Blogging+for+Busy+People+v2.3

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MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE Ever feel like, no matter what you do, it's never enough? To get ahead at work, you need to put in more hours. To stay current, you need to read more books. To keep up with technology, you need to buy a computer with more power. More, more, more, more, more. It's even spilled over into blogging. Gone are the days that you can build a following just by having something interesting to say. Now you need to do more. You need to write more. You need to leave more comments. You need to focus more on Twitter. You need to link out more to other bloggers. Don't know how? No problem! Every day, you can read more tips, showing you how to get more trafc, so you can convince more people to subscribe and make more money. You’ll have so much stuf to do that you turn into one of those weirdos that spend 16 hours per day on the computer. You'll stop going outside. You'll stay up late at night, chugging Mountain Dew. You'll live on hot pockets. What's that? You say the price is too high? Well, that's the world, honey bunch. Cold as a grave digger’s ass and twice as hard. If you want to succeed, you have to do more than everyone else. You have to learn more, do more, be more. More, more, more, more, more. DO YOU RECOGNIZE ANY OF THESE THOUGHTS? Listen to it long enough, and you come down with a case of the "if only’s."     

If only you weren't so tired after coming home from work... If only your kids would give you a few hours of peace and quiet... If only you could aford to spend all day chatting on Twitter... If only you had the discipline to stick to a writing schedule... If only you could fnd the time to read a book about SEO...

Ten you would be a successful blogger. Te problem isn't that you're being asked to do too much. No, no, no, it couldn't be that. 2

You just need to stop watching television or pick up a time management book or wait until things slow down at work... Oh dear, those thoughts are dangerous. Not so much because they are wrong as because they seem to make sense. You've been brainwashed by the Cult of More, and you're reaching for the Kool-Aid. Stop! Te answer isn't doing more. It's doing less. A TALE OF TWO FIGHTERS Consider the following story: In the fnals of the National Chinese Kickboxing Championship of 1999, two very diferent fghters competed for the title. One was a lifelong student of the martial arts, preparing from childhood to turn his body into a lethal weapon. Te other was an unemployed deadbeat with four weeks of training. Who do you think won? Te answer: Te deadbeat. In his words: “Using dehydration techniques I now teach to elite power lifters, I lost 28 pounds in 18 hours, weighed in at 165 pounds, and then hyper-hydrated back to 193 pounds. It’s hard to fght someone from three weight classes above you. Poor little guys”. Te funny thing is, he didn’t even have to fght at all. He found a loophole in the rulebook saying a combatant was automatically disqualifed if he was tossed out of the ring three times. So, he didn’t even try to punch or kick his opponents. He just grabbed them and used his superior mass to throw them out of the ring over and over until they were disqualifed. He went home a national champion. You might say, “Well, that’s cheating,” and a lot of people would agree with you, but here’s the thing: You know that unemployed deadbeat? His name is Tim Ferriss. A few years later, he wrote Te Four Hour Workweek, one of the best-selling books of all time. Today, he’s a renowned experimenter, performing such 3

incredible feats as becoming fuent in a language in four days and losing 20 pounds in 30 days without exercising at all. His secret? Focusing on what matters to achieve the goal and deliberately avoiding everything else. In other words, working smarter, not harder. But that’s not a tacit endorsement of laziness. On the contrary, here’s what Tim says in Te Four Hour Workweek: “Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. Tis is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifce instead of personal productivity.” Translation? If it doesn’t work, don’t do it. And the vast majority of the conventional wisdom for doing almost anything is completely wrong. Almost always, there’s a way to “cheat” and get the maximum results in the minimum time. Let’s take blogging, for example… THE BEST WAY TO BUILD A POPULAR BLOG IS SIMPLE One of the pitfalls of being a beginner is that you compare your work to that of the masters. You hold your blog up next to the likes of Copyblogger or Zen Habits, wince at how simple it is in comparison, and conclude that this whole blogging thing is a lot more complicated than you originally thought. After all, you're not doing half the stuf that we are. You must be falling behind, right? Nope, not necessarily. You see, blogging gets a lot more complicated once your blog is popular. You start thinking about bringing in other writers, competing with mainstream publications, rolling out your own product lines, and a host of other concerns that revolve around capitalizing on the attention of your audience. None of that stuf matters when you're just getting started though. Worrying about it is like an up-and-coming singer refusing to perform because he doesn't have an orchestra to back him up. Sure, having an orchestra would be nice, but it's not what really matters. What counts is getting out there and showing people why you deserve an orchestra. Building a popular blog is just as simple. Stop worrying about your design and your 4

