try a little harder and get your readers excited!

Blogging Strategies For Success A common mistake start-up bloggers make is to attempt to replicate the success of large, visible websites like Mashable. This fails because you are not Mashable. You can’t invest $4,000 in a single post, you don’t have a staff of writers, editors, PR people, and so on. You don’t have the network, or the prominence. While researching this book and exploring the nuances of excellent blogging, I have come across vast amounts of blogging advice. Are there fundamental rules of blogging that apply equally to everyone? Of course and there are some fundamental first principles that apply! First principles are hidden rules of everything, that you cannot afford to ignore, like the laws of physics. First principles also show you what you can afford to ignore. In many instances, both in life and blogging, it can be hugely liberating to realize that you can afford to ignore a lot of good advice, so long as you focus on the essentials. Instead of copying successful bloggers, learn from their examples. You can also, learn from unsuccessful bloggers’ examples, which can be even more helpful.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Successful bloggers do what all of us do when asked how we became good at something. They search for answers and say something like, “A combination of work, skill and luck.” Which of course is true, but not helpful.

What Makes for Blogging Success? Blogging success can be defined as making a huge impact in the lives of a very large and devoted readership. There are many blogs with from 10,000 to over 1 million regular readers, with a successful business or career that is related to their blog topics. Another great measure of success, for you, is whether you love the blog or not. Just in case you conduct a similar study on your own. Ask the right questions. When reverse-engineering success, I have always found it helpful to look at the outliers, the people who apparently had everything going against them, and yet they succeeded. Who are the people, who started with nothing, and still built an incredibly large audience and a super successful business with full-time responsibilities? What did they do differently than everyone else? We can learn quite a lot from some of these “one-in-a-million” breakout bloggers. These single-author bloggers all avoided doing what most people do. They operate nothing like Mashable. They took their own path, and stuck to it, even though it was different. These bloggers had a single, simple core strategy that they stuck to from the start. And each of their strategies had common elements which I believe are fundamental laws or first principles of blogging.

Seven Proven Blogging Strategies The following bloggers have remarkably simple strategies, which have remained remarkably consistent for years. I am convinced that the simplicity, consistency and persistence of these strategies is what has made them so extremely effective. 1. Experiment with a topic that answers a question your readers have, then tell the story of the results. It can work for most people. Following it 22

Setting Up Your Own Blog

automatically will help you avoid the biggest traps that come with blogging. 2. Create great content, wonder at something that fascinates you, and invite others to wonder with you. Every blogger should do something besides blogging, and this strategy is perfect for those who approach their work as an art. 3. Assemble the best answers from experts to one big, relevant question. Then provide a link and credit to every author. This blogging approach is perfect for those drawn to academic life, but who want a broader impact. 4. Invite experts in your subject to share their expertise with your audience. Ask great questions and shut up. 5. Live a story you choose for yourself that is so courageous and hopeful that ‘the right people’ just have to talk about it and the wrong people have to disparage it. Blog your story as it unfolds. 6. Observe the world with open eyes in every waking moment, learn by analogy, carry a notebook, write down as many insights as you can, and publish the best insight in your field of expertise on a daily basis. This is a long-term strategy, and a great way to build personal authority that isn’t tied to any specific business. 7. Become a personality. Bring incredible passion, personality and conviction to your subject and entertain as well as inform. By studying others, you can highlight your personal bias toward methods you prefer, even though some methods you don’t like may be equally or more effective. It is good practice to look at what works and try to figure out why it works, rather than labeling it right or wrong. Pick a single strategy that plays to your personal strengths. Just one. Two different strategies is not much better than no strategy. Whatever you choose, adopt a proven strategy to yourself and make it your own. Don’t be afraid to try a different strategy if one does not work for you. You will only know by giving it your best effort.

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When blogging remember that you have to be real and be human, you have to reach out to others, you still have to work passionately and consistently, and you still need to help others before you help yourself. You will also have to tailor any strategy you adopt to your unique strengths, with practice.

Being Part of a Network “The main benefit of being part of blogging network is the set of links from other blogs on the network which helps with Search Engine rankings. My blog would not have anywhere near the amount of search traffic it has if it were a stand-alone blog.”

Suggested Blogging Apps Blogger (Free) iPhone, iPad, Android If you are a Blogger user and don't want to use one of the better third-party apps, the official app from Google will cover the bare basics. You can add new posts, insert pictures and switch between blogs (if you have more than one), but don't expect it to replace the browser version, as you can't moderate comments or do anything fancy with layouts or formatting.

Wordpress (Free) iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone Wordpress' official mobile app has many advantages over Blogger. Not only is it available for every smartphone and tablet platform, but it also has a range of powerful features for updating and managing your blog on the go, including comment moderating, Jetpack stats and post scheduling. There's also a preview mode so you can see what your post looks like before you publish it.

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Tumblr (Free) iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone Tumblr's official mobile app has an excellent user interface and a step-by-step wizard that guides you through setting up a new blog and makes it extremely accessible for first-timers. There is also an option to find friends that are using the service, and you can keep up to date with their Tumblr blogs through the Home tab.

Blogsy (under $10) iPad If you do most of your blogging from an iPad, Blogsy will suit you. It supports all the major blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and TypePad, and the breadth of functionality is very similar to what you would get in the desktop blogging interface. A particularly smart feature is the ability to drag and drop images, videos and URLs from certain websites into a post.

Posts (Free) iPad The Posts app is a worthwhile alternative to the official apps for WordPress and Blogger. It supports both of those blogging platforms. It has a surprisingly rich set of features and an easy-to-use interface, with support for multiple blogs, rich text and HTML editing, and offline content management.

Blogging Case Study One blogger posted this insight, “In February 2005, I started blogging to promote and market my professional service firm. And what still amazes me, it worked and worked well. Blogging gives even a small marketing budget business the opportunity to position themselves as an authority on their particular area. “What I hear often from businesses and others looking at blogging and using a blog is how do I get started. Frankly, it has never been easier to gain a web presence then is it today.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

“Blogging is also one of the original social media tools and remains in my opinion, still one of the best social media tools. I have stated in the past, ‘“blogging was social media before social media even knew it was social media.”’ Another blogger posted “For a large part of the life of my blog it has made much less than $40 per day. I've regarded the time spent before now as an investment which is starting to pay off and which should give quite a good effective return over the next few years.”

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4. BLOGGING FOR MONEY. TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS What is the secret of successfully turning what is essentially an online journal into a viable business?

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

What is The Secret of Successfully Turning What is Essentially an Online Journal Onto a Viable Business? It is the result of creating compelling content, nurturing a community of readers, and forming the kind of partnerships that are likely to generate revenue.

How To Make Money From Blogging Blogging has undergone something of a revolution in the past few years on many fronts. The number of people blogging has exploded, the number of tools and services available for bloggers has risen (and their quality has been raised incredibly) and the profile of blogging in wider culture has increased also. Along with these developments has been an increase in focus upon making money from blogging. This is a trend that is happening across all levels. You are not alone if you want to make money from blogging. Increasingly bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having a part time job to get through university, or whether they have got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers who make money blogging. One Sydney based company encourages people to write blogs for them after they allocate them their own domain name on their server. The company has more than 17,000 blogs on their server and charges for advertising on their site and ads are allocated to suitable blogs. When an agreed number of hits have been made to the blog the company shares the advertising revenue with the blogger. Hundreds of people have been attracted to write blogs for this major blog source with the possible benefits of maximum exposure, the chance to raise their profile and income creation. Blog writers receive 50% of the Google Adsense profit from ads delivered to their post pages. Bear in mind that if you choose to blog for pay, blogs can take some months to make any appreciable money - just like any other business.

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A second method of payment or additional payment involves editorial stars. This system evidently is designed to encourage good quality posting from its members. Factors taken into account when considering a post for an editorial star include the quality of the writing, originality (has it been covered on their blog site previously), length of the article, and the amount of effort put into research. Stars are more often allocated to posts which cover topics of broad appeal that will attract daily readers such as breaking news, features on current events, and entertainment news. When the blogging company disperses funds, it is based on those writers who were allocated stars in the previous month. When the writer’s account reaches $200, they are paid through PayPal. This payment should always be considered a secondary pay subordinate to the greater funds that can acquired through Google Adsense. Continuous good writing, good research and a broadly applicable topic selection are key success factors. The most popular topics on this blog site are shown below, and the domain name gives some indication of the content. • www.zcars.com.au • www.horrorphile.net • www.funnyphotos.net.au • www.fashionrat.com • www.craftscope.com • www.moviecritic.com.au • www.moviecatcher.net • www.rawfish.com.au • www.phonics.net.au • www.dessert.net.au

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Analysing The ZCars Blog Success The ZCars blog was recently attracting over 20,000 individual readers a day. What can other bloggers do to apply the same techniques to their own blogs? ZCars is written by an employee of a blogging site, however there is nothing about ZCars which cannot be replicated by any Orble blogger with a domain blog. ZCars recently was generating around US$40 per day in AdSense revenue ($20 commission) for about 60 minutes of work with traffic continuing to increase. A large proportion of the ZCars traffic was from Google image searches which pays very little. Non image-search traffic amounts to about 3500 unique readers per day. Around half of ZCar's traffic comes from Search Engines (mainly Google, some Yahoo and MSN) and the rest from returning readers (email, bookmarks, type-ins) and referring sites. Each post contains an image. Many of the images have been cropped. Properly named and captioned images help attract regular Search Engine traffic as well as image-search traffic. It also makes each post so much more attractive to your readers and they are more likely to hang around and click on an advert. Each post contains an image. Many of the images have been cropped. Properly named and captioned images help attract regular Search Engine traffic as well as image-search traffic. It also makes each post so much more attractive to your readers and they are more likely to hang around and click on an advert. One of the most important factors in the success of ZCars has been the effort made to attract links from outside blogs. This has been done by creating great content (people will link to good, timely content) but also by visiting other motoring blogs and forums and leaving comments. Most sites will allow you to leave a link at the end of your comment back to your own site, as long as you are making a genuine contribution to their site with a useful or informative comment.

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Continuous Posting Continuous posting over long periods is one of the most important factors in attracting Google and other Search Engine traffic. A blog needs to have a long period of continuous posting to attract serious Search Engine traffic. One blogger recounts how for or the first five months of it's life, her blog struggled to attract many readers at all, less than 100 per day in fact. “The key is persistence,” she recounts. “The longer you blog the more of your competition drops away and the more traffic you will pick up. The last blogger standing wins.”

How Many Blogs? An interesting issue is whether it is better to post three posts per day on one blog for instance, or to post one blog per day on three different blogs. There are some bloggers who make similar amounts of revenue as some of the more popular blog sites from what they claim is about one hour per day of posting on a number of different blogs. The advantage of this approach is that all your blogs are not in one basket, while the disadvantage is that it may be harder to sell to direct advertisers once you reach sufficient traffic volumes.

Stable Topics Topics which continue to attract search engine traffic over long periods of time are known as Stable Topics. Large, well paying advertisers will only place ads on websites with very large traffic volumes and an audience that fits their target demographic.

Original Content Having lots of original text in your posts is essential for attracting Search Engine traffic. Lots of duplicate content (text which is copied from elsewhere on the web) will result in your blog being penalised by the Search Engines. Your posts should also be of sufficient length. A post requires at least 200 words on original content to have any chance of attracting Search Engine traffic, and the

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

more the better. You are better of writing one substantial post of 500 words, than 10 short posts of 50 words. Get help from friends. You might like to join a forum, like Digital Point, which is full of people looking to help each other for online business. Consider buying a system and epogram that can completely automate everything - from e-sales, e-credit, card usage and e-downloads (delivery online) to everything else that is needed to keep sales, customer info, and operate a successful business online. Choose, create and sell your own “e-product” that people will want to buy; information e-products may be quick to create and quick to market. The product that you would sell is digital and your space taken up is on your computer and on the online site hard drive. This method does not take years, nor require much help, nor take great funds to manufacture. You can create information products in as little as a day or two, post it, and begin generating revenue. You need a special topic and a computer (no stock, no mailing or counting inventory). This takes no space in your garage, house nor a store because you do not have to buy any products to sell. Create a good ebook yourself and make money by marketing that online. Create an “e-store” yourself and make money by marketing several e-products online. Sign-up for “Pay Per Click” with a site(s) where you get paid for visitors on your site clicking on other peoples’ ads to be redirected to that other site, for example. That may work by creating cookies that give you credit for sending a legitimate client. For example: Google’s Adsense program: Google will read your article that you write and find “ads that are relevant” to it and display them next to or within the article. Having very relevant ads, can be of benefit to the readers, too. Become an affiliate marketer selling someone else’s products. However, you must learn how to connect with your buyers on a more fundamental level,

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using unconventional strategies and techniques, mixed in with more conventional methods such as pay per click.

