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Fishing, Catfish and Successful Blogging

April 23, 2010 By 1 Comment

The following article is another Ramped Reviews and Ramped Blogging success story from Chad Ferguson at Learn To Catch Catfish. I really like Chad’s attitude towards blogging and success stories like these is the main motivation for RobbSutton.com. I know you’ll enjoy this one as much as I did.

In 2001 I started a website with absolutely no experience, which primarily involved an online forum. Due to my inexperience when setting it up I became frustrated with the management of it a few years later and made some changes and went to a self hosted forum. Due to my lack of tech skills I hired someone to install PHPbb for me as the primary forum software.

The switch in forums cost me a lot of members and was a huge hit in the website traffic and I learned a valuable lesson about making changes. I also learned some valuable lessons along the way about advertising, as I also used this website to sell a line of products that I manufacture.

After running on the forum with PHPbb for about 6 months somehow I started getting hit by spammers on the forum getting thousands of registrations each day and bombarded with inappropriate content.

I worked with several programmers trying to make changes that would fix the spam problem and we just couldn’t make any headway, so once again I was forced to shut down the forum and change forum providers, which was the kiss of death for keeping members on the website, and most of them left immediately. Again, valuable lessons learned.

I left the website in place because it had good search engine rankings and was valuable in driving traffic to the websites for my other products, but literally went four years without making any changes to the website. I was at a point in my life where I just didn’t have the capacity to deal with it so it sat stagnant.

Through a casual conversation with a friend one day the subject of Google Adsense came up and my friend asked why I wasn’t running any Google Adsense ads on the website, and then the conversation turned to blogging. This brief conversation put my mind in overdrive and I started considering the possibilities of starting a new website.

I spent some time looking through this old website and consider the possibilities and decided that rather than attempt to redesign the old website I would start a blog. Blogging was virtually non-existent back when I started my first website, and something that I honestly had not paid much attention to until about two months ago.

Learn To Catch Catfish

After doing some research I decided that blogging was the way to go, and I purchased the domain www.learntocatchcatfish.com I have a hosting account with HostGator and much to my surprise they had a seamless install of a self hosted WordPress blog.

I installed the WordPress software and came up with a quick logo and downloaded a free WordPress template and started playing around with WordPress. Initially setting up the blog was very frustrating because I was using free WordPress themes. I wasted a lot of time trying to get things to work and with no support because I was using a free theme. In hindsight, I should have just purchased a theme from the very beginning but I was trying to keep the cost to a minimum (I am know looking at purchasing a Woo Themes theme to use until I get to a point when I want to have a custom theme designed).

After getting everything setup and working correctly I started searching on Google for information on blogging and landed upon a number of websites, which is where I found Robb Sutton’s Ramped Blogging e-book, which I immediately downloaded.

I read the entire ramped blogging e-book cover to cover and followed the steps that Robb outlined in the Ramped Blogging e-book, and purchased the Ramped Reviews e-book and read it cover to cover as well, and then started blogging.

The Ramped Blogging book by Robb Sutton was more helpful that any other items I looked at and saved me a ton of time and frustration in setting up my blog, knowing which plugins to use, and exactly how everything needed to be setup. This gave me significant piece of mind since I was so new to WordPress and blogging.

The Ramped Reviews e-book was also very helpful as it gave me some good ideas on how to go about doing product reviews, and how to actually get the product for review. I had tried to do this with my old website and was moderately successful with it but Ramped Reviews gave me some good ideas on what I needed to do differently with this blog both with getting product and with completing the reviews.

I immediately went and added links to all my other websites back to my new blog and it started getting traffic immediately. I also placed a few strategic posts on several online forums that I had been involved with for years, and added the link to my blog in my signature, and started generating some traffic there as well.

To kick things off I offered a free prize for joining my email list and ran 30 day contest for members to win a free fishing rod. This generated some good traffic and 78 comments on the post. This was huge for me as I had not one comment on the blog at that point.