domain name and your social media presence and your post categories and how you're going to make money. All of that's just the orchestra. It will be important later. For right now, just forget about it, and focus on what really counts: Creating content that gets results. Trafc. Email subscribers. Links. Comments. Conversations with infuencers. In the beginning, these metrics are all you should focus on. It's all that matters. And as you might notice, making heaps of money while you sleep is NOT on the list. IS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE WRONG? No. It's just premature. Money is the result of giving people what they want. Te key ingredient in that equation is people. If you don't have any people paying attention to you, then you can't make any money. So focus on getting people to pay attention frst. If you're writing tons of blog posts, but no one is paying attention, then it means you've forgotten the people. You're singing in the middle of the desert, and your words are being carried away by the wind. If you want to have a chance of popularity, you need to perform where word has a chance to spread. Stand in middle of Grand Central Station in New York City, and see if you can make people stop to listen. Go audition for American Idol. Sing for free as an opening act at a more famous musician's gig and hope their agent notices you. It applies just as much to blogging as anything else. Google is our version of Grand Central Station, Reddit is our American Idol, and a guest post is the equivalent of an opening act. All are just a way of getting in front of the people who matter. Ignore them, and you're just another nobody with a blog no one reads. I know because that's precisely what my frst few blogs were. LESSONS FROM MY BLOGGING FAILURES Te frst blog I started was about real estate investing. I grew up in the business, built a $50 million real estate company, and took an hour or so every day to publish my thoughts about how to become successful as a real estate investor. In my opinion, it's still the fnest advice about real estate investing ever published to the web. 5

Surely it was successful, right? With a topic like real estate, how could you fail to bring in the megabucks? Heh. Te blog was an absolute fop. Tree months after starting it, I was pulling in a mere 50 visitors per day from search engines. Nothing to sneeze at, no, but hardly what a blog of its caliber deserved. People paid me $500 an hour for real estate advice, and here I was giving it away for free without any worthwhile result. So, I moved on to the next idea: a blog about how to write a best-selling book. Rather than trying to write all of the content myself, I would track down best-selling authors and get them to answer 10 questions about what it takes to write a best-selling book. Within a few months, I'd posted interviews with the likes of Seth Godin, Michael Gerber, Chip and Dan Heath, and Steven Levitt. Surely it was a success, right? I mean, everybody wants to write a book. Who could resist advice from the best in the business? Well, it just so happened that people never got the chance to resist it. Once again, I waited for the world to discover my killer content, and once again, no one did. I might as well have been writing the blog only for myself. Was it because I was a bad writer? Was it because I was writing about something no one was interested in? Was it because my content didn't measure up? No. All of that was fne. What was wrong actually surprised me. THE MYTH OF KILLER CONTENT You know the saying, "Content Is King?" It's the whole idea that success online is about publishing killer content. Write something that's truly good enough, and you don't have to worry about promoting it. People will fnd it and spread the word for you. Makes sense, right? Well, that's what I thought too. Te problem: if content really is king, then why weren’t my blogs growing? My content was killer, but no one seemed to care. I was actually so confused about my lack of success that I hired Chris Garrett, the coauthor of the ProBlogger book to tell me what I was doing wrong. It took him a few hours of arguing with me to fnally get through, but he fnally told me something that changed my life: “Killer content isn't enough. If you want to be successful, you have to spend as much time promoting your ideas as you do writing them. Maybe even more.” 6

