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August 9, 2017August 22, 2017

Increase your SEO with Team Content Marketing!

This is a guest blog contribution from Matt Ganzak, founder of EliteGurus.com and BuildNetworkPlus.com.

Content marketing and SEO is getting more difficult. Each day, there are thousands of new domains purchased and thousands of new websites going online.

Most new bloggers and content writers will get started with their site, staying active for a couple months, and then reality hits them. No traffic to their articles. The time does not seem worth the effort.

Content Marketing can be FRUSTRATING!

In an effort to remove outdated and irrelevant search results, Google has been updating their systems over the years with a series of updates. The latest Google update, Penguin, was said to lower the ranks for websites that have poor quality links and also took into consideration the relevancy.

This was the push some businesses and bloggers needed to find a better way to build quality SEO.

Today’s Content Marketing Strategy for SEO

According to Google, the best way to get quality rankings is to follow this guide:

1) Post quality content that gets shared

2) Have social widgets easy to access

3) Use Google Plus profiles for authors

4) Use Google Plus Pages for sites

5) Guest blog on other sites to earn link backs

6) Do not buy links

7) Setup your web pages targeting keywords

8) But do not over optimize

In a nutshell, there is no shortcut to boosting your organic traffic, so just put out the quality content and they will come. Well, this strategy is causing newbie bloggers to get frustrated.

So what is the solution?

I have been teaching my clients to build networks within their niche industry, and share each other’s articles. This is a strategy that will build your organic SEO naturally as all the sites work together to grow traffic. Many bloggers choose to be loners and just focus on “their audience” but realistically, today’s Google Algorithm stacks the cards against these loners.

Fact is, you need to reach out and make new friends. Connect on the social networks, and reshare each other’s content. Then also guest blog on each other’s sites and even send newsletter’s to each other’s lists. If you build small niche teams and work together, Google will build your PageRank and Domain Authority as your sites grow together.

This strategy does not create overnight success, and can be rather time consuming. But Google will index their community with excellent authority and continue to do so as her network grows.

Steps to creating your Network

The first step is to decide on your niche market, and do not stray from it! If you confuse Google by having so many different industries, Google will not index you with high relevance for your target industry. Choose and stay the course.

Next, determine who your competitors are in your vertical. You can do this with a Google search for your keywords. And I always like to check Alexa.com rankings to get a look at their traffic score.

After that, choose relevant keywords with high search volume but low competition. I suggest picking 4-7 keywords to target. If you choose more, you can spread your site too thin which will lower your keyword density for your target keywords.

Lastly, find out where your niche industry peers hang out. This can literally mean go to networking events in person, or meetup groups. Take business cards! But you will also want to find online communities dedicated to your niche. Get in, get involved and start networking together.

Personally, I have been doing this sort of networking for the past year and my group has been growing. If you would like to join, I would be more than happy to chat and put up guest posts on any of my websites.

So let’s all work together to improve our PageRank and Domain Authority to grow our readership together. Content Marketing and SEO has become a team effort. I look forward to meeting each and everyone one of you.

Matt has been working in marketing for the past 12 years. He is an innovator of new ideas and has been training businesses on building their online presence. He specializes in Website Development, SEO, blogging, PPC, media buying and monetization strategy. Connect with Matt on EliteGurus.com, and be sure to check out his WordPress hosting (DollarWebsiteClub.com).

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August 7, 2017August 22, 2017

How I Stopped Waiting to Become a Writer, Quit My Job & Launched My Dream

This is a guest contribution from Jeff Goins of Goins, Writer.

It took me six years to become a professional blogger. And four and a half of those years were spent waiting.

For years, I read blogs, bought books, and watched videos about ordinary, everyday people making the colossal shift from day job to living their dream. I seethed with envy and bitterness as I saw friends skyrocket to success, living out their passions.

What were they doing that I wasn’t?

All the while, I waited. Waited for someone to pick me. Waited for permission. Waited to be good enough to start.

And guess what? Permission never came. Until one day, when everything changed…

The Conversation That Turned Me into a Writer

A few years ago, a friend asked me an important question:

“What’s your dream?”

“Don’t have one,” I said.

“Sure you do. Everyone has a dream.”

“Ah, I dunno… I’m living it, I guess.”

“Really? Hrmph.” And then a long pause — “Because, well, I would’ve thought your dream was to be a writer.”

As soon as I heard those words, something in me stirred. Something that had been there all along.

“Well, uh, yeah…” I gulped, “I guess I’d like to be a writer… some day. But that’ll never happen.”

I sounded so sure, so certain that at 28 years old, I knew where the rest of my life was headed. Shaking his head, my friend smiled.

“Jeff… You don’t have to want to be a writer…”

And then he said nine words that changed me life:

“You are a writer; you just need to write.”

Turns out that was all I needed. It’s really all any of us need: to believe we already are what we want to be.

So that’s what I did. I started calling myself a writer. And I started practicing.

Practice Makes Better

After that conversation, I started blogging, guest posting (despite my fear of rejection), and sharing my work with the world. At first, nobody noticed or cared, and that was just fine with me. Because I was finally doing what I was born to do: writing.

