Blog Profiting Secrets 2016

 

ElmoCopy
267 Carvers Ferry Road
Richmond, KY 40475
(859) 797-9560
Elmo033057@gmail.com
www.ElmoCopy.com
Blog Profiting Secrets 2016 is copyrighted© by ElmoCopy. No portion of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the author.
Copyright© 2016 Mark “Elmo” Ellis All worldwide rights reserved. Copyright protected. Duplicating, reprinting, or distributing this material without the express written permission of the author is forbidden.
About the Content
Just because the date on this eBook is 2016 please don’t make the error of believing that the material is out of date or no longer relevant. The ideas and principles presented in this book will be valid for years to come.
About the “Results Guaranteed”
I can guarantee that if you follow the tips and ideas presented in this book that you will get results. However, the degree of results you will get by following these ideas are entirely up to you. Just like any other business, blogging takes time, trial and error, experience, and patience. However, if for any reason you feel that you honestly couldn’t get anything out of this book and that it was a complete waste of your money, I’ll happily refund you the money you spent on it and you can keep the book as well.
About the Links
It is possible that after a period of time the links in this book will become stale and outdated. The links merely give you access to additional information and tools you can use. The real value of this book is in the material itself and the lessons provided not the links.
Notice
This is not a free eBook! The purchase of this digital product entitles the buyer to one copy of it for their computer and one printing of this document ― that is all. Printing out more than one copy and distributing this document either electronically or by printing will violate international copyright laws and subject the purchaser to over $100,000 in fines per copy distributed.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Can You Actually Make Money with a Blog?
Using Your Blog to Make Money ― Step by Step
Different Ways to Monetize Your Blog
Chapter 2: How to Set Up Your First Blog
Before You Start, Don’t Do This!
Finding the Right Domain Name
Setting up Your Blog
Making Your First Post
Chapter 3: Finding Your Niche Market
Finding Your Ideal Niche
Step by Step Method to Finding a Niche
Chapter 4: Writing Killer Blog Headlines
An Overview of a Blog Post
The Headline
Steps to Writing Great Headlines
Blog Headline Formulas
Chapter 5: Subheads 101
Four Kinds of Readers
Another Hidden Purpose for Subheads
How to Write Subheads Step by Step
Chapter 6: How to Write Viral Blog Posts
The Different Types of Blog Posts
The Basics of Writing a Post
Writing Body Copy Step by Step
Chapter 7: How to Generate Great Blog Post Ideas
Great Blog Post Ideas in 5 Steps
How to Create a Tutorial
Finding Popular Subjects Step by Step
Chapter 8: Using Commenting to Increase Traffic
Reasons for Branding
How to Brand Yourself on Blog Comments
Creating a Maven Persona
How to Leave Comments on Blogs
How to Wreck Your Commenting Efforts
Chapter 9: Setting Goals for Blogging
Setting Goals You Can Achieve Quickly
Blogging Factors that are Important
How to Blog Everyday
Chapter 10: Get Your Blog Seen with Guest Posting
Finding Blogs to Write For
Bearing Down on the Most Promising Blogs
Approaching Guest Blogs
Contact Examples
Chapter 11: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)for Blogging
SEO Confusion
Simplifying the Challenge of SEO
Getting Links to Your Site
Consistency & Excellence are the Key
Citations
Resources
Introduction
It would be a big mistake to believe that you could start a blog and make vast sums of money overnight by merely putting down your thoughts about a subject you are passionate about. I would rank that kind of idea right down there with believing in the tooth fairy, honesty in politics, and secret flying saucer breeding grounds at Area 51.
However, vast sums of money and opportunities do abound in the blogging realm if you put your back into it and learn as much as you can. The idea that you could just read this book, or take a course in blogging and assume that alone will give you all the knowledge you need is a bogus one. Just like any other trade or discipline, blogging requires a constant pursuit of more knowledge and practice honing your writing and research skills.
Having said that, I do want to say that blogging, copywriting, article posting, and other forms of writing abound on the Internet alone, creating a vast industry of online writing opportunities. This book will get you jump-started into the blogging arena so that you’ll have the confidence to start your journey in the right way, immediately, without a lot of trial and error guesswork.
It is my desire, hope, and prayer that this book will not only help you to get started down the right path of blogging, but also get you fired up and passionate about a niche or business that you want to start or promote. Just keep in mind that any real success or fortune rarely comes easily or without hurdles or trials. As the great coach, Vince Lombardi once said, “I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious!”
God Bless!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis

Chapter 1 Can You Actually Make Money With a Blog?
If you’re a person that’s blogging for pure fun, writing random poetry, or using a blog platform for a diary, you’re not going be interested in this book. Most people I’ve talked to want to know how to use a blog to make money, or if you can actually make money with your blog.
Let me just give you the answer right now so we can quickly move on to the matter at hand:
Yes, you can make money with a blog. If you bust your butt and keep learning as much as you can about it, you can probably make a lot of money with one. However, before you get too excited, you have to understand that there are a variety of ways to make money with a blog.
Here are a few examples:
● You could use your blog to bring in customers to your bricks and mortar business.
● You could use a blog to become an authority online, thus gaining more clients for a business.
● A blog could be used to generate an income from displaying advertisements like AdSense ads.
● You could sell products that your business has available on your blog.
● A blog could be used by a salesman to bring in more customers and generate more sales.
● Your company could use a blog to create buzz about products your company is selling.
● A blog could be used as a social media center for advertising methods.
● You could use a blog to sell affiliate products.
As I said, there are many ways you could use a blog to make money online, but before we start getting into the details on how you can do this, I do have a word of caution for you…

Don’t quit your day job.
It’s fairly easy to make money from blogging. You could put up a blog, monetize it with AdSense ads and within a week, have your blog pulling in money. However, AdSense only pays a few cents a click, so you will need to get a ton of traffic and a crap-load of clicks on those ads to make any real money.
Just to give you a real-world example: I worked very hard on my first blog for the better part of 2 years before I saw any real money. Even though I was making money there were months I made $500 from AdSense, and some I made only $100; the amount of money I made always fluctuated.
In that case, I was only trying to generate money from one source which was AdSense.
● I made quite a few mistakes along the way, like:
● Picking too small of a niche…
● Not researching my subjects enough…
● Ignoring my mailing list…
● Not writing outstanding posts…
One of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to make money using nothing more than AdSense ads; I really didn’t have a business goal that was doable.
So, if you really want to learn how to make money with your blog, I’m going to give you a blueprint in this chapter that should help you get on your way to making money with your blog.
If you’re diligent and really hard, there should be no reason why you can’t make some good money from your blog or from blogging.

Taking Blogging Seriously
Blogging is just like any other worthwhile endeavor, if you push yourself really hard and make it work, it’ll pay off sooner or later. Having been a professional musician and teacher for years, I can see the same pattern in music students.
When a student first gets a musical instrument, he or she is very excited to try it out and has all sorts of ideas about how great and fun it’ll all be when they start playing.
Soon reality rears its ugly head and the student then realizes that it takes hours upon hours of dedication and work to become a musician. If you want to be a really awesome musician, it'll take a ton of practice. But hey, if you truly love music as I did when I was growing up, you’ll look for every chance you can find to practice and hone your craft. Let’s face it; only a few of the bazillions of people that start playing music will actually become professional musicians. That’s just the reality of it. And it’s the same thing with blogging. Many will come, but few will make the entire trip. It’s just the law of the cul-de-sac.

What is Your Blog’s Purpose?
Much of your blog’s success will be dependent on what your goals are for the blog. A person that is using a blog to connect to his clients will have a far different goal than a person that’s selling affiliate products to make money from her blog.
So establishing what your niche is and understanding its role in the market place is very important.
I've written extensively about these subjects on other books and blogs, but it bears repeating briefly here. In order to build your blog on a solid foundation, follow these suggestions and click on the links for the more detailed information.
Using Your Blog to Make Money ― Step by Step

Step 1: Determine your niche - Before you do a single thing, determine what your market is and how you are going to fit into it. A big mistake I made was not picking a big enough niche or a niche that could fit into several bigger categories. For example, my niche is:
Writing -->bogging --> Copywriting --> Copywriting for Recreation Vehicles
See how all of those can dovetail into one and other?
The reason why I’m bringing this up is because when I created my blogging site before, I painted myself into a corner. I was rather new to Internet marketing at the time, and I had been told that the smaller, more focused a niche was the better off I’d be.
So I started a blog about electric bicycles.
Even though there were plenty of people that were interested in electric bikes and scooters, it was too small of a field to write about. Add to that the fact that there were already quite a few well established electric bike sites that were eating up the market share online.
Some of those sites were owned by regular brick and mortar stores that had established an online presence for years. I couldn't compete with that small of a market too long.
So the big lesson to pull from this is: Pick a niche that can expand into bigger niches if you can.
It will give you a lot more to write about, make it easier to survive in a niche that won’t be overcrowded, and you’ll have more business opportunities to make money at.

