Over the past couple of weeks, I rolled out my latest product release on Bike198.com…the “Live the Ride” wristbands.
Backing up – awhile back (about 6 months ago), I was trying to figure out another physical product I could release that would increase brand recognition and be easy to put together. After some thought, the idea of the wristband came up so I asked our Facebook followers what they thought…and they loved the idea.
This morning, I was getting for the day when I came to a realization…
I hate blogging about blogging.
What started off as trying to help people has turned into the vicious cycling that I had dreaded from day one.
So what exactly happens?
The more I post useful tips that actually work…the more people just want another list post about “how to get more comments” or “how to make more money” that they can tweet without reading or use on their own “make money online talking about making money online” blog. It is less and less about building a business out of something unique and more about copying the success of others in the hope that money can be made off of the same blueprint.
As this cycle continued to show itself…I was finding myself thinking about creating training course, more eBooks and other related materials that would basically just become more of the noise. I wasn’t happy about it and I was dreading every second of it.
I got into blogging to connect and help other people in the biking industry with Bike198. Luckily, that site is still doing that. However, when I tried to apply that same theory to Blogging Labs, I was getting stuck in the rut that most blogs about blogging head in…and it is time to stop the madness.
I want to connect with people again and I do not care if that costs me money in the long run. That is not why I started writing about online publishing in the first place…but that is what it turned into. Bike198 is still doing incredibly well on the income side of things without having to sacrifice the connection and sharing within the industry. That audience could care less about the blogging and make money online world…all they want to do is share their passion online.
If I have to take an income hit to get back that connect here…it is worth the tradeoff to not be another “blog about blogging” or “make money online by talking about making money online” place on the web. There are enough people doing that already and 99.9% of them are all saying the same thing. Saying that, there are very few (ie. DavidRisley.com and some others) that are still publishing content that I will even read.
So things are going to change rapidly. I am going to get back to connecting with people by publishing everything here on RobbSutton.com and I am completely dropping Blogging Labs. The old content will stay live, but now you are going to be connecting with me…not some brand…not what the industry wants…just me. The about pages, categories and other items will shift into the direction that I want this site to take.
I have a lot going on now that I do believe can help people and I want to share, but I do not want it to be list posts about rehashed crap in an attempt for pageviews. If you want to connect with me…the guy behind the scenes…then you will love this change. If you want more list posts and how to posts that will “get you 100 more subscribers today”, you are not on the right site anymore.
It’s time for a change.
To start…I am going to give everything I used to charge for away for free. Ramped Blogging and Ramped Reviews are now yours to have whether or not you subscribe to a newsletter or purchase them. Here are the download links…
They will continue to be free for anyone who wants to download them. If you sign up for the newsletter or rss feed…great! I am glad to have you as a part of the site. But…I will no longer be offering a free incentive on this site as part of the signup process as the blogging about blogging world is full of people that purely signup for the free stuff and aren’t interested in staying connected. They are just interested in that next “magic bullet”.
I have this fundamental belief that blogging needs to get back to its roots. What started off as making that one on one connection has now become almost solely focused on money and becoming another “get rich quick” scheme. What many people fail to realize is that the money came after the connection…not before. It is only when these connections got in such high numbers that bloggers began to gain respect for the amount of income they were producing that was a byproduct of the connections…it wasn’t the initial goal.
So here is RobbSutton.com…it will be about me. My successes, failures and life laid out in the attempt to connect with people on the other side of the screen. I am going to keep this site as far away from MMO as possible and focus my life, what I enjoy and the principles that create successful ventures.
I recently made some big changes to the Bike198 site that not only made my life much easier…but the big changes also drastically increased my search engine traffic. There is something in this story — we’ll call it my big mistake — for all bloggers, so take this ride with me and see how you can use this story to improve your blog.
This story really starts back with the re-branding of Bike198.com. Back then…I had the idea that I wanted to have each of the separate cycling disciplines on their own sub-domain with individual WordPress installs. On paper, it looked like a great idea. I would have individual sites that could carry their own weight and have their own direct advertising campaigns while somewhat benefiting from each others back links. I even made it look cool by the colors switching between mountain, road, commuting and the base domain.
