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6 Tips On How To Get More Comments On Your Blog

November 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

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?

Mandy Barrington is the lead web designer and blog author at RYP Marketing, an online marketing company whose name describes their objective – to “Raise Your Profits.” Take a stroll by the RYP blog to read more of her ramblings. When she isn’t busting out articles or websites, she’s probably cooking sinfully delicious food or planning her next getaway.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , , ,

Increasing Traffic Significantly While Making Things Easier On Myself

September 8, 2011 By 12 Comments

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.

  • Separate installs was like running 4 different blogs at once. A total pain in the ass and ultimately some of the categories/sub domains suffered.
  • You don’t really get the full benefit of back linking to the main domain. The other sites have to hold themselves up in a lot of ways.
  • This setup rendered the core domain Bike198.com literally useless as it had no relevant info. All it ended up being was basically a landing page with post lists.
  • When people linked to my website, 9 times out of 10 they said Bike198.com instead of the respective sub-domains. Who was really going to type mountain.bike198.com anyway?

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.

  • Conditional menus with WordPress would handle navigation
  • OiOPublisher would actually handle the separate advertising by category for me (huge score for that plugin)
  • Each individual category RSS feed would be my different feeds for road, mountain and urban…so that was an easy switch

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…)

The Real Result: The next 72 hours…

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.

So what should you take away from this?

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.

Getting Credit For All Inbound Links

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]

Think About Your Visitors…Not You

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.

Do Not Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

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.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

Diversifying Your Blog: Publishing Different Types of Posts

August 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

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.

Pillar Articles

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.

 Guest Posts

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.

Mixed Media

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.

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Tutorials/How To

What Makes A Video Go Viral on YouTube?

June 21, 2011 By 2 Comments

It is a struggle for everyone that is on the internet and has a video camera. What actually makes a video go viral? What brings your brand, blog, product in front of millions of YouTube visitors all looking to digest unique video content?

Real Life Examples of Viral Videos

As most of you know, I am obsessed with my Subaru WRX. I take pictures of it…take it apart on a weekly basis…and watch much of my income get dumped into it with upgrades. The sickness spreads beyond my car as I also pay attention to drivers out there that are behind the wheel of WRX’s and STi’s.

Ken Block is known throughout the car industry for producing viral videos that scream through YouTube like wildfire. His latest viral video shows off his new Fiesta RS WRC rally car with the “Monster Girls”. With 568,400+ views and counting…the video you see below is doing pretty well on YouTube.

(of course, when he made his Subaru STi video informercial…it is at 26,427,000 views and counting…maybe he should switch back to Subaru. See that video here.)

Ken is tapping into one of the oldest rules in viral videos…sex sells. In an attempt to one up Ken Block, fellow rally car driver and general nut case Travis Pastrana made is own version of “car and girls” video.

In this video…Pastrana says “car + girls = traffic”. And while Pastrana’s video is only at about 300 views when this article was published, I have a feeling it will eventually take off as more forums and Facebook pick it up.

What To Take From This And Viral Videos You Produce

Do you need to have dancing girls around your eBook or video review? No…absolutely not (but it might help).

Viral YouTube videos are a black art of sorts. You never really know what is going to take off and what sits in the graveyard never to be found. From my experience with YouTube as both a watcher and producer of content, there are several key things you need to keep in mind when producing your videos if you want them to go viral.

  1. They Must Be Entertaining – If you are going to put up some boring video and expect it to get a lot of views…you are going to be waiting awhile. People want to be entertained. Even with more boring subject matters and reviews, the entertainment value can still bring a lot of views to your video. I remember including me wrecking in one of my video reviews of a mountain bike and that video saw 10′s of thousands of views over the regular website views. It brought (and still brings) a lot of new visitors to my blog.
  2. Be Over The Top – This really goes with #1, but on video…everything looks flat. You really have to take facial expressions…wording…and tone to a new level for it to be caught on video. You will feel stupid during the execution, but it will come out better on video.
  3. It Has To Be Unique – Even with the videos above…there is nothing new about girls and cars…but there is a uniqueness to the editing and feel to the video that allows it to not be just another car video. Especially with the 25+ million views video from Ken Block, the uniqueness of his skill and the added effects (like drifting across light bulbs) add to the “wow factor” of the video.
  4. Keep It Short – When I used to work in video production, we were constantly looking for ways to keep people invested in the content while viewing. We found that shorter clips (around 6 minutes max) with multiple cuts through the clip (15 to 20 seconds) kept people’s attention. You do not have to have fancy editing techniques, simple cuts are fine but what you want to stay away from is your face infront of a camera for 6 minutes. People will get bored quickly and leave no matter what you are saying.
  5. Quality Wins – Take your time and do it right. Just slapping up subpar video quality with audio that people can hardly hear is not going to work. Also, use HD where ever possible.