Turning Your Blog Into A Business Blogging is no longer a mere part-time hobby for people who like o play on their computers. It has morphed into an industry. One man who commenced blogging in 2002 began making a full-time income from it in 2005. While he has been involved in blogs focusing on a diverse range of topics over the years, his two main blogs recently had around 330,000 readers and almost 1,000,000 readers). He earns money from blogging through advertising, affiliate links and selling products such as ebooks. He says his first ebook generated around $70,000 in a week. One lady discovered blogging when she asked a website designer to create a website for her personal styling business, which she started around five years ago after leaving her job as a senior journalist at a regional daily newspaper. "At the time, I didn't even know what a blog was," she said. "I just wanted a website that I could update myself." She initially used her blog as a marketing tool for her styling business. When her styling blog grew in popularity she began to accept small amounts of sponsorship and advertising. "I saw that there was a whole community around blogging," she says. This "community" comprises the readers who visit her blog for styling tips and advice on fashion and beauty. She has gained such a following (around 40,000 unique visitors per month) that she has effectively become her own media channel. She recently decided to concentrate on full-time blogging, and secured a talent agent that specialises in representing bloggers. She now earns more than she did as a salaried journalist, mainly through sponsored posts, advertising and affiliate sales. Another successful personal blogger who posts about her life has won a small and highly loyal readership.

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She is represented by a blogger talent agency but says she had to fight to be recognised as a "blogger" by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). She had an ABN which she had previously used for freelance writing. However, it was cancelled because she no longer earned money this way. Then her blog took off. "I honestly never set out to monetise my blog. It's only since I signed up with the blogger talent agency, that I've started to treat my blog as a business." This blogger claims she earned more in four months as a blogger than in the last financial year, hence she asked the ATO to reinstate her ABN. Although this is usually a straightforward process, she had to endure and cope with bureaucratic stonewalling. She says a representative from the ATO informed her that it did not recognise "blogging". "I explained what I do, that I have an agent; I had to send my blog URL and explain that, these days, you can earn money from blogging. "Eventually, I supplied some invoices for some freelance writing work I did for a website. The ATO accepted that and reinstated my ABN in due course – but that was because of 'freelance writing', not 'blogging'." A spokesperson for the ATO said: "As a general principle to apply for an ABN/ ABR you must meet an enterprise test; this is irrespective of industry." According to the ATO website: "An enterprise includes a business" but "It doesn't not include private recreational pursuits and hobbies" or "activities carried on by individuals … without a reasonable expectation of profit". This blogger says she has been approached by three publishers keen to talk about a book deal. When it comes to dealing with bloggers, publishers not only see ready-made evidence of a strong writing voice, but also a community of fans who are likely to buy the book.

Common Blogger Mistakes That Can Lead To Failure Marketing gurus such as Seth Godin claim you should start marketing your work three years before you publish, while traditional publishers are encouraging their authors to blog. But there are even more roads that lead to failure. Many of the mistakes authors make when they dive into blogging are easy to avoid if you know how.

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There is nothing more depressing than coming across blogs that have been abandoned by their authors. You see the archives: lots of posts for a couple of months fading to a trickle, until there is one post left that starts with something apologetic like, “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while…” and then silence. Here are some mistakes authors make when they start blogging. If you can get these things right, you are much more likely to stick it out, find readers, and build a community you will enjoy and profit from for years to come.

Not Knowing Who You Are Writing For The most important question to ask yourself when you start blogging is “who am I writing for”? Exactly who do you have in mind that will read your articles? I don’t mean to say that you won’t discover more about your audience as it grows and learn exactly who is attracted to what you are writing about. But if you don’t know who you are writing for (your target audience), how will you know what to write and how to write it?

Not Marketing Your Blog This is all too common. Even if the author has studied blogging and has written excellent content, the biggest problem with many author blogs is that the author never markets them. Half of blogging is writing, and the other half is marketing. Contrary to what seems to be many people’s expectation, even good content does not magnetically attract hordes of readers. After all, if they don’t know about it, how can they discover, read, enjoy and share it?

Not Creating a Publication or Posting Schedule Early bloggers started out writing what were basically personal journals, so lots of authors think that writing a blog is about telling the world about their own dayto-day activities. This casual approach to blogging all too often extends to the frequency of blogger’s posts. Authors who write these “personal” blogs seem to post whenever the inspiration hits them. Sometimes weeks go by without an article, while sometimes they will post every day for a while before going dormant. 35

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A publication (your blog) intended for public consumption has to have a schedule of some kind. You wouldn’t subscribe to a magazine if you never knew when - or if - it would arrive, would you?

Turning Blogging Mistakes Into Successes For each of these failings, you can start moving instead toward success by changing the way you approach each of these areas.

Know Who You Are Writing For Nonfiction authors can research their audience and then “listen in” on their conversations. For instance, searching for online forums, discussion groups, Twitter chats, Google+ communities and other places people gather will lead you to ongoing discussions in your field. You can also research successful blogs in your field and take a look at the guest authors and the readers who leave comments to get a good idea of the audience. After all, these blogs have already succeeded in the same field, so they are a great place to learn more about your audience.

Market Your Blog The research you do on your audience is going to lead directly to the beginning of your own blog marketing. Why? All those forums, discussion groups, blogs and other places where you found your audience are the same places you are going to start marketing your own insight, expertise, knowledge and blog articles. They will also supply you with great opportunities to contribute to your community and to meet and network with other bloggers and thought leaders in your community. You will discover guest blogging opportunities, and lots of communities where you can start to become known, leaving links that will build into a steady stream of traffic to your own blog.

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Publication or Posting Schedule This is a personal decision, and it is one of the best ways to de-stress your approach to blogging. When you are new, set a schedule that you absolutely know you can stick to no matter what. If that’s once a week, start with that. As you become more proficient as a blogger, you can always increase the frequency of your posts, and that is usually a good way to increase your traffic and readership. An easy way to do this is to have specific features you publish at specific times. For instance, you can add a shorter post every Tuesday with tips for your readers. People will start to look forward to your “Tuesday Tips” posts, and you will have fairly effortlessly increased your schedule. You also can create several of these posts and use your blog’s scheduling function to schedule them all at once - another great way to maintain a publication schedule. These are some tips to help you if you are just getting started blogging or if you haven’t had the results you want. Blogging is one of the greatest marketing and engagement devices ever invented. Authors are perfectly positioned to make the most of blogging technology, and if you avoid the three newbie errors you’ll be off to a much better start. Always remember the key to blogging success: Just half of blogging is writing, and the other half is marketing.

Six Pillars of a Successful Blog Blogger Srinivas Rao provided these insights into successful blogging. 1. Purpose/Message/Mission Knowing the purpose, message, and mission behind your blog when you start is a bit of a double edged sword. If you know what this is when you start consider yourself lucky. But, you also have to be open to the possibility that it will change because building a platform is a voyage of self discovery. It’s a professional journey as much as it as a spiritual one. 37

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If you don’t know the purpose, message or mission behind your blog, don’t  worry. In many cases it reveals itself to you. If you’re a business owner you may be thinking this doesn’t apply. If that’s the case I encourage you to go back and the read what corporate blogs could learn from personal blogs.  Once you become clear on the purpose, mission and message of your content, the right people show up in droves. It’s when things go from message to a movement. 2. Email Newsletter In a world where people spend half their days on Facebook, it might seem odd that an email newsletter would be so important. Every single blogger or content creator I have ever talked to has said the biggest mistake they have made was not building their email list sooner. A book marketing strategist for a New York Times best selling author told me that emails resulted in ten times more book sales than social media. They may not see your latest status update or tweet but email gives you direct contact to your potential reader or buyer. Another thing to consider about email is that people tend to reveal quite a bit more through email correspondence because it’s private. 3. A Free E-Book/Manifesto Besides helping you build your email list, a free book or manifesto can have several other benefits. We have all had those friends who show up at our house late when we’re watching a movie and make us pause the movie to explain what’s happening. In the case of your blog you don’t have the option to pause and do this for every new reader that shows up. A free e-book gives you the option to catch the reader up on your ongoing narrative. It can also cause your ideas to spread. 4. A Product/Business Model As you build a platform you have to think about what value you are going to create in exchange for money. There is no right answer to this. It is going to be different in every case. If all you do is produce really good content and build a blog that gets a reasonable amount of traffic, that doesn’t equate to revenue.

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There is nothing wrong with packaging your content and selling it. In that case one kind of value you create is convenience. Packaging and repurposing content is how some of the world’s biggest media companies generate tons of revenue. Examples include books turned into movies, movies released on DVD and TV shows turned into boxed sets. Maybe your model is services. You might be an expert in a particular field, and your blog serves as a way to market your expertise. The bottom line is this. It might seem obvious, but you have to sell something on your site to make money. 5. Site Design In the online world people judge a book by its cover. I have seen people who have really impressive bios with terrible site design. The lousy site design made me question their credibility and lose interest in their content. Good design completely alters brand perception If you can afford to do it, hire a skilled designer. It will be one of the best possible investments you could make  in your platform. If you can’t afford to hire a designer, embrace simplicity. Use a premium wordpress theme and make the site as clean as possible. One other mistake I made in the design of my own site was designing based on what I thought would look good. A valuable lesson I learned was that you need to design your site based on the actions you want people to take. 6. Effective Self Promotion If you create something and don’t tell anybody about it, it’s kind of useless. Self promotion gets a bit of bad rap in the online world. When people hear that they go to the other extreme and don’t do any self promotion. A friend the other day told me we need to get over this idea that it’s bad to sell via social media. It’s a bit of a balancing act. If you wrote a book and think it would be of value to your followers, feel free to tweet it out once a week. Share a tip from the book, but include a link back to the book. Do the same for your services or information products. If you don’t promote your content you can’t expect anybody else to. If you don’t think it’s worth sharing why should anybody else? 39

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If you look at any successful blog, you’ll see that all these pillars are in place. Are you missing any? What could you do today to solidify the foundation of your platform?

Learn From Failures and Mistakes Rao says, “While I don’t believe much in dwelling on failures and mistakes, I do believe we can learn from them. Often other people can learn from your failures as well. By sharing these experiences we keep history from repeating itself. “Every year I like to take a look back at my blogging efforts and examine what I’d do differently if I was building my platform today. These mistakes have helped me to determine what I consider the pillars of a successful blog.”

Blogging To Launch a New Product Blogging is second nature for many online businesses and it’s a great way to spread the word about your new product launch. Consider how your blogging/content strategy will fit in with your product launch. Will you create just one blog or a series of blogs? What keywords will you include to grow your reach and your SEO? Make sure your blog is targeted specifically at your buying audience and that it reflects the values o both our company and your product. You should also consider guest blogging or pitching your blog to other quality websites/blogs with high page/domain rankings. This is great in creating ‘link juice’. You can also run a simultaneous social media campaign. Use your social media pages to maximise the influence of your product launch, and create a great campaign that will spearhead your product and bring you the results you want. Give your followers and fans an incentive to endorse or share your post or buy your product; freebies, samples, discounts or a competition are all top ideas. Create several posts that work to support your product launch and diversify your content; shake it up with blogs, press releases, competitions, images, photos and video posts.