It was a dumb idea.
At least for me. I have always said on this blog that I learn as much from my mistakes…if not more…as my successes and I was learning a big lesson on this setup. What I basically did with that setup was create a HUGE headache for myself in several major areas.
That really only scratches the surface of the issues I was running into. Basically I created a setup that need a team to run…and I am just one guy with a blog.
So I had to go about fixing this as it was driving me crazy. My great idea on paper was driving me up the wall and hurting my business. So I started looking into a setup that would actually work for me while strengthening the site.
I made the decision…I was going to drop years worth of articles and photos on the main domain…Bike198.com. Mountain.Bike198.com, Road.Bike198.com and Urban.Bike198.com were going to get combined onto Bike198.com. Sounds like a big move and it was.
Luckily, WordPress makes this entire process stupid simple. Export from one into the other and click a simple check box stating you want the images to be downloaded too. It is actually so easy that you think you are doing something wrong. As far as moving the domains so Google and the other search engines wouldn’t get confused, I just hit up an article I wrote on moving domains and I was set.
So everything was on one site. Google and other search engines knew to take the change due to the 301 redirects and I was on my way to having an easier life with my main source of website income. Through the process, I even figured out that I could simulate the separate sites through WordPress 3.0.
So the only thing I lost was my colors…and I can live with that. (Oddly enough, a coding genius friend of mine thinks he can still get that done with a couple of lines of Javascript…)
A crazy thing happened in the next 72 hours. My traffic went through the roof…by a large percentage. It was actually so bad that I thought I had done something wrong. I was already ranking incredibly well for high competition keywords like “mountain bike reviews” so I am used to a surge of traffic especially during the warmer months. But I was not prepared for this…
As I started to research into what was “going wrong”, I found something really interesting. As Google was spidering my content and switching the url from the sub-domain to the main domain thanks to my 301 redirects, my rankings were increasing drastically within it’s rankings. I just started laughing to be honest. I thought it was a mistake and things would go back to normal soon.
It wasn’t a mistake…as things kept going…results kept getting higher and stabilized.
I was now ranking 1 and 2 for positions I was holding in the 4 to 5 territory. Long tail keywords (around 4 words) were always in the top 5. It was as if my site was given instant juice that was getting directly injected via IV into all of my pages.
The goal of this project was to make my life easier…and hopefully that change make my site perform better. If anything, I was expecting a slight drop off in traffic until Google caught up with the inbound links from the other sub-domains. That would have been completely normal…the increase is not when moving domains.
The big difference here is that I was performing actions that was making it like trying to run in lead boots. I had great content, it was getting linked to and I was otherwise making all of the right steps. Where I went wrong was trying to bite off too much at once…which ended up biting me in the ass by making my SEO efforts harder and my general site maintenance harder. Now…my site is getting full advantage of all of my hard work…and it is awesome.
I know you are probably thinking “Wow…that’s great. But I don’t have multiple sub-domains or the issues you were having…I am just trying to build traffic and subscribers.”
You are right. 99% of bloggers were not in my situation which you would think would make this post completely worthless to most bloggers. But like with most stories, there are things that you can take away that will help you in your blogging.
Make sure you are putting your best foot forward by choosing www or non www in your domain and stick with it. While WordPress handles this by your settings…you need to make sure you are letting Google know exactly how you want to be indexed and linked to by putting a simple bit of code in your .htaccess file .
Redirect www to non-www:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Redirect non-www to www:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
When you are designing your site and handling how your visitors will interact with your content, you absolutely have to think of your visitors first…what you think looks cool second.
If it doesn’t convert…it is not worth having. Drop all of the widgets that 70% readers aren’t going to interact with and make things easy to find. Beyond that it is about converting visitors into readers.
