Appearance May Not Make You, But it Can Break You

Let’s pretend for a minute you have a job interview today. It’s one of the biggest career moves you could possibly make in your early adult life. You had gone out a few days ago and bought a nice business suit, new shoes to match, and got a nice haircut while you were at it. The big day finally came and you go to put on your new suit and realize somehow there is a stain right on the front part of the shirt. It is too big for your tie to cover it but you dress in it anyway and head off to the interview.

Now studies show that you can be judged by the interviewer on the appearances like this. Your qualifications may be above the grade, and you may show ambition with a great sense of accomplishment coupled with a good sense of humor, but that stain just rubbed him the wrong way. Now if the stain was not there it may not have improved you interview but having the stain there sure caused enough irritation that the interviewer may have felt something was a bit “off”.

Relate this to the appearance of your blog. Having a good looking blog won’t make you successful. All the qualities that make up a good blogger will make you successful like: networking, writing good content, keeping the blog current and up to date, relating to your readers, and so forth. But if the appearance of your blog is too distracting, or is just a bad looking theme, it can cause readers to feel unpleasant. It should be a fairly pleasant experience to come check in on your blog.

So what are some of the top most annoying things about a blog that could cause problems?

I will list a few but I would like you guys to list at least one by replying. But how about when the there are so many Google Ads you can’t find the content? Or how about when the theme is too dark and you can’t read the text? I have read blogs where it is so dark and the text looks like it is trying to hypnotize me while I am reading. Shouldn’t a blog be fresh and clean… easy to read?

What else? Ideas anyone?

Keeping Blog Posts Short, Sweet, and to the Point

One of the first things we all should take note of is that the average reader doesn’t believe they have a lot of time while on the Internet. Most readers browse and scan pages until something catches their eye. Once the reader determines they might be interested in the content, they slow down and begin reading more in depth. The average reader does not have time to read long posts. If they glance down and notice it will take them 10 minutes to read the article, more than likely they will leave even if their intentions are to come back and read it later. Most never come back to finish. There is just too much information out there on the Internet.

The key is to break longer posts into several, and then linking them together. If they read the first post and got through it, they will more than likely click over to the next post. Keep articles under 5 minutes. Present the article so it is easy on the eyes. I tend to read articles that are broken up nicely into short paragraphs with bold words emphasizing an issue. You could have the same text but in one long paragraph. Break it up into nice looking paragraphs.

Blogging is different than writing articles for a magazine. I remember when I first started blogging, and my goal was for lengthy articles. Soon you realize it isn’t the length of the article but rather saying the exact same thing but in half the article. Choosing your words better, and getting to the point immediately with little character development leads to better blog posts.

The first paragraph is the most important. That first paragraph will be the determining factor whether or not the reader will continue. One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is trying to lure readers in with suspense, as if you are writing a novel. Instead you should lure your reader in with facts on your topic. Whatever your article is about should be pretty much summed up in the first paragraph. From there on out, diving in and getting more specific will be important.

Spend some time reading top news articles online. Hit some of the biggest news sites and read through their articles. First and foremost, the title is descriptive. There is never any question what the article is about from reading the title. Then the first paragraph is a quick summary of all the important facts. Then the rest of the article dives into more detail. Go check it out. The reason they do that is because they know what hooks the readers and draws them in. Try following these simple procedures when writing and I think you will begin to see a big difference in readership.

But as far as short or long posts, the best thing to do is mix it up. There is nothing wrong with winded articles as long as people are reading them. When people are not reading them, then it might be worth shortening your articles a bit or splitting longer articles up into several.

But the debate goes on… and on… and on… and on… and on…

You be the judge!

Secrets to Making a Six Figure Income from Blogging

One of my all time favorite bloggers on the Internet today is Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger. Darren, from Australia, has many blogs with various topics and had begun making 6 figures while doing it. Now, I am sure a lot of you know who Darren is, but for those who don’t, should spend some time reading his material. He is honest and at the same time inspiring. You soon learn it’s possible to make money from writing blogs, but like anything, it takes time and dedication… and lot’s of hard work.

Darren is also one of the founders of the largest blog networks on the Internet today… b5media.

Well, Darren a while back, unleashed his secrets onto the average blogger in a book called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income… Co-Authored by Chris Garrett.

For those of you out there who are looking to monetize your blog may want to swing by Amazon and pick this up… Right now in paperback you can pick it up for only $16 or so.

Review
“Both authors are successful and profitable probloggers and here they reveal at last some of their secrets.” (The Bookseller, Friday 14th March 2008) “You’ll learn about the essential steps involved…if you think blogging could be the business opportunity for you - buy it!” BusinessOpportunitiesAndldeas.co.uk Monday 19 May 2008 “You’ll learn about the essential steps involved…if you think blogging could be the business opportunity for you - buy it!”BusinessOpportunitiesAndldeas Monday 19 May 2008

Product Description
Problogger.net is where bloggers worldwide go for advice and information on enhancing their blogs presence. Whether youre just starting out or have been blogging for years, these two professional bloggers show you how to turn your passion for blogging into extra revenue. This practical guide to creating and marketing a blog with the potential for generating a six-figure income shows you how to choose subject matter that works for you, handle technical issues, and evaluate your blogs success so that you can use your blog to generate income indirectly.