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5. GENERATING MORE HITS TO YOUR BLOG The Internet is a great unifier, allowing you to market your brand to people around the world. Anyone anywhere can access your content so long as they have an Internet connection.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Why Do You Want To Blog? Think about why you want to blog. Do you want to blog simply to share your thoughts and opinions? Do you want to use the blog to promote your services? Do you want to sell products? Do you want to build your reputation and position yourself as an expert? Do you want to make money from affiliate products or ad clicks? The path that you take with your blog should be influenced by your purpose. For example, if you are blogging to build your reputation or to promote your services you will want to focus on providing the highest quality of content possible, together with the type of information that visitors are not getting elsewhere. If you are able to accomplish this, people will start to see you as an expert and your services will be in demand even if you are not aggressively promoting them. With a clear understanding of what you hope to accomplish with your blog, look at your blog posts as stepping stones to get you to that goal. What types of content and what topics will help you to get to where you want to be? Another important aspect that can have a big impact on helping you reach your goals is your blog theme design. If your goal is to promote affiliate products or to get ad clicks, you might want to use a simple theme that allows visitors to notice the ads. If you want to use the blog to sell products, you will want to promote those products in locations on the theme that will get attention from your visitors. If you want to position yourself as an expert in the field you will want to use a professional-looking theme, and you may want to give away something like an ebook that will help you to further position yourself. Many bloggers with this approach will promote a free ebook at the top of the sidebar or in a popup window. Probably the most frustrating challenge for many bloggers is trying to attract more visitors. Most bloggers don’t give very much thought to how they will attract visitors until after the blog has been launched and they find that not many people are visiting. Regardless of how much traffic you have, you will always want more. For new blogs this can be a discouraging problem to face, and it’s one that 42

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leads many bloggers to give up and stop blogging. Here are a few proven methods for getting visitors and bringing life to a struggling blog.

Re-Evaluate Your Posts Take a step back and look at the types of posts you are publishing to make sure that you are providing original content that is worthy of attention. What other types of posts could you try? How could you differentiate yourself from other blogs in the industry/niche? Are your posts working together to develop the style that you are hoping to achieve? Are certain types of posts having more success than others? Evaluating your own blog posts isn’t always easy, but it is necessary in order to have the best blog that you are capable of. If you can use your own insight to improve the quality of your posts or to find other posts styles or topics that will appeal to your target audience, you will be in a much better position to attract and retain readers.

Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs A favorite method of promoting a new blog is to write posts that are published on other blogs. There are many blogs looking for quality content, so getting your articles published isn’t that difficult, but it does take some time. The benefits of writing for other blogs include getting links to your blog (in the author bio), increased name recognition in your industry, a chance to improve your skills (writing for other blogs and larger audiences will force you to be at your best), and you will gain an opportunity to network with other blog owners and editors. For these reasons I think it is easily worth the time. The traffic that you will receive from guest blogging is unlikely to reach huge numbers from any one blog post, but if you are consistently posting on other blogs throughout your industry it will add up over time. The links are also great for SEO purposes, which can help to send Search Engine visitors in the future. The networking aspect is also a tremendous opportunity, as getting to know influential bloggers in your industry can lead to all kinds of opportunities in the future.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

A recommendation is to set a goal of writing one guest post per week; you can stop at any point when your feel that you have achieved your goals of increasing exposure to your audience. Take a look at other blogs in your industry and see which ones are publishing posts from several different authors, as they will be great candidates for guest posts. I recommend starting with smaller blogs to become more comfortable, as writing for a major publication with a huge audience can be rather intimidating.

Use Social Media While traffic coming from most social media sites may not be the same high quality as some other types of traffic, it is still a potential source of traffic that works very well for new blogs. If there are niche-specific social media sites that apply to your blog you should definitely take advantage of them and submit your posts. For those in the design industry, sites like Design Bump, The Web Blend, and Design Float can be excellent sources of targeted visitors. Just as importantly, it’s easier to have success with niche social media sites than it is with major sites such as Digg and Reddit, but the numbers of visitors will not be as high. Twitter and Facebook are also excellent sources of exposure and traffic, so if possible have a profile on those sites and be active. New bloggers often find that it is difficult to get votes for their content on social media sites, even if the content is of very high quality. Voting social media sites are a lot easier to have success with if you have existing traffic to your blog (and you use buttons/widgets to encourage votes) or if you have an established network of social media users who will vote for your content. One way that a lot of bloggers get votes for their content is to get in touch with other bloggers in their industry/niche and agree to help each other out with votes, tweets, or likes. This way everyone helps each other to get a little bit more exposure, and with niche social media sites it usually only takes a few votes to get your content to become “popular”.

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Have A Clear Purpose Every blog should have a clear purpose. If you are maintaining a personal blog your focus is probably just to communicate with friends and family, so you can virtually post whatever you want. However, if you are blogging for business purposes you should have an idea of what you want to get out of blogging. Many people start blogs because other people are doing it and they feel that it is important, but they don’t always know specifically why. If your blog does not have a clear purpose it will be difficult to retain the interest of your visitors. They may like one post that they stumble across, but the other content may not be of any interest to them, so they’ll stop coming back. Here are some suggestions for making sure that your blog has a clear purpose.

Repeat Visitors While getting traffic is a concern for many bloggers, repeat traffic is really what is most important to a blog’s long-term success. In order for a blog to achieve and maintain a high level of success, it must be able to build a community. The community of users are people who come to the blog on a consistent basis, hopefully they will leave comments at least occasionally, and they are also more like to share a link or vote for the content on social media sites.

Keep Visitors Coming Back to Your Blog For More Encourage Subscriptions by Email and RSS One of the best ways to get readers to come back is if they subscribe by RSS or email. Subscribers will see your content any time something new is posted, so it is very likely that they will see something they like in their RSS reader or email inbox and return to your site. You can encourage subscriptions by placing links, icons, buttons, or sign up forms in prominent locations on your blog where they will be easily noticed. Also, you may want to consider mentioning the various subscription options in a blog post. Some bloggers also give away something for free to encourage subscriptions - ebooks are popular for this purpose.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Consider Starting an Email Newsletter Another way to stay in front of your audience is to use an email newsletter to communicate with them. The newsletter can be a summary of things that you post on your blog, other short articles or tips, or really anything that will be of interest to your audience. The methods for promoting an email newsletter are basically the same as the methods mentioned previously for encouraging subscriptions.

Have a Customized Blog Theme Part of attracting repeat visitors is branding your blog and making sure that it sticks out in their mind. In the future when they are looking for information on a topic relevant to your blog hopefully you will come to mind. Branding yourself and standing out from other blogs in your niche is easier when you have a custom designed theme that is unique to you. Not all bloggers can afford a custom design when getting started, so another option is to make customizations to an existing theme to  give it a more personal feel. You could have the header customized, add a photo of yourself somewhere, change the color scheme, add a background image, or any number of things. Publish Posts on a Regular Schedule If you publish posts on a consistent schedule (for example every Monday and Thursday) you will find that visitors and readers start to expect to see something new from you, and they are more likely to come back to your site to see what has just been published. If you publish posts whenever you happen to have content ready, visitors will have no idea when something new is likely to appear. Publishing frequently (usually at least once per week) will help with building a stronger community around your site, and this will lead to more repeat visitors.

Be Consistent with Promotion In addition to posting on a regular schedule, it can also help to consistently promote your posts in the same places. If you consistently submit your posts to the same social media sites, other users of those sites will get used to seeing your content there, and be more likely to view your blog as a leading source of content 46

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in the industry. Rather than submitting each post to somewhere different, try to build some connections with other users of the sites where you are promoting your content on a regular basis.

Encourage Facebook and Twitter Interaction While social news sites like Digg used to be the most sought after source of traffic for bloggers, Facebook and Twitter are a lot more productive for most bloggers right now. If you can build a strong profile at either site you can help to keep visitors coming back to your blog as you share links to your posts at those sites. If you have a profile at these sites make sure that you are linking to it from your blog so it is easy for your visitors to find you there, and if you don’t already have profiles at Facebook and Twitter now is a great time to start.

Provide the Best Possible Content The most effective way to keep your visitors coming back is to publish great content. If your content really connects with visitors, they will want to come back in the future. All the marketing and promotional efforts you can possibly do will not make up for poor content, and even with below average promotion great content can succeed over a period of time.

Consider The Titles Of Your Blog Posts You could have the most relevant information on the topic, but if it has a boring title, it won't be read. Use headlines that draw in readers and search engines latch onto. The search engine element is an art in itself which you will eventually find yourself learning more about. Some key pointers to bear in mind include: 1. Use words that marketers use to capture attention. There are several "Top 10 English Words" lists available online used by marketers to grab attention (do a search for one). Adding words like "you" to the title may sound banal but according to marketing research, strategic use of the top 10 words can bring readers to open links to your post.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

2. Encourage comments. People will read your words of wisdom but they won't tell you what they think because the majority of people (around 99 percent) won't unless prompted. You will receive a significantly larger number of comments if you ask for them. 3. Don't close down your comments feature. It is important not to fear comments - they are a pulse on your blog, letting you know that people are responding to your blogging, whether negatively or positively. If your blog is really good, you will receive both positive and negative responses, which is ideal! 4. Make it easy for your readers to comment. Readers don't want to jump through hoops. Balance making them sign in and using CAPTCHA fixes (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") before they can say a single line with the fact that this will cause many of them to not bother at all. The fewer hurdles, the better, especially where personal information is concerned. Always end your blog posts encouraging comments by asking questions, or asking for experiences and suggestions from the reader. Respond to your commenters - without fail. Not only is that polite to the person who took the time to comment but it lets other readers know that you care and engage with them. They are looking! An obvious exception is spamming or flaming, in which case, either remove the comment (spam) as soon as possible, or let it stand on its own lack of merits flaming unless you have a witty and kind response. 5. Remove spam as soon as you can, it looks unprofessional. Invest in a way of keeping spam off - there are plenty of programs available. Find good ways to clean up spam that don't involve chasing off your genuine readers. 6. Spread the word about your blog and new posts. Use social media to the maximum. There are many platforms to choose from. Use one, or preferably, many of them. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and Tumblr are just a few.

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7. Take time to visit other blogger's blogs and leave comments with your name and link in them. Get known as someone who cares about what other bloggers are saying and creating, and they will repay the favor. 8. Encourage others to guest post on your blog. Guest posting is an excellent means for getting well-known, quality bloggers to increase the profile of your blog. Offer guest posts in return, in order to get your blog's link into other people's blogs. Guest posts increase variety for your readers. If you get well-known bloggers on your blog, this will help your readers to connect you with the guest poster, which will increase your profile. 9. Love your readers and give back to them. Show your readers that you appreciate them. Give back to them by responding to your reader's comments promptly. •

Visiting your reader's blogs if they have them. Leave supportive comments and even suggest they guest blog for you now and then.

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Facilitating your readers' interaction by using quizzes, competitions, surveys, featuring your readers, etc.

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Always provide a quality read that is of interest.

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6. USING BLOGS TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS Blogging is all about community.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

An increasing number of entrepreneurs are using blogs and bloggers to write about their products and services as part of their four P’s (promotion - the others are product, price, place) in their marketing mix. In the past, there were limited options available to business owners. You could pay for advertising, or hope that you would be given coverage in mainstream media. These opportunities were limited, often confined by the number of pages in a publication. However, the world of blogging has opened up new channels for business owners to reach their target audience. One female entrepreneur started her online shopping site with a focus on selling fashion to 16 to 26 year old women. "When I was at university I started selling my old clothes on eBay, It was a hobby but then I noticed that there was a demand for certain types of tops and dresses, so I began sourcing them and selling on eBay." She says she realised that she could make a bigger margin if she opened an online store. This is so she could avoid the fees charged by eBay and PayPal, which she used to take payment. "I used Shopify to create my online store. It was really easy. I spent the weekend uploading pictures of the clothes and then my site was ready to go," she says However, having an online store means nothing if people don't visit it and buy from you, so she implemented two key strategies: Google Adwords and blogger outreach. "I researched all the keywords and figured out which ones had the best success rate when it comes to conversions. We set a budget of how much we would spend a day. We started out with $20 a day and in due course we increased it to $40 a day." In addition to Google Adwords, she says she thought about what her target market were reading to find out more about fashion. "I know that I like reading fashion blogs, so I thought: 'Why not ask these bloggers to spread the word about my business?'" This entrepreneurial lady identifies fashion bloggers and sends them free products – mainly dresses – in the hopes they will write about her online store.

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After sending about 40 dresses to bloggers she says, "So far, all of them have ended up featuring the dresses on their blog." She claims that after being featured on a blog, the traffic to her online site sees an increase of up to five times its usual amount, as her sales revenue increases up to 50 percent every month. It's a cost effective exercise as she does not pay most of the bloggers she contacts. "However, I do pay some of the more popular bloggers," she says, adding that this payment is clearly disclosed when the bloggers writes about the item. Although still a relatively new business, her strategy is working and she says she's making enough money from the site to "live on" and she has plans to expand.