At it’s heart…it really is a simple formula. It just takes time to execute it correctly. When you look back at the videos that you posted on YouTube, did they have these features that set you up for success? Or did you create a video that you wouldn’t even watch…

Filed Under: Social Media, Tutorials/How To, Videos Tagged With: , , , , ,

How To Get 3,242,283 People To Want To Be Your Friend On Facebook

June 15, 2011 By 5 Comments

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.

Facebook Polls - How To Use Them

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!

The Power Of Facebook Polls

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.

4 Facebook Poll Tips For Success
  1. Ask Polarizing Questions – You need to ask questions that people within your niche have a definite and passionate answer about. What are things that people argue about most in forums and to each other within your niche? Those are prime questions to ask on Facebook polls as your potential voters will be passionate about answering. If you ask bland, boring questions…expect terrible results.
  2. Invite Your Friends To Answer – Once you are finished making the poll within Facebook, you can invite your friends to answer the question. Only invite those friends that would actually care to answer (I don’t ask my friends that don’t ride bikes as an example). That will get the ball rolling and get you on their timeline for exposure to people that you might not have been in front of before. Just like with the girl’s example above…it gets the ball rolling.
  3. Respond To Comments Left On Your Poll - If you are having people comment on the poll, respond to the comments to show you are approachable and to start the dialog that turns into long time readers and followers. You want these people to like your fan page and visit your blog. Like most things in online community building, that process does not stop after you hit publish. Interact with these new people just as if they left a comment on your blog.
  4. Don’t Allow For User Generated Answers – I have seen polls go wrong when the voters are able to submit their own answers. What you end up with is a bunch of 1 vote answers that are pretty much the same and that discourages people from voting due to the massive amount of choices. Put up the available answers and lock it from there.

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.

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

Top 7 Ways To Connect With Your Readers

June 7, 2011 By 7 Comments

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.

Top 7 Ways To Connect With Your Readers

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.

  1. Tell On Yourself – No one is perfect and showing that you are human by displaying your mistakes along with your successes is a great way to connect with people. I have also always said, sometimes it is more valuable knowing what not to do as much as it is what to do. There is much to be learned in mistakes.
  2. Teach Them Something – Whether it is through one on one coaching or an article on your blog, if you can make your readers better at something in your niche, you are going to start that connection process that can go on for years. I will often times, ask my readers what they want to see covered on the blog, then actually write it! Make their voices heard and deliver.
  3. Answer Emails/Tweets/Comments – That one on one connection with your readers is extremely easy with blogging. By answering tweets, emails and comments, you are able to quickly and efficiently talk one on one with your audience. These are very powerful tools that many bloggers say they don’t have time for. Make the time and you will see the results.
  4. Attend Conferences and Meetups – Face to face interaction is the best way to get in touch with people. Shake your readers hand, meet new potential readers and continue to make that personal interaction.
  5. Be More Than Just A News Source – Your blog needs to be a resource for something other than the news. Your readers can get that from anywhere. Editorials and thought based articles will give your readers insight on what goes on in your head. Make that connection and keep it rolling.
  6. Hold Webinars – You can be everywhere and attend every conference…and neither can your readers. Just like I said with #4, the strongest connection you can make with your readers is face to face. With the widespread adoption of video conferencing, you can now host a webinar on UStream and other services to put the name with a face. The huge benefit to going this route is that you can also do Q&A.
  7. Video Posts – Not all of your readers want to schedule the time it takes to attend a webinar, but they do want to see that interaction with you. By doing video posts, you are able to bring your personal touch, attitude and personality to your content that will connect with your readers far beyond basic text.