After I had about 30 posts on my new Learn To Catch Catfish blog I contacted a number of outdoor writers by email that I had worked with in the past (they had previously done articles on me for one of my other businesses).  Within two days one of these outdoor writers called me and interviewed me about my Learn To Catch Catfish blog, and a few days later there was a half page ad in the Sunday Fort Worth Star Telegram about my blog.

Needless to say, this mainstream media exposure caused the traffic to soar and my members increased by 1000% percent in two days.

During the midst of all this I decided to reach out to two manufacturers and ask them for product for review. Both of these manufacturers had worked with me in the past so I felt it was likely they would send me product, and they both did. I decided at that point to step out on a limb and contact 4 other companies and ask for product for review and much to my surprise all four companies responded and agreed to send product, including a $200 digital camera that I am going to review and then give away on the blog.

My site is not huge, but I have confidence based on current traffic and subscriptions that it is headed in the right direct and is a great project to be working on. I would appreciate any and all feedback from other bloggers so make sure to check it out at www.learntocatchcatfish.com

I now follow Robb Sutton’s posts and articles very closely, and consider everything he writes, and am anxiously awaiting the next e-book or article.

Thank you very much for all you do Robb!

Note from Me: Thanks for the story Chad! You are killing it. Keep it up!

Click here to pick up your own copy of Ramped Reviews

Filed Under: Blogging, Ramped Spotlight Tagged With: , , , ,

Ramped Blogging Success: "A Sitting Duck" – Animation Production

April 3, 2010 By 10 Comments

After you complete the 7 week Ramped Blogging eCourse, I offer the opportunity to publish your blogging story on RobbSutton.com to show off your success after completing the eCourse. This week, we have a submission from David Edwards of A Sitting Duck.

I started “A Sitting Duck” in May 2008 after 5 years in the sales industry. I was 25, I had a good background for working with lots of different people and I have always enjoyed working for companies. The interactions are great and it’s always good to go out for drinks on a Friday at the end of the week.

The reason why I left, was because it seemed that although I was gaining experience over the years, I was not building anything that I could be proud of. In the sales industry, you are constantly reminded that you are only as good as your previous week’s sales. I started to see the more experienced guys feel down as the new starters were hitting more sales than them. I thought that’s just not fair and I don’t want to end up in my forties competing with someone on a gap year!.

So I vowed never to go back to sales… I said to myself if I do then I have to own a substantial stake in the company so when I do walk away, I can look back and think: “I built that!”…

Back to blogging…

Maybe some of your readers have picked up on the fact that I’m not going to write the next “Harry Potter”, the website was built and on-line in September 2008, the plan was to make the blog more visual with photographs and illustrations. I have always drawn on envelopes, scrap bits of paper around the office and on the back of bills!. I had never taken illustration seriously and always thought I had a business mind, but I do enjoy drawing and designing characters so I thought if I can start a business around that then its a win/win situation!.

I uploaded all my drawings and illustrations, I wrote about different artists and I read 100′s of art blogs and websites. After a while I got bored of small blogs and ended up just reading “Kidrobot” which takes all the news from artists and presents it in a really cool way.

Getting tips from those artists was great and how they promote their work. It was clear to see that video was so powerful to them and combine that with photographs and illustrations, you can have a really nice looking website.

So I thought: I have a well designed website, good illustrations and a pretty good number of posts. I need videos!… I was too shy to be a presenter like “Gary Vaynerchuk”, he’s fantastic at video blogging. I’m not ruling it out in the future, maybe interviews etc, but I couldn’t talk directly into a camera!. So the mission was to make the best “flash animation series of all time”!!!!!…

Before I could make awesome flash animations, I needed to build a team that could achieve this goal with me. Siobhain my fiancee was happy to be a voice, Boyd Clack (incredible actor) I’m friends with agreed to be a voice as well and I found Luke Hyde (flash genius) on Facebook. He met up with me and brought his two friends along: Mike (Sound Producer) and Joe (Graphic Designer). The team was built!.