Step 2:Start Building Relationships — The old business model said, Create Buzz --> Sell Them Something --> Go On To The Next Customer.
However, building relationships over the long haul is far more profitable. People that live on the Internet are sold to almost constantly and they are getting sick of it. They want something more; to be a part of a group, to feel appreciated and special.
One of the best ways to do that online is to give them something. Don’t just give them crap, give them something of serious value that will open their eyes in amazement.
As a copywriter, I tell my prospects everything. I show them many tricks of the trade, tell them how to do research, and actually write sales copy for themselves. I really let them know as much as I can about the craft and how they can use it to improve their lives and business.
You probably think I’m nuts for doing that, which is fine.
However, when it comes to actually writing the advertising copy for their businesses, they choke and ask me to help them.
Why?
Because writing advertising copy is just like any other skill, it requires tons of practice, dedication and work to get to the place where you’ll be able to write it well enough for your business.
Even if I’ve told them everything I can about writing copy, once they sit down to actually try writing it themselves, reality hits them.
It’s a lot harder than they think.
Since I’ve handed my readers the keys to the kingdom, they trust me and ask me to write their copy for them. See how that works?
Here are a few methods of connecting with people that you need to use if you want to build your online readership:
Comment on other people’s blogs as often as you can. I use Twitter and if I see someone on there that posts regularly and often, I’ll check out their stats to see how large their groups of followers are.
If they have a rather large following and are very active I’ll join their group and find out where their blog is. If they write great content, I’ll read their posts and leave a comment.
Note:Read at least 3 of their posts and 3 of their comments. This will give you keen insight on what to write about and how to phrase things. You don’t want to look like a noob.
if you aren’t genuinely interested in what they have to say, you’re lack of enthusiasm will probably get noticed and they’ll flag you as a spammer.
Here are a few tips on leaving comments of blogs that you should practice:
● Try not to promote your products at all on them, unless you’ve been given permission to do so.
● Don’t use foul language on them. I don’t care how cool you think you are, you’ll lose some readers over these types of issues.
● Try to make your points or comments relevant. If you’re leaving generalized comments, you will be viewed as spam.
● Always try to be encouraging and friendly with your comments and try not to come off as a know it all. If you have a disagreement or criticism you should try to disagree without being disagreeable.
● Thanking the person that wrote the post while actually using their name works real well in establishing a relationship with the blogger and they will actually want to help you.
● Try to offer helpful advice. This helps to establish credibility and professionalism that is reflected on your business and you.
Here are some examples of good comments and bad comments.
BAD COMMENTS
Topic:7 Steps to Claiming Your Niche Market
Bogus Comment #1:
“What’s Going down i am new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve discovered It positively useful and it has helped me out loads. I am hoping to give a contribution & help other customers like its aided me. Great job.”
Note:This person obviously wrote a generalized post and is surfing around the Internet looking to publish a link that leads to his advertisement. He’s just pasting his link and bogus message all over the place. Mark it as spam.
Bogus Comment #2:
“Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO? Blah, blah blabady blah blah blah blaah blaaaaah blah blah blah blabady blah blah blah…”
You get the picture.
Note: Again, this comment had absolutely nothing to do with the subject and it’s obviously spam. Many of the people that leave comments like this use special software to generate articles and comments. If you look at Bogus Comment #2 you’ll see just how bad the comments read. Anyone can easily spot a fake comment; it hardly makes any sense and you can tell immediately that it is nothing more than spam.
GOOD COMMENTS:
Topic:10 highly-Successful People on How They Stopped Procrastinating
Great Comment
“This is so timely as I was just analyzing my own procrastination habits earlier today. I am CONSTANTLY surprised at how much I can accomplish when I just sit down and do the work, but getting started is often the worst part for me. I'm pretty good at prioritizing, but I also tend to let myself get mentally overwhelmed by thinking about everything I need to do as a whole, rather than focusing on one item at a time and appreciating the progress as it comes. I'll get a couple of things done, but when there's still a long list in front of me, I don't feel like I've made "enough" progress. It's a vicious cycle!”
Note:The comment was from a blog post on 10 highly-Successful People On How They Stopped Procrastinating. You’ll notice that this poster sounds natural and genuine.
Also, there are no links of any kind, especially the kind that send you to a page that tries to sell you something. You can see that the topic was relevant to the post and the young lady that commented had a picture of herself that accompanied the post.
So the bottom line is: spamming tactics to gain links is a bad idea and will probably get you banned from posting on other people’s sites, while earning you a bad reputation. (Not only that, but it is just annoys people to death that have to perform constant maintenance on their blogs)
Thank goodness there are spamming prevention plugins for WordPress that you can easily get for free to combat this problem.)

Step 3 Commenting in Forums to Gain Authority
I do realize that I’ve sort of focused on blog commenting; however the rules I’ve laid out here are for contributing in other places too.
I frequent a popular Internet marketing forum where a lot of people hang out for good advice. I always make sure that I actually try to give an opinion or instruction there that has value.
People that are on forums are usually looking for answers, so it’s fairly easy to contribute and help someone out. Make sure that your answers are thorough, clear and professional at all times because a lot of people will read them.
If you go on a forum or a social media site and start contributing crap, you’ll get shredded, flamed or ignored.
Here are a couple of suggestions for using forums to gain readership and authority:
● Check out the forum first. You don’t want to waste your time on a forum hardly anyone is frequenting. If you’re trying to gain readership or authority, you’ll want to find forums that have at least 1000 members, close to at least 10,000 comments and has people commenting on it frequently.
● Before you sign up to use the forum, make sure that you read their rules and agreements. You want to make sure that you will be able to have a signature linking to your blog, site or opportunity. It makes no sense to post to an entity that won’t allow you to use it for any kind of personal gain.
● Set up your own personal profile and make it as complete as possible. It always amazes me how entrepreneurs will leave tons of great, valuable comments on a forum and have absolutely no contact information on their profiles at all. Make sure you put as much as you can about yourself and your business in your personal profile, otherwise you’ll look like a noob or unprofessional.
● If the forum asks you to make an introductory post, do it with style! If you are really intending to impress people make sure you write something that leaves an impression. You can make a ton of really great friends on a forum.
The main thing to remember about a forum is that it is just like blog posting. If your posts are short and sucky, devoid of anything valuable or interesting, then your traffic will go elsewhere in search of another guru in your market.
So, make sure that you’re adding value, and that you’re genuinely trying to help someone out.

Step 4:Use Your Blog as a Launch Pad
There are many ways that you can use your blog as a way to launch other aspects of your business.
As a matter of fact, you probably won’t make a ton of money directly from your blog, but you will use your blog as a reference point, as a center of your online marketing efforts.
The main idea of this method of using a blog is that you are:
1. Establishing a relationship with your audience – You are trying to connect with them and get them involved in some way with you. A good tip is to use a picture of yourself in your branding instead of using a logo. You could also use a video to tell a story about yourself so that people can make a connection with your personality.
2. Giving you a chance to prove that you can deliver. If you are providing great, quality content for people that visit your site, then they will be able to see that you really know your stuff.
3. Giving your audience a chance to also participate in your blog, by way of a forum, commenting or connecting with you and others in such a way that it benefits them.
Let’s face it, people will do business with others that they know and love. The more people are happy with you, know you and trust what you have to say, the more likely they will be to purchase your services or products in the long run.
One of the best ways to establish authority online is to use your blog to become a place where people can see exactly what you’re made of and if you are for real.
Nothing speaks volumes to a crowd more than verification of your knowledge base.