It was like fipping a switch inside of my head. I stopped thinking of myself as a writer and started thinking of myself as a marketer. Instead of just writing a post and waiting for the world fnd it, I developed a miniature marketing plan for each and every post I wrote. Te result: Te next blog I started was a sensation. On Moneymaking pulled in over 1,000 subscribers within 60 days of launch, received an average of 1000 visitors per day, and was nominated for the best Business/Money blog in the world. When I got tired of the concept, I sold it for fve fgures... after writing only 27 blog posts. Te diference between On Moneymaking and all of my previous eforts: I promoted the hell out of it. I wrote guest posts. I built relationships with popular bloggers. I sucked up to social media power users. I asked everyone I knew to introduce me to anyone that might be able to help me. And it worked, not because my content was the best ever published, but because I impressed all the right people, and they made certain that everyone paid attention to me. I'll talk about this more in a moment. But frst, let's talk about how we got into this mess of believing the only way to build a popular blog is giving away overwhelming amounts of free content. THE TYRANNY OF CONTENT CREATION If you let it, your blog will turn you into a slave. Every day, it'll demand more content. Every day, you'll spend hours researching and writing blog posts. Every day, you'll fnd yourself so creatively exhausted that you don't have enough energy for promotion. Sound attractive? Te sad fact is that's exactly how most bloggers live: under the tyranny of content creation. Tey keep believing that if they just write a little more, than maybe their blog will fnally take of. But it doesn't work that way. All you end up with is a bunch of content that nobody reads. It's a huge waste of time. So what's the answer? HERE'S HOW TO GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT ONLINE In the beginning of your blog, only three things matter. 7

1. Choosing a mass-market topic with millions of potential readers 2. Building strong relationships with the infuential bloggers in your space 3. Converting as many visitors as possible into email subscribers Money, trafc, infuence – it all stems from those three things. And by the way, none of them are optional. If you neglect any of those three elements, or if you do any of them in the wrong order, you’ll fall far short of your potential. Of course, I can already hear the objections: But… what about Facebook? But… what about search engine optimization? But… what about publishing lots of great content? My answer: In the beginning, it’s all a waste of time. Sure, those techniques become important later, but if you have fewer than 1,000 blog subscribers, each and every one of them is a waste of time. Not because they are inefective, but because they are inefcient. And if you’re busy, efciency is the name of the game. Here’s why: YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO EVERYTHING You might’ve already guessed this, but let me confrm it for you… Tere’s no way in hell where you can do all the crap experts tell you to do. Write a great post every day, optimize it for search engines, create infographics, promote them on Pinterest, build a fan base on Facebook, write short posts for Google+, build an engaged Twitter audience, sell coaching or consulting, publish a book, manage your web server, hold a conference, and on and on and on and on… Tey’re all solid strategies, but you could work yourself 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and you couldn’t get all of it done. Hell, I have a staf of seven full-time people, and we still can’t do all of that! So does that mean we should all just quit? Go of and eat some worms? No. 8

Remember, the answer isn’t working harder. It’s working smarter. You have to do the things that get you the most results in the least amount of time. And then you have to deliberately and steadfastly ignore everything else. Let me tell you a little story… HOW I GOT 13K SUBSCRIBERS WITHOUT WRITING A POST A few years ago, I found myself obsessing over a weird but provocative question: Could it be possible to build a popular blog without writing a single blog post? I was working at Copyblogger at the time, one of the most popular blogs in the world, and one of my responsibilities was doing blog reviews for our customers. Over a period of several years, I worked with several hundred bloggers, and in each case, I noticed something peculiar: Publishing great content wasn’t working. Tat’s the #1 thing popular bloggers tell you to do, but I’ve seen the Google Analytics reports, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty: if you’re a beginning blogger, publishing great content is perhaps the absolute worst way you can spend your time. So, I decided to do a little experiment: In my spare time, I would start a new blog, and instead of just jumping in and writing a bunch of posts, I would steadfastly refuse to write a single post until I reached 10,000 email subscribers. On the surface, it sounds absurd. How can you expect to build a popular blog without publishing anything? But listen to this… Less than 60 days later, I had 13,000 email subscribers, more than 3,000 beyond my goal. I worked about 10-20 hours per week. I didn’t spend a penny on advertising. I also didn’t write a single blog post until I reached my goal. When I did fnally write a post, it received more than 5,000 visitors in a single day. Tat was the very frst post! And within nine months, the blog generated nearly $500,000 in revenue. How on earth is all that possible? 9