Blueprint for Starting a New Blog

If you surf the Internet long and hard you will find many articles with tips on how to start a new blog. Successful bloggers always provide tips because they know it is not an easy thing to do to maintain a well organized and insightful blog. Of course it takes commitment and a lot of drive, but if you begin reading all the tips out there it can become very overwhelming.

Sometimes it’s better to sit back and keep things a bit simple and follow some of the basic formulas in order to move in the right direction.

A new Adventure Network I have been in contact with and is actually in partnership with Skinny Moose Media, wrote a nice article on their main blog called, “What is Important When Starting a New Blog?” The article focuses on a few major facets to blogging that is extremely important in the early stages of a blog’s development.

The article breaks these down into 4 stages:

1) Have A Plan
2) Reach Out
3) Tip Off
4) Social Networking

Read the full article here >>

Taking Advantage of Black Friday

Yes, Black Friday has come and gone, but it will be back again next year. The neat thing about Black Friday is that most shoppers rush out to the stores, trample people, while racing for those deals. It isn’t until the days following where shoppers look for the deals online. So how can you benefit from this and take advantage of shoppers during the Holiday Season?

Put yourself in the shopper’s shoes. Pretend you are a shopper online and envision yourself having to seek out gifts. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:

a) What are the new and hot products?
b) Can these products actually be purchased online?
c) What do you know about these products?
d) Can you offer advice on any of these hot new products?
e) Is the Internet already saturated with content about these hot new products?
f) Is the product related to your blog’s niche?

Once you ask yourself these questions you probably can narrow it down a bit better if it is worth writing about an item or not. ipods are a cool topic, or the new iphone, but more than likely the Internet is saturated with information on this. Finding products to talk about can take a lot of research. So what can you do?

Look around at other blog’s in your niche. What types of products are they discussing? If you have run a parenting blog for the last 2 years and have been all over the Internet reading other parenting blogs then you probably have a good idea what types of products have been talked about and what the new hot items are for this year.

Write a review about it. Maybe go out and actually buy the product and test it out. Write about it. Tell people how it functions. Did it live up to your expectations? If not… why?

Link to other reviews. Maybe you don’t have all kinds of money to blow on the product or you have your doubts about. Do a roundup and link to what others are saying about it. Put 80% of the links to blogs in your niche. Then try breaking out a bit and see if other blogs outside of your niche have blogged about it. Link to them. Pingbacks may drive traffic back to your article.

Make sure in your articles you are using nice keyword rich text. Link often and liberally to sources. You never know… you may get on the first page of Google for those searching online for information about the hot new item…

Comment on other blogs talking about the same product and make sure to link your name to either your blog or that specific blog post. Remember, people search the Internet heavily by topic. If you can stick with the same crowd and get some links coming and going you will see a rise in traffic naturally, as long as the topic remains of interest.

Now what if you wrote about a product and more traffic comes your way? How do you jump on this opportunity? Maybe one example would be to post a link at the end of that article inviting readers to subscribe to your feed via email. Feedburner offers a great service that will deliver your posts via email to those who choose to sign up for this feature. As a matter of fact, if you want to subscribe to my feed via email you can do so right here at this link.

What other things can you do? You can provide links at the end of your article leading them deeper into your blog with other related articles. Maybe you blogged about that product on many occasions. At the end of the article tell your readers if they enjoyed this post why not try reading a few of these… and leave a list of about 3 or 4 other articles that may interest them.

Another option would be to provide a link to any referral type programs. The downside of this is you are providing a link which will lead people away from your blog. On a good note, some of these referral programs can earn you a bit of cash. It’s really your choice. If you can find the right program which is closely related to the topic being discussed in the article then it should only benefit you since you are sending targeted traffic to a program potentially making you money. Any random program is a bit risky and you could probably benefit by keeping the reader at your blog longer.

Any other ideas? How can you benefit from added traffic on a blog article that is attracting people? Don’t forget to open those comments up and get conversation going. Readers will be back to see if anyone replied. This can boost traffic momentarily. The key is to get these new readers to come back and stick around.

Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank

Most of you who have been blogging for a while or who have been online for some time now, understand that Google ranks each website. It is more of a rating 1 through 10. I believe that no site out there on the Internet has been ranked 10. Naturally, the higher your rank the chances of you being higher in the search engine is greater.