Different Ways to Monetize Your Blog
There are many different ways that you can monetize a blog and they generally fall into these different categories:
● Affiliate Marketing
● Advertising and Advertisements
● Selling Digital Products
● Physical Products
And finally, my favorite method in the whole world…but I’ll tell you about that in a minute.
Here’s the breakdown of each of the different methods and their pros and cons:
Affiliate Marketing - Just like any other type of Internet marketing, affiliate marketing takes a lot of time and effort to make an income from.
If you’re brand new to making money online, this is one of the easiest ways to break into it. (Notice I didn’t say it was “get rich quick”.) The way this works is you create a digital product that can be easily delivered online and you decide to sell it.
So you offer anyone online that wants to sell your product a commission if they sell your product. Using state of the art affiliate commission software, and special tracking numbers for your affiliates, they sign up to sell your product.
You automatically pay them a commission and make money because digital products are very cheap to produce.
Or, the easier way…
You don’t even create the affiliate product yourself, you just go to a website like ClickBank, sign up, and start selling other people’s products. (…Easier said than done, for sure.)
There are people that are really good at making money with affiliate products and make a sizeable income but I would say the vast majority aren’t making money.
It has been my experience that the people which make the most money with affiliate products are the ones that are creating the products not selling them.
The people that make the products and systems are very skilled at packaging them, hiring advertising copywriters for their products and putting the whole affiliate system together.
The majority of their time and efforts are spent on marketing the products themselves more than the creation of the product. Not only that but the really good affiliate product producers have loads of more expensive upsells to throw at their customers at even higher prices.
The Upside of Affiliate Marketing: As a seller of affiliate products, it is very easy to sign up for an affiliate program and start selling a product. If you are selling affiliate products in your niche or one that’s compatible with your site, then it will be easier to sell the products.
If you’re creating the products it’s fairly easy to create the products and set up a system that you can get affiliates to join and sell for you.
The Downside of Affiliate Marketing: You’re going to need to attract the good affiliates that are good at selling online to make decent money at this game. And those types of affiliates don’t come easily.
A vast majority of the affiliates that you’ll attract will be around only for a short while and then –poof- they’ll be gone.
Note: A word of caution, there have been some very nasty ways that unscrupulous affiliates have managed to rip off the product owners of large sums of money. Without going into too great of detail, you need to be vigilant and keep an eye on any suspicious behavior or fast movement of large sums of money.
Sell Digital Products
Selling digital products is a fairly simple business model. You create an eBook, online video course, or other digital product and sell it directly from your site.
Once again, most of the efforts that you will expend will be on marketing your products.
However, I and others have noticed a trend. There’s a massive flood of information on the Internet and more being made every day. Thousands of hours of videos are being uploaded, bazillions of sites being created every second, etc.
I talked about this quite a bit in a previous chapter on how to get your blog posts read. I personally believe that the days of crappy content, products, and services are on the way out.
If you’re thinking of throwing together some sort of slap-dash junk and start peddling it, you’re probably going to have a hard time selling digital products. I think this is because there is just so much of it being peddled already that only the best cream will rise to the top.
A good way of thinking about how things can get inflated is by looking at education. It used to be that a college education was the easy ticket to a better job. However, these days anyone that has a pulse can get into college and if they work it for four years, will easily graduate. Because of this, the degrees are becoming inflated.
No longer is a Bachelor’s Degree the easy ticket to a better job. You now have to have three PhD’s and four Master’s degrees to get a decent gig because competition is very stiff. It’s getting to be that way with online digital products. I recently went to a site where the marketer was offering 7 eBooks and 3 video courses just to get your email address! So it had become clear to me and others, that the high quality content and products in this arena will be the winners.
As an instructional designer by trade, I look at creating learning programs and systems through a different lens. If you buy a digital product there has to be a systematic approach to the learning system so that the learner can actually use what he has learned. I want the info product to be so good, that whatever I sell to an individual, he or she is getting the highest quality information and course material as possible. This is what will establish you as an expert and put you light years ahead of other people selling digital products online.
The Upside of Selling Digital Products: Digital products do not require a lot of money to create nor do they require any great skill to make. If you know exactly what you’re doing and your subject matter well enough you could produce a fairly decent digital product in a relatively short period of time.
The profit margins are great on digital products because you can make them for next to nothing. Other than some rather inexpensive software and the time it takes to make the products themselves, you really won’t be out much money.
How I Made Money with My First Digital Product
Years ago, I was a band director at a military academy and there was a bagpiping team that had some of its members making money on the side with their bagpipes. As it turns out, these kids were playing their bagpipes for funerals, weddings and other events and making great money doing it.
So I decided to take notes from these students and write my first eBook called, “How to Make Money with Your Bagpipes”. I sold it online for about $25 a shot and made a very modest sum of about $700 from it.
However, I was the most excited with the fact that I had written a book that others got a value from more than anything else.
As a matter of fact, one of the people that purchased my eBook sent me an email several years later, after I had taken the product off the market and asked if he could buy another copy. Turns out that his hard drive got fried and he no longer had his copy. I sent him a copy for free, of course.
The Downside of Selling Digital Products: The downside to selling digital products is that you have to have an automatic delivery system to sell your products. You’ll need a service in place that will help take your orders, process them and then send your customers to where they can get their digital product instantly.
The best way to do this is by selling through Amazon. You can sell all sorts of digital products through Amazon without being on a subscription or having to go through a set up process. Getting on board with Amazon is fairly easy if you have your own account with them already.
Another problem with selling digital products is that there are already tons of them on the Internet and you’re going to have to make something that stands out from the crowd. You want to create a product that will really strike a flash of amazement when people purchase one.
One of the problems of creating and selling digital products is that they are simple to make and to sell. If you write one that becomes really successful, it won’t be long before someone will copy what you’ve produced and become your competitor(s). So, the best way to avoid that problem is to create a complex series of info products that reflects a system of some sort. Since you’re going to be in the information marketing game anyway, you might as well build a series of courses that will eventually become an entire system at some point.
When you have one simple product, it is very easy for competitors to duplicate what you do. When you have a system that is complex, it is much more difficult.
Selling Physical Products – Years ago, I had an online embroidery site that specialized in making and selling high quality embroidered music apparel. I basically sold all of my apparel and took orders online.
I didn’t need to set up shop or get a building to run my business because it was all done on the Internet.
I created all of my items in my basemen t and sent them through the mail by priority rates.
I did very well with this business for years and I learned a lot about Internet marketing. However, I was also working a job as a full time teacher and I got burned out.
So, selling physical products is an excellent way of making money online and I would rate this as my #2 favorite way of making money online.
You can also sell digital products in a physical form and make money as well. Currently, I have a product on Amazon that I’m selling which is a digital product that is packaged as a video course and sold on a disc.
With great fulfillment companies like Kunaki, you can get your physical product made in no time, dirt cheap.
The Upside of Selling a Physical Product: An early victory in the market place will motivate you to sell and more and get you addicted to becoming an entrepreneur. Most of the other ways of making money using your blog will take a while to land some sales.
If you pick a good niche and have a great product, you can make some early sales very quickly. My PaintShop Pro Tips and Tricks Course started selling very quickly once I got it onto Amazon.
The Downside of Selling a Physical Product: Unless you are using a fulfillment company, you will have a lot on your plate and you could burn out.
When I was running my embroidery company online, I built the website, digitized the designs, sewed out the garments , packaged them up, did all of the online marketing, and anything else you can think of.
It was a ton of work and I got burned out.
If you decide to go this route, either try to hire out the menial tasks or get a family member or partner to help out with the business.
Selling Your Services - This is one of the easiest ways to start making money online and my personal favorite. You basically start advertising your services through your blog and people hire you to perform a task or service.
Depending on your niche, target market, and how expensive or cheap you are will determine how fast you can start making money online.
If you’re blogging consistently, you can start advertising your services immediately and you may see results rather fast. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, you can use your blog to establish authority very quickly and prove you’re worth your salt.
You can also use your blog posts as bait for people to visit you from social media sites and later convert the posts into eBooks and other digital products to either sell or give away with your businesses branding in them.
The Upside to Selling Your Services: Again, depending on your type of business and niche, you may start getting clients very quickly. You will be working more intimately with your clients, therefore if you play your cards right you can retain those clients for years.
The Downside to Selling Your Services: Clients can also be demanding and once they get to know you, may place all sorts of demands and changes on you. However, you’ll learn how to deal with clients like these over the course of your business, and once you develop a system of dealing with them you’ll be able to navigate those waters much easier.
To Conclude All of This…
There are all sorts of ways to make money with your blog, and you’ll have to figure out which business, niche, product or service is right for yours.
I’d like to leave you with the same inspiring words a shoe company came up with years ago…
“Just Do It!”
You need to get moving and get out there and fail a bunch of times. Yep, that’s right, fail. All successes are built on failure and trial and error. If you just sit on your donkey butt and do nothing, I can assure you that nothing will happen. That’s a 100% guarantee. So get out there and get started, because you’re not getting any younger.

Chapter 2 Setting Your Blog Up
I am probably the world’s weirdest chicken.
Yes, you read that right, I said “weirdest”.
Stuff that scares most people like public speaking, starting a new business, or even trying to do a task that I have absolutely no skill or training at, I am fearless. If I’m watching TV and see a person standing on the ledge of a building, I’m terrified. If I have to stand up to someone half my size, I have to muster every bit of strength to even open my mouth.
The reason a lot of people won’t start a business, or even write a book is because they’re terrified. They are afraid of failure, scared of what others might say, or intimidated they are simply afraid of the unknown.
Starting a blog or using one for your business might be the therapy you need. It requires little money to start, and if you decide to start an online business, it is so easy to learn you’ll be up and running in no time.
So, if you are starting a business for the first time from scratch, you’ll benefit tremendously. If you have a regular bricks and mortar business, starting a blog that you can easily update will be a massive help to your enterprise. If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll get a value from reading some of the strategies and ideas I will lay out in this chapter.
In this session, you’ll learn how to:
● Find a domain name and hosting
● Install a blog like WordPress
● Log in and create your first post
Before You Start…Don’t Do This!
If you’re new to Internet Marketing or blogging you may have heard that you can get a free site or blog online and that’ll be good enough.
Nope.
Usually, what happens with sites and services like that is they will get you to use their platform, but it will be very limited and they will only encourage you to get the paid upgrade.
Take Google’s Blogger for example. You can get a free Google Blogger account and use it, but you will have a really large extension to it and that extension will be controlled by Google. Not only that, but you will really have a large URL that looks like this:
Figure 2.1
Ye Massive Web Address:
http://ellistratedadcopy.blogspot.com/2014/02/make-massive-sales-easily-by-using-this.html
The “.blogspot.com” is the real killer in all of this.
There’s a reason why this is disastrous for an online business.
● Nobody will be able to easily remember a long URL (web address) like that. Compare that URL to: ElmoCopy.com…which one would you be able to remember?
● It will be hard to use in online advertising, and many online ads won’t accept a free URL because it doesn’t look like a serious business.
● Upgrading to the regular hosting service will probably cost you more money than if you had shopped around for a regular hosting service in the first place.
● If at some point you decide to switch your blog to a regular URL, you won’t have to worry about whether or not all of your posts can be migrated to a regular account.
● All of the free hosting services are not good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) partly because they will have very long addresses, and partly because of sharing their hosting addresses with a load of people. You may even be sharing your hosting with spammers.
● There are other issues with shared free plans such as Web server downtime, and page load time.

The bottom line to all of this is: spend a little money and get your own hosting plan. I recently got a hosting plan with HostGator and spent somewhere around $150 for 3 years of hosting.
My domain name was rather cheap, so for 3 whole years I’m spending next to nothing, and I didn’t even shop around. I possibly could have gotten a cheaper deal if I had looked around more, but I didn’t want to spend too much time shopping and bargain hunting.
Finding the Right Domain Name
Please, don’t over think this.
The best thing I can tell you is to try to keep it relevant to what your business is and keep it short. Also, try to avoid weird characters and hyphens in your URL too. Other than that, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If you must get a .net or .org, that’s OK, but if you can grab a .com, do it.
When I came up with the URL for my blog, it really didn’t take me long at all. My nickname was Elmo and my business was copywriting, so ElmoCopy (www.elmocopy.com) was born. I wanted something short and sweet, so that was perfect for me.
You may want to put more thought into yours, so knock yourself out. The shorter and simpler your URL is the better. When I had an online embroidery business I called it Ellistrations. A lot of people thought that was clever. Your URL does not need to be clever, but if you just happen to think of something like that, so much the better.
As I’ve already said, the shorter and more relevant you can make it the better off you are because people will remember your URL a lot easier. Long winded web addresses are hard to remember as you try to type it in.
Pay for Your Name
You’re going to have to pay for your domain name, so you might as well get it as cheap as you can. I got my ElmoCopy domain from a company called “NameCheap”. Currently NameCheapwill let you pay only .88 cents for your first year, and every year after that is $10.88. Pretty sweet!
However, if you want to check around, you can try to find a better deal. Here’s a few suggestions but just bear in mind that these companies change their pricing plans from time to time:
Blue Hostoffers FREE Domain names if you get in on one of their hosting plans. Currently, BH is offering $6.95 a year if you choose them for basic hosting program. Even though I bought my domain from NameCheap, I’ve got my hosting through HostGator. I love HostGator for hosting my site files, and in a little bit I’ll be telling you a more about their hosting plans.
But for now, I can tell you that it is a great way to get a cheap domain too. There are others you can check out that not only has services that you can buy domain names, but they also have hosting plans for you to place your domain at. (More on this in a second.) So, once you go to a domain registry site like GoDaddy, you’ll see an interface that looks something like this:
Figure 2.2

In this case, we’ll type in www.fishpoop.com and see if this domain name is being used by anyone at this time. Once you type in a domain name like “fishpoop.com” you’ll be treated to another page that has the results of your domain query.
Figure 2.3