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?

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , ,

The Role You Play In Buying Decisions And How To Turn That Into Blogging Profits

April 28, 2011 By 10 Comments

Online shopping is the fastest growing segment in retail shopping. More buyers are looking to the internet on a daily basis to pick up items they need by using the convenience of click and ship. However, there is one major problem most online buyers face when looking to capitalize on this convenience…the in store help and hands on experience. In previous shopping experiences, the consumer would see and use the product in the store while asking questions to an associate to aid in the purchasing decision. When you shop online…you get rid of that interaction…or do you?

Online shoppers are turning to blogs and websites for honest, online product reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. This is where you step in as the blogger and provide that personal experience they are missing through forgoing the in-store experience! Better yet…you let them know where they can purchase these items for the best price and receive a commission off of that sale. This is the new way of buying online and it equals massive blogging profits for your business.

There is a bonus at the end of this article…so keep on reading…

Where I Got My Reputation In Blogging

Most of you already know this…but I got my blogging rep by getting in free product to review for Bike198.com. In the first 9 months, I had already surpassed over $100k in product and that was just the beginning. Not only was I helping out riders in the industry by providing honest opinions on products they were looking to purchase, but I was also providing exposure for companies looking to get their product in front of potential customers. Through this…I was able to grow my blogging income to include a lot of affiliate revenue and bonus revenue through the facilitation of product in my industry for review purposes.

Talk about a cool way to live. The same products I used to pay thousands for a year…I was now getting for free and profiting from it! All I had to do was be honest!

BlogWorld Expo: Time To Share The Story

Next month (May 24-26), BlogWorld Expo comes to NYC. On May 26th at 11:15am, I will be delivering my presentation on The Role Bloggers Play In Retail Purchasing Decisions and How That Equals Blogging Profits. I am completely stoked about the opportunity and look forward to seeing you there if you are going to be at BlogWorld.

I will be sharing how I have generated over 6 figures of online income by positioning my blogs as that source for online buying research and how you can do it just like I did. I will also be presenting recent trends in online purchasing and showing you were I think things are headed for the future. We always have to be planning ahead right?!

Bonus: 50% Off!

To celebrate and get pumped up for next month, I want to offer you guys a 50% off coupon code that you can use on Ramped Blogging and Ramped Reviews. All you have to do is enter “BlogWorld” as the coupon code at checkout and you can watch the price cut in half! I truly believe that we learn from those that have been there before us to drastically decrease learning curve time periods. I want to help you get on the right foot to see success earlier and that is the main driving force behind delivering the presentation and why I have no secrets in how I run my business.

Click here and use coupon code “BlogWorld”: Ramped Blogging | Ramped Reviews

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , ,

Generate More Blog Income By Inviting Reader Reviews

April 20, 2011 By 10 Comments

I have this theory…if you are not moving forward…you are moving backwards. There is no standing still and just going through the motions with business building and blogging. You are either looking forward to the future and planning for those changes or you are letting others pass you by that are making the conscious decision to get that done.

On Bike198.com, I have been looking for a way to get even more reader interaction and do so by drastically increasing my site size with product heavy, SEO gold that contains affiliate links. I want to be able to provide the same quality I have with reviews into a user experience that allows riders to review their products as well. With that idea in mind, the database of products labeled “Rider Reviews” was born. Now…I just had to build it…

Building Out A Reader Review Section

Ironically enough, I tested about every single WordPress option I could find. Every single plugin seemed to be ok…but they lack a polished look or were too hard to get everything looking correctly. I started searching around for a stand alone php script to accomplish the same goal and just happened to fall upon Reviews For Joomla (not an affiliate). The layout, ease of use and basic design was exactly what I was looking for. Better yet…it installed over Joomla so I would have a very strong back-end content management system to aid with setup.