It was good to blog in relative obscurity, good to practice without the whole world watching. This is a foreign concept in our world today. Everyone wants to be awesome now, but the road that leads to mastery is rarely a densely-populated one.

At the same time, I had a daily routine. I was, as Seth Godin says, practicing in public. Putting myself on the line. Forcing myself to be creative. Every day by 7:00 a.m., I had to post something. Seven days a week, 365 days a year. And this expectation I placed on myself was just what I needed. It made me better, helped me find my voice.

That one year of intense writing taught me more than the previous six years of writing when I felt like it. The lesson I learned was this: frequency, not quantity, is what counts in getting to excellence. Some days, I wrote for 30 minutes, while others I wrote for two hours. But the amount of time didn’t matter.

What mattered was that I showed up.

And that’s what turned a hobby into a discipline — and eventually a profession.

“This is the… secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight.” —Steven Pressfield

How I Built an Audience of 100,000 Readers in 18 Months

Initially, nobody knew me. So I interviewed influential people and A-list bloggers, people I wanted to learn from and associate with. And after awhile, I became friends with these folks, some of which invited me to write on their blogs.

Still, there were no overnight successes. It took me six months to get a mere 75 email subscribers. But something amazing happened around that six-month mark: The week I released a free, 900-word eBook for writers, I had over 1000 signups in seven days.

There was power, I learned, in giving more than taking, being generous instead of greedy.

Eight months in, I had amassed an audience of a few thousand followers (through guest posting and my free eBook), and a book publisher asked me to write a book. Within 18 months, those 1000 emails had turned in 20,000, and I was regularly receiving over 100,000 unique visitors to my blog each month.

I wasn’t making much money yet, but I believed that if I helped people, there would be a way to make a living.

From Side Project to Full-time Income

That next year, my wife and I were expecting our first child, and we weren’t sure how we were going to afford it. She wanted to stay home and raise our son, and on my salary it just wasn’t possible.

Someone told me that once you had over 10,000 subscribers, you had a six-figure business. So I decided to give that idea a try, throwing together an eBook in a few days. I sent an email to my subscribers, telling them I was offering the eBook at an early discounted rate. With that first eBook, I made about $1500 in a weekend. At the time, that was about half a month’s salary for me, an entire paycheck. In two days.

I couldn’t believe it. The next few months, I played around with affiliate products and started making a couple hundred bucks a month doing that. The side income was nice, but I knew I had to do another launch.

My second eBook, which was just a rewritten version of the first one, made $16,000 in six weeks. After that, I knew there was something to this whole “make money blogging” thing. Buried in my blog was a business; I just had to find it. Later that year, I released an online course, starting at a low price and gradually raising it with each new class. Every time I launched it, I got more students than the last.

By the end of my second year of blogging, my wife was able to stay home to raise our son, and I was preparing to quit my job. When we did our taxes, we were amazed to see we had not only replaced our income, but tripled it.

What It Takes

Although I’d read all the success stories and heard all the tips, I didn’t realize how much work it would be to build a popular blog.

In my first year of blogging, I wrote over 300 posts for my blog plus 100 guest posts for other websites. To do this, I had to get up every morning at 5:00 a.m. and often stay up well past midnight. I quit most of my other hobbies and focused all my free time on writing.

It wasn’t easy, but I was committed to the dream. Having spent so many years in frustration, unwilling to do the work, I was ready to invest the time — even if it took years — to get the results I wanted.

People often ask me what one thing I did with that made all the difference with my blog. And of course, I can’t think of one. Because it’s a process, a whole hodge-podge of things I did that made it work.

No single strategy can help you to get to your dream. No solitary experience or choice will lead to your big break. Well, except for maybe one:

Don’t give up.

Don’t quit. Keep going. Never stop. Learn from your mistakes, but don’t let go of the dream. You can do this. You will do this — if only you don’t stop.

That’s what’s missing with most blogs and with most writers. Every great story about some legendary entrepreneur I’ve ever read was rife with failure until one hinge moment when it all changed.

What made the difference? Why did Steve Jobs succeeded while thousands others in Silicon Valley didn’t? Why did J.K. Rowling become a worldwide phenomenon while many of her peers never will? And what can ordinary folks like you and me do to live extraordinary lives?

Don’t give up.

If I had to boil it down to three steps, I would say here’s what you need to do:

Own what you are (i.e. writer, blogger, entrepreneur, etc.).
Commit to the process. Do uncomfortable things, make friends with influential people, and keep practicing until people notice.
Keep going. When it’s hard and scary and nobody things you’re any good, don’t give up. Persevere. In the end, we will be telling stories about you, but only if you don’t quit.

So what do you say? Isn’t it time you started really pursuing your dream?

You bet it is.

Jeff Goins is a writer who lives in Nashville. You can follow him on Twitter @JeffGoins and check out his new book, The In-Between.

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August 2, 2017August 22, 2017

Content Creation vs Content Promotion: Where is the Balance?

A few days ago we published a post on ProBlogger titled ‘Forget about Marketing: Concentrate on Blogging‘, which led to some interesting discussion on Twitter and in the comments.

I love the points author Nicholas Whitmore made in the post but I wanted to give a few thoughts, based on my own experience, on developing great content and promoting your blog.