Promoting Services While sending products to bloggers is easy if you actually sell a product, can the same result can be achieved when you sell a service. One national marketing manager is reaching out to bloggers to promote a very different kind of business, "managed IT services, Microsoft products and solutions, Oracle solutions, business intelligence and mobility solutions to enterprise clients." This person is a firm believer in the influence wielded by certain bloggers. "I believe strongly, in this day and age, that powerful blogs from dedicated bloggers are often a go-to source for our key decision makers," he says, referring to CIOs, IT Managers and small business owners. “These people are often looking for technology solutions and seek product reviews written by trusted tech bloggers. "These bloggers can be more persuasive than a comparable traditional media ad campaign. Our target market get invested in the tech blogger’s story and feel like they know our brand; when the tech blogger recommends our product or brand, they trust our dedicated blogger. “You need to be strategic in choosing the right bloggers to work with. "Partnering with our dedicated bloggers is a great way for us to raise brand

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awareness — and if done right, a blogging partnership can potentially generate a significant increment of sales to us," he says. "I usually go into LinkedIn and search for the profiles of key technology bloggers, editors and journalists that will be interested to cover our press releases or feature articles. “Sometimes we can engage a paid blogging partnership. Most blogging jobs pay per post (often around 300-500 words), and have some kind of regular posting schedule. We pay $5 to $50 per post.”

Case Study - Blogging For Beauty "Bloggers have an amazing reach and the ability to speak to consumers almost anywhere, regardless of geography. Bloggers also have a unique connection with their readers – they can speak to their audiences from a position of authority, whilst still often being very approachable,” says one lady who is a fan of working with bloggers to promote her online service business that sends beauty products to people every month. "As an e-commerce business, we understand the value that bloggers represent in terms of word of mouth communication. "We are quite a blog obsessed bunch at our business. We like to keep up with ‘who’s who’ in the blogging world and reach out to bloggers who foster similar communities to ours. This makes it easy to collaborate with like-minded bloggers, open to mutually beneficial partnerships. "The most regularly occurring outcome for us is that bloggers will review our posts and promote the concept of beauty subscription to their readers. Working with bloggers is a very important part of our marketing and PR strategy, and it’s something we continue to do on a daily basis."

Key Factors To Consider When Reaching Out To Bloggers • Read blogs that speak to your target audience. If you are not clear where to find them, use Google. Search for whatever search terms best suit your industry and audience.

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• If you have a product, you might consider sending the product to the blogger for review. However, the blogger is under no obligation to write about that product if no payment is involved. • If you want to ensure coverage on a blog, consider paying for a sponsored post. • Every blogger is different. As the blogosphere is still evolving, you can expect wildly varying fees for sponsored posts. While some may only pay $5 to $50 per post, some popular bloggers can charge up to $3000 per post. The amount you pay is often a reflection of the popularity and experience of a blogger.

Why Start Up Companies Should Blog Blogging can have a huge influence and be extremely valuable to a company’s success, even if it is only a start-up. Most new companies have very limited marketing budgets. Business blogs are very easy to manage, and blogging is relatively affordable, and in many cases a free form of small business marketing. If you are knowledgeable and passionate about your industry niche, you can have a successful business blog. That’s what makes blogging such an efficient marketing tool for start-ups. As any person in business soon realises the most important resource needed for your company to be successful is paying, profitable customers. People in business soon realise they are operating in a crowded market place with many competitors in the field. So how can you cost effectively tell tour potential customers about your value proposition and your amazing your solutions? Too many startups will answer, “our company website.” However, if no one knows your website exists, you will never make the online sales you expect. A business blog provides your start-up the opportunity to engage your target audience and get the word out about your website and your solutions. You can use your blog to educate your potential customers about the ins-andouts of your industry, niche, field, products and services. Hopefully the more you

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educate, the more your potential customers will visit your blog and read your informative posts. In time, they should begin to trust your industry knowledge and experience, and view you as an expert in your industry who they can trust to recommend products and services that will make their lives easier. How can blogging help your start-up company succeed? Why do experts insist that you need to start blogging immediately? Here are some suggestions to help your start-up business commence blogging successfully as part of your online marketing strategy. Spread The Word. Blogging is an extremely affordable way to spread the word about your products and services. Blogging can be time consuming, however, that’s only because it’s vitally important that you blog about valuable topics. Your informative posts can help to attract potential customers to visit your blog. You then have their full attention to inform them how your solutions can help solve problems they are having. This is the type of information your blog visitors are more likely to share with their social media networks. Thought Leadership. Show your target audience that you are aware of issues and developments related to your niche. To accomplish this, educate your audience about market news, and add your industry leader voice to online discussions. This is a great way to establish a loyal audience, who will return to your blog regularly for more content. Blogging Can Help You Engage Your Target Audience Before The Start-Up Date. Many start-up companies make the mistake of using their blog to announce that they will be open for business soon. This is okay, as long as this is not the only content on your business blog. It may takes months for you to actually start business operations. In the meantime, your audience has forgotten all about you and your start-up date. The Gold Coast light rail project is a good example of engaging your target audience before the start-up date. After around two-years of inconvenience and disruptive road works, including noisy all night work in residential areas, a 56

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marketing campaign was commenced months before the first tram ran, greatly helping to smooth over some of the negative feeling in the community. Provide your audience with content that will entice them to keep coming back for more substance. Even before you launch, you should be keeping your target audience engaged. Remaining silent until your start-up date simply will not due. Blogging Can Help You Identify The Who And Where Of Your Target Market When start-up companies develop new products and innovative services, most have some idea of who their target market is. However, when it comes down to content marketing, this s not always the case. Blogging helps businesses understand exactly who’s interested in their solutions, industry and market. Blogging also helps you discover exactly where your market is located online. In other words, a photography studio may find that most of their target audience enjoys actual images. Therefore, they are probably more active on Pinterest and Instagram. This can be done by analyzing your blog traffic on dedicated sites. Search Engine Rankings Google rewards blogs that regularly publish high-quality, relevant content. This is because the goal is to provide searchers with links to sites that can actually answer their questions or provide solutions to their problems. Recent research shows that 44 percent of all online consumers start their shopping experiences with search engines. Thus, the more valuable the content published on your blog, the better your chances of gaining traffic from search engines. Create Valuable Backlinks High-quality backlinks are links to and from authoritative websites and high ranking blogs related to your industry. Backlinks can be valuable to any business blog. High-quality backlinks can be very effective for helping start-ups increase search engine rankings.

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Higher rankings mean showing up on the first pages of search results. This increases your chances of consumer click-throughs, which increases traffic to your blog. Industry Leadership Many start-up companies fail to create blogs because they can’t decide what they should be blogging about. However, the answer to that is usually right in front of you. The best topics to blog about are always those which the writer is passionate about. In the case of your start-up company, that would be your solutions, industry and anything related to it, such as your niche, or market. Keeping your target audience informed and educated about your industry creates a level of trust with them. They show their appreciation by engaging on your blog, and eventually, buying your solutions. Improve Online Communication Skills As in many fields, when it comes to blogging, practice makes perfect. The more quality content you publish, they better you will become. These new communication skills will trickle over into other inbound marketing efforts. Your e-newsletters, emails, sales letters, social media posts and other online marketing material will continue to evolve along with your constantly improving writing skills. Earn Market Trust As a start-up company, you are the new kid on the blog. One of your biggest online marketing challenges will be to gain the trust of your target market. This will require building your brand’s online reputation. The best approach to accomplish this is to provide your target market with helpful content related to your niche. By educating your audience, you will help to create a connection with them. This tells them that you care more about helping to solve their problems than simply getting them to buy your solutions. Consumers appreciate this non-sales approach and trust companies who follow this policy on their blogs.

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A Reference Point For Your Industry Even as a start-up company, if you write about important topics you market actually cares about and has a real interest in, your blog will succeed. In time, your blog will become a point of reference for others looking for news and other information about your industry. In due course your blog’s search engine rankings will increase to levels that will set your site up as an authoritative blog. These blogs always rank high in search results. They also become very popular places for other industry leaders to interact with each other. This, in turn, also helps to provide more valuable content for your readers.

Case Study - Dolly When Dolly magazine's editor started a blog she barely knew what a blog was. Now Dolly hardly runs anything without consulting their blog's 250,000 visitors. "The blog has allowed that relationship to be cultivated and built between myself and my readership," the editor said. "I could be talking about trivial or important things but it's that direct relationship that means I can see their fears and emotions, what they care about, what's hot and what's not, and I can roll that out in the magazine. If they think they have a voice and are being heard, that I'm taking it on board and they're taking control of the product, they're less likely to stray to our competitor." SMS and the internet are the "backbone of communication" to her target 14to-17-year-old readers. Building an online community around the Dolly brand is also an opportunity for marketers, Dolly says. "With a teen market, there is so much competition for their time and money that it makes sense to access them at every point. A sponsor event might be in the magazine, on the website and the blog and in an SMS update so advertisers get a complete package. They'll see straight through a straight sell, but if there's something in it for them like a discount on underwear, the readers say, 'Cool, thanks'."

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Readers can also sign up to a "mobile club" that distributes marketing tools such as discount vouchers. Dolly will soon roll out a more sophisticated mobile portal. "This generation will text their friends or (send a) picture message about their purchase. The power of SMS is incredible." Such was the case when 300,000 people subscribed to an SMS service notifying them of the Schapelle Corby verdict.

A Platform For a Company To Get Their Message Out There Channel Nine's Today Show editor has also looked at internet or mobile phonebased services such as traffic and weather. "When we deliver a service, it's also a platform for a company to get their message out there," he says. Matthew Costello, co-founder of mobile marketing company 5th Finger, says marketers and brands are demanding "three-screen" marketing: strategies with television, internet and mobile elements. "They know the consumer may spend time in front of the TV or flicking through a magazine, or on their phone on public transport, and they don't want to be there in a disparate and disorganised way," he says.

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7. OVERCOMING COMMON BLOGGING PROBLEMS The most effective products and services that are promoted through blogs are those that solve problems for readers.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Be prepared for complaints and negative comments, and don’t react negatively to genuine feedback. The way in which you respond to criticism, especially in conversation initiated by your blog, will have a significant impact on the way you are perceived by your followers and online community. Blogging provides anyone with the opportunity to publish content and the potential to make money. Because of this, there are hundreds or thousands of new blogs launched every day. Unfortunately, there are some significant challenges that most new bloggers face, and in many cases the challenges are significant enough to lead the blogger to give up. Here are five problems that many bloggers face, especially in the early days of their blog, and some ways that these problems can be overcome.

No Comments from Visitors/Readers It can be very frustrating to dedicate time creating a blog post, only to sit and wait for comments that never come. The interactive aspect of blogging is what draws many people to get started with their own blog, but in reality many new blogs have trouble attracting comments. If you find that your blog posts don’t usually get the attention or feedback that you had hoped for, you’re not alone. Here are a few tips to get comments flowing.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs One of the most effective ways of building an audience and attracting comments is to leave comments on other blogs. Focus on small blogs rather than industry leaders, because those bloggers are more likely to notice and appreciate the comment, and many of them will return the favor. The key is to leave intelligent comments that add something to the post or the discussion, as opposed to leaving a generic comment like “Great post!” Set aside some time every day to leave comments, and make an effort to comment at the same blogs several times so that the bloggers start to recognize you. Once you get a few comments and an active discussion going on your posts, you will find that even more people will jump in and leave comments of their own.

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Respond To The Comments That You Get You can show the commenters that you appreciate their comments by responding, and you can also take a moment to visit their blog and leave a comment. Many commenters will enter a URL of their blog when posting their comment, and they will appreciate seeing that you have taken the time to visit their site and leave a comment. This helps to build the community of a new blog, and once the community has been developed other things will get much easier. Ask Questions In your post content, especially at the end of posts, pose questions to your readers. Make it clear that you are seeking their feedback, and even ask for their opinion. One of the best ways to increase the number of comments that you receive is to simply encourage it in this manner. Write Thought-Provoking Posts or Cover Controversial Topics Certain types of blog posts tend to attract more comments than others. Anything that makes readers think and encourages them to form and share an opinion will be more likely to receive comments. Many bloggers have used this approach to increase their exposure and it can lead to a lot of comments. However, your post and opinion doesn’t have to be controversial, if you cover controversial topics in any way it tends to increase the feedback that you will receive.