Rider Reviews at Bike198 Home

With this system, I can have the products loaded in and then my readers have an incredibly clean, easy to use layout to give ratings and reviews for products in the industry. There are even features to allow them to compare ratings and features which adds a ton of function into that portion of the site.

I installed Joomla 1.6 into a subfolder of Mountain.Bike198.com (this one will only have mountain bike products) and got to work…

Handling Of Affiliate Links

Now…a section of your blog like this is only really good if it is generating income. One of my biggest nightmares with this entire project was trying to figure out how I would actually handle the affiliate linking. The idea of searching for my specific affiliate link, getting it on the right product and then making sure it wasn’t broken 24/7 seemed like an incredibly daunting task just in itself.

Ironically, a friend of mine that owns MyGolfSpy.com recently came across VigLink and started testing on his forum. What VigLink basically does is takes your links to popular stores online (ex: Amazon) and automatically handles all affiliate revenue for you. Of course, they take their cut but it takes all of the management process out for you with a simple line of code. Now I was able to get the products loaded with a link to a store and not have to worry about whether or not I am getting credit for the sale. VigLink claims to get a higher percentage commissions on sales due to their larger audience, so the cut they take should drastically reduce the difference between using them and doing it on your own. The time management side was the real payoff for me though.

If you are only building out a section of your site like this that has 12 or so products (maybe even up to 50), managing it yourself might make sense. As of right now, I have 696 total mountain bike products and bikes listed, so you can see how that can get out of control quickly.

Getting The Products Loaded Into The System

A review system like this is worthless if you do not have an accurate representation of your industries products listed on the site. Let’s be honest, I do not have the time to load over 1,000 products into a website. That is a lot of busy work that I can’t even fathom doing and it is also the main reason this idea I have had for over a year is just now coming to fruition. To get some help, I enlisted the help of Chris Ducker over at Virtual Staff Finder to help me out in finding a virtual assistant. After interviewing 3 candidates, I found the perfect one for me.

Rider Reviews Product List

After sending over one training video, I started sending Lauren (my new VA) the list of products each day and the site started expanding rapidly. My industry is a little unique as we have a ton of parts and related gear.

Now…I don’t want you to look at my site and think this isn’t possible on your site just because of the magnitude of products. In other industries…you might not have this much of an extreme workload where you need to hire someone on to help. In my case, I did and it is working out perfectly.

How do you get people to actually use it?!

As you can see by visiting Rider Reviews, there are a couple of reviews already started on the site by my readers. However, like with any social interaction environment, there is going to have to be some incentive to get the ball rolling. I already have several contests lined up for my readers that are based around getting the review section populated and useful for new visitors. Once those go live, it should be great to see the new reviews come in on a platform that allows my readers to have a voice in the industry and basically runs on its own while also generating income.

Rider Reviews

As you can imagine, the SEO benefit of this section has already returned great results and it is just getting started. I am going to check back in on this project here to let you guys know how is it progressing. There are still more products to load and some design work to get completed before I start running the contests, but…from what I am already seeing, it is going to be my my largest asset on Bike198.

Check out: Rider Reviews at Bike198 | VigLink | Reviews For Joomla

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

6 Ways To Increase The Perceived Value Of Your Free Ebook

April 5, 2011 By 9 Comments

We all know the potential benefits of offering a free ebook or the classic “7 Part Email Course” to try and encourage our website visitors to complete an action such as subscribing to our RSS feed, signing up for our mailing list or liking us on Facebook. The reason this method of “ethical bribery” is so popular is quite simply because it works. But for everyone who reads about your free report and signs up, just as many people decide *not* to take the plunge and leave your site empty handed.

Assuming your free ebook really *does* offer your visitors significant value then you *both* just lost. Your reader missed out on some high-quality information that isn’t available anywhere else and you just lost a potential new subscriber.

Not good.

What’s even worse is that the hardest part of this whole equation is getting those visitors to see the message about your free ebook in the first place. So once they’re on your site we need to do everything possible to encourage your readers to take that desired action in exchange for your free ebook.