Nicholas wrote some great arguments for focusing your energy on writing great content as the central way of growing your blog. He writes:

“When you write and publish awesome content on your blog, good things will come your way.”

I completely agree with this sentiment. As a blogger your #1 focus needs to be on producing content that is useful, engaging and of as high a quality as possible. Without it, all the marketing you might do will be wasted as you’ll just be directing people to something that is of no value to them.

As Nicholas goes on to write:

“When you write and publish boring content then spend hours on end building links to it, trying to force people to your website, good things will never come.”

Again, I agree with the sentiment expressed here.

However, on Twitter a discussion among some of my followers highlighted that some bloggers differ quite a bit on how much effort should be put into promoting a blog vs developing content for it.

On one hand, there were certainly people who felt that if you build a great blog that it markets itself.
On the other hand, there were people who felt that if you didn’t get out there and market your blog you ran the risk of all your hard work in developing great content going completely unseen.

While I think we all agree that the content on your blog needs to be of a very high focus, I’m also of the belief that if a blogger wants to grow their readership they also need to put effort into promoting that blog.

I like the idea of the marketing being taken care of by your visitors, if you have good enough blog post. In my experience, there are things you can do to promote your blog to help speed the process up, without compromising the quality of your posts.

In the early days of my own current blogs (here on ProBlogger and at dPS) I estimate I probably spent almost as much time writing content as I did working on growing the readership. In fact, I’m sure there were some weeks where I did spend considerably more time promoting my blog than writing content!

In short, I don’t see marketing and creating content as mutually exclusive – both are really important to me.

How did I grow my readership (or market my blogs)?

I recorded a webinar last year on this very topic with a load of tips in it. You can listen to it and see the slides here so I won’t rehash all of that but here’s a summary slide of the points I talked through.

You can see that my process actually talks about the content that you develop as being a part of finding readers for your blog (both in points 2 and 8). But by getting off your blog to promote what you do you are certainly able to significantly grow your blog.

For me, I’d say that the balance of creating content and promoting has changed over the life of my blogs over the years. This is probably partly because the life cycle of a blog but also due to my own personal circumstances and how much time I have available to work.

That said , I would always prioritise both on a daily basis… and would probably also add in that I prioritise other things too such as ‘engaging with readers/building community’ and also a focus upon ‘monetization’ (without which I can’t sustain what I do).

Where is the Balance of Promotion and Content Creation for You?

I’d love to hear how others get this balance right in your blogging?

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July 29, 2017August 22, 2017

Are You Ready to be a Full-Time Blogger?

This is a guest contribution from freelance writer, Ayelet Weisz.

A big part of the pro blogger dream is to be your own boss. No more office politics, competitions with colleagues or having to prove yourself to someone who reaps all the benefits of your hard work. You’ll set your own rules and live life your way.

Yet if you’ve never had to be accountable to yourself on a large-scale, long-term project, you might find yourself overwhelmed.

1. Unrealistic expectations. If you don’t know your own limitations, you could end up planning to invest too little time or leaving too little flexibility in your budget. You could also work yourself to exhaustion.

2. Getting lost. Being a full-time blogger leaves you plenty of opportunities to get lost – online, in sleep, in your own fears.

3. Missing tools and skills. There are lots of skills to master and tools to learn – not only in your chosen field of blogging, but in business management, time management, marketing – and the list goes on.

Do You Have The Skills?

Fortunately, tools and skills to be a successful full-time blogger are learnable. You need to incorporate the process of learning into your business plan, and don’t despair if you find yourself taking longer in one step or another. Instead, relish in your blogging journey and, as you challenge yourself, remember to give yourself a break.

Would You Hire You?

Few jobs will take you in without an interview – and your blogging business should be one of them. You must define the job before you can find out if you’ve got the right stuff.

You need to research what it means to run a full time blog and own a business, how to live on fluctuating income, what kind of marketing strategies are usually used, and where you could break the marketing rules to help your blog shine.

Read sites and magazines about your chosen niche, as well as general sites about professional blogging (like Problogger!), entrepreneurship and small businesses.

Once you have a vision of what your daily and annual life could look like, ask yourself the tough questions:

Are you ready to get started on the job?
Which areas require more learning, practise, tools or expertise?
What could you do with the skills you have right now to start building your blog?

Just as importantly, put on the interviewee’s hat – and ask yourself if you even want the position.

Go on at least one good course

Getting educated is valuable in gaining a deeper understanding of what you’re getting yourself into, as well as to speed up the process. Your chosen course, or several courses, might be about getting certification or about improving through feedback you’d get from professionals on your creative work. It might be about writing, marketing, business management or creating more self confidence in your life.

You could choose to learn all these aspects or some. You could learn them one by one or mix them together. You could decide learning is another business task, like marketing – or you could set aside a concentrated learning time before you take your first practical step in building your blog.

While you’ll likely keep on learning as you develop your blogging business, it’s easy to get caught up in the learning and never take a step beyond that.

Give yourself a deadline for when you absolutely have to go register your business or pitch a guest post for the first time.

Do You Have The Budget?