As you’ll notice in our picture above, fishpoop.com has a rather large price tag on it. This isn’t because GoDaddy is trying to price gouge you;
actually, someone else is.
In this case, someone purchased fishpoop.com and is holding on to it in the belief that someone will eventually want to pay them that amount. Usually, the domain price is around $10 and the 14.99 is per year after that to keep the domain.
As it turns out, in the world of hydroponics, fish poop is used as a fertilizer. So somebody bought the domain and is now hanging on to it hoping that eventually someone will pay the huge sum of money to get it. (These types of people are called “domain name brokers”.) This doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.
Seems like a huge hassle to me, but what the heck. The domain brokers can lose out over the long haul because they have to pay about $15 a year to hang on to the URL until it sells…if it ever does.
Anyway, you’ll notice that fishpoop.net, .org, .co, .whatever else is available will be only $8 to $11 a year. So, if you are dying to get a particular domain, you’ll have other alternatives that are cheaper. OK, once you have your domain name, you’ll want to get a hosting plan.
Getting Your Hosting Plan
Once you get your domain name, you’ll need to set up a hosting plan for your website or blog. In case you have no idea what a website and hosting company really is I’ll try to explain it to you. (If you already know all about it or feel that you don’t really need to know, you can skip this section.)
A website is nothing more than a collection of visual files that are kept on a really large hard drive called a hosting company. The hosting company makes these files available to millions of other hard drives (hosting companies) all over the world called “The World Wide Web”.
When you look at these files on the Internet they are basically loaded from one of these hard drives and into your computer so you can see them. What you really need to be concerned with is the hosting company that you’re choosing, which will store your web site files.
Here’s a very simplified example of how that works:
Figure 2.4

The bottom line is your hosting company is like the middle man, storing your website files for future use on the internet. Getting a decent affordable hosting company is very similar to getting a domain name.
As a matter of fact, most hosting companies offer domain services so that you can buy your domain name on their sites as well as purchase their hosting services. There are many hosting companies on the Internet and rather than give you an enormous list of them, I’m going to tell you about the two I’ve been doing business with.
I am not affiliated with these companies in any way and I do not make money from them. So, you’re going to get the pure, unadulterated facts on these companies.
GoDaddy is a well-known hosting company that has established itself as one of the industry leaders. I usually buy my domain names from this company over the years until I bought my last domain name with NameCheap. GoDaddy is an excellent company with a great track record. You can buy both your domain name and hosting plans from GoDaddy and they also have an excellent support staff.
So if you get totally lost, you can either call their support staff or call them on their toll free number that’s running 24/7/365 and they will tell you exactly what to do or they will actually do the work for you. HostGator is my company of choice when it comes to a hosting company. I have had several different sites with HG, and I have been a loyal customer of theirs for about a decade.
I used to have an online embroidery business called Ellistrations. This was basically an ecommerce site where I sold personally embroidered musical instrument apparel. I had customers all over the world and started to gain a lot of traffic. The hosting company that I had used for years got purchased by another company. That company was run by flim-flam artists that tried to fleece me out of a lot of money.
They immediately (and without warning, I might add) started charging me for “extra bandwidth”. And the charge was very substantial.
To cut a long and horrible story short, I cut the other company loses and discovered HostGator and it has been the most wonderful hosting service I have ever used.
HG has awesome customer service and a superior support staff that is world-class. No matter what time of night or how big the problem is, they’ll handle it for you or at least tell you how to fix it.
One other feature I love about companies like HG is their chat function. You can almost immediately talk to a skilled techie and have him or her fix any problem you may have. The people are always friendly, courteous and kind at HG, and that’s why it’s my hosting company of choice.
Figure 2.5

So, just to recap, make sure you hire a good, reputable hosting company. If you don’t, you could lose years of work building up your traffic only to lose all of it to a lousy hosting company.
Setting up Your Blog
Once you get your domain name and have a subscription to a reputable hosting company, you’ll need to set up your blog. If you have an awesome hosting company as I have recommended, you can get one of the hosting company’s awesome support staff to get your site set up.
With a company like HostGator or GoDaddy, there’s a quick and easy way to set up your WordPress Blog. Once you’ve bought your plan with HG, you will be sent your hosting name and your password information. Make sure you file these in a place where you can find them.
Once you have those in your hot little hands, you can log into a thing called your Cpanel. Basically, a Cpanel looks something like this:
Figure 2.6

To get to the place where you can set up WordPress, scroll down to the Software Services section and click on the “quick install” icon.
Figure 2.7

After you do that you should see a section that looks like this:
Figure 2.8

Next, click on “Wordpress” (#1) on the left and then “Install WordPress” on the right. You will be then sent to a set up page that looks like this:
Figure 2.8

Here’s all of the stuff you’ll need to fill out.
#1 Is your domain name. Fill it in just as your hosting company tells you to.
#2 This is a subdomain. That is usually used when you want to attach a similar domain to your account. If you are just starting out, you will not dealing with this, so leave it blank.
#3 Give a regular email address here where you can be contacted.
#4 Type in the Title of Your Blog.
#5 Give yourself an admin user name.
#6 Your first and last name.
Figure 2.9

Once that is all filled out, all you have to do is hit the “Install” button and your request will be processed.
You will receive your WordPress login information in an email from WordPress.
Accessing and Using Your WordPress Blog
To access your WordPress Blog from the Internet, type:
www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin
The instructions usually tell you to do this when you get your email address.
If the instructions that they send you are different than this, then follow those instructions.
Once you type in the domain name as I have indicated above, you should see a login like this:
Once you log in to your account, you’ll be treated to the WordPress Dashboard.
Using the dashboard will take you a little time to learn how everything works and I would suggest you purchase a current book on how to use all of the features of WordPress.
Figure 2.10

I would suggest that you purchase a copy of WordPress for Dummies (Figure 2.10). I personally love using the “For Dummies” books because they get straight to the point and chew your learning curve in half. I’ve learned so many different subjects using those books that I can’t count them all and I highly recommend them because they are also fun to use too.
If you don’t want to buy a book on the subject, you could easily find one of the many excellent websites on the Internet that is dedicated to teaching WordPress.
Here’s a few excellent sites that will help you learn WordPress:
Learn WordPress– This is a very organized site that shows you how to get started using WordPress and is broken into easy to learn sections that should get you up and running in no time.
WP Beginner– The lessons on this site are broken down into days so that you won’t feel overwhelmed. On Monday, you’ll learn how to set up your WordPress Blog. On Tuesday you’ll start out with your first blog post. On Wednesday you’ll…Well, you get the idea.
You could also very easily find YouTube videos dedicated to the subject as well. Here are a couple of videos that’ll help you get started:
WordPress Tutorial for Beginners 2016: Step by Step Build Your Website
How to Write Your First WordPress Blog Post – This video is excellent and very professionally made. It is produced by PCClassesOnline.com
Making Your Very First Blog Post
I would highly recommend watching the video above on how to make your first blog post. However, I will briefly touch on it here. Once you log into your WordPress (WP) blog you will be treated to an interface called a “Dashboard”.
It looks like this: (Figure 2.11)
Figure 2.11

Using the Dashboard you can do many wonderful things with your blog, to include selecting templates that will decide what your blog will look like. Accessing the books and videos above, you can easily learn how to do all of these things.
But for right now, we’re going to start learning how to write into our blog and make our first post. Click on the selection on the left that says “post”. You should get a screen that looks something that looks like this:

Figure 2.12
You’ll want to click on the link that says, “Add New”. Once you do that, you’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this:
Figure 2.13

This is the section where you’ll write your first words into WordPress and then post them.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you’ve already used a word processor like Microsoft Word before. The reason why I’m bringing that up is because using the word processor part of WordPress is just like that.
You can type into the main field and use all of the same parts of a word processor ribbon just like you were using Microsoft Word. You have a dropdown menu for your different fonts. There’s buttons for bold, underline and italics, as well as left, right and center justifications for your words.
There are also buttons to add links to your post as well. This section is very easy to use. Once you have written your first batch of words, and made sure that your post has a title, all you have to do is press the “Publish” button and you’re through.
It really is that simple.
I hope that this chapter has taken any of the fear you have of getting a blog up and running out of your head. Just remember, if you don’t know what to do next, there are always loads of people, books and videos online to help you figure things out.
I do want to leave you with a parting thought. I just want to remind you that setting up your blog, although technical, is actually the easy part of blogging. The hard part is learning and practicing how to write posts that are going to interest people in your niche and what you have to say.
Writing of this nature takes a lot of practice, study and dedication. You can accomplish great things and inspire legions of people with your blog, but it will take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
Any art, if it is to be done with all your soul is a worthy pursuit, because it separates the scoffers and tire kickers from the real geniuses.
So, put your back into it and kill it…You won’t be disappointed.

Chapter 3 Finding Your Niche Market
If you’re considering getting any free traffic at all to your site, you’ll want to pay attention to this chapter. One of the places I frequent for Internet marketing ideas, feedback, and entrepreneurial information is the Warrior Forum(a.k.a. the WF).
If you’re an entrepreneur or business person, this forum is a gigantic vault of information on Internet businesses, marketing, and as well as advice on brick and mortar ventures.
One of the most frequently asked questions I see on the WF usually comes from people that are new to the reality of Internet marketing.
The question usually looks like this (or a variation of this):
“I’m totally desperate. I’ve bought loads of courses, tried everything and nothing is working. I’m on my last $50 and don’t know what to do. HELP!”
Or…
“How do I make money online when I don’t have much to start out with?”
First of all, I’d like to take this opportunity to reference one of history’s greatest entrepreneurs.
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
~Thomas Edison
When Mr. Edison says “work” he means it.
Internet based businesses are no different than any other business. You have to go out there every day and kill it…Plain and simple.
So, if you’re looking for a magic bullet, forget it.
I personally have had my own ecommerce sites, affiliate sites, and even some blogs that I generated AdSense revenue from, and I can’t begin to tell you how much blood, sweat, and tears I put in to those enterprises. Sometimes I made decent money, and sometimes I didn’t make a dime. That’s just the way it goes. However, as any entrepreneur will tell you, failure is essential to success.
Yes, Virginia, there is a silver lining.
I’m not trying to depress or stop you from doing business on the Internet; quite the contrary You’ve got to understand the pitfalls and misconceptions that occupy this minefield of marketing. It’s not going to be easy to generate loads of free traffic, and anyone that tells you that is lying — flat out.
The good news is it can be done if you’re willing to work it.
If you don’t have a job and you’re on your last $50, get a job and work your Internet based business on the side. You have to keep the lights on and the baby fed — that’s just common sense. But if you want to pour your guts into an online business and get started as cheap as possible, then I’m going to tell you as much as I can how to do it.
The really good news is that most people aren’t willing to work it, and leaves room for people like you and me to swoop down and scoop up the opportunities.
Figure 3.1 (Source: blog.ghost.org)