Simple: I did what works, and I ignored what doesn’t work. Te result? Te most popular blog launch in the history of the web. Let’s talk about what I learned…. THE MARTIN LUTHER KING EFFECT You’ve heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, right? One of the best speeches ever, no question. It fundamentally changed the way many people see the world. But here’s something to think about… What if it there was no audience? No crowd, no radio broadcasters, no television crews? What if King gave that speech to an empty room? It’s obvious, of course. Nothing would’ve happened. Here’s why: It doesn’t matter how good your content is. If no one is around to consume it and talk about it, you will have absolutely no infuence on anyone. In fact, as far as the world knows, you never created the content at all. Disturbing thought, isn’t it? And yet it’s precisely where most bloggers fnd themselves. You’re publishing great content. You’re putting your heart and soul into it. But nothing is happening. No comments, no shares, no links. You might think it’s your fault. You might wonder what you’re doing wrong. Te answer? Maybe nothing. It’s quite possible you’re doing everything right. You just don’t have an audience to observe it. For all practical purposes, you are totally 10

invisible. Te solution? Stop publishing posts no one is reading. Tey are worthless. You might as well be sitting on the beach somewhere picking your nose for all of the good it'll do you. Tis sounds rough, but if you really think about it, it's actually quite liberating. You know all those posts you’re sweating about writing every week? Well, eliminate them. Don’t write a single one. Instead, take that time and dedicate it to something that will work, such as… THE MOST POWERFUL TECHNIQUE FOR BUILDING YOUR AUDIENCE For the opening act of a Rolling Stones concert in 1981, a young man wearing bikini briefs sauntered up on stage and began to sing a song called, “Jack U Of.” Te crowd threw vegetables and booed him of the stage, but he came back the next night and the next and the next, and before long, the crowds recognized his brilliance, and he became one of the biggest stars in rock history. Who was this young man? He called himself Prince. In music, becoming an opening act for a famous band is a well-established route to stardom. Stevie Wonder also opened for the Stones. Guns N’ Roses opened for Aerosmith, and later, Motley Crew opened for Guns N’ Roses. We could go on and on. Te point: When you’re a beginner, the best way to build your audience is to become an opening act. Doesn’t matter if you’re a musician, a comedian, or a blogger. It’s the same idea. In blogging, we call it “guest blogging.” Te idea is you write a post for a popular blog, and in exchange, they give you a link at the bottom back to your own site. Of course, I told you not to write anything on your own site yet. So, why would you possibly want to send readers there? 11

We’ll get to that in a minute. For now, it’s important you grasp this simple concept: In the beginning, you have no audience, so it’s pointless to publish your best stuf on your own site, but that doesn’t mean you don’t write anything. On the contrary, you hunt down the biggest blog you can fnd with an audience who would like your stuf, and you publish it there. Not only is it a great way to build your audience, but it helps you hone your craft. Personally, I guest posted for several years before I fnally felt ready to go out on my own. And I’m not the only one. Brian Clark, Leo Babauta, Tim Ferriss, and countless other famous bloggers were also guest posters before they became popular themselves. In fact, it’s hard to fnd a popular blogger who didn’t guest post for someone else when they were coming up. It’s not just about building your audience, though. It’s also about getting to know the boys in the back room. THE BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM When I graduated from college, my father gave me some valuable advice. "Son," he said, his voice rumbling with Alabama twang. "I'm proud of you for gettin’ your degree and all, but I want you to know something: It doesn't entitle you to squat." I must've looked startled because he stopped. "What do you mean?" I said. "Well... all of these boys and girls seem to graduate thinkin’ that just because they have a degree that the world owes them a job. But it ain't true. Te world don't give a shit what you got hangin’ on your wall." I laughed. "I know, Dad. Don't worry. I'm going to work hard too." He shook his head. "Tat's not what I mean," he said. "You can work all you want, but if the right people don't notice, it don't count. You got to impress the right people, son." I thought about this for a moment. "Who are they?" He smiled. "Te boys in the back room. I don't care whether you're pickin’ cotton or writin’ fancy computer programs. In every industry, there's a back room somewhere with a bunch of boys playin’ cards, shootin’ pool, and controllin’ how everything works. To get ahead, you got to fnd out who they are and impress the hell out of them." As it turns out, he was right. Sort of. 12