Importantly, remember that you need to save money in advance and put it aside to cover the cost of the course and the hours of paid work that you might miss.

Don’t forget to budget enough time for implementation either – homework tends to take longer than what you first expect.

Do You Need a Mentor?

At times, it’s recommended to hire a mentor even if you took a course or few. With a mentor, you’ll be able to ask questions you might not feel comfortable asking in a group, get a sense of direction and compile a list of actions it’s best to take for your specific blog and situation.

You might choose to keep this mentor on payroll for longer, yet sometimes even an appointment or several will do. Then, you could go on your merry way and sign up for another session when you feel one is needed.

Another option is to join a community of peers or top professionals, or one that’s combined of various levels of skills and successes. These can be paid or free, an online message board, meetings in your community or networking organisations’ gatherings.

Either way, that personalised attention will enable you to learn the inside world of launching and managing a blog, of marketing, of communicating with readers and of being the best blogger you can be.

Have you got more tips to test if you’re ready to start pro blogging? Share them with us in the comments!

Ayelet Weisz (www.AyeletWeisz.com) is an enthusiastic freelance writer, blogger and screenwriter, who focuses on business, technology, travel and women’s issues. Get her free report, 48 Must-Live Israeli Experiences, on her travel blog, and connect with her on Twitter.

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July 29, 2017August 22, 2017

ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for your Business

This book was launched at the perfect time for me, because I’m working hard to turn my photography blog into a business. This is my review of the latest ProB…

July 27, 2017August 22, 2017

How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True

“ONE DAY I’ll be a full time blogger!”

‘V’ – my wife – must have heard that statement 100 or more times in 2003-2004.

Me posing for my first ever press photo in 2003. Out of shots all my neighbours were watching on and wondering why I was videoing a guy taking a photo of me while sitting in my front yard.

It would usually be accompanied by a spread sheet and/or chart in which I showed her how the earnings from my blog had grown from $9 per month to $11 per month and me excitedly talking about how if things kept growing like that I’d be full time…. in 9 years time.

Back in those days I spent a lot of time dreaming about my future as a full time blogger.

I remember laying in bed at night, hoping it would happen and wondering what opportunities might open up to make it a reality.

Those of you who have read the ProBlogger hard cover book know the story of how ‘V’ heard me talk about my ‘dream’ one time too many and challenged me to take my blogging seriously.

In short, she challenged me to start treating my blog as a business ‘today’ rather than hoping it might be one at some point in the future.

Note: I wrote about this in my post ‘The #1 Reason My Blogging Grew into a Business‘

That challenge changed my mindset and was a huge part of making my dreams and hopes a reality.

We CREATE our Future

I recently came across this quote:

“The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.” – John H. Schaar

We don’t arrive at our future… we create it!

I wish I’d heard that quote back in 2003 when I began to experiment with making money blogging.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with ‘dreaming‘ of ones future. I just keep meeting bloggers (and people in other fields too) who seem to be stuck in the ‘dream’ phase.

The reality is that nobody really gets anywhere just by dreaming. There needs to come a time to ACT.

Just Do It

Do you dream of your blog one day being bigger, better, more profitable, or bring you better opportunities?

Just Do It!

Your future isn’t something that will just magically happen to you – you make that future.

So the time is now to begin moving in that direction through action!

Is it All Too Big?

Of course, giving the advice ‘just do it’ might be the kick up the pants that some people need to get moving but many bloggers I meet feel overwhelmed by all that lays ahead in order to create their dreams.

I often here one of two things from bloggers facing this:

There is too much to do
I want to do it perfectly

Both of these statements can cause paralysis and put your future on hold.

Here’s my advice to you… (and I’m really writing this for me as well… because I feel both of those things too)…

Start With Something Small

Choose one small thing to start with that will move you toward your dream and do it to the best of your ability (tweet this).

Let’s break that down:

Choose One Thing – if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the many things you need to do, you can end up doing nothing or trying to do everything, but failing. Doing one thing well, and then moving onto the next thing, will take you further than either of those options.
Do a Small Thing – if you’re currently ‘stalled’ you need to get momentum so choose a smaller thing to get the wheels rolling. Achieving that small thing will give you energy to tackle the next bigger thing.
Choose something that will Move You Toward Your Dream – it’s so easy to be distracted by tasks that seem like a good idea but aren’t really important in the scheme of your goals. Choose something that is directly tied to your ultimate goal (I’ll give you some examples below).
Do it to the Best of Your Ability – if you only ever do things you can do perfectly, you may never do anything! Do it as well as you can now and perfect it later. By starting you’ll learn so much and in the long run will produce something great.

What I’ve outlined above has been a strategy I’ve used many times over the years. Let me give you some practical examples.

Example 1 – Starting dPS

I put off starting Digital Photography School for a couple of years before I actually launched it (I’ve never admitted that before).

I had previously had a camera review blog that did well but I always dreamed of starting a more ‘tips’ related photography blog. I thought it’d be more satisfying to write and would have more potential to grow a relationship with readers.

I had every excuse in the book not to start dPS. I already had too much to do. I didn’t have the money to invest into a custom designed site. I doubted my own ability to write content on the topic. I couldn’t find the right brand/domain name…

The list went on.