Just like any other endeavor, most people will start out gung-ho, but will die out in the earliest stages when they realize what this type of business entails. If they do, they’ll usually miss the mark by stubbornly spinning their wheels working a niche that has few followers, or writing in such a way that nobody cares.
The goal of this piece isn’t to tell you how to start a business, get a website, or any of the other basic stuff you should already know to start an online business.
My goal is to try to show you how to get traffic as cheap as possible, and the key to free or cheap traffic is super incredible content and niche focus.
If you want to learn how to convert that traffic, that’s another issue.
But the focus of this lesson is going to be on how to select your niche so you can generate specifically targeted traffic as cheaply as possible without painting any false illusions about it.
Finding Your Ideal Niche
Before you can you start any online business or blog, you must find a niche market to operate in. One of the worst pieces of personal advice I’ve received in the past was to find a small niche and cater to it.
The advice I usually heard was something like this:
“Start a site about teaching blogging to old people in Alaska. You can call it “Old, Cold Bloggers up North.”
So you sit down to create a site that teaches old people to blog. Obviously it’s a well-defined niche, because it has the following specific criteria:
● It is age specific
● It’s geographically well defined
● It teaches a particular group of people a skill
● It even details a temperature your niche is accustomed to
Wowie-Kazowie! We should have great success with a focused niche like that! But before we start writing for our site or writing blog posts, let’s look at a few online entrepreneurs that are making incredible money to see what niche they’re in…
Neil Patel – SEO Marketing
Jon Morrow – Blogging
Seth Godin – Marketing
Jeff Taylor – Websites and Internet Media
Tim Seidler – Internet niches
Tung Tran – Starting online businesses
Taylor Dow – Weight loss
As you can see, many of the most successful online entrepreneurs are in the largest markets or at least the submarkets of the larger ones. And the reason for this is very simple: This is where the money is and this is where the traffic is.
Another thing you may notice from the list above is that these are highly competitive niches as well. Small niches, on the other hand, mean low traffic and little opportunity to make money. Yes, it’s great to find a well-defined audience for your online business, however you need to go to a bigger market in order to make money.
I’m not saying there aren’t smaller, viable markets out there; it’s just that they’ll take you a very long time to start seeing any money from them online.
My personal Take On This…
A couple of years ago, I had a blog called “Electric Bikes and Scooters”. I wrote articles for that site for years before it sunk in that no matter how much I poured my guts into it, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Hey, I was in a small niche that had a following, right? However, the niche was too small to support all of the established sites that were already out there.
Plus, some online ventures work better hand in hand with regular bricks and mortar businesses attached to them. Many of the electric bike businesses already had their own stores that were helping them generate traffic to their sites.
For example, if I already had an established bricks and mortar electric bike shop, then it may have been easier for me to attract people to my site from making face to face contacts or handing people my sales material with my website address printed on them.
So, building an electric bikes and scooters site may have worked better if I had a regular bike or scooter shop and I wrote about the products I was selling.
So, considering all of the trials and errors that I took to find my own focus the question that still needs answering is, what do you need to do to find a profitable niche?
The Step By Step Method to Finding a Great Niche
Before you do anything, heavily research your niche.
When the famous godfather of marketing, Dan Kennedy, decides to create an information product, the first thing he usually does is run ads BEFORE he tries to make the product.
The reason?
He’s trying to make sure there’s definitely a significant market for the product so he won’t waste a ton of time making something just a few people want or care about.
Of course, Mr. Kennedy is a direct mail marketing expertand he still swears by it. So, he sends out ads to a targeted list announcing a product that he’s says he’s creating, and if you just sign up early for it you’ll get a massive discount once it’s finished.
All you have to do is send in a reply card saying you’re interested and you’ll get the discount. There’s no cost or obligation at this point, because many times, the product isn’t even completed yet. If he gets a significant number of people to raise their hands and say “Yes, I want it!” then he’ll create the info product or seminar, and move forward.
Can you do this on the Internet? Absolutely!
Just buy a targeted email list and send out an announcement stating you’ll be starting an online course (or whatever) and that as soon as you’re finished with it you’ll give the selected people a huge discount when it’s done. I got one this week from a top marketer on the Internet who is offering a blogging course.
Here’s the offer in the email I received:
“…For this first release, we're only giving 200 people access.
… and we have over 140,000 writers on our email list.
So, I think there's a pretty good chance the spots will disappear lightning fast.
Here's the good news, though:
If you're interested, and you'd like to give yourself a better chance of grabbing one of the 200 spots, you can get on our early bird list here. “
The reason I’m bring this up, is because you must make sure that there’s a market for your product, service or niche before you start promoting it. If you go through the process of creating a website, products, and content for a niche that doesn’t have many takers, then you’ll run into a lot of frustration.
Niche Research Step 1:
Take a Look at the Big Niches
Let’s say that we’re starting from scratch, and you have no idea which niche you’re going to dive into. Based on what I said earlier, let’s take a look at the largest niches and see if there’s anything there that interests you.
Here are the top niches listed with sub-niche suggestions:
Business & Entrepreneurship:Business Opportunities, Entrepreneurship, Networking and Multilevel Marketing
Health & Fitness:Dieting, Exercise, Alternative Medicine, Exercise Equipment
Career:Education, Motivation, Management Techniques, Leadership
Creative Stuff:Artistic Hobbies like Drawing, Painting, Carving, Scrap Booking, Tole Painting, (The latest thing is coloring books for adults…Who knew!)
Freelancing:Copywriting, Blogging, Photoshop, Web Sites and Design, Coding
Gadgets & Technology:Software like Photoshop, Robotic Devices, Drones, Tablets, I-Phones or a mixture of these things, Gaming is big too.
Marketing:Blogging, SEO, Direct Mail, Internet Marketing, Social Media
Culture, News & Entertainment:Movies, Movie Stars, News, Fashion, the latest Trends
Parenting: Pregnancy Issues, Child Rearing, Education Issues, products related to this market
Personal Finance: Debt reduction, Investing, Accounting, Frugal Living,
Self-Improvement:Motivation, Business and Fitness can cross over in this space as a group
Take a look at the niches listed to see if there is anything that resonates with you. Chances are, there is something there that you’re interested in or have a passion for. Once you’ve checked these out and decided to pick a main category, drill down and see if there is an a sub-niche within the larger one that you’d like to focus on. This will give you the opportunity to scale up to the larger niche seamlessly when you want to.
Good Advice: Try to find a niche you’re passionate about. If you definitely have a passion for it, then you’ll get up every day and look forward to what you have to do. If you don’t believe me, take a look at people that followed their passion: Jack Lalanne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Lee, Bob Ross, Seth Godin, or Richard Branson.
Method #1 Using Google Search and Keyword Tracker
This method involves using two different tools that Google has in its arsenal to get an overview of what people are looking for. The first method is very simple, involving Google’s Autocomplete search function and the second involves using Google’s Keyword Planner.
In order to use the free Keyword Planner, you must have a Google AdSense or AdWords account. You’ll have to sign up and give Google and set up an account very similar to doing business on Amazon or PayPal.
These types of accounts require banking information so that deposits can be made to your account in the situation where you have made money, or taken out if you buy something. I’ve known people that have had these types of accounts and they are safe and secure. I’ve never heard any complaints about them.
If you don’t want to use Google’s free Keyword Planner, then you can use a paid service like Word Tracker.

Step 1 – Use Google’s Autocomplete
As I told you before, you are going to be using Google’s search engine, so navigate to Google’s home page. (www.google.com). When you start using Google’s search field, you’ll notice that a bunch of related words pop up with the autocomplete function.
For the sake of this example, let’s say we are going to go into the health niche and look at dieting. Notice that when you start typing a word you’ll see that related words start popping up in the search field. (See Figure 3.2.)
Figure 3.2

You can see by Figure 3.2 that the two top search terms are “diet pills” and “diet plans”.
According to Google these are called “Autocomplete Predictions” and they represent queries or searches made by other people as well as the content of similar webpages.
You will also see relevant searches you may have made in the past as well. However, the bottom line is that the search terms have been used by people in the past. We are just going to use these as idea generators and will give you fertile ground as to what other people have been searching for.

Step 2 - Look at Relevant Terms
Start using some of the relevant terms found in the Autocomplete function. So in our example, we now have two top terms – diet pills and diet plans.
Let’s take a look at Figure 3.3:
Figure 3.3

Let’s say you don’t have any interest at all in diet pills, but you do in diet plans. However, there are millions of diet plans and the term “diet plan” itself is extremely competitive. So, we will have to get a little more specific.
Now you can start to do a search using the term “diet plans” and I would also use the singular version of “diet plan”. Take a look at Figure 3.4
Figure 3.4

Step 3 – Organize Your Data
Now we’re starting to get somewhere! We have “diet plan to lose weight” and the real interesting ones: “diet plans for men” and “diet plans for women”.
Now you can do a search for diet plans for men (or women if you choose) like this:
“The best diet plans for men”
“The best types of diets for men”
Or even…
“The most popular diet plans for men”
Once I Googled those phrases, I then compiled them into an Microsoft Excel file that looks like Figure 3.5. (Please bear in mind that I could have made this a much bigger and more detailed sheet. For the sake of getting through this entire process, I kept it small.)
Here’s a list of diet plans for men that I organized from those sites:
Figure 3.5

You’ll notice that a few diets keep popping up on this list. Weight Watchers was first followed by the Dash and Mediterranean diets. You don’t have to choose the plans that come up the most, but you’ll really need to look at these and decide which ones interest you the most.
This chart lets you know which diets are the more popular so that you can see how much interest there is in this diet before you make your final decision. Let’s pretend that you have already been on the Mediterranean Diet, and are very familiar with it and like it. From looking at your Excel sheet or list, you see that it is a prime candidate for your niche.
NOTICE: Just as a side note, it’s always good to have actually used or been involved with the subject or niche that you’re going to build your online venture around. If you don’t know the subject you’re writing about, then take the time to learn it.
This is the primary reason why you need to have a genuine interest in what you will be writing about and promoting. If you don’t have a serious interest in it, then find something else you can write about.