As bloggers, we want to take on the world. Sometimes, this gets us away from what we are good at an in a world that we can not possibly manage. Try to avoid the shiny key syndrome (running after every new idea) and really plan your attack that will fit in your life. You can not possibly manage 10 blogs on your own and be good at it. Do what you do best…and manage your life at the same time.
Blogging is not rocket science…but we try to make it that way.
Blogging at its core is great content and marketing…not complicated site builds and big dreams. It is important to have goals and to see where you want to be in the future. It is detrimental to your success to not stay rooted in reality and plan your moves carefully.
You could be giving up a lot and making things harder on yourself like I did.
Editors Note: This is a guest post from Lauren Bailey. I am a firm believer in diversifying the content on your blog to engage your readers on a deeper level. I think far too many times we see people that only write posts that generate revenue or none at all while focusing on only providing one type of article to their audience. Switch it up a little bit and provide some diversity! You will be surprised at the result.
As the saying goes, content is king. Successful blogging requires many things quality web design, strong marketing, clear niche but the most essential aspect is content.
If you want to be a professional blogger, you have to produce content that is well written, engaging, and unique. One of the most difficult aspects of blogging is creating content that is new and exciting enough to surprise our readers and encourage them to want more. It can be easy to lose inspiration and interest when you are writing the same way over and over again for your blog.
Work to diversify the types of articles and posts you publish on your blog. By diversifying your blog in this way, your readers will have several different ways to interact and engage with your blog. Publish articles within these four categories to help spruce up our blog and keep your readers interested.
Quality content is what brings readers to your blog in the first place (for the most part). Pillar articles are the posts that you write that make up the “meat” of your blog. Foundational posts like this allow you to thoroughly examine a topic that interests you and suits your blog area. Your readers can read these posts and come away with a solid understanding of the subject matter.
Oftentimes, these posts will be “how to” articles, tutorials, or other informational pieces. These posts help to position you as an expert within your niche area of blogging. With strong pillar articles, readers will come to your blog for the information they seek. Furthermore, quality pillar articles can generate a lot of traffic from search engine results.
Diversifying the voice used in your blog can help keep things new and fresh for your audience. Invite guest post bloggers to write for your blog. Readers will appreciate hearing varying viewpoints and opinions on the topics considered in your blog. Guest bloggers can help generate more traffic to your site by linking to their guest post for your blog on their own social media and website. This may attract readers you would not have otherwise reached. Of course, it is important to select the guest posts you publish wisely. Make sure that your guests write quality posts that fall within your blogs general niche.
Using multimedia within your blog is a great way to change things up. A blog can get weighed down by too many text heavy posts. While text posts are popular for their search engine optimization potential, an occasional multimedia post can attract new readers and bring new life to a dull blog. Try doing a video blog or a podcast every now and again. This can be a great strategy for upping the traffic to your blog. Some visitors may not want to spend the time reading a post, but if they can watch or listen, they may stick around.
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for best online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 [at] gmail.com.
I honestly see no reason for hating WordPress. Millions of people simply can’t be wrong. Just look at the numbers. 13,800,000 blogs running as self-hosted installations, and 13,900,000 active blogs on wordpress.com (2010 data). Of the top 1 million websites (according to Alexa) 12.4% use WordPress. That’s a whopping 124,000 of them.
But still, you don’t have to be preaching WordPress if you don’t want to. So if you’re about to launch a new website you might as well use a different web content management system (CMS). Or don’t use any CMS at all, and build the site from the ground up with pure PHP and HTML. Although this is probably not the best possible idea since there are tons of great systems out there.
Here’s a list of 13 top web content management systems you should consider if you’re not really into this WordPress thing.
I had been a Joomla! (don’t forget about the exclamation mark) programmer for a couple of years before I switched to WordPress. Joomla! is an advanced, full-blown open source content management system that powers 2.7% of the entire web (as it’s claimed on joomla.org). Joomla! provides many functions you would expect from a CMS, plus has an impressive directory of extensions (8,065 of them at the time of writing). This CMS is great for all sorts of corporate websites or portals, online magazines, e-commerce stores, small business websites, and other.