In May 2009 we launched the first episode, it was a success!. 5 stars on “You Tube” and we distributed the video with top established websites. We followed with episodes 2 & 3, which were also getting thousands of views…

Bring it forward to March 2010, the internet series : “Candy The Magic Dinosaur” has been viewed over 100,000 times on “You Tube” and estimated over 1 million times on the internet in total!. We have a video-game being launched in November and a toy deal with “Patch Together”. To give hope to your readers this is all from a £500 website and a lot of hard work, no other investment!. I have lived a pretty simple life for two years, no holidays or fancy restaurants but I’m sure that I’ll make up for that next year!..

David Edwards

http://www.asittingduck.com

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Ramped Reviews Spotlight: DailyShotofCoffee.com

March 2, 2010 By 18 Comments

I first met Mike Crimmins at Daily Shot of Coffee when he purchased Ramped Reviews. Back then, Mike was just getting started with process of review blogging and was looking for a way to connect with his readers and blog about his massive love of all things coffee (as you can imagine…I can relate).

On DailyShotofCoffee.com, Mike shares his coffee experiences, opinions and reviews with his readers and he has a great growing community around that premise. As he says on his about page, “I’m not a coffee expert (yet), I just love coffee.” and that rings true throughout his blog.

What You Can Learn From Mike

Daily Shot of Coffee Screenshot

Mike Crimmins has done a fantastic job at taking action steps with his blog. Having been blogging for sometime before he purchased Ramped Reviews, he was able to capitalize on what he had already learned through first hand knowledge and apply the steps laid out in Ramped Reviews to take his blog to the next level by getting in all of that coffee and equipment for review content on his blog.

From Mike:

I’ve read Ramped Reviews from cover to cover several times now, it has really been the hands on guide for helping me get products to review for Daily Shot Of Coffee. The chapter on how to write the product request letter was especially helpful and one of the key reasons that I’ve received thousands of dollars worth of equipment product to review including high end coffee makers, espresso makers and various other pieces of coffee equipment. Thanks at least in part to Ramped Reviews, I’m running out of room in my kitchen.

Ramped Blogging helped me fine tune my blog. I’ll admit that I thought I was a little too experienced for it at first, but inside of it I was able to find many things that helped me fine tune my website on a lot of different levels. The chapter on pages, I used as a guideline to add missing pages to my blog to make it more useful to my readers. The section on generating income helped me tweak some things to improve my income, while also giving me ideas on other ways to monetize. Another good read that I need to go back and look at for a second time.

Mike is doing an incredible job at capturing leads for his newsletter by providing a free eBook that gives you the recipes you need to create your own Starbucks drinks at home. With a great tagline, “Learn How To Make The $5 Coffee Shop Drinks For Less Than $2 A Cup”, Mike is growing his blog by providing a valuable resource to his readers. This newsletter will be a vital part of the blog’s future growth.

Over time, Mike is going to want to clean up the design a little bit and get more of a defined logo to centralize his brand, but the community his is building and the success he has seen so far overshadows that at this time. As the budget allows, those will be investments he is going to want to make in the future.

How Is Daily Shot Of Coffee Doing?

Well…I could throw up his stats and show you guys how great he is doing with unique visitors, pageviews, etc…but there is something else that happened recently to Mike’s blog that is much more important. It also shows the true power of blogging and reviewing products on your blog.

Mike hit one of the holy grails of blogging exposure…main stream media. Thanks to Mike’s hard work on providing quality content and reviews for his coffee loving readers, Mike’s Daily Shot of Coffee blog was linked up in a magazine…Woman’s World.

It doubled my traffic on Monday and brought me a lot more fans on Facebook and email subscribers.

You can find out more about that magazine article by clicking here.

Mike has done what a lot of bloggers don’t, he has applied the knowledge he has learned from experience and eBooks by taking action. You can get all of the advice in the world, but until you take that first action step…you are not going to get anywhere.

Now…thanks to his action…he has more product than he can physically review (didn’t pay for it either by the way) and he has a growing community built around his honesty and love of all things coffee.