Step 4 – Use Google’s Keyword Planner
As I said earlier in this chapter, you’ll have to get a Google AdWords or AdSense account. Once you get that set up, head on over to the AdWords portion of Google and log in.
Figure 3.6

Google AdWords has all sorts of tools and tracking interfaces that will help you launch a great campaign, however, we will only need to use the Keyword Planner to find out which words and phrases are the most popular.
All you need to do to start using the planner, is click on the word “tools” and then click on the words “Keyword Planner” in the drop down menu. When you get inside the Keyword Planner, the Interface looks pretty simple; there’s three drop down menus to choose from:
Figure 3.7

You’ll want to click on the top suggestion that says “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.” Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a field to type into. Type in “Mediterranean Diet”.
The search field should look something like this: (See Figure 3.8)
Figure 3.8

After you’ve plugged in your keywords or phrases, you can then press the “Get Ideas” button at the bottom of the screen to see the results.
Figure 3.9

In this screen, you will see the monthly volume of the searches with the words “Mediterranean “ or “Diet” or a combinations of these words and phrases listed below that. Not only that, but you can see the number of monthly searches and the competition for these different phrases.
The main information you can take away from this is the listing of similar terms and the search volume each term or phrase has. Take a look at the first phrase under the Keyword Ideas tab that says “Mediterranean Diet”.
Figure 3.10

You can see that the term “Mediterranean Diet” gets 165,000 searches a month and that it’s not very competitive. That means there aren’t very many people aren’t competing for advertising on AdWords ads for that diet.
This is kind of a good news / bad news joke. On one hand, you’ll have quite a few people searching for the term “Mediterranean diet”, while not too many people are using the keywords “Mediterranean diet”.
On the other hand, if not too many marketers are using the term “Mediterranean diet” then perhaps there aren’t enough people searching for it.
Once again, you can make a good list out of what keyword planner presents you with and decide if any of these terms can be translated into a niche. Keyword planner has a spreadsheet file you can download for these terms and phrases.
This will help you decide which phrases words and ideas for a good niche in the Mediterranean diet arena you might like to venture into.
Step 5 – Use Google Trends
Google Trends is a great tool for determining people’s interest in a subject or idea. You can go to Google Trends at : https://www.google.com/trends/.
The interface on trends is pretty easy to learn. You can check to see how popular different terms are at once and see how they compare to one and other. In this case, I checked to see how the Mediterranean diet fared against other diets in our spreadsheet like the Paleo and Weight Watchers diets.
Take a look at Figure 3.11 to see how they fared.
Figure 3.11

Obviously “Weight Watchers” is generating a lot more interest than the Mediterranean and Paleo diets.
Method #2 Using Amazon to Find a Niche
Another way to find out if a niche is worth pursuing is to use Amazon’s website.
There are between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books written every year in the U.S. alone. You can easily use data from all this activity to seek out and evaluate whether a subject is worthy by looking at Amazon’s Best Seller List.
To get started looking at Amazon’s Best Selling books, click on the small arrow next to the search field and follow the drop – down menu and click on the part of the list that says, “Books”.
Make sure you click the search icon or hit “Enter” next.
Figure 3.12

You should be taken to another page where there’s a link that says, “Best Sellers” in the center of the page. Click on that link also.
Figure 3.13

Once you do that you’ll see a menu open up on the left hand side of the page that has a listing that looks like this:
Figure 3.14

You will want to navigate down to the link that says, “Health, Fitness and Dieting” and then click on that. Once you do that you will be able to drill down and find the category, “Diet & Weight Loss”.
Figure 3.15

Finally, you should be able to find all of the top books on diets that have been searched for the most. (See Figure 3.16)
Figure 3.16

As you can see, the books, diets, and categories that are significant in this category are listed. You can click on your chosen diet niche and determine which diet or life style you are most interested in and would like to promote.
The best thing about Amazon is that not only can you see what the best sellers are in each category, but you can also read the comments about the different subjects to get a feel for what people are actually buying. You can also see how one book or subject stacks against the others in general, in their category and in the specific topic area. If you click on a specific book or product, you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean.
For example:
Figure 3.17

In this case I clicked on the book, “Paleo for Beginners: Essentials to Get Started”
Looking at this information, you can see:
● This book ranked #2 in the Paleo subject area
● #11 in the “Health, Fitness and Dieting” category
● #16 in the weight loss area
If you look where it says Amazon Best Sellers Rank it’s listed as #515 in books in general. Considering the millions of books Amazon sells, that’s not too shabby.
Amazon’s Review Sections are Very Important
After you’ve navigated to a book or product page there is a section where you can view the comments that people have made about it. This is a very important part of being able to determine which niche you’re going to invest your blood, sweat and tears into.
If you look back up at Figure 3.17 again, you’ll see that in Average Customer Reviews there are 817 comments.
Now, let that sink in for a moment. 817 people took some of their time to actually sit down and write a review of this product. Many of them wrote rather extensive reviews of it, and if you look at the 4 star rating, you’ll notice that most of the reviews are favorable.
Figure 3.18

So, apparently there is a crowd of people that not only have been reading this book, but they are actively involved with it enough that they are willing to write about it and recommend it to others.
Not only can comments sections like this give you an idea of how popular an item is, but it can also give you valuable insights as to what people liked and disliked about it the most.
Figure 3.19

Final Thoughts
You can use all of these methods here to see if your niche idea actually has legs and can move. I would advise you to thoroughly go through all of these steps and methods before you begin working on your niche.
In the long run, it will save you a lot of time and cut out a lot of trial and error in your pursuit of trying to find a niche you can happily work and thrive in.

Chapter 4Writing Killer Blog Headlines
Before immediately jumping into headline writing, I thought that it would be beneficial to take a look at why blogging is very important to the growth of your online presence first. Whenever I talk to other online marketers and business people who are trying to drive traffic to their websites, I usually hear the same question, “How can I drive cheap or free traffic to my site?”
I usually have to tell them that the answer is not the one they really want to hear, which is:
“There’s no such thing…That is if you consider the time you have to put into your traffic generation “free”.
Most entrepreneurs have a full schedule and generating traffic for a website or blog is very time consuming. It’s entirely possible to get a steady flow of traffic to your website that is significant without plunking down loads of money, but it does take a lot of time, effort, and commitment. Those three things have a price tag on them whether you think in those terms or not.
As a matter of fact, time is the most valuable commodity we have. You’re only given a certain amount of it, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Unlike money, relationships, or anything else you value in life, time can never be redeemed.
If you’re going to use blogging as an inbound marketing strategy for gaining a loyal following or online traffic generation to your site, then you’ll have to pay the price. Either that or you’ll have to hire someone to write for you. The good news is that this book and chapter is going to help save you a ton of time. The reason why blogging is viewed as a difficult traffic generating strategy is because not only does it take a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but if you do it wrong, it’ll eat up a bunch of your time. (Not only that, but you’ll work yourself to death and probably give up.)
However, if you follow this advice, and diligently and consistently put the time into your blogging, it will produce results. After studying advertising copy and blogging for several years, I have come to these conclusions about blogging for traffic or dollars:
● Blogging requires consistent, frequent posts
● The blog must have a focused niche that is a big enough to generate a crowd, and is sustainable over the long term
● The posts must be high quality and offer real value to the reader
● The blog must offer solutions to the reader’s problems frequently
● The blog must have relevant, quality graphics that supports the content
● The content must be formatted in a way that helps guide the reader through the material
So, ask yourself the question. Considering all that I’ve just told you, do you think that blogging is worth it? Let’s take a look some data compiled over the last couple of years. (Source: Hubspot 2010)
Figure 4.1 (Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing)

As you can see from the 2010 chart compiled by Hubspot above, (Figure 4.1) blogging has a direct and significant impact on lead generation. And as we all know, any type of serious lead generation requires large amounts of traffic.
Has this trend changed in the last six years? Let’s take a look at the data compiled in 2015:
● Websites with blogs have 97% more inbound links
● Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed webpages
● Companies that have blogs have 97% more inbound links
● Business to business marketers have 67% more leads
● 65% of U.S. consumers have based a purchase on something they read in a blog post
However, let’s be clear before we move forward. The kind of traffic that you’re going to need to generate to get the results that you want has got to be frequent and consistent. Here’s another graph from Hubspot that backs this traffic generation method from 2015:
Figure 4.2 (Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing)

Hopefully, you can see the value in consistent and persistent blogging. If you are going to use this method for generating leads and traffic you’re going to need the following:
● The time to research and write the blog posts yourself
● Staff member(s) that can write and research the material for you
● Freelance writers that you can hire to write the high quality content that you need
● A combination of the above working together to create your traffic generating content
So having said all of this, if you don’t have the time to write or have the money to hire someone to write the high quality content you’ll need to blog with, then you may want to look at alternative methods to get traffic to your site.
The Silver Lining You’ve Been Looking For
If you consider that most people who decide to use this traffic generating method are going to try to take the quick and easy way out by:
● Not researching their niche or market
● Not doing proper research before beginning to write
● Not writing anything of value for their target market
● Not structuring or planning their content in a logical manner
● Not doing SEO and keyword research when preparing their posts
● Not creating relevant graphics for their readers that engage them
● Not using a method to convert blog readers into a list or customer base
● Not using social media sharing links and email messages to keep readers in the loop
(There are more factors to consider, but those are most of the considerations worth mentioning at this point.)
This should tell you that if you’re willing to do what most of the crowd is not willing to do, you’ll have a clear advantage in your niche or market.
And therein lays the seeds to your success in your market space. If you want a good reason why you should invest your time in writing well-written highly detailed blog posts, here’s the reason:
Sometimes those suckers go viral. And when they do… Bazinga! You can almost immediately achieve rock star status at your job, in your chosen vocation or niche market. Suddenly doors that were closed to you are now open. Speaking engagements, guest blogging, and profitable joint ventures are on the horizon.
Suddenly you’re the authority…
The go-to guy…
The Man…
But before we get too big of a head, we need to understand the basic parts of a blog post and how it all connects together smoothly.
An Overview of a Blog Post
In this section, I’m going to show you exactly what a blog post consists of. Once you see the overall format and structure of how a post is written, you’ll be able to shave time off your writing almost overnight and start churning out well-structured posts with some degree of confidence.
Don’t worry, a little later on, I’m going to show you how to do your research as well as write all of the different sections of the post so that you’ll know exactly what to write.
As a writer of advertising copy, I have found that writing blog posts is very similar to writing copy. Here are the basic sections of a blog post are laid out:
● The Headline
● Relevant Picture
● Introduction where you’ll describe the problem or the desire the person may be having
● Points you’re going to be giving in this post that’ll solve their problems or fill their desires
● Go through all of the points you’ll need section by section giving detailed instructions on each step
● Your conclusion
● Call to action (CTA)
● How to share the post info
● Support material
Throughout my posts I sometimes use subheads. Subheads tell readers when a new section of your post is starting and gives them a taste of what the next section is about. You want to make your subheads kind of tantalizing and whet the reader’s appetite for the material in the next section to come. (Subheads are covered in the next chapter.)
The Headline - The Dominant Beast of Your Post
The headline is probably the most important part of any post. In advertising copy the headline is seen as so vital that most seasoned copywriters obsess over it. It’s not uncommon to hear that a copywriter will write and rewrite a headline hundreds of times before landing on a good one for his copy.
In blogging the headline is just as vital. However, there are a few more restrictions that are placed on bloggers that copywriters don’t have to contend with.
First of all, to make sure your post is prepped for SEO, you don’t want to have as long of a headline in blogging as you would in copywriting. Just to give you an idea, here’s a headline written for a direct mail piece by the famous marketer Dan Kennedy:
“Announcing An Elegant And Sophisticated Referral System Your Competition Doesn’t Know About That’ll Generate An Endless Flow Of Customers, Clients Or Patients Who Are Predisposed To Do Business With You…Even If You’ve Been Afraid To Ask For Referrals Or Your Customers Don’t Know How.”
Now, here’s a headline by the blogging genius, Jon Morrow:
“How I Wrote Posts That Touched the Hearts of More Than 5 Million People”
As you can see, headlines for printed material can be as long or as short as you want it to be. With blogging the rule of thumb is to keep your title under 65 characters.
And the reason for this is quite simple. A blog will take your title and turn it into a URL for your posting page.
Here is a good example:
Figure 4.3