Fortunately there are a whole raft of ways we can do this and they’re all focused around one main concept – increasing the perceived value of your ebook. In other words we want your visitors to feel like they’re getting something of real value. We want them almost feel guilty about what a great deal they’re getting from you. Like they’re getting something worth paying for – but for free. That’s the key to maximizing downloads of your free report.

So how do we go about accomplishing that task?

1. Design An Ebook Image

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and when it comes to free ebooks this may not be far off the mark. Over the years dozens of marketers have tested their signup rates for free ebooks both with and without an image. Almost without exception more people sign up when an ebook image is present.

Getting an ebook cover – a graphical representation of your ebook – is easier and cheaper than ever before so there really is no excuse whatsoever. I’ve recently been experimenting with Fiverr and have had a number of high quality ebook images for just $5 each. If that increases my signup rate by just a few percent I think that’s the bargain of the century.

2. Use Different Media

So many people offer a free ebook or free report that there is a risk that this method is starting to lose it’s effectiveness. Like banner advert blindness the more there is of something around the less attention we pay to it.

So another technique worth considering is offering the same information as your free ebook but in another format. The best examples are either audio formats (“download our free podcast”) or in video format.

Sure, it’ll take you a day or two to change your current ebook into a new format but if that boosts your results it may be a worthy investment – particularly when you can make video or audio for free these days and easily upload it to your website.

3. Use Social Proof

By nature humans are social creatures and we listen to and trust the opinions of others. Most of us want to be part of the gang rather than lonely outsiders. That’s why peer pressure works so well.

Social proof takes this concept into the 21st century and onto the internet. If you can enlist the help of other people in your niche to spread the word then this will often increase interest in your free ebook and also increase it’s perceived value.

A few ways to use social proof to boost your signups are to show testimonials on your website from people who have already read your ebook. Send copies to prominent bloggers and Twitterers in your niche, asking them to mention it to their tribe if they like it. And make it easy to “Like” your signup page on Facebook.

4. “Sell” Your Ebook

You need to help your readers to understand *why* your free ebook is valuable and what benefits they will receive from downloading it and this is where a degree of ethical salesmanship comes in.

Don’t just tell your visitors they *can* download your free report but explain why they *should* in exciting, attention-grabbing language.

5. Really Sell Your Ebook

Have you ever considered actually trying to sell your free ebook as a paid ebook? Assuming your free ebook really *does* offer significant value to readers then there’s no reason why someone shouldn’t be willing to pay to gain access to it.

Not only can this become an additional revenue stream for you but how much more valuable will your offer be on your website when you can explain to your readers that you’re currently selling copies of your ebook for x amount of dollars but if they subscribe to your RSS feed they can get it for free and save their money?

6. Publish It As A Hard-Copy Book

This is the idea I am personally most excited about at present and that I am putting into practice on a number of my sites. Image the power of actually having your ebook published as a paid-for print book. You know; the kind you’d buy off the shelf from Barnes And Noble.

Just imagine how much it could increase the perceived value of your free ebook if the paper version was actually for sale on Amazon and other people were actually payng money for it and leaving positive reviews.

I visited a website the other day that was doing just this. The owner of the website wrote a book on property investment which has sold incredibly well on Amazon and has numerous glowing reviews and five-star ratings. As soon as you see the book on Amazon it makes you want to buy a copy.

And yet there on the authors site he’ll give you a free PDF version of the book just for joining his mailing list. Did I sign up? You betcha – in an instant.

So how do you publish your free ebook as a proper paper book with as little expense and hassle as possible? Simple. Just sign up for a free account at CreateSpace.com and follow their simple instructions.

Now it’s your turn. What helps to increase the perceived value of a free ebook for you and what would increase the chances of you taking an action in order to receive an ebook as thanks? Please leave us a comment below with your thoughts…

This is a guest post by Richard Adams of Lifestyle Design Unleashed where he writes about building online businesses, quitting your job and living the internet lifestyle. Visit Richard today to download your free copy of his highly regarded traffic-generation ebook “WordPress Traffic Explosion”.

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash, Tutorials/How To

How To Leverage Twitter To Bring Old Posts Back To Life

March 21, 2011 By 6 Comments

Blogging and WordPress do a lot of great things together. Search engines love the code and regularly updated content, writters find it easy to publish their content and sites are relatively easy to navigate and find what you want. In the web world, that is a pretty strong formula for success.