Low Income/Revenue If you are not blogging for personal reasons you most likely want to make money from your blog either directly or indirectly. Although the potential to make money blogging is rather high, in reality only a small percentage of bloggers ever achieve their income goals. If your blog is not producing the amount of revenue that you would like, here are a few tips.

Don’t Expect to Make Money Right Away Building a profitable blog takes time. It is extremely rare that a new blog will produce any significant income in the first few months, or even the first year in many cases. Many bloggers expect to see results very quickly, and they get 63

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discouraged even though they are making great progress simply because income is low. If you have realistic expectations and you’re willing to put in some work up front and have patience, making money with a blog is very realistic.

Have a Plan How do you want to make money with your blog? There are a lot of different possibilities. Some common ways to make money with your blog include: ad sales, AdSense, affiliate products, memberships, premium content, product sales, and promoting services. It’s natural for your plans to change a little bit over a period of time, or to add new monetization methods as your blog grows, but it is good to have a general idea of how you would like to monetize the blog. For example, if you plan to sell premium content to monetize your blog you will need to prove that your content is worth paying for, so you will need to produce high-quality content for free first. Or if you want to monetize the blog through AdSense and affiliate programs you will probably want to do keyword research before launching the blog to make sure there are enough people searching for a particular phase and that the payout will be significant enough to justify your time.

Don’t Rely Only on One Source of Income For the best income potential and security you should attempt to generate revenue from a few different sources. This is especially true as your blog grows and more income opportunities arise, and it’s also more applicable if you intend blogging to become a major source of income.

Focus on Building a Following and a Reputation Making money with a blog is much easier when you have an established audience and when you have earned the trust of your readers, especially  if you are attempting to sell a product or if you are promoting affiliate products. Your recommendations will carry a lot more weight if your readers feel that they can trust you. If you are able to build a large and loyal following, income opportunities will follow.

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Never attempt to make a quick buck from your blog if it might cost you the trust of your readers. If you are able to wait to monetize your blog and you can focus on just building your following for now, you will probably be better off in the long run.

Identify Problems That Your Readers Face, and Solve Them The most effective products and services that are promoted through blogs are those that solve problems for readers. Whether it’s information that they are struggling to find, an app that helps to simplify their life, or consulting that helps them to overcome their own challenges, solving problems is a great way to ensure your own success. This applies to creating your own products and services as well as to finding the right affiliate products to promote. Take some time to think about your audience and the challenges or problems they face. How can you help them? Are there existing products that you could promote as an affiliate?

Focus on Building Search Traffic and Repeat Visitors Search engine visitors and repeat visitors will generally be worth more to your blog than other sources of traffic, like social media. That’s not to say that those other sources of traffic don’t have a place, but the goal should be to ultimately build a steady flow of traffic from searches and from repeat visitors. Once you have established this type of traffic you will have to work a lot less at promoting your blog, and you can focus more on things like producing content and monetizing the blog.

Personal Privacy and Safety Because anyone can find your blog, editing is a crucial part of maintaining your personal privacy and safety. Many bloggers post personal pictures, talk about people in their lives and give details about their activities. Without careful editing, you may be giving away information that can compromise your safety by inadvertently showing your home address in photos, talking about your

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whereabouts in too much detail, or providing information that can be used to impersonate you online or over the phone. A blog can present professional risks, particularly if the information is highly personal, judgmental, emotional or poorly edited. The information you put online stays online--often, even after you have removed it. Cached or indexed versions of websites are automatically created, immortalizing your words. Future and current employers may judge you based on a blog post written in the heat of the moment, even if it was written years before. Even a single inflammatory post can damage your professional reputation and job prospects.

Anonymous Blogging Unless your blog is deliberately tied to your name for professional reasons, it is wise to blog anonymously to protect your privacy and identity. Staying safe is more difficult than changing your name. Almost any detail can be used to identify you: a username that you use elsewhere online, a description of where you work, the name of your city, initials, pseudonyms that are too close to real names, photos of your children or even a mention of a distinguishing feature. Anonymizing a blog can involve a great deal of attention and effort. For best results, change major identifiers and edit posts to remove potentially damaging material.

Additional Precautions If you have serious concerns about preserving your personal and professional privacy on your blog, you can take additional precautions. For personal blogs, limiting the audience to friends who request access can keep you safe from search engines. An IP-masking service like Tor hides your computer's unique IP address, making it difficult to trace the source of the blog updates. Other options include registering your domain anonymously and posting via ping servers.

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Don’t Blog For Harassment and Defamation Using a blog as a platform for harassment and/or defamation is generally frowned upon at best while it is a ground for legal action at worst. Many people are of the opinion that the rules of traditional media do not cover bloggers. This view has emboldened some people to express views that should have at least come with supporting facts to be defensible. The freedom in having no one to “police” articles before publishing has resulted in articles that have destroyed reputations in one click. This same freedom though can be used for more noble purposes. Bloggers who are clear about legal issues pertaining to blogging will have no problems if they move within the bounds of common respect. Providing information and the sharing of personal experiences are the most common reasons for personal blogging. Business bloggers on the other hand use blogs to promote products and services. All these are useful reasons that serve the needs of readers. When certain information that has the potential to affect other people, especially in the negative sense is used, it is best to check sources, determine possible legal liabilities and distinguish facts from opinions. The disclosure of sources of sensitive information may have to be provided in the interest of fair play.

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8. CASE STUDIES. FROM BLOG TO COMMERCIAL SUCCESS The most effective products and services that are promoted through blogs are those that solve problems for readers.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Seth Godin - Sneezers, Purple Cows, "interruption marketing", Permission Marketing, the end of the "TV-Industrial complex" and Idea Virus Any experienced blogger or marketer will have heard of Seth Godin (born 1960) and his remarkable marketing exploits, including coining and or developing the phrases in the title above. Godin is a US based author, entrepreneur, marketer, public speaker and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. Godin started, one of the first Internet-based direct-marketing firms, with the notion that companies needed to rethink how they reached customers. His newest interest: the tribes we lead. "Seth Godin may be the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age," Mary Kuntz wrote in Business Week around ten years ago. "Instead of widgets or car parts, he specializes in ideas -- usually, but not always, his own." In fact, he is as focused on spreading ideas as he is on the ideas themselves. In 1986, Godin used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions, a book packaging business, out of a studio apartment in New York City. These were the same offices where Godin met Mark Hurst and founded Yoyodyne. After a few years Godin sold the book packaging business to his employees and focused his efforts on Yoyodyne. Godin promoted the concept of permission marketing originally developed by Perlstein with Yoyodyne and he served as a columnist for Fast Company for a while. Godin argues that the end of the "TV-Industrial complex" means that marketers no longer have the power to command the attention of anyone they choose, whenever they choose. In a marketplace in which consumers have more power, he thinks marketers must show more respect; this means no spam, no deceit and a bias for keeping promises. Godin asserts that the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable. Godin refers to those who spread these ideas as ‘Sneezers’, and to the spreading of the idea as an ‘Idea Virus’. He calls a remarkable product or service a ‘purple cow’. Advertisements on television and radio are classified by Godin as "interruption marketing" which interrupt the customer while they are doing something of their 70

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preference. Godin promoted the concept of ‘permission marketing’ where the business provides something "anticipated, personal, and relevant". In 2006, Godin launched Squidoo, a community website allowing users to create pages (called "lenses") for subjects of interest. The site donates 5% of the profits to charity, and 50% to the lensmasters. Godin and Squidoo have been profiled in numerous media outlets The site was given top prize in the SXWX community/wiki category. In July 2008, Squidoo was one of the 500 most visited sites in the world. Yoyodyne was purchased by Yahoo! in 1998 who kept Godin on as a vice president of permission marketing. Godin has produced several critically acclaimed and attention-grabbing books, including Permission Marketing, All Marketers Are Liars, and Purple Cow (which was distributed in a milk carton). In 2005, Godin founded Squidoo.com, a Web site where users can share links and information about an idea or topic important to them.

What Can You Learn From Seth Godin? Here are some recent blog posts by Seth Godin to illustrate his mind set and writing style. ‘I don’t get it” “Who is teaching us to look deeper? “If you read a blog post, and it begins with an analogy about car dealers, is your instinct to say, "well, I'm not a car dealer..." and then jump to the next post? “When you see something working (or not working) in the marketplace, something you don't understand, do you stop to figure out why it's working (or not working)? Or is it easier to change the attention channel and get back into line? “I've discovered (the hard way) three rules for writing a blog post that will spread: • Don't use unfamiliar words or concepts. • Avoid subtlety. • Try not to challenge deeply held beliefs.

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“Education, politics, marketing, tourist attractions--they all seem to work better when we keep people moving, behind the velvet rope, input and output, cause and effect, this then that. When the masses conform to the system we've built, the system works a whole lot better. “But who wants to be a cog in that machine? While playing it safe might work, where does it get us? “The best opportunity you've got to grow and to make an impact is to seek out the, "I don't get it," moments, and then work at it and noodle on it and discuss it until you do get it. Analogies and metaphors are your friends. Dense lyrics, almost indecipherable prose, mysterious successes--these are the places where you will leap forward. “I know there is now an infinite amount of media to choose from, an infinite number of experiences to have. But if you skip over the ones that aren't spoon fed to you, all you'll end up with is eating from a spoon.

Time Doesn’t Exist Until We Invent It “The transcontinental railroads led to the invention of time zones. For the first time, everyone needed to be in sync, regardless of what village one lived in. “A few generations later, we're in all in sync, to the second, thanks to the computers in our pockets. “Time is borrowed, wasted, spent. We find the time, slow down time, take our time. Its Miller, quitting, clobberin time. We focus on the stitch in time, hard time, closing time, not to mention big, daylight savings, race against, first, last, due, nick of... “Time is so variable, so based on our experience, that the absolute measure of time is almost meaningless. Don't even get me started about relativity and time travel. “Time on a long bus trip goes so much slower than time spent doing what we love with people we care about. We'll pay $1000 to buy an hour in some circumstances, but refuse to pay a $5 premium to save an hour in others. “Time doesn't exist, not in a way that matters to most people. The story we tell ourselves about time, though, is the overriding narrative of our day to day lives.”

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The Opposite of ‘Defenseless’ “It might be defended, or defensive. “If you're asking for feedback or coaching or an education, neither is going to help you very much. “The person who has ideas that are well defended isn't going to be able to listen carefully for the lessons that can help him change those ideas. “And the person who is defensive not only won't hear the ideas, but he'll push away anyone generous enough to share them. “Defenseless is the best choice for those seeking to grow.”

Understanding Luxury Goods “A luxury good gets its value from its lack of utility and value. A typical consumer would look at what it costs and what it does and say, "that's ridiculous." “When a good like this (and it might be a service as well) comes to market, it sometimes transcends the value equation and enters a new realm, one of scarcity and social proof. The value, ironically, comes from its lack of value. “The owner of a $12,000 Birkin bag might tell you that it's worth every penny. Obviously, one can carry a wallet and a few other essentials in a bag that costs less than 1% of what this bag costs, and we can even imagine making something just like a Birkin for a fraction of the price. But that would be a copy, not the real thing, and so the story, the narrative, the specialness and most of all, the social element would go out the window. A Birkin bag is at its most valuable when your friends admire you for owning it, not when they admire its ability to carry your stuff. “The ring in the blue Tiffany box or the speaker cables that cost more than a car--these are purchased as (perhaps perverse) testaments to the (take your pick) power/taste/wealth of the person buying or owning it. “Discount luxury goods, then, are an oxymoron. The factory outlet or the job lot seller or the yoga studio that's selling the "same thing but cheaper," isn't selling the same thing at all. They don't offer scarcity, social proof or the self-narrative of a splurge. What they sell is, "you're smarter than other people, but you know, you're also a little bit of a fraud because this isn't actually a luxury good, because it's a better value." Circular, but true. 73

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“It takes guts to invent a brand new luxury good from scratch. Shinola watches don't tell time any better than a $16 Timex, but they do tell a better story. Their creation is part of that story, but so is the identity of the stores that sell them and the fact that they sell out regularly. “Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who invented the industry (yes, one person invented luxury goods as a category) understood something that flies in the face of the non-scarcity of the Internet: social proof among the wealthy is based on beauty plus scarcity plus expense. The fact that others believe a good is overpriced is precisely why a certain segment of the market chooses to purchase it. “This even works in B2B situations. McKinsey certainly offers a luxury good (only the biggest, wealthiest corporations can afford them) as do furniture makers like Herman Miller. We're also seeing luxury goods being purchased by people not ordinarily thought of as wealthy. A teenager with a rare pair of new sneakers qualifies as luxury in her tribe. “It's interesting to note that first class travel isn't the luxury good it once was. The airlines stumbled, started playing with both service and scarcity, and unravelled the myth. Hence the need for a private jet as a luxury good, even when there's a perfectly fine commercial jet going to that very destination. “One place where the luxury goods idea has been underutilized is philanthropy. The rich guy who gives $20 million to a university isn't doing it because the school is likely to spend his money in the most efficient way. He's doing it because they will name a building after him. The building is a scarce good, overpriced for what it appears to deliver, which is precisely why it's a form of luxury. “One opportunity for non-profits is to use their true needs as only part of the conversation about giving. The dreaded gala, for example, is best seen as a luxury good. All the time and coordination and busywork are actually providing utility... not to the charity, but to those attending. “Sorry to drone on... wrapping up then, when luxury intersects with the web, conflicts ensue. First, because the net makes pricing transparent, which inevitably makes some people feel stupid for paying full price (and stupidity doesn't work with the other pillars of luxury).