Tankfully, the misogynistic world of old, white men smoking cigars together in a back room is fading away. Today, when you meet the power players in a space, they are male, female, young, old, and their skin color is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Not totally irrelevant, mind you. Society still has many dark corners where the ignorant huddle and pine for the past. But the idea of power players? Inner circles? Infuencers manipulating an industry from behind the scenes? Tat’s not going anywhere. Years ago, when I used to be a video game designer, there were about a dozen game publishers who controlled which games were released. When I was in commercial real estate, there were about a dozen real estate agents who controlled which properties sold. When I got into fnance, there were about a dozen lenders who made the majority of the loans. Of course, you probably know this. It's really just an extension of the Pareto Principle. What you might not have fgured out yet though is that it applies just as much to blogging as anything else. I sure didn't realize it in the beginning. I thought blogging was diferent. Chris Garrett had to practically wring my neck for me to realize how stupid I was being. Blogging isn't diferent; it's the same as everything else. Online, the "boys in the back room" are still in charge. Tey just look a little diferent. MALCOLM GLADWELL AND THE LAW OF THE FEW In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Te Tipping Point, he says: "Te success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts." Notice he doesn’t say their involvement is just nice to have. It’s a requirement. He calls it “the Law of the Few.” Without infuencers called Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, it’s almost impossible to spread your message. He documents examples of their importance all the way back to Paul Revere in the Revolutionary War. So, the question isn't whether or not these people exist. It's how to get them talking about you. Guest blogging is one answer. If you write a guest post for one of the infuential blogs in your space, you immediately have a much better chance of getting other favors as well. 13

For example, if you write a great guest post for my blog, BoostBlogTrafc.com, and then you ask me to do an interview or share a report or connect you with another infuencer, I’m a gazillion times more likely to do it. But there are other methods too. If you fnd the right angle, it’s surprisingly easy to get infuencers to do interviews with you, and asking smart questions can easily turn into the start of a relationship. When I was a beginner, I asked Seth Godin to do a 10-question written interview, and we’ve stayed in touch with each other ever since. You can also buy your way in. Te quickest way to rise to the top of any infuencer’s priority list is to become a client or customer. It can be pricey, but it certainly works. You might wonder… Is it really worth the investment of time and money? After all, you’re hanging your hopes and dreams on the approval of a small group of people. It seems awfully risky. And it is. But unless you want to pay for advertising, there’s really no other way to get trafc. TWO STEPS TO ALL THE TRAFFIC YOU CAN HANDLE If you want to build a popular blog, here's what you have to do:  

Make friends with infuential people Get them talking about you

Tat's it. If you look closely, pretty much every viable trafc technique is simply an extension of those two steps. Want your blog to rank at the top of Google? Te most important part of SEO is getting links to your content from highly trusted sources. "Highly trusted sources" is just another way of saying "boys in the back room," and "getting links" is the result of having them talk about your content. Want to have a post go viral on Twitter? Convince several popular users (a.k.a., the boys in the back room) with an interest in your topic to follow you, and then send them a direct message asking them to retweet your best posts (another way of talking about your content). 14

We could go on and on. It's such a universal process that I've started teaching it to my consulting clients as "Te Trafc Two Step." What's important is that you do the steps in order. Many bloggers make the mistake of thinking that they should publish great content, and that content will result in infuential people taking notice of them. But that's not the way it works. THE HARSH REALITY OF GETTING LINKS FROM POPULAR BLOGS Given that I'm the owner of a website dedicated to the subject of blogging, you would think I'd be aware of every blogger in the space. You'd think I'd be able to list them all, ranging from the biggies like Darren and Brian and Rand down to the beginners who are bravely blogging away with only 50 or 100 subscribers. But I don't. Not even close. I subscribe to fewer than 20 blogs, and I only watch a handful of them on a daily basis. I check social bookmarking sites for trends every week or two, but I usually only look at the headlines, almost never reading the posts. If you have a small blog, chances are I'll never notice you. You could write the greatest post in the history of the universe about blogging, and I'd never hear about it or link to it, nor would any of the other authorities on blogging. If we're being honest, the reason why is simple: you're not high enough on my priority list. Sure, you're on the list somewhere, but probably # 197 or something. Before I could even think about reading your blog, frst I have to do things like:      

Write for a few hours Answer questions from employees Respond to email from customers Talk to consulting clients Keep up relationships with other important bloggers Attend to dozens of other business distractions that inevitably pop up

At the end of the day, I'll go to bed having crossed 20 or 30 of these activities of my list, and tomorrow, I'll replace them with 20 or 30 more. It won't matter how much I want to read your blog; something else will always be more important. Unless...