If you were to look closely at Figure 4.3 above, you’ll see that the title “7 Steps to Claiming Your Niche Market” is the same as what’s in the Web address for the post, which is: elmocopy.com/7-steps-to-claiming-your-niche-market/
Usually when you post a blog piece each post will take your title and place it into the URL. However, it will only take around 70 or so characters before it leaves out the rest of your URL. So you’ll want to keep your characters somewhere around 65 characters.
There are other reasons for doing this as well. If you want your post to be shared on social media sites like twitter, you can only post so many characters. In Twitter’s case, your tweets can’t exceed 140 characters and many of those characters are URL backslashes and other characters that you’ll be posting along with your message.
Another reason that you don’t want your headline too long is because when people share a title or headline in email, if the title is too long it’ll get cut off in the subject window like so:
Figure 4.4

The bottom line is that if your blog post is too long, you won’t be able to use twitter to share it no matter how good it is.
Using Amazon to Create Great Headlines
I was writing some advertising copy for a product that I was promoting on Amazon, and I came across a great way to write headlines and copy in general. I started looking at books that were similar to my product to get ideas for my copy. Think about that for a second.
Copywriters write the ads and cover copy for the nonfiction self-help, or how-to books that are on sale. I would venture a guess that the copy that’s written for these bestselling books is probably written by experienced copywriters that have researched and studied the books or products that are being sold.
I would also think that the best copy would appear on the covers of these books and that the copy on the back side of the book (which is probably sales copy) is written and researched by advertising copywriters as well. You can get a bunch of great information and ideas from reading these covers and any ads that accompany them.
In the realm of ad copy you would write down or copy these ads and keep them in a file you could keep to look at when you needed to. These files are what are known as “swipe files” and all of the top-drawer copywriters maintain files of this sort. Just to be clear, swipe files of this nature can help you get great phrases, see the form of the sales letter or a blog post, or give you an idea of how to write or approach a certain area.
They are NOT for plagiarizing or copying word for word.
If you can’t write your own material, I’d say you need to do something else besides writing. You really can’t be a great blogger or copywriter if you’re using someone else’s work as a crutch but you sure can draw all sorts of ideas from them.
And you don’t have to draw ideas or inspiration from just one swipe or ad. You can use several at the same time. I recently wrote an advertising piece where I used swipes and ideas from 4 different sources.
I got help on the headline from looking at covers on Amazon. I also found benefits for my copy by reading the comments section of very similar copy. I just looked at all of the things people liked the most about the product and how it helped them and I had all sorts of ideas. Not only had that, but the people that wrote those comments had some great phrases that I could use in my copy.
I also had to look at advertisements that two great pro copywriters had written to see the format of the overall copy I should follow. (Why not learn from the best in the business?)
Here are the steps to using Amazon to gather ideas:
1. Look at non-fiction types of books that have similar topics to what you want to write about.
2. Look at how the copy is written and write down the parts and short phrases that you can use to make your headline have more impact.
3. Read through the comments and see if there are any repeated benefits or ideas that you can use.
4. Once you get some of the material swiped that you can use, you can then begin crafting your headline using the Benefit + Curiosity = Interest formula
5. If you want to really nail a headline, crank out about 25 of them and choose what you think are the best ones.
6. See if you can get others to read your copy and give you feedback before you pick your headline.
Figure 4.5

Using the Warrior Forum to Brainstorm and Test Ideas
Another method I use to help write headlines is to bounce ideas off of other copywriters. There are a couple of online forums that I hang out on, and one of them is the Warrior Forum (WF). There’s a whole cadre of copywriters and copywriter wannabes on there and they usually hang out in the copywriting section of the forum.
You can almost always post a headline or some copy there and get a response. However, these guys and gals will be blunt and most of the time won’t pull any punches. If you’re wearing soft tissue as an outer skin for your ego, you better toughen up buttercup, or you’ll get shredded.
I’m not saying that they’re mean people; they are some of the nicest people on the planet. But you will get your copy shredded and you will get brutally honest evaluations and ideas about your work, which is what you really want. You won’t get any better trying to write copy without someone telling you the honest truth.
So if you do go on the Warrior Forum, please make sure that you thank them for any help you get. It’s rare in this world when people appreciate what you do for them.
How to Practice Writing Headlines
I often see all sorts of ideas on how to craft headlines or some other aspect of writing copy or blog posts, but rarely do I see articles that tell you a good way to practice it. So, I’m going to give you step-by-step instructions on how to practice writing headlines.
If you practice this enough, you’ll have mastered a skill that’ll help generate interest in your posts while moving you on your way to blogging stardom.
The steps to writing a great headline:
Step 1 Research
The best advice I can give you about researching blog posts and headlines is to first know your audience. If you can figure out how to get feedback from your audience about what interests them and what they would like to hear more about, then that’s pure gold.
If you checkout Neil Patel’s QuickSprout site, you’ll see a small pop-up at the lower left hand side of the screen. This pop up asks you a question about a subject that’s relevant to his site. It usually asks you questions that help Neil determine what people that come to his site is interested in. If he only gets a few responses, then he knows he’s probably on a dead topic.
If he gets a lot of answers, then he knows that he can move on to writing about the topic or creating a product that addresses the interest. But the main thing is to know who are writing for. Go to the blogs and forums that they hang out on and pick their brains. Find out what kind of language they’re using, what keeps them up at night, what their desires are and anything else you can about them.
Once you know what your target market is all about, writing anything for them will be much easier.
Step 2: Use Research Tools
As I said earlier, if you’re drawing a blank on what to write , you can go on Amazon or another online book vendor and look at books with similar subject matter and see what they had placed on their covers.
This should give you some ideas on what to write for your headlines.
Look at the bestsellers on Amazon in your subject area, I can almost guarantee that the copy that’s written for the cover has been written by copywriters that can deliver, which will be fertile ground for ideas.
You can also use Google to generate keyword ideas as well. For example, if you were writing a post about “metal detecting for profit”, then you could type that into Google to see what the results are.
You should see the automatic fill that Google uses that looks something like this:
Figure 4.6

Also, at the bottom of the first page of the search engine results Google has other suggestions that look like this:
Figure 4.7