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“And second, because the new sorts of social proof have to do with how connected and respected you are, not how much you paid for that handbag.”

Better Than Free “How do you compete with free? How does a wedding photographer or a travel agent—someone who used to make a good living performing a task that was hard to do without them—compete against ubiquitous free alternatives? “There's only one way: Sell something better than free. “Make a product or provide a service that's worth paying for. “You don't need a better way to talk about what you do, or a better gimmick, or a better social media strategy. In fact, you need to reinvent and rebuild what you make for a new reality, a reality where paying for something is an intentional act of buying something way better than the free alternative. “I'm sorry if this seems obvious. It's apparently not obvious to all the frustrated people I encounter who are still trying to sell the old thing in a new market.”

Buying Is Selling “If you're negotiating to buy something--a house, a company, even as the purchasing agent for a big company--you're also selling. “That's because it isn't a faceless transaction involving a list price and a credit card. The purchase involves faith and trust and risk and someone caring enough about the other person to do more than seek the highest possible/lowest possible price. “If you hope to buy for less than the clearing price, or get better work than average, in fact, you are selling when you're buying. “A friend was selling his house, and every time he showed one particular prospective buyer a new feature, the buyer discounted it, demeaning its value. This is a common strategy--denigrate the thing you are hoping to buy, question the judgment of the seller, make them feel desperate. After all, the thinking goes, a desperate person will sell for less. “Perhaps. But more often, a person being made to feel desperate will take her valuable goods somewhere else, to someone who cares more.

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“Why not say, "that's fabulous! It makes the house worth even more, well done." Recognizing the good work of those you hope to buy from puts you on precisely the same side of the table as the seller. “The brutal purchasing manager who uses RFPs like a club and nickels and dimes (not to mention dollars) suppliers--do you think he's actually getting their best work? When we're talking about emotional labor, it's not often about the money, it's about how the transaction makes the seller feel. “Or consider the used car dealer. His business is only as good as his inventory, of course. So where to get the cars that get sold? One strategy is to only buy cars from desperate folks, folks with no options. (Or to make the people you meet with feel desperate). What sort of inventory does that leave you with? Last resort cars from people with no options. When the dealer who sold me a car recently tried this tactic with the car I hope to sell, I walked away. “The good stuff is more likely to be sold to people who care. The things you'd like to buy are probably going to be sold by people who have other options now.”

Japanese Hostess Takes Up Blogging and Becomes a Star Writer Mieko Kawakami, a former bar hostess and bookstore assistant, was just another obscure singer until she started her blog. Her poetic, street-wise writing stands out starkly among Internet diaries in Japan, to the extent that she became Japan's biggest literary star. In 2008 Kawakami won that year's Akutagawa Award, Japan's most prestigious honor for a new writer. Kawakami is unusual in the extent of her success. But Steve Weber, an American who has written about marketing books online, says Japanese writers are far ahead of Americans in making their work available on the Internet. Kawakami's readership shot up from a handful of people when she started the blog in 2003, to about 10,000 a day, soaring to 200,000 the day she won the Akutagawa Award. She writes in frenzied, urgent prose that emits furore. "At first, the blog was the only place I had for my writing," she said. "You know how many people are

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accessing it, and so you know right away when you've written something that's drawing interest." She started the blog to draw attention to her music, but the early entries became her first book. Her third book won the Akutagawa. Kawakami's award-winning novella, The Breast and the Egg, explores the ideas of divorce, the questioning of beauty standards and other themes of solitary womanhood that are still relatively new territory in Japanese literature. Kawakami's stories in some ways are those of Japan's Everywoman. For now, she said, she wants to stay away from stories of relationships with men and sexuality that characterised past Japanese female writing. "It's about living, our body, the changes of the heart that accompany the body, the urgency, the problems being born, moment by moment," Kawakami said. "The fact that we are always doing our best at living." Joichi Ito, Internet entrepreneur and Technorati board member, says Japanese tend to view blogs more as exchanges with friends and a personal outlet than as news sources as Americans do, for discussing politics, technology and other issues. "More content in Japan is personal, and more content in the U.S. is media-like," he said. Interestingly, there are more blog posts in Japanese than any other language, according to Technorati, which tracks nearly 113 million blogs globally. Technorati recently found 37 percent of all postings were in Japanese - about 1.5 million per day. Postings in English - from Americans, Britons, Australians and people in many other countries - accounted for 36 per cent of the total.

Understanding The Market Power of Blogging In the U.S., publishers are just starting to understand the market power that writers with hit blogs can wield, according to one blog marketing expert. "Popular bloggers are definitely being targeted by smart publishers because the publishers realize that the authors have already done the hard work of book marketing. They have attracted the audience." U.S. bloggers who have been picked up by major publishers include Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen,

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which chronicles attempts at Julia Child's classic recipes, and Colby Buzzell, a U.S. soldier in Iraq, who wrote My War: Killing Time in Iraq.

From Blog To Successful Start Up You have a great startup idea. Enthusiastically, you exercise your technical skills and begin coding. After weeks of long, caffeine-fueled nights, you release your product to the world with anticipation. But no one cares. This in an all too common story before. Far too often, entrepreneurs build something that does not solve a real problem. Here are some strategy suggestions to help you get started: • Talk to potential users • Survey customers • Conduct usability tests using a competitor's product • Build a landing page to collect email addresses • Run ads to measure click-through/conversion rates • Create a fake prototype using manual processes A lesser known approach is the blog-first method; a simple blog post is a viable tactic to quickly validate ideas and gather market feedback. Here are some examples of startups that have successfully used this strategy:

Mattermark Not long after Danielle Morrill announced the death of her startup, Referly, she published The Y Combinator Startup Index, using publicly available information to measure and rank the success of YC startups. The post exploded into hundreds of tweets, hitting the front page of Hacker News. She followed with additional posts analyzing 500 Startups, TechStars, Andreessen Horowitz, and other portfolios, all of which received similar attention. The topic clearly struck a cord in the startup and investment community and she continued writing every day. Danielle published 89 essays over 10 weeks, building an audience before announcing her new venture.

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Then she announced, "In case it wasn’t obvious, this is our startup and these posts are our MVP." Shortly afterward, Mattermark was launched. Dubbed the "Bloomberg for startup investors," the product was an expansion of the Startup Index her audience feverishly consumed. Danielle cleverly built a following and proved that people valued the content through her blog before launching her new venture.

Silencer In January, Zack Shapiro published an insightful essay on his blog, Why Muting is the next big era of the Internet. In the post, he described a solution to our unfiltered, noisy social feeds, which he called the "Muting API." Tired of Apple's latest WWDC announcement? Want to avoid Game of Thrones spoilers? Disinterested in reading about who made out with whom on The Bachelorette? The service Zack described would enable people to take control of the content they consume, empowering its users to filter keywords, topics, hashtags, events, and other updates from Twitter, Facebook, and other feeds. The post received enormous interest as readers enthusiastically suggested ways they might use the service. One reader responded, “I've been wanting this for a different reason than information overload: to hide spoilers. Whether for TV shows, movies, or sports, it's easy to come across a result you'd rather discover later on, and one shouldn't have to switch off all channels just to avoid coming across it.” Inspired and affirmed by the feedback on his idea, Zack sought to turn his blog post into a reality. While working full-time at TaskRabbit, he started building the product during nights and weekends. Three months later, Zack released Silencer, a free Chrome extension that empowers users to mute Twitter and Facebook posts that contain specific keywords or hashtags. Today his service filters 6k-10k pieces of content daily and has been featured on Lifehacker, CNET, and The Next Web.

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Groupon Did you know that Groupon originally launched as a blog? The first version of the daily deal site was "totally ghetto," according to an interview with founder Andrew Mason. To launch the idea, the team re-skinned a WordPress blog with the Groupon brand. Each day, they manually posted offers for heavily discounted restaurant gift certificates, concert vouchers, movie tickets, and other deals in the Chicago area. Using off-the-shelf software, they generated PDF coupons, emailing vouchers to customers using a script and Apple Mail. Although not the most elegant or scalable solution, the blog enabled Groupon to quickly prove that people would pay for coupons, and helped it measure market demand with little upfront investment. "It was enough to prove the concept and show that it was something that people really liked," Mason recalls. Once the idea was validated, Groupon expanded its operations and infrastructure far beyond its humble blog beginnings.

App.net In June of 2012, Twitter introduced policy changes restricting permissions and access for third-party developers. This affected several businesses that relied on the service, many of which eventually shut down. Shortly after the announcement, Dalton Caldwell expressed his distaste for Twitter's decision to restrict its API and focus on ad monetization. His arguments resonated. The post quickly circulated the web, racking up more than 80,000 page views in just two weeks. People were hungry for a Twitter alternative with an open API and an ecosystem that did not rely on advertising to sustain operations. Caldwell’s idea wasn't new when he published the rant. Both he and his team had been working on a relaunch of App.net, their "secret project", for the previous 8 months. However, Caldwell was able to validate market demand and publicize the new product through his blog without needing to actually launch it. His writing even inspired supporters who shared his vision to provide feedback for the unreleased product, which his team listened to. 80

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It is very rare to be sitting on an idea that manages to capture people’s imagination. Just how rare having an inherently powerful idea is prompted many people to pay a great deal of attention to the amount of discussion this blog post generated. App.net went on to raise more than $803,000 from 18,000 customers that shared his vision, only six weeks after Caldwell's prolific blog post.

Ghost Ghost, a new blogging platform, launched a Kickstarter campaign in April 2013 that generated massive attention in the open-source community. However, it was actually a blog post that kicked off the movement five months earlier. John O'Nolan originally created a concept page describing his vision of the ideal blogging solution. On the concept page, he explains how WordPress, the de-facto self-hosted publishing solution, had outgrown its blogging roots, introducing unnecessary complexity and overhead. Ghost is a re-imagining of what a blogging platform should be, designed specifically for the blogger with ease-of-use at its core. Within a few days of publishing the concept page, O'Nolan had received more than 91,000 page views, mentions in Mashable, and an interview with PandoDaily. In addition to the exposure, hundreds of fans and critics offered valuable feedback. Where others struggle to find their customers and gather feedback, O'Nolan received a flood of input and valuable data from the proactive, engaged community. While Ghost's supporters were waiting for it’s public appearance, the teaser site received 200,000 page views each month. While still in development, O'Nolan built a following of 5,236 paying customers and 19,000 email subscribers growing at a rate of 2,500 emails each week. It all started with a blog post!

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Why Blog-First Might Be Right For Your Startup The beauty of a Blog-First Startup is that it allows an entrepreneur to: • Validate ideas with minimal effort • • •

Identify their customer Build a following Gather early user feedback

There is no best method for gathering feedback and validating startup ideas, but add blogging to your lean startup toolbox can be very cost effective. Remember, before writing code, it is a good idea to consider writing a blog post.