However, I had the dream and one day I realised that if I didn’t actually start the blog that I’d never have any chance of arriving at that dream. So I started small.

I made a call on a brand and domain name – It wasn’t perfect but it allowed me to start
I started on GoDaddy Hosting – I knew it wasn’t the best option but it allowed me to start
I started with a free WordPress theme – it wasn’t as professional or customised as what I saw in my dreams but it allowed me to start
I wrote a handful of posts – I wanted to have more in my archives but it allowed me to start
I started with comments switched off to allow me to focus on creating more content – doing so fell short of my vision for a ‘community’ driven site but it allowed me to get moving

The design of dPS when it launched using a free theme.

When the blog launched I remember looking at it with a mixture of:

Dissatisfaction at all the things I knew I could have done to make it better
Immense pride that I’d actually got the ideas out of my head and had finally implemented something

With the ball rolling, I was able to improve and grow what I was doing.

I moved to better hosting (and have done so 3 times now). I moved towards a custom design (we’re about to launch our iteration of the design). I’ve since published over 3800 posts and developed a team of writers. I switched on comments and added a forum area to build community.

The site is now 10 times bigger than any blog I had at the time I started it. It is still not perfect by any means (I have a long to do list) but it is a lot closer to my dreams than ever before.

Example 2 – My First eBook

My First eBook (now no longer available as we updated it)

I shared this story at the ProBlogger Event last year but don’t think I’ve written a post about it.

After a year of starting and then evolving Digital Photography School I began to see the opportunity to create a teaching product to sell on the site. I wasn’t sure at first what format would be best (eBooks, courses, events or something else) but knew there was an opportunity there.

I gradually settled on the idea of an eBook to test the waters with my audience but procrastinated and made excuses on why I should delay doing it for another 12-18 months.

Again my list of excuses was long and I justified my inaction with things like:

not having time to write and develop an eBook
not knowing how to set up a shopping cart
not knowing how to design or format an eBook
doubts about knowing enough about the subject matter

I put off the creation of that first eBook for a couple of years but managed to snap myself out of the paralysis and decided to start.

I decided to write the eBook about Portraiture – the topic my readers asked the most questions about and the one that I knew most about.

As I was time poor, I decided to get up 15 minutes earlier every day to create the eBook. I would have rather been able to set aside a week or two to work solidly on it but I had blogs to run and a newborn baby at home. I had some major sleep deprivation already so figured 15 minutes less sleep a day wouldn’t hurt! It wasn’t the ideal way to write – but it allowed me to start.
I decided to use some repurposed blog posts as the basis for the eBook. I’d rather have written it all from scratch but this approach allowed me to start.
I decided to outsource the design but kept it as simple and clean as possible to save on cost. I’d have rather had a beautiful/rich design but it allowed me to start.
I decided on a relatively simple and inexpensive shopping cart set up. I used e-junkie (aft) and synced it with PayPal. It wasn’t the most feature rich solution but was relatively east to set up and didn’t hold me back on launching.
I hada relatively simple launch. We launched it over 8 days with a pretty simple sales page and sales email to my list. I made a lot of mistakes in that launch and have a much more sophisticated process these days but I got the product launched!

I look back on the creation and launch of that eBook now with a mix of embarrassment at how simple it all was and pride at what I achieved as someone with no experience in creating an eBook.

It could have been A LOT better on many fronts but it was the beginning of something that has transformed what I do.

That eBook sold 4800 copies during its launch (bringing in a total of $72,000) which at the time completely blew me away (in the years after it sold a lot more) but the income from it wasn’t the best bit.

The most valuable part of creating that eBook was the lessons I learned in doing it.

That eBook and its launch became the template for future eBooks. I have now published a total of 12 on dPS, 6 here on ProBlogger and 1 on SnapnGuides.

The creation process of our eBooks has changed a lot (we no longer use repurposed content, now use editors, proof readers etc and have evolved the design quite a lot) and our launches are a lot more sophisticated but it all began with 15 minutes per day and doing the best I could!

More Quick Examples

This pattern of small steps towards big dreams is something that I could give you many more examples of.

Like how I got the ProBlogger hard cover Book published. It started as a draft for an eBook and some content that Chris and I had published on our blogs.

And how the ProBlogger Event was started. This has grown to be an annual event for 400+ bloggers but it started as a hastily arranged day for 100 bloggers in a dodgy suburban hotel.

Like how I developed 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It started as a series of blog posts that evolved into a quickly produced eBook which grew again into the best selling ProBlogger eBook that we offer today.

And how I developed the ProBlogger Queensland Competition. It started as a crazy idea I got while sitting in an airport. I tweeted something and it ended up being one of the biggest campaigns I’ve ever done with a brand.

I’m certain that others reading this post would have more personal examples – I’d LOVE to see them in comments below.

Choose 1 Small Thing…

Let’s return to the take home advice…

Choose one small thing to start with that will move you toward your dream and do it to the best of your ability (tweet this).

I can’t emphasise enough how powerful doing this has been in my own business (and my life in general in other areas).

Give it a go – I can’t wait to see what impact it has for you!