If you want a social proof here’re some websites that use Joomla!: http://gsas.harvard.edu, http://www.outdoorphotographer.com, http://www.quizilla.com.
An open source platform as well. Drupal is close to the top of this list not without a reason. It’s a great CMS for building corporate websites, information portals, enterprise applications and even blogs. Plus, you can choose from more than 8,000 modules (extensions).
Some websites that use Drupal: http://www.fastcompany.com/, http://www.popsugar.com/, http://www.symantec.com/connect/, http://www.observer.com/.
(http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/)
The name itself is pretty self-explanatory. CMS Made Simple is the winner of the “overall best open source CMS award 2010″ by Packt Publishing. It’s a scalable platform (suited both for small businesses and large corporations) and provides a really big list of features. Some of them are: SEO friendly URLs, user and group management, multiple language support, multiple themes per website, forms, polls, newsletters, guestbookÖ there’s no point to mention every single feature here, just go to cmsmadesimple.org and find out for yourself.
First non-PHP CMS on this list. Plone runs on Python. But what it runs on is not important to the end user. What is important though is its simple and easy to use interface. “Elegant minimalism” they call it. The new version of Plone is claimed to be 50% faster than the previous one and to be one of the fastest open source CMS platforms on the market. Its many features and constantly growing community makes it the top non-PHP choice.
Back to PHP systems. Easy to use, feature-rich, and fully modularized ñ this pretty much sums it up. Some interesting features are: expanded users management and theme-based GUI (with over 1,000 currently available themes).
This one is old-school. It was one of the most popular systems when I was starting out as a PHP programmer. Fortunately, it hasn’t been forgotten and it’s still developed by a devoted community. The counter on phpnuke.org indicates more than 8,450,000 downloads, which is impressive to say the least.
“e107, it’s pimp, init?” ñ one of the random sentences you see when you visit e107.org. This is a great, developer-friendly CMS with many interesting features, and if you think there’s something missing you can suggest a new feature. There’s a special section on the site for that. If you happen to be a product owner yourself then here’s a hint ñ there’s no better way of showing your community that you care than by letting them suggest new ideas for improvement.
(http://www.magnolia-cms.com/)
It’s targeted mainly towards business users, so it’s no surprise it’s the CMS of choice for many government and large corporate websites. Among its many features there’s a possibility to preview content exactly as it would be seen by the website visitor. If you’ve been working with other CMS platforms you know that it’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to explain to your client why in the end the content looks differently from what they see in the editor. No such problem here.
This one is a Java-based content management system. You can choose from two available versions (free ñ Community version, and paid ñ Enterprise version). Similar to every CMS on this list this one provides a wide range of features as well. You can use it to manage small, micro-sites as well as large online magazines. If you’d like something built around Java this is basically the route to go.
This is a blog content management system (similar to WordPress). Free and open source. It provides some classic, blog features but also many additional ones. It lets you manage files and photos, launch multiple blogs, use detailed user permissions and more. Of course, there’s a lot of available plugins too.
If you need something really simple you should consider this CMS. It’s basically just a news management system that uses some standard files instead of a normal database (like MySQL for example). Somehow it still manages to support things like commenting, archives, search function, file uploads, and even backup and restore.
This CMS is probably one of the easiest to use platforms on this list. A “truly simple CMS” as the authors say. And it’s hard to disagree. I was really surprised when I learned how the CMS works because it uses none of the industry-standard ideas. The first surprising thing is that there’s no software to installÖ yea, how about that? I encourage you to find out for yourself. The video on cushycms.com is just 5 minutes.
Basically a blog content management system running on PHP and MySQL (same as WordPress). What’s interesting about it is the fact that you can use it to launch multiple sites with a single installation. If you like to you can extend it with a number of plugins (which is kind of a standard for top-shelf CMS platforms these days). One of the more interesting features is the possibility to backup and restore the whole database with just a single click.