Ten Successful, Multi Million Dollar Bloggers As I have discussed throughout this book there are numerous reasons why people may consider starting a blog. People may blog express their thoughts and opinions, to promote or market a product, to help others, or to help themselves. These are some of the more popular reasons why people from all over the world are starting their very own blogs, every single day. One of the reasons I wrote this book was to show that by starting a blog, you could also have the potential to make millions upon millions of dollars. Here are ten of the most popular, and successful blogs with their net worth in the millions. The Huffington Post is a blog and website based in America, founded by Kenneth Lerer, Andrewe Breitbart, Jonah Peretti, and, Arianna Huffington. The blog offers news, and original content, that covers a vast array of topics, ranging from, Politics, Business, Environment, Entertainment, Technology, and much more. The blog was founded in May 2005, and launched within a few days. In 2006, a bank invested $5 million into the site, and a few years later, thanks to fundraising and various investments, the blog had raised over US$15 million. In 2011, AOL acquired the site for US$315 million. The net worth of Arianna Huffington and her blog is now US$35 million. TechCrunch is a blog which offers news, and information on all things that are technology related. This blog was founded and created by Michael Arrington in 82

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2005, and is now affiliated with a number of other websites. This has proved to be an extremely smart financial move on their part. The websites and blogs in question are known as “The TechCrunch network”. In 2010 Arrington sold Tech Crunch to AOL for a US$25 million. He recently started a brand new blog called UnCrunched.com Michael Arrington’s net worth is currently around US$15 million. Gawker is a New York City based blog founded in 2003 by Nick Denton, that offers news and gossip on “all things Manhattan”. It focuses on the media, and celebrity industry. Over the years, Gawker has acquired a number of high profile investors, as well as loyal customers, so it should come as no surprise to learn, that it is one of the most financially successful blogs in the entire world. The net worth of Nick Denton is now estimated US$100 million. Lifehacker is a blog about so called “life hacks” which are basically hints and tips to make your day to day life, that little bit easier. It is actually owned by Gawker media and was launched back in 2005. They are so financially successful thanks to advertising, including landing a lucrative advertising sponsorship with Sony. LifeHacker was originally created by Gina Marie Trapani who now has an estimated net worth around US$110 million. Mashable is a news website and blog founded by then teenager Pete Cashmore in 2005, while working from his home in Scotland. Mashable is considered one of the best websites and blogs for social media, and is one of the largest websites in the whole world. In early 2012 Mashable was rumoured to have been sold to CNN news for around US$200 million. Pete Cashmore’s net worth is currently at US$95 million. Fail Blog is a comedy based web blog, created in 2008 by Ben Huh. It features various comedy mishaps, and acts of stupidity in both photo, and video form. Within five months of being launched, fail blog was sold to the popular “Cheezburger inc” company. 83

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Their main income comes from advertising, investments, and the more than 1 million visitors every single month. They also launched their very own successful book in 2009, which is still selling well. The exact net worth of Ben Huh is currently unknown, but it is thought to be well into the millions. Smashing Magazine is a website and blog offering advice, and resources to web designers and developers. It was founded in 2006 by Sven Lennartz, and Vitaly Friedman. They evaluate software, and other web based software and tools, targeted at people in the computer industry. They generate huge amounts of money thanks to various product advertising deals, as well as investors and loyal visitors. The net worth of these two is estimated at more than US$5 million. Business Insider is a business and entertainment based blog launched in 2009. It was founded by Kevin P Ryan, and is considered one of the most trusted sources of business information. They have a number of various investors, as well as advertising sources, all keen to advertise their various products on the blog. They receive more than 5 million visitors to their blog on average, so that should tell you just how popular they really are. Ryan’s estimated net worth is thought to be around to US$3 million. Engadget is a technology blog network founded by Peter Rojas that covers consumer electronics and technological gadgets. It was quoted in ‘TIME’ as being one of the best blogs in all of 2010. They have their own app available to download for a small fee, as well as their very own show. These, as well as lucrative advertising deals, means that Engadget is one of the most financially successful blogs on the planet. Rojas is reputed to have a net worth of around $3 million. The Daily Beast is a news and opinion based blog founded by Tina Brown in 2008. In 2010 they merged with Newsweek and created the “Newsweek daily beast company”. This proved to be a great financial move by both companies.

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They also generate large amounts of cash by publishing books known as Beast books, written by various writers at the daily beast company. They average around 3 million visitors each month. Tina Brown is number 77 on the Forbes list of power women, and her net worth is reputed to be over US$100 million. The one common feature of all of these bloggers is that they all started out with nothing, and are now millionaires. So if they can do it, why can’t you?

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9. BLOGGING IN THE FUTURE Blogging is one of the greatest marketing and engagement devices ever invented.

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Since the commencement of blogging in the mid-1990’s, social networking and media have seen exponential growth. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest were born and quickly became mainstream just as blogging became more and more popular. Blogging became fashionable and a “must-have” for businesses and as a result, millions flocked to create an online presence of their own. People found their voices, and set up businesses, as journalists, writers, fashionistas, marketing gurus, or in whatever their expertise or passion was. Currently, with around 175 million blogs on the Internet, we need to as have we reached a point where these voices not only get drowned, but completely discouraged? Is it time when the online industry must shift to fit the needs of all bloggers? The Internet now houses an entire population of blogs ranging from micro niche to general lifestyle. Some have six followers, while others have six thousand, or even six million. There are huge numbers of bloggers who struggle to build a following, and who generally don’t have the time or resources to successfully do so in the way professional bloggers do. Discouragement sets in and soon, something they were passionate about became a lost cause. The advent of blogging revolution featured WordPress and Blogger, who led the way in the form of platforms where users could make profiles and create their own blogs. They were followed by Tumblr with its simple aesthetic and straightforward, image-driven functionality, for which it became wildly popular. The ability to post images, quotes, text, or other media in a straightforward, attractive, and customizable layout enabled millions of people intimidated by traditional blogging to experiment with blogging on an innovative platform. Visuals became increasingly important on the web and the combination of both Tumblr, and the new standard that online media had to be visual first, began contributing to the loss of what blogging was meant to be in the first place, an online writer’s journal. Meanwhile, social networks Facebook and Twitter continued to grow exponentially, proving to be societal mainstays that would forever change the landscape of personal and professional networking as we know them.

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I really wonder how long it will be before social media and blogging come together in a way that allows bloggers to build online communities without having to read marketing books?

Multinational Blogging - Make Your Website Multinational The Internet is a great unifier, allowing you to market your brand to people around the world. Anyone anywhere can access your content so long as they have an Internet connection. However, language can be a barrier. Creating a multinational version of your site can make it easier for people to read your site in their own language and allows Google to index it for people searching from those countries. Here are a few things you need to know about in order to create a multinational version of your site:

Create a Subdomain If you don’t want to register a separate URL for each new national version of your site that you want to create, you can create a subdomain instead. This could be it.example.com/ or au.example.com, for instance. Creating a subdomain allows you maintain the authority you have built in your primary domain. However, you may lose some of your linking authority as other sites may forget to include the country-specific part of your domain and just link to the standard www (subdomain) instead.

Register a Country-Specific Domain A country-specific domain is what most users are more accustomed to seeing when they visit a national version of a site. These domains look like www.example.co.it/ or www.example.co.au/. This requires registering a separate url and creating the contents of your site on that new domain. The advantage of registering a country-specific domain is that it is more likely to rank in country-specific searches and your inbound links are more likely to be correct (as this format is more usual than the subdomain format). 89

How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Create a Subfolder The easiest way to set up a multinational version of your site is to simply create subfolders. The address for a particular national version of your website would then look like www.example.com/china or www.example.com/france. Using a URL like this can help you to boost page rank for the entire site as any links or other SEO juice pointing to the national ‘site’ would contribute to the whole domain. The disadvantage of this option is that users may find the URL too cumbersome and confusing. People may not type the whole URL, and they may then be redirected and become confused. You also won’t be likely to rank well in search listings specific to that country.

The Advantages of a Multinational Website No matter what option you choose, creating a multinational version of your site can help you connect with more users and promote more awareness of your brand. Translating your site into other languages will help you increase your reach and boost the page rank of your site, as well. You could use one of the many free translation services on the web, such as Babelfish, to convert your site content but doing this is not recommended.  Just imagine how you might feel in visiting your national ‘site’ if the content is what is often produced by such software. Your confidence in the company may be weakened if there are weaknesses in the language being used.   Perhaps in the future, automatic content translation may be a possibility as the logic improves but not for now. Much better is to contact your local university and find a student for each of the language versions you wish to create.  You may decide to go with less web pages for particular language versions and you may offer links to English language versions of some pages.  It is highly probable that most of your potential customers can speak English anyway. However do not underrate the warm feeling they will have for your company by having an entry page and other important pages in their own language.

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Do’s and Don’ts to Make Your Blog a Success Here are some tips to make your blogs a success based on a post by Uttoran Sen in October 2013. Do: Blog Regularly. This is one of the best things you can do for your blog. If people know that post blogs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday then they will know to check your blog on these days. If you post whenever you feel like it, then they have no idea of when to check. Decide on a schedule you are comfortable with and adhere to it. Choose a slower schedule at first – say posting two or three times a week and then increase your posts if you are confident you can post more often. Don’t: Switch Topics All the Time. Most people have more than one interest. For your blog to be successful you need to stay on topic. If your blog is about vintage motor cars, then that is what you should blog about. If your blog is about organic gardening then this is what you need to blog about. Don’t step in there and blog about something totally unrelated – like retirement planning and investing. Do: Have a Contest. Blog readers love contests! Contests don’t even have to be big to be successful – just fun – and do remember to stay on topic. If you have a mystery book review blog then give away some mystery books or a gift card to a book store. If you have a computer or gadget blog then giveaway computer software. Remember that contests often help to attract new followers as they are often promoted on social media. Don’t: Be Mean. It is sometimes tempting to share your opinion when blogging. But don’t be mean! There is a big difference between saying you don’t like something or even giving a critical review of that band or restaurant – or saying something that is really cruel. Just think before you hit “Enter.” Most blog readers find opinions interesting but being mean is something that wont attract you many followers.

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Do: Connect with Other Bloggers. This is one of the best things you can do to help your blog. Get to know other bloggers who blog in similar topics to yours. If you blog about beauty then get to know people who blog about jewelry, accessories, women’s fashion and hair – as well as other beauty blogs. Not only can you trade links but you can do promotions together and sometimes create contests and fun blog events together as a team. Don’t: Post a Blog with no planning. One of the worst things you can do is to post a blog with no planning or effort. You want to show your readers that you care enough about them that you will do something special for them each time they visit. Check your spelling and grammar. Double check your blog posts for any possible errors. Focus on posting terrific blog posts – you never know which blog post will be someone’s first blog post visiting at your blog! Do: Use Images and Video. It is easier than ever to add images and video to your blog posts. With the click of a button you can add them. Remember to give proper credit if adding images or video. Images and video often make your blog posts more fun and interesting – and attract readers to them at first glance. Don’t: Forget Links and Tags. If you want to post terrific blog posts each time, take the time to add links and tags to them. It isn’t too difficult to do. If you are talking about a great site or product, add a link to it. People will probably want to click on what you are talking about to check it out for themselves. Tags are helpful to let people easily find your posts. Use at least five tags for each blog post. Do: Have Fun with Your Blog. Blogging can appear to be a lot of work, but remember to have fun with your blog – the reason you started with it in the first place! If you are having fun with it, then it is very likely this will show through when people read that great blog post at your blog – and they will enjoy it even more. If your blog becomes a total grind and a lot of hard work and no fun for you, then your blog just isn’t going to seem exciting, fresh and interesting. So have fun and know that others are having fun with you too!

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Blogging Mistakes To Avoid There are many common but easy to remedy mistakes that bloggers tend to make. As with any new business, inexperienced newcomers tend to make “every mistake in the book.” Not linking to other blogs. Always have a blogroll. If someone is interested in reading your blog, they would probably be interested in reading the other blogs you like to read. Blogging is all about community. Linking to other blogs also sends a positive message to customers because it shows that you are involved in the community. Not having an email link or contact page. Sometimes readers might want to contact you, but not leave a comment on your blog. If you are worried about getting your email address spammed, a simple contact page can prevent that. Otherwise, you can write your email address in this form: name at domain dot com. This will prevent spam bots from finding your email address. Allow the readers to leave comments. While most bloggers give an easy and accessible way to either contact them via email or leave a comment, I noticed that some blogs do not allow the readers to leave comments. This sends a bad message to customers, because it seems like the company does not want to hear from their customers. More than anything else, blogs are communication tools. If a blog is used only to share information but does not allow communication between the company and its customers, its success and popularity will suffer. Many blogs without a comment feature have low page rankings and likely have less returning visitors. Not having an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a way for people to read a blog without always actually visiting the blog. They can view the entries through websites such as bloglines.com and feedster.com. RSS feeds are extremely important, because most people will read your blog via RSS feeds. You are more likely to pick up regular readers if you have an RSS feed.