How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True
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July 27, 2017August 22, 2017

Challenge: Update Your Blog’s About Page

Today I want to set us all a little homework – a challenge of sorts – to update your blogs ‘About Page’.

This challenge evolves out of the embarrassing realisation that my own about page here on ProBlogger was dated and in need of a refresh.

It had been well over 12 months since I’d last looked at it – in that time I’d ended some projects mentioned on the page but also started new things like the ProBlogger Event – embarrassing!

It is particularly embarrassing because a blog’s About Page is often one of the first places a new visitor to a blog goes to check out what the blog is about, who is behind it and to make a decision whether it’s a blog that they want to subscribe to!

Many bloggers I speak with report that their About Page is one of their most read pages on their blog – get it wrong and you could be losing readers, hurting your brand or just looking dated.

So today I did a quick update of the page to fix the obvious problems and have put a fuller rewrite on the cards for the next week.

I also thought if my about page was dated – there must be a lot of others out there with similar issues so lets do a group challenge of sorts and all refresh out pages together!

There is no right or wrong way to write your about page but if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration check out this previous post on the topic – How Your About Page Can Make or Break Your Blog which gives some practical tips including:

Introduce yourself
Remember the mantra: What’s In It For Me?
Sharing Who the Blog is For
Being Personal – but not too personal
Determine the goal of your About page
Always end with a call to action

Once you’ve updated your About Page – please link to it below in comments so we can see the approach you’ve taken (I’m sure we could all learn a lot about creating great About Pages through seeing how each other does it).

Challenge: Update Your Blog’s About Page
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July 22, 2017August 22, 2017

Aprendendo a Blogar com Darren Rowse | um dos maiores Blogueiros do Mundo

conheça o meu blog: http://acblog.com.br Neste vídeo a Ana do site Vídeo-Aulas by Ana, resume uma entrevista feita com o Blogueiro Darren Rowse um dos maiore…

July 21, 2017August 22, 2017

An Experiment in Removing Share Buttons Altogether

Unless you’ve been hiding under a social media rock recently, you probably know about Twitter removing their share counts.

This meant that, as of November 20, any blog posts that had some form of Twitter sharing button (native or third-party) would no longer be able to show how many times that post had been shared on Twitter.

Cue content marketers and social media sharing companies decrying the move, with dramatic quotes about it “being the death of Twitter”.

#SaveOurShareCounts Tweets

Because, yes, Twitter has nothing more serious to worry about than whether or not it shows share counts…

For the rest of us, it didn’t mean as big a deal. At the end of the day, a share count is simply one metric of a blog post’s “success”.

Given there are enough shady companies and scripts out there that can artificially inflate these numbers, it’s not even a great metric.

Personally, I’d rather go by engagement, reactions (as in discussions and thoughts elsewhere), and growth (either subscribers, readers or share of voice) as metrics that matter.

But it made me wonder – with so many people getting up in arms about a little number, what would they actually feel like if you removed the option to share via on-site buttons altogether?

And so I’m going to find out.

To Quickly Share or Not to Share

Last year, I read a post from a few other bloggers who were discussing the value of social sharing buttons, and whether they helped or hindered sites.

One of the best articles I read was from Sam Solomon, called Why I’m Done With Social Media Buttons.

Sam’s main premise was from a designer’s angle, and how sharing buttons could ruin the user experience.

Yet he also shared a couple of case studies that looked at on-page sharing, and the results weren’t great.

While he admits that he didn’t do any real conversion tracking on his own site before switching off, his points around the topic are very valid, and worth the read.

His closing argument has remained with me since reading his post:

If people really love your content, they’ll share it.

And it’s true.

Yes, having on-page buttons may make it easier – but then do they take away from other calls to action that you’re trying to achieve (comments, subscriptions, etc)?

For example, this company saw conversions increase when they removed their share buttons, which is clearly a more important metric than how many tweets they got.

But perhaps that shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise – it’s simply following the golden rule of marketing: that you have one main CTA and that’s your primary KPI (key performance indicator).

You then set secondary CTAs and KPIs based on the key one – but only if they don’t jeopardize your main one.

If you take this to your blog, your core CTA might be to get a comment. Or it might be to get a subscriber. Or to download an ebook, or something similar.

I’m going to hazard a guess that these will come before social sharing. So are we diluting our goals by the [apparent] importance on social sharing buttons?

Time to find out.

Setting 30 Days Comparable Metrics

If I look at my Google Analytics, I can see how much social traffic means to my blog.

In the last 30 days, my breakdown has been as follows:

Organic search – 58%
Direct – 22.3%
Social – 9.5%
Referral – 9%
Other and email – 1%

Just looking at that simple pie chart, I can see that – in the grand scheme of things – social isn’t a huge part of this blog’s traffic.

While 10% might mean X amount of visits, I tend to find the bounce rate (how soon someone leaves a page) higher for social traffic than search or direct.

Additionally, if I look deeper into my social analytics, I can see that both Facebook and Twitter are the key social drivers – Twitter accounts for 31% of social traffic, Facebook accounts for 29%.

That’s almost 2/3 of all my social traffic coming from just two networks.