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THE SECRET TO GETTING ANYONE'S ATTENTION Did you notice how I mentioned several people who get my attention every day? Namely, guest writers, customers, consulting clients, and other important bloggers? If you want me to read your post, your best bet is to become one of these people. Sure, you can't wave a magic wand and become an important blogger, but you can become a guest writer, customer, or a consulting client. And once you do, you'll immediately go to the top of my priority list. Tey don't like to admit it, but pretty much every popular person I've ever met operates this way. Tey have a few groups of people that are important to them, and they ignore everyone else. It's nothing personal. It's just the way they survive in a world where too many people want their attention. You can't change the system, so you might as well roll with it. Become one of the people who's already important to them, and then use the opportunity to ask for a favor. But the reverse? Not. Going. To. Happen. Make the connection frst, and then you’ll have a chance to have them read your content. It's not easy, but it is doable. Upstart bloggers are doing it all across the web every day, and so can you. You just need someone to help you cut through all of the clutter and ft it into your busy schedule, not give you so much to do that it takes over your life. YOU'RE BUSY (AND THAT'S A GOOD THING) Let's face it... most blogging advice is designed for computer nerds. You know who I'm talking about – people who can drop everything, live in their mother's basement, and spend 16 hours a day learning about SEO, copywriting, and the hundreds of other techniques that you can use to build a popular blog. Tey have nothing better to do. But you actually have a life. Maybe you have a blossoming career that takes up most of your time, and you're thinking a blog will help you become a thought leader in your feld. Or maybe you have a business, and you'd like to explore using a blog to generate leads for your sales reps. 16

Or maybe you're creating an information product, and a blog seems like the perfect way to attract more customers. Whatever the case, you don't have time to learn hundreds of trafc strategies and fgure out how to apply them all. You need someone to cut through the crap and show you how to start getting results now from your blog. SO, LET ME ASK YOU A BLUNT QUESTION… If you had a chance to be mentored by me for the next year, would you take it? I’m not talking about one of those fimsy home study courses with a few Q&A calls. I’m talking about meetings with me, both online and in person, where I review your work, give you feedback on your direction, and lead you step-by-step to becoming one of the most popular bloggers in the world. We’ll talk about the positioning of your blog. I’ll read your posts. You’ll also receive access to every training on blogging I’ve ever created, collectively valued at more than than $25,000. I’ll take a personal interest in what you’re doing. I’ll invite you to spend the weekend with me in my home near Miami, Florida. If I think you’re ready, I’ll happily connect you with other infuencers I know (and I know almost everyone). In other words, it’ll be a real mentorship. And I’ll help you get real results. Te cost? Well, it won’t be cheap, but it’ll be far less than you might expect. Certainly far less than it’s worth. For the frst time, I’ll also be ofering scholarships to bloggers who meet select criteria. And just to ease your mind, this is NOT a sales pitch. You can’t join today, even if you want to. I’m not accepting applications until September 8th. But you can get on the “interest list” here if you like: Click here to get on the interest list I also have lots more educational training coming your way. Totally free of charge. Frankly, I can only mentor a small number of people, so my goal is to help you, regardless of whether we work together or not. If you’re serious about blogging, I’m serious about 17

helping you, even if you never pay me a dime. Not because it’s the proftable thing to do. Not because I want you to feel like you “owe” me. It’s because I’m tired of watching smart people like you stumble around in the dark. Te least I can do is turn on the light and point you in the right direction. Te web needs more serious bloggers. I’m hoping you’re one of them. If you are, then watch your inbox carefully over the next few days. I have much to teach you. Your friend,

Jon Morrow

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