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How To Blog Your Way To $100,000 Per Annum

Not updating often enough. The more often you update, the more popular your blog will be. Many blog readers like to read their favorite blogs on a daily basis. If you do not blog regularly, you run the risk of losing readers.

Conclusion I trust this book has done more than merely help you understand what blogging is: I want readers to be stimulated with a great many ideas for their blogging career! As you have read in the many case studies I provided, many people have made money from blogging, including some who have made many millions of dollars in a comparatively short time. However, for most bloggers the joy of blogging will come more from writing and expressing about your passions and beliefs. If you come from this angle and any money you make is a nice bonus, then you are likely to have the mindset and psychology required to succeed as a blogger. If you want to earn a six figure income from blogging and live a lifestyle that most people can only ever dream about, while working anywhere in the world. You simply have to get started. My main group of companies are involved in media and education as I believe media has the ability to influence and help reshape the world, while a modern day 21st Century Education is the key to transforming the world. This desire to disrupt and bring old school media and old school education into the 21st Century is why I created www.21stcenturyenetwork.com based in Los Angeles. I mention this because our 21st Century Media Company is actively looking to recruit tens of thousands of bloggers Old media would hire thousands of journalists, while new media in the 21st Century would rather have tens of thousands of bloggers creating content for readers to read. As mentioned previously many people don't believe they are bloggers, yet they routinely post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram - they are blogging.

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Facebook, despite being a huge media company worth over $100 billion does not hire a single journalist to write content for its site: it outsources that to you as a Facebook user and you gladly post for free. This in turn drives traffic to Facebook, traffic which equates to a $100 billion valuation for Facebook as an example, and $5 billion in advertising sales and growing. www.21stcenturyenetwork.com will actually pay you up to 100% of the advertising sales revenue generated from its blogging platforms it provides to you, if you want to become a professional blogger and earn $100,000 per annum or more. While for some, $100 or $1000 a month as a part time blogger is still attractive. New technology blogging platforms and mobile blogging platforms are now making it even simpler for anyone to blog, with the inevitable consequence the media industry will be disrupted and reshaped even more. And it will allow so many people worldwide to derive a full time income from the internet thanks to blogging. In the past large media companies kept the billions in advertising profits to themselves. At 21st Century Media and www.21stcenturyenetwork.com we intend changing this and taking some of those billions and paying it out to our expanding worldwide network of bloggers. We intend to redistribute this wealth on a grand scale, thus allowing countless individuals to earn a living by simply expressing who they are while sharing their life story, hobbies, interests or what they believe in. Whatever topic you decide to blog about and how ever much income you would like to earn from blogging’ I wish you well in your new found blogging career. If you have any questions feel free to email me and my team will be happy to help point you in the right direction. Warmest Regards, Jamie McIntyre, CEO 21st Century Education [email protected]

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Make A Point of Checking Out My Blog: www.jamiemcintyre.com.au www.21stcenturynews.com.au is an example of a larger blog which provides dozens of articles every day in news and educational topics. It attracts over 40,000 readers a month and is rapidly growing. Bear in mind though, when you are starting out your blog will most likely be much simpler and have a lot less blog articles. Also read www.21stcenturyenetwork.com

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Index Additional Precautions 66 Advantages of a Multinational Website 90 Analysing The ZCars Blog Success 30 Anonymous Blogging 66 App.net 80 Assemble the best answers 23 Avoid preaching at your readers 15 Backlinks 57 Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout Live blog 10 Be Consistent with Promotion 46 Become a personality 23 an affiliate marketer 32 Being Part of a Network 24 Better Than Free 75 Blogging Can Help You Engage Your Target Audience 56 Can Help You Identify The Who And Where Of Your Target Market 57 Case Study 25 For Beauty 54 For Money 28-41 In The Future 88-93 Mistakes To Avoid 93 Strategies For Success 21 To Catch Out Political Rorts 12 To Launch a New Product 40 Blogs By Device 10 by Genre 9 by Media Type 9

Brown, Tina 84 Building Search Traffic and Repeat Visitors 65 Business Insider 84 Model 38 Buying Is Selling 75 Capture attention 47 Case Studies 54, 59, 70-87 Cashmore, Pete 83 Channel Nine's Today Show 60 Check your top posts on Facebook 19 Choose a Niche Market and Domain Name 14 Create and sell your own “e-product” 32 Comments feature 48 Common Blogger Mistakes That Can Lead To Failure 34 Community 19 Conclusion 94 Consider Buying a system 32 Starting an Email Newsletter 46 The Titles Of Your Blog Posts 47 The Titles Of Your Blog Posts 47 Continuous Posting 31 Corporate and Organizational Blogs 9 Create a Subdomain 89 a Subfolder 89 great content 22 Valuable Backlinks 57 97

Current popular blog topics 17 Cursing 15 Denton, Nick 83 Do’s and Don’ts to Make Your Blog a Success 91 Dolly 59 Don’t Blog For Harassment and Defamation 67 Expect to Make Money Right Away 63 Rely Only on One Source of Income 64 Early Bloggers 8 Earn Market Trust 58 Editing 17 Educational Information Blogs 18 Effective Self Promotion 39 Email Newsletter 38 Encourage comments 47 Facebook and Twitter Interaction 47 others to guest post 49 Subscriptions by Email and RSS 45 Engadget 84 Engage Your Target Audience 56 Experiment 22 Fail Blog 83 Fashion Blogs 18 Focus on Building Search Traffic and Repeat Visitors 65 Free E-Book/Manifesto 38

Index Frequency 16 From Blog To Successful Start Up 78

Japanese Hostess Takes Up Blogging and Becomes a Star Writer 76

Gathering Feedback, Reviews and Testimonials 12 Gawker 83 Generating More Hits To Your Blog 42-51 Genre 16 Get help from friends 32 Ghost 81 Godin, Seth 70 Groupon 80

Keep Visitors Coming Back to your blog for more 45 Key Factors to Consider When Reaching Out to Bloggers 54 Know Who You Are Writing For 36 Launch a New Product 40 Layout 16 Leadership 58 Learn From Failures and Mistakes 40 Leave Comments on Other Blogs 62 Length of posts 16 Lifehacker 83 Live a story 23 Love your readers 49 Low Income/Revenue 63 Luxury Goods 73

Harassment and Defamation 67 Have A Clear Purpose 45 Have a Plan 64 How Many Blogs? 31 much does it cost to set up a blog? 14 To Make Money From Blogging 28 Huffington, Arianna 82 Idea Virus 70 Identify Problems that Your Readers Face, and Solve Them 65 Income/Revenue, Low 63 Industry Leadership 58 Internet Technology Blogs 18 Interruption marketing 70 Invite experts 23

Make Your Blog a Success 91 Your Website Multinational 89 Making Money With Online Blogs 17 Market Your Blog 36 Mashable 83 Mattermark 78 Measure Your Tweet Impact 20 Microblogging 7 Mistakes To Avoid 93 Monitor Influencer Social Channels 19 Morrill, Danielle 78 98

Multinational Blogging - Make Your Website Multinational 89 Website, Advantages of 90 New Product 40 No Comments from Visitors/Readers 62 Not Creating a Publication or Posting Schedule 35 Knowing Who You Are Writing For 34 Marketing Your Blog 35 O'Nolan, John 81 Observe the world 23 Online Shopping Blogs 18 Original Content 31 Overcoming Blogging Problems 62-69 Paragraphs 21 Pay attention to your blog’s layout 15 Permission Marketing 70 Personal blogs 7 Improvement Blogs 17 Privacy and Safety 65 Plan to Write Your Blog in a Tone Appropriate to Your Blog Topic 14 Platform For a Company To Get Their Message Out There 60 Political blogs 15 Precautions 66 Privacy and Safety 65 Product/Business Model 38 Promoting Services 53 Promotion 46

Index Provide the Best Possible Content 47 Publication or Posting Schedule 35, 37 Publish Posts on a Regular Schedule 46 Purple Cows 70 Purpose/Message/Mission 37 Re-Evaluate Your Posts 43 Reaching New Customers 11 Reference Point For Your Industry 59 Register a Country-Speci!c Domain 89 Remove spam 48 Repeat Visitors 45 Respond To The Comments that You Get 63 Reverse Blogs 11 Revise 17 Safety 65 Schedule 35, 37 Search Engine Rankings 57 Self Promotion 39 Seth Godin 70 Setting Up You Own Blog 14-27 Seven Proven Blogging Strategies 23 Shapiro, Zack 79 Sign-up for “Pay Per Click” 32 Silencer 78 Site Design 39 Six Pillars of a Successful Blog 37 Smashing Magazine 84

Sneezers 70 Spread the word 48, 56 Stable Topics 31 Suggested blogging apps 24 Take a hint from your community 19 time to visit other blogger's blogs 48 Target Market 57 TechCrunch 82 Ten Successful, Multi Million Dollar Bloggers 82 The 21st Century Belongs To The Rise Of Bloggers 2 Benefits of Blogging for Business 11 Daily Beast 84 Huffington Post 82 Impacts and Achievements of Blogs 8 most popular blogging topics 17 Opposite of ‘Defenseless’ 73 Thought Leadership 56 Time Doesn’t Exist Until We Invent It 72 Titles 47 Travel, Leisure and Lifestyle Blogs 18 Turning Blogging Mistakes Into Successes 36 Your Blog Into A Business 33 TV-Industrial complex 70

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Understanding Blogs 6 Luxury Goods 73 the Market Power of Blogging 77 Use Social Media 44 words that marketers use to capture attention 47 Using Blogs to Develop Brand or Personality 11 Blogs To Promote Your Business 52-69 Voice 21 What Can You Learn From Seth Godin? 71 Is A Blog? 6-13 Makes A Successful Blog? 21 makes for blogging success? 22 When Did Blogging Commence? 6 Why Blog-First Might Be Right For Your Startup 82 Do You Want to Blog? 42 is a Blog called a Blog? 6 Start Up Companies Should Blog 55 Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs 43 Your Target Market 57

Blogging is one of the greatest marketing and engagement devices ever invented! If you want to become involved in blogging or have a blog of your own, then this book is for you. Many people think that the money to be made from blogging is mere coffee money. However you would be surprised at just how many people have become multi-millionaires through blogging. Jamie McIntyre - Author

This book will show you how blogging can attract new customers and quickly grow your business. As well as how you could blog your way to $100,000 in a year! In this book I explain what blogging is and how readers can make six figures by blogging. I also look closely at how some people have made millions from blogging and what their success secret is. “Blogging has become an essential part of my business and marketing plan, which has helped build my $40 million group of companies. The essence of blogging means I can quickly and easily reach my markets with little to no cost. It’s a no brainer for anyone wanting to increase their business or personal income.” Jamie McIntyre, CEO of 21st Century Education

What readers can learn from this book: • What  is a blog?

• What to blog about and how often

• Setting up your own blog

• How to monetize your blogging

• Blogging  for money

• How  to make a 6 figure income from blogging

• Generating  more hits to your blog • Overcoming  blogging problems • Blogging  in the future

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR!

• H  ow to easily get started within days • Does Facebook pay you to blog ?

“It doesn’t matter who you are, a business owner or have a corporate career, trades person or stay at home mum. Everyone should have a blog and be building up a following. Blogging and the Internet is how most of us will derive an income from in the future, so its best to be ahead of fast moving trends or risk missing out on a lucrative career choice.”

Jamie McIntyre has been featured in:

To set up your own blog within minutes visit www.21stCenturyENetwork.com

www.21stCenturyEducation.com.au

RRP $19.95

21ST CENTURY PUBLISHING

Every reader qualifies for the following DVD Pack visit www.FinancialEducationPack.com.au

ST

EDUCATION

HOW TO BLOG YOUR WAY TO $100,000 A YEAR BY JAMIE McINTYRE

By Jamie McIntyre

Jamie McIntyre, CEO of 21st Century Education

21 CENTURY