There’s no best or worst here. If you need a good, feature-rich, and safe content management system you can go with either one from this list. It’s best to check them all out and see which one appeals to you the most. And when you do, don’t forget to come back and let me know in the comments which one is it.
P.S. My favorite one is still WordPress sorry.
About the author: Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland who hates to work but loves to train capoeira. But anyway, tune in to get his blogging tips and tutorials.
I was looking through my timeline on Facebook yesterday when I noticed something interesting.
Within my timeline, there was a poll by a friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook that read, “I am cleaning up my Facebook friends…let me know if you would like to stay?” Seems simple enough. This girl just wanted to clean up her Facebook account like many of us do from time to time. She saw the poll feature, thought it would be an efficient way to get the job done making sure she didn’t de-friend anyone she wasn’t supposed to…and she put up the poll.
However, she forgot the most powerful aspect of the new polling feature in Facebook…people that are not friends with you see if one of their friends answered the poll.
Every time one of her 247 friends answered the poll, it showed up in their timeline to all of their friends who could also answer. Her one innocent poll went viral on Facebook to get over 3,242,283 votes, 136,650 followers of the poll and over 199,200 comments. I don’t think that is what she had in mind when she asked the simple question!
Now…while this example provides a bit of humor, it does illustrate a very important point. The Facebook polling feature can be very powerful when growing your brand for your Facebook fan page.
Inviting user opinion and interaction is an incredible tool for building a following. Luckily, with the Facebook polling feature, you can get in front of the eyes of new, potential Facebook fans by asking your current followers to check a simple box to a simple question.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been testing out the polling feature within Facebook on the Bike198 Facebook fan page and I have noticed several things that will help you gain more followers and get more people to interact with your questions.
As long as you keep those key suggestions in mind, you can grow your fan base and bring more readers to your blog.
In my opinion, the Facebook poll feature is one of the most powerful tools available to fan page owners as we continue to try to grow that following. The viral nature built into the feature is the easiest way to get your brand in front of your fan base’s friends without being a spamming pain in the ass.
This past weekend, I did something really stupid. At the end of BlowWorld, my wife and I stayed in NYC for a couple of days to take a long weekend, mini vacation. On Friday, I came down with something terrible. Cold sweats, high fever, aching body, coughing like crazy…it was all there. For the next 10 days, the symptoms just ran over me like a Mack truck.
In my infinite wisdom, I decided after a week of feeling sick (and not feeling any better) that it would be a great idea to go on a 52 mile road bike ride with my friends. What harm could it do right?! By the end of the ride, I thought I was dead. I could barely hold on to the handlebars, my voice was completely gone and my throat felt like I had swallowed razorblades. What a dumb move…
Ironically enough, like most things in my life…it created inspiration for a blog post on Bike198.com. I wrote an article basically telling on myself and explaining how impatience as cyclists can take us backwards instead of forwards.
After the article went live (you can read it here: Riding Is More Than Just Spinning Wheels), I ended up getting emails from readers and calls from friends in and out of the industry telling me how spot on the article was and thank you for publishing it. Here is an example of one of the emails I received.
Hello Robb.
Thanks for the honesty of your reviews and insights.
It is always nice to read the articles as they genuinely have the human touch.
Keep up the good work
Many thanks
Reader of Bike198 (name removed)
(Brisbane Australia)
When the emails started coming in…I was floored. It completely made my day and energized the thought process for more related articles.
When we write our blog posts, I think it is easy to sometimes forget that we are connecting on a 1:1 basis with our readers. While you might be writing to an audience of thousands, each reader digests your content one at a time. The reason they do this is to connect with you and your thoughts. While they might agree or disagree, that connection is what separates blogging from other traditional forms of content publishing.
It is important…and that connection is what ultimately will grow you blog.
So how can we, as bloggers, capitalize on this and make a stronger connection with our readers? Let’s take a look at this list and see if you are doing these on your blog.