So, truth be told, for this particular blog, maybe social isn’t a key driver of visits, even though I’ve continuously made it easier to share with ever-improved social sharing options.

Of course, the argument could be made that perhaps the content just wasn’t shareworthy. In which case, get off my lawn!

One thing I do find interesting (and another reason for this experiment) is that when I look at both my Google Analytics as well as Share Tally, I can see there are a solid number of shares from Buffer and Pocket.

These are two platforms that my current social sharing solution doesn’t support – which suggests that readers are still happy to cut and paste a blog post’s URL onto their preferred platform of choice.

Well, I guess I’m about to find out.

For the next 30 days, I’m not going to enable on-page sharing for the posts I publish.

Instead, whenever a reader enjoys a post and wants to share it, they’ll need to grab the URL and paste it directly into Twitter, or Facebook, etc.

If they do, great. If they don’t, well, maybe great, maybe not – I guess we’ll see based on traffic comparisons as well as network activity.

Either way, I’m interested to see how removing share buttons impacts the shareability of this blog.

Let the fun begin!

July 11, 2017August 22, 2017

How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True [Part 2]

Choose one small thing to start with that will move you toward your dream and do it to the best of your ability (tweet this).

I issued that challenge in a post How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True just over a month ago. Since publishing that post, I’ve had literally hundreds of readers email me to let me know that they’ve been using the mantra to move them toward their blogging (and non blogging) dreams.

As a result, I thought I’d circle back to it today to check in with how people are going as well as suggesting another strategy for helping you to move toward your dreams.

Last week, I spoke at the World Domination Summit about ‘getting dreams out of your head’. I finished my talk by suggesting those in the audience take a moment to tell the person next to them a dream they wanted to chase.

What I’ve discovered, over the years, is that when I share my dreams the chances of them happening increases. I think this is for three reasons:

Sharing Dreams Creates Accountability

Firstly, it creates a little accountability. When I share a dream I have (whether it be a big dream or a small one) I find it opens a conversation that becomes ongoing. The other person then has permission to followup and ask how the dream chasing is going and even if they don’t ask, I know they know… so I am motivated to pursue it!

Sharing Dreams Helps You Recruit Dream Collaborators

Secondly, I find that by sharing a dream with another person you often find collaborators who can help you make it happen. Just last week I told a friend a dream of mine and two days later I received an email telling me that they’d been thinking about what I’d told them and that they:

knew someone that I should talk to that had experience in that area
had just read an article that I should read that touched on my dream
wanted to offer to help with one aspect of making the dream a reality

Sharing your dream might just unearth the keys to make that dream happen.

Sharing Dreams Makes Them More Robust

Lastly, I find that verbalising a dream helps the dream to find shape. My dreams usually start off just living in my mind. But once I share it, verbally, I begin to hear the strengths and weaknesses of what I’m saying. By putting words to your dream, you begin to test it and shape it. When others ask you questions about it you’re forced to look at it in a more realistic way – something that helps to make it a more robust idea!

Who to Share Your Dream With?

So at WDS last week I asked people in the audience to share a dream with the person next to them. This took a few people out of their comfort zone but in the days that have followed, I’ve had emails from a number of people who took the challenge who have already seen their dreams becoming a reality. And it all started when they shared a sentence or two about their dreams.

Sharing your dreams with random people is certainly something that can have a big impact but you might want to be a little more selective than that, particularly if your dream is more personal or in its very early stages.

Sometimes you want to be a little careful about who you want to share a dream with because some people will bring their critical thought processes to the dream before it is ready to be critiqued. There’s certainly nothing wrong with having a dream ‘tested’ by such people but I tend to do this once a dream has been developed and becomes a little emote robust!

I have a small group of friends and team members who I know are great for listening to my dreams and ambitions. They are people who care for me, who I trust and who I know will encourage and give energy towards making dreams come true. They are also people who can tell me if an idea isn’t so great when required – without crushing my spirt 🙂

Challenge: Share a Dream

So here’s my challenge to you. Share a dream!

Do you have a dream that you’ve been struggling to get out of your head? It may or may not relate to blogging – either way, I encourage you to share it with someone.

You may choose to do this by sharing it with a trusted friend as suggested above.

Or if your dream isn’t so personal or you’re ready to put it out there more publicly you might choose to do it in comments below or you might even write a blog post about that dream.

But don’t keep it to yourself!

How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True [Part 2]
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July 10, 2017August 22, 2017

How I use Google Analytics ‘Compare’ Feature to Motivate Me to Grow My Blog

This morning, a reader asked me this question:

“How do you motivate yourself to grow your blog traffic from day to day?”

We’ve covered a whole heap of techniques for growing the amount of traffic you attract to your blog in our Blog Promotion category (also check out this ‘how to find readers page‘ and listen to my recent finding reader webinar) but one thing that has helped me on the ‘motivation’ front lately is the report below in Google Analytics (click to enlarge).

What you’re looking at is the traffic so far today (the blue line) on Digital Photography School compared to the traffic on the site one week ago (the orange line) – arranged by the hour.

I’ll tell you how to get this report below but first, the reason I love this report is that it tells me whether I’m on track to get as much traffic to my site today as I had this time last week.