However, there is one plaguing problem in blogging platforms and structure that frustrates the hell out of bloggers over time.

We spend all of this time putting together articles that are meant to inform, entertain and help people only to find that a year later they are buried in the archives for no one to find. With regularly updated content, our timeless content continues to be pushed down the line making it harder to find by new readers and search engines alike. The easy fix is to remember these articles and link to them within new relevant articles, but how can we start to easily leverage social media to get those same articles in front of the eyes of our followers?

I started searching around to find a tool to do this for me as I do not want to be spending hours of my day scheduling these posts (I have better things to do that generate more income). After looking at the features of several different options, I landed on one that had what I needed and started the testing process.

WordPress Plugin: Tweet Old Post

First, let me start by saying I typically do not like automated systems. They tend to be very impersonal and everyone knows when you are using one even if you think they do not. If something is going to be automated, it needs to be highly configurable and able to integrate into more personal atmospheres easily by providing value.

I uploaded Tweet Old Post to my WordPress install of Blogging Labs and started the configuration process. Luckily, this free plugin allows you to do several essential tasks that make it usable for me in this application.

Timing of Old Post Tweets

You can set the random times that tweets go out to your followers. Part of the reason that Twitter is the perfect testing ground for a system like this is because the timeline moves quick enough that you will not be annoying people and it has a viral aspect to it that you hope your articles start to get retweeted. If you do it too often, people will ignore your links and unfollow you, so setting a random time for these tweets to hit your timeline hours apart does wonders for not looking like spam.

Excluding Categories

One of the biggest things I needed in a plugin such as this one was the ability to exclude entire categories from being tweeted out. Information that was tweeted from my archives needed to be timeless to still be relevant. I did not want old articles that are no longer applicable to today’s environment to get tweeted out because that would look terrible as it has zero value to my followers.

Omit WordPress Categories

By being able to exclude categories, I can remove blocks of archives that should not be tweeted, or I do not feel provide enough value to my timeline. As you can see from my excluded lists, I tried to keep any articles from my archives to blogging tips, tutorials and advice.

Exclude Specific Posts

To fine tune the process even further, there were posts that I didn’t necessarily want retweeted within those categories as well for one reason or another.

Omit Specific WordPress Posts

Tweet Old Post allows you to also omit specific articles from being sent out to your followers automatically. Another great feature that I needed to insure the quality of the tweets would be at their highest.

After you have everything setup, an automated tweet ends up looking like this on your timeline.

Tweet from Tweet Old Post

A Couple Of Things To Keep In Mind…

Before you jump in headfirst and never look back, keep these couple of things in mind.

  • If you are going to set something like this up, you need to have some archives to pull from. As you can see, I really fine tuned my process, but if that came down to a dozen or so post by the time I was done, I would be sending out a very small number of articles over and over again. Talk about annoying for anyone that is following you.
  • You also need to gauge reactions within your Twitter following to see how people are taking the automation. In my @robbsutton account, the change was actually taken in very well and I am now getting traffic and RT’s into my older content…which was the goal. I even started asking around to followers to see what they thought and the overall reaction was positive.
  • I do not think this kind of automation would work with Facebook. The timeline does not move fast enough to keep you from clogging the system and in the end you would end up annoying friends and family at the same time. Saying that…if you have your Facebook account linked to your Twitter account so when you send out a tweet it updates your Facebook page, I would break that link before you start testing this out.

Overall, I have been happy with the result as I am always looking for ways to bring people to content that has been buried down over time. There are not very many efficient ways to get this accomplished, but Tweet Old Post seems to do a really good job by leveraging the fast moving timeline of Twitter. It’s highly configurable backend is the only reason I believe you can really make an automated system like this work.

But…just remember…you need to actually converse with your Twitter followers as well and RT other content. Your entire timeline can not be just automated tweets of your own content if you want to be successful with that online medium.

Download Tweet Old Post for free here.

Filed Under: Content, Plugins, Reviews, Social Media, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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