You can pick up your own copy of Ramped Reviews by clicking here and…if you love coffee…click through DailyShotofCoffee.com and soak up the content.

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Ramped Blogging Spotlight: Mikes Brew Review

February 15, 2010 By 5 Comments

Over the course of the free 7 week Ramped Blogging eCourse (sign up at the bottom of this post), I have you guys submit content to me for promotion in social media to help out with traffic and web presence. Through this, I get to see some pretty cool new sites that are really starting to grow through hard work and action. From time to time, I am going to check in here and feature some of the sites that I think are really killing it. By doing this, you can apply some of the same elements in your blogging to see more success. While many of these blogs will be outside of your niche, there are fundamental things that apply to all blogs in the pursuit of the oasis of community and diversifying income streams.

Up on the chopping block is MikesBrewReview.com where Mike reviews beer and gives tips on home brewing.

Mikes Brew Review – Ramped Blogging Spotlight

Mike's Brew Review

Mike really starts out on the right foot with Mikes Brew Review. The clean, relevant design is appealing to the eyes and fast loading. He uses a solid, distinctive logo that will separate his blog away from the rest in his field. The content and navigation is easy to access giving his readers instant access to what they want to dig through. While the design is not “light the world on fire” mind blowing, I believe it really strikes a cord with his audience and focuses on content. Mike’s readership is not going to be a bunch of designers, so the simplicity is really going to help in the long run.

Since Mike has his name in the branding, it is vitally important that he brings his personality into the blog. He does this through is episodes where he records short video reviews of different beers. Instead of just a boring sit in front of his Flip HD camcorder, he brings his own personality into the videos like the one you see below. His ability to let his own personality shine through his blog is fantastic. I find myself watching his vids and I don’t even drink anymore!

It is going to be really important that Mike continues to bring himself into his content to get that connection with readers of his blog.

How Is MikesBrewReview.com doing?

MikesBrewReview.com 1 Month Traffic StatsSurprisingly, Mike’s Brew Review blog is only one month old as the article is published. Mike jumped on with Ramped Blogging early and as a result, his blog is off on the right foot and doing really well for its first 30 days of existence. Here are some stats to the right.

As you can see by the posts tagged “homework”, the homework posts in Ramped Blogging really do help bring in traffic to your blog no matter how old it is. These are fundamental articles that breed traffic and community in your blogging that will bring long term positive results. By actually taking action after reading the emails, you can actually start to see things happen.

Mike really is doing a great job with MikesBrewReview.com and I am excited to see where he heads. I really see this blog increasing his awareness in his field to the point that he can be the Gary V of beer. Keeping up with the personality and solid content production while fine tuning his own brewing…and all of the sudden…Mike is going to have a successful micro brewery by attracting an audience and then selling his product to that audience. Is there a MBR IPA in the future?! In the meantime, he is getting to connect with people in his niche and reviewing some incredible beers. Doesn’t get much better than that when you get to make positive life experiences out of your passion.

Some beginning issues Mike is going to come across is monetizing his new following. Some suggestions would be to use Amazon to review products that are needed to home brew (which he has already done one of via a Ramped Blogging homework assignment). By getting his readers on Amazon, he can benefit from commissions based off of any purchase they make after that referral.

After Mike starts to see a significant amount of traffic, direct advertising within his videos and on his site for micro breweries is going to be a lucrative avenue. Smaller to mid sized breweries are going to be a fantastic source for this income (ex. Sweetwater Brewery).

The biggest piece of advice I could give Mike right now is to keep the flow going. He has a fantastic start and is about 5 steps ahead of where most bloggers are at this stage in the process. Continuing to deliver that value and connection will be vitally important as the blog continues to grow.

Connect with MikesBrewReview.com

Sign up to be apart of the free 7 week Ramped Blogging eCourse below. You can also sign up for a blog consult by clicking here (this spotlight was not a blog consult…purely based off of what I had seen through Ramped Blogging).

What do you think of MikesBrewReview.com?

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