Having something to compare traffic keeps me motivated to better the previous week’s result.

Note: I always choose to compare traffic from exactly 1 week previous because on our site we see quite distinct rises and falls in traffic on different days of the week.

In the chart above you can see the day’s traffic started well, with the first 4 hours between 1.7% and 18.1% higher than the previous week.

This all happened while I was asleep so when I checked in at 9am I was pleased! However, I also saw that from 6am-8am that we were beginning to slip behind.

Knowing this gave me a little bit of motivation to find some ways to drive more traffic to the site today.

I took a look at the schedule of Facebook updates that I had planned for the day and decided to move a status update I thought would drive some traffic to be earlier in the day.

That status update went live at 9am and resulted in a nice bump in traffic to get the blue line trending up above the orange again.

I also identified some older posts from my archives that I then scheduled to be tweeted throughout the next 24 hours (based upon my advice from last month to promote old content), which I thought would help us to keep nudging the traffic up higher for the rest of the day.

Having this report open is a great little source of motivation to keep working not only at writing great content but also driving traffic to it.

I also find that having this comparison open during the day (and watching ‘real time’ stats) helps me to spot anomalies in traffic. It helps me to quickly spot if there’s a problem (server issues) or on the flip side it shows me when a post might have been shared on a big blog or social media account.

Knowing this information helps me to react quickly to fix a problem or leverage a traffic event.

UPDATE: here’s how the traffic looked at the end of the day in the comparison view:

Things slipped for the last hour or two but over the full day visitor numbers were up by 4.22%.

While a 4% increase in traffic isn’t the most spectacular result I see it is a small step in a larger race I’m running. I know if I can see even a 1% increase in traffic each week that over a year or longer that it’ll significantly grow the site over time.

How to Get This Report

For those of you new to Google Analytics here’s the easy process to get this report (it will only take you a couple of minutes).

1. Login to your Google Analytics Account

2. In the menu click on the ‘Overview’ link under ‘Audience’

3. By default you’ll be looking at the last months traffic. You want to drill down now to today so in the top right corner click on the date range and a calendar will open up like this:

4. Select today’s date.

5. Check the ‘compare to’ box and then in the new date field that opens up underneath you can put in last weeks date by clicking on the day you want to compare it to. Once you have – click ‘Apply’.

6. You’re almost done now. You should be looking at a report that compares the two days but by default it’ll be showing you the total of the days in the chart as two dots. You want to view this now as ‘hourly’ so hit the ‘hourly’ tab.

You now should be looking at the comparison of today’s traffic with the same day last week (note: your current days report won’t yet be complete unless the day is almost over and it does run an hour behind).

Variations on this report to check out

This comparison tool is really useful for a while heap of reports.

For example you can choose to compare one week with another:

In fact, any period of time can be compared with any other period.

Also, with a date range locked in you can drill down into many other metrics.

For example, earlier today I was doing some analysis comparing this last week with the corresponding week in September, which was just before we did our new redesign on Digital Photography School.

A day by day comparison showed a great improvement in overall traffic.

Drilling down further, and viewing the two weeks by the hour, was also fascinating and showed that the two weeks had remarkably similar patterns in traffic from hour to hour – so the increase in traffic was very even across the week.

Under that chart was some interesting data:

Not only were Visits and Page views well up – but being able to see that bounce rate was slightly down and that average visitor duration was up was encouraging. Seeing Pages Viewed Per Visit was down showed we have an area to improve on (we’re already working on this) and seeing that we had a good rise in ‘new’ visitors was something that should be investigated further.

To investigate the rise in ‘new’ visitors I moved into the ‘Acquisition’ menu on Google analytics. The same date range and comparison is still selected so now I’m able to compare the two periods when it comes to different sources of traffic and see why we’ve had rises in traffic:

It turns out we’ve seen increases in a few area:

Search Traffic is up:

All_Traffic_-_Google_Analytics_and_Preview_of_“Untitled”.png

Facebook Traffic is up (due to my recent experiments):

But interestingly Feed traffic is down (giving us something to investigate).

There are many other areas you can drill down into with the comparison tool – almost anything that Google Analytics has a report for you can compare from period to period and get a great overview of how that stat compares very quickly.

Have a go yourself – do some comparisons and let me know what you find in comments below!

How I use Google Analytics ‘Compare’ Feature to Motivate Me to Grow My Blog
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July 9, 2017August 22, 2017

The Real Life Of A Pro Blogger

http://gugulethum.co.za/pr This is a real life of a pro blogger. Wake up in the morning create a blog post and make k just like that.

July 5, 2017August 22, 2017

Making A Service Worker: A Case Study

There’s no shortage of boosterism or excitement about the fledgling service worker API, now shipping in some popular browsers. There are cookbooks and blog posts, code snippets and tools. But I find that when I want to learn a new web concept thoroughly, rolling up my proverbial sleeves, diving in and building something from scratch is often ideal.

The bumps and bruises, gotchas and bugs I ran into this time have benefits: Now I understand service workers a lot better, and with any luck I can help you avoid some of the headaches I encountered when working with the new API.

The post Making A Service Worker: A Case Study appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

July 1, 2017August 22, 2017