The context of blogging was based on that connection between writer and reader that was not possible through conventional content publishing methods. By remembering that core ideal while you also try to increase business, you will be able to grow to new heights and attract raving fans of your blog.
How do you connect with your readers?
New dad. Blogger. Business owner. My life and journey through all of these while trying to keep my obsessions in check. Read more
6 Tips On How To Get More Comments On Your Blog
I’m going to share a little secret: the process I go through when writing a new blog post isn’t usually this: “Idea = Blog Post”
Instead, my equation looks a little more like this:
“Problem > Research > Solution > Blog Post > Feedback > Better Solution”
You see, I’m entirely sold on the concept that a blog shouldn’t be looked at a one-way information vortex. Instead, it should be more like a hurricane or tornado (or some other turbulent force of nature) that stirs up information and ideas from a group of people. In the same way most people read a recipe and adjust it based on the reviews, I believe most readers find blog comments as rich in information as the blog itself. So, now you’re asking: how do I get more comments on my blog?
I’ll share a few ideas I’ve learned over my blogging experience:
1. Interact with other blogs
Find blogs that are related to yours, and join the discussion on their articles. In addition to learning more about your field of interest, you can share your expertise and get to know like-minded readers. You can often find appropriate places to add a link to an article you have written on your blog, but only do so if it adds to the discussion and benefits the other readers. Keep at it, and over time, thoughtful blog interaction could increase comment-giving traffic to your own blog.
2. Submit guest articles to other industry blogs
Why would you put time into an article that someone else gets to run without paying you? Well, in essence, you are getting paid; provided that the blog provides your author bio at the bottom. In one fell swoop, you’re getting your name out to a wider audience, a link to your page that could help search engine rankings (especially if the blog has a higher page rank), and you’re establishing credibility by positioning yourself as an industry expert. Anyone can create a blog and publish articles on it; however, having a reputable blog publish your articles speaks volumes to readers.
3. Keep it casual
This isn’t English 101 anymore – you can speak in first person, use contractions, and have a sense of humor. If your blog comes off too textbook-y, readers may be uncomfortable commenting for fear of getting slapped by a ruler after neglecting MLA format. That isn’t to say you should neglect spelling and grammar, or be unprofessional. But your goal here is to engage in conversation, and conversations don’t sound like term papers. Think of it like talking to colleagues over coffee. Oh, and in case you didn’t notice back there: I started a sentence with “but.” Yes, I’m a rebel.
4. Keep stirring the pot
The directions mean it when they say “stir constantly over low heat.” If you stick your blog post on the burner and abandon it, you’ll end up getting burned in the end. People who took the time to comment on your blog should be recognized and responded to, especially when they have questions or criticisms. The rest of your audience is watching how you respond to these comments, and the impression you make could be the difference between repeat visitors (and commenters) and a dwindling audience.
5. Be diplomatic in your comment responses
A reality you must accept about blogging is that your ideas are out there, open for praise or attack. If you get a criticizing comment, you should always take the high road in your response: thank them for contributing their thoughts, apologize and clarify if they misunderstood (or misconstrued) something you said, and maybe even ask them how they would do things differently. If the comment is non-constructive, mean spirited, or downright wrong, resist the urge to puff your chest and tell that person off. Respectfully disagree, or politely comment that you would appreciate more constructive feedback. You can’t win a war of opinion against an ill-mannered person, so don’t lose your professional image over a nasty comment.
6. Ask for what you want
Would you like more responses? Ask for them. In the footer of every article, ask the reader if they enjoyed the article, and tell them to add their two cents in the comments section. It sounds unnecessary, but if marketing has taught me anything, it’s that people respond better to calls of action. Many non-bloggers may not realize how much time and resources goes into writing articles, and that comments are what make it worthwhile for many writers. If you’re still not getting responses, consider whether you’re asking the right (or any) questions.
Now it’s your turn:
Remember the equation: Problem > Research > Solution > Blog Post > Feedback > Better Solution? This is part where you help solve a problem many bloggers (including myself) have. What advice would you give to a blogger seeking more comments?