Alexa is similar to Google and they provide each website out there on the Internet a rank. How it works, though, is a bit different. Alexa ranks the top site with a 1, which is actually Yahoo. CNN Money ranks number 2. So the lower the number the better you are. There are ways to get a lower (better) ranking with Alexa. If you rank 235,000 then you know that there are 234,999 other websites out there that rank better than you. Now since there are millions of websites on the Internet, getting as low as 200,000 is extremely good. Alexa’s ranking is based on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people who visit a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.

The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)

So how do you rank lower and better with Alexa?

*The most basic step is to Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage.

*Try puttnig up an Alexa rank widget on your website.

*Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar, like friends, fellow webmasters, and your readers.

*Write or Blog about Alexa. Others enjoy reading about ways to increase their Alexa ranking and, in turn, will hopefully like to your article sending you targeted traffic. Hopefully they will have the toolbar already installed. This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.

*Get one of your articles submitted to Digg or Stumble Upon when you can. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer volume will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.

*Use Pay-per-Click Campaigns. Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in traffic. It will be more useful when your ad is highly relevant to webmasters, who are more apt to be using the Alexa toolbar.

*Optimize your popular posts. If you have a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines, include a widget at the bottom of the post and then link to your Alexa post.

Blogging 101: The Foundations of a Better Blog

I have created a new category which will cover some of the real basics of blogging. I think like anything, there is a foundation you build things on. Like math. You have addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. If you can’t master those, then those long drawn out formulas and equations are impossible to execute. With math, you take a complex issue and break it down into pieces that make sense. In other words you are simplifying.

Blogging is similar. There are basics. Those basics should be mastered so that when later on you face questions, concerns, dilemmas, and a lot of problems, you can simplify everything. You break everything back down to the basics.

So what are the basics of blogging?

What is a blog?

Ok don’t laugh. What year is it and I STILL come across people who don’t know what a blog is. According to Blog Basics this is the definition:

Blog (noun) - a journal or diary that is on the Internet - Andrew Sullivan has the most popular blog on the Internet.

Blogger (noun) - a person who keeps a blog - Bloggers are revolutionizing the way news is shared.

Blog (verb) - to write a blog - I am going to blog before breakfast this morning.

Blogging (verb) - the action of writing a blog - Blogging is my way of sharing my passions with the world.

Establish Motive and Set Goals

Once we have determined what a blog is, you need to narrow it down to why you are blogging. What is it you want to write about and what are your goals? Do you want to provide a wide range of topics or narrow it down to just one or a couple? Do you want to produce news articles, tips, reviews, commentary, or maybe all of the above. Do you want readership? Are you looking to make money? Why so many dang questions?

The reason for the questions is simple. Blogging is not easy. Without a vision you will more than likely give up finding out that blogging was a waste of time and you should have spent more time with your studies or your family. Blogging is a commitment. You have to write often and even spend time doing research. Yuck… Research?

Yep. How else are you going to learn about something so you can share something new with your readers? So setting goals, planning out a mission, and being prepared to learn is key.

Persistence

This is the biggy. Here is a thought about success. I would not have gotten married to my current wife if I was not persistent. I was turned down (believe it or not), before she finally caved in. I am sure she is regretting it now. But hey, I was persistent. To be persistent also means you have to accept certain levels of failure and move on and keep up what works without letting the little things get to ya. I could have gone home and cried my eyes out and sworn off women for the rest of my life. Instead I was persistent.

There was a job I applied for over 10 years ago and was never contacted. I called each day asking for an update. They told me my schedule didn’t fit what they were looking for. So I changed my availability and resubmitted my application. After several weeks of constant back and forth communications, and being turned down for many reasons, I was persistent yet professional, showing them I was determined to work for them and would make certain accomodations to do so. I could have chalked it up the first time they turned me down as yet another failure, but I was persistent. It isn’t always that you need to do more work, but rather keep doing the same thing over and over and over again until it pays off.

What is your edge? Offer something different

Just like a product… you need that cutting edge. What separates your product from all the others? There are so many blogs out there to read, it is impossible for everyone to read all of them. How do you draw them in? Having another blog just like everyone else is kinda cool when you are new to the blogosphere, but at some point you will need to ask yourself, “What is it that makes me stand out?”

Networking

Networking builds traffic. There is no sense building a business out in the middle of the woods where you might get a couple of passer-bys each week. You need to learn to envision online traffic much like roads and pathways to real communities and places of business. I wrote about this a while ago on the Skinny Moose main blog in an article called Blogs are Roads; Intersections. Networking is done in many ways and we will cover this later in future posts but it can help you understand what is happening in your niche, and at the same time pave some nice roads to your blog. There are some great ways of doing this. Each time you write a new blog post you have another opportunity to pave roads to your blog. You aren’t just looking to promote your main page. Each article is a gem in and of itself. Getting people to take interest in your articles, link to them, and drive traffic your way based on one article out of many is a beautiful thing. It won’t happen with each article but the more you write and the more you network the more pathways that lead to your blog. So opening these pathways up so there are so many avenues to get to you no matter what the browser’s interest will really spark some diversity in your audience.

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