These suggestions are great ideas that will help you get started. In the case above I would start a list like this:
● Metal detecting for profit (your original search)
● Metal detecting profitable hobby
● Metal detecting for fun and profit
● Metal detecting finds worth money
● Metal detecting finds
So, if I were to use just the ideas above, I could start writing:
“How To Turn Metal Detecting Into A Profitable Hobby While Having Fun” (less than 60 characters). Now that’s just a start, and it gets your brain thinking about how you can begin to write your headline.
Step 3: Use a formula
Here’s the first formula that I learned from my copywriting mentor, Alex Cohen:
I=B+C
Or
Interest = Benefit +Curiosity
When you start writing headlines, you’ll need to find the main benefit that your target market is looking for when they read it. As I said before, you need to hit on what keeps them up at night or what their deepest desire or wish is. Now, if you can create curiosity along with that, they’ll have an interest in what you have to say.
Let me give you an example:
“Amazing New Formula from Beverly Hills Lets You Look Years Younger”
That headline was from the great Gary Halbertand was extremely effective ad he wrote for a beauty product. (If you don’t know who Gary Halbert is, you should really check him out!)
Let’s look at it for a second:
Curiosity:Amazing New Formula from Beverly Hills
If you’re a woman and you want to look great, then you’ll want to know what the formula is, right?
Benefit:Lets You Look Years Younger
There’s no doubt as to what the benefit is in this product. So, of course there is going to be an Interest! When you see how simple it looks all laid out like this, you might make the mistake of thinking this is going to be easy. But I can assure you that writing great headlines is anything but easy.
The Blog Headline Formula
I have used the headline formula above to help me write headlines for advertising copy, as well as blog posts. However, there is an even better way to write them.
I mentioned the master blogger and SEO guy Neil Patel earlier, and he has a formula on his site that goes like this:
Number or Trigger Word + Adjective (describing word) + Keyword + Promise
Here are a few examples Neil’s Headlines:
“7 Ways to Make Your Content More Likable”
“Get More from Landing Pages: 6 Ways to Use Them More Effectively”
“Mastering Content Marketing: 7 Required Principles for Success”
Before I move on, I’d like to mention that you can get an incredible resource from another blogging great,Jon Morrow. His eBook which is free, has 52 headline swipes that you can use to write great headlines.
However, I’d like to be clear that you should try to write your own headlines and develop your own voice and style rather than using someone else’s headlines as a total crutch.
Elmo’s Formula
Over time, you’ll very likely grab several ideas and start your own way of thinking of headlines for blogging. Here’s the one I use for myself when writing blog headlines that seems to work for me.
Benefit + Curiosity + Numbers + Excitement + Keywords = Bazinga Headline!
Step 5 Let’s Start Practicing
Once you have your keywords, ideas, swipes and formulas in place, you can start writing. Take those keywords and really push yourself to write at least 25 headlines per post for practice.
As you practice, try to keep these ideas in mind:
● Make sure that the main benefit is the centerpiece of your headline
● Try to use numbers in your headline because people respond favorably to them
● You should add the element of curiosity to your headlines
● You want to use words that generate excitement
● If you can, make the reader want to read the article because you have roused his or her curiosity
● Try to be concise on blog post headlines (60 to 70 characters, tops)
Side note: I love to draw. Years ago, I really got into it. I found a great teacher, and she turned me on to a book about the subject. There was one key piece of information in that book that really got my attention.
The author wrote," I really accelerated my drawing skills when I carried my sketch pad around with me all day. I would wear my pencils down to nothing and I drove my parents crazy because I was even sleeping with my sketch books. If you really want to get good at drawing you better carry your books with you constantly and draw every chance you get."
It's the same thing with writing. I'm not suggesting that you sleep with your laptop, but the more practice you get at writing blog posts or copywriting, the better off you'll be.
So using the 4 steps I mentioned above, you should try to spend about an hour writing out headlines. You will write no less than 25 headlines per post until you get the hang of it.
When you first start writing your headlines, try to focus primarily on how you're going to focus on the main benefit of your post. What problem or desire are you trying to solve or fulfill?
Getting the Engine Started
Here's a good exercise to get you started.
1. Pretend that you've got a friend with a problem or desire that needs to be solved
2. You just found a great solution to that problem now you’re excited and want to tell her all about it!
3. Pretend that you're sitting across a table from that friend and you are going to tell them as fast as you can about the solution. Try to think about exactly the way you would phrase it to her. (You wouldn't be talking like a dictionary or a text book, would you?)
4. Now type or write it out as fast as you can. Don't worry about following any rules or anything like that just get it out.
5. Now, write it again and this time, try to be more concise. Keep the excitement, but scale down the words.
6. Now, you can start to get more critical about what you're writing. Try to think of how you can arouse her curiosity about your solution so that she'll actually try it!
7. Now start thinking about some of the rules. Make it around 60 to 70 characters; create curiosity, main benefit, etc.
8. Now take that headline and rewrite it 25 times.
9. Once you've done this, start looking at all of your headlines that you've written. You'll get used to looking critically at your writing and after a while, pick the best ones from the batch.
10. If you need to, rewrite those headlines, do so.
11. Now, get a couple more pairs of eyes on these and see what others think of them. Remember to not take any criticism that you get too seriously; learn what you can from the critique and move on. Do not get discouraged!
12. Pat yourself on the back, because you have successfully written your first blog post headline (walk with swag, act cocky...whatever!)
Ok now it's up to you. Go out there and start writing your own headlines. Yes, this takes quite a bit of work but once you have a few successes under your belt, you'll really start to feel energized. The reason you'll feel that way is because you'll be recognized as a leader and a maven. Not only will you make some money, but you'll have a blast helping people and encouraging them too.
Note: As you write, rewrite, edit, and develop as a writer, you will soon develop your own process of writing headlines, blog posts and articles. This is just a method I have used in the past that I learned from someone else. However, if you don’t have a step by step system for writing headlines hopefully this one will get you started.
The bottom line is, just like learning to paint a picture, or run a marathon, we all have our own methods that we will eventually use to get the job done; this was just one way you could use and modify to get started. Now, go out there and knock out some great headlines! The sooner you get started creating your own, the more experienced and better you’ll get at writing them.

Chapter 5 - Subheads 101: How to Create a Blog Post That Grabs Readers
If you think that just writing a great headlineis going to pull your reader through an entire post, guess again, dear blogger. In order to suck eyeballs onto your blog post you’re going to need some engaging content.
You’ll need to write content that:
● Connects with your reader. Hopefully, you have someone that’s looking for content within your chosen niche and is interested in your subject matter.
● Offers compelling information that your readers need, desire or are dying to read.
● Offers a solution to their problems.
● Is so good they’ll want to share your content with others.
Houston, We Have A Blogging Problem…
Even if you format your blog post so that it’s easy to read, and your content is so effective that even researchers are giving it awards ― about 92% of the reading populace will take the fast and easy way out…
…They will quickly scan your text before reading it to decide if it’s for them.
And if they don’t see anything that’ll solve their problems in a mere 3 or 4 seconds, they’ll go elsewhere. Advertising copywriters know all about this. To a person that’s selling using absolutely nothing but words, every jot and tittle on a page is vital.
In the Webster’s dictionary subheads are defined as:
“Subheading: a heading given to a subsection of a piece of writing.”
I’m sure you’ve seen these things; they look like this on a blog post:
Figure 5.1

These sections separate different parts of your post and let the reader know what you’re writing about. However, there is a more important function of subheads that I hinted to before.
Subheads sum up your entire piece while tantalizing and whetting the appetite of your reader as he or she scans your post. The main goal of the subhead is to make sure the reader understands what the whole post is about without giving too much away. Therefore, subheads must hint at the benefits of what you’re telling your readers in a way that makes them want to read the details of what you’ve written.
Ideally, subheads should be written in a way that leads the reader through the entire piece giving them a good idea of what the post is about. In other words you could scan the subheads like a micro-post and get the entire idea of what the post is all about without getting the specifics.
Just remember to “give them all of the sizzle and none of the steak”. The main objective is to get them to read the rest of the piece to get the complete solution to their problem.
Four Kinds of Readers
In copywriting and blogging there are 4 kinds of readers.
1. Readers that are looking for what you’re writing about and will read every single word.
2. People that are tire kickers that are kind of interested and will get what they can by scanning your post.
3. People that just happen to look at your post because it was at the top of a search engine results page, or saw it on LinkedIn, or found it by accident and got interested for a few seconds.
4. Readers that have absolutely no reason to read your stuff and get off quickly.
All four readers are important, even #4. Let’s go through each one of them and I’ll explain the significance of each one.
Of course, the first group (#1) is very important because the scanners are lusting after what you have to offer. You’ll want to make sure you lead them through your copy so that they will read and take action of some kind before choosing an alternative.
#2 is the type of reader or scanner the subheads are really meant for, because the reader may be straddling the fence on whether or not they should read it and may be swayed in your direction. If your writing is compelling enough and really hammers the benefits and reasons for reading and taking some sort of action, then you might be able to entice them to read more. Don’t blow these folks off because there’s a bunch of them.
# 3 is probably the least important because they’re in the wrong place and already know what they want. It’s probably not you; however don’t ignore them entirely. They may like what you have to say enough to tell others that are in your market about you.
The people in the # 4 category are important for one reason. If your post or copy is clear enough, then they’ll immediately know it’s not for them. This means that your copy is perfectly clearabout its target market and readers can tell immediately it’s not for them. Since they have absolutely no interest in what you are talking about, they’ll move on.
So, all four of these types of readers are important and subheads help them scan your entire piece ahead to see if it’s for them. Now you can see why subheads are so important and why you must learn to write them in a way that is compelling, tantalizing, and exciting.
Here’s a troll comic that may help you understand the different types of people you’re dealing with:
Figure 5.2

Are You Too Embarrassed to Admit You’ve Done This?
You’re sitting at auto repair place waiting for them to fix your breaks and you pick up a magazine. As you flip through it, you notice an article on golfing (or baking cookies for that matter) which catches your eye. As your eyes dance across the pages, you look at the pictures in the article, but after that your eyes are drawn to the bold lettered sections announcing the different parts of the story.
You start to read one of these sections, but then realize you missed part of the story, so you go back to the first part of it. After a while, you give in and decide to read the whole dang thing.
This is the primary reason and way subheads actually work, and let me reassure you, they do work!
Another Hidden Purpose for Subheads
Now we can see the primary reasons for writing subheads:
● Creating the desire in people that are scanning the piece to want to read the whole thing (or at least most of it).
● Dividing up and announcing the different sections of your piece.
There is another good use for subheads that you may not have thought about and that is ― they serve as great outline devices!
The way that I like to think about writing subheadlines is they will serve as a skeleton of the body of my post. I can sit down and write them out and I’ll have the entire piece outlined and organized… at least for the most part. If you don’t know exactly what you’re going to write about in an entire post and can’t get all of your subheads down, that’s fine. You can start writing the subheads and the other parts of the post will occur to you as you write your post.
The Stanley Kubrick Blog Post Method
As a copywriter and blogger, I’m always looking for a system of organizing my posts and ideas. Here’s one I came up with that may help you organize and think about your subheads and posts differently.

I’m a huge fan of the movie director Stanley Kubrick mainly because of his masterpiece 2001 a Space Odyssey. I don’t think that he ever blogged because he died in 1999, and that’s about the time blogging started to become popular. I do remember that WordPress had one of its earliest templates named after him, but I’m getting off topic.
When I was a kid in 1968; I went with some of my friends to see the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey. The theater was totally empty because nobody went to see it; it seems like everyone hated it. Critics panned the crap out of it, the studio execs that bankrolled it thought it sucked, and the public ignored it. The only people that I knew that really saw a value in the movie, to my knowledge, were a bunch of junior high kids.
Despite 2001 a Space Odyssey’s bleak opening, it is now considered to be one of the 10 most important movies ever made.
Go figure.
2001 a Space Odyssey was supposed to be about alien life making contact with us for the first time. However, the movie starts in an African veldt millions of years ago with nothing but a bunch of apes as characters. The end of the movie was just as weird, with a psychedelic light show that many movie critics thought reminded them of a recreational drug experience. (Hmmm…How did they would know what a “drug trip” was like?)
Anyway, I walked out of the theater as a young boy thinking, “Wow! That’s the coolest movie I have ever seen!” I didn’t understand what I had just seen, but it was really awesome! When you’re young you usually don’t know or understand why some things work or how they work. You just accept them.
I never really thought about why 2001 a Space Odyssey worked as a story or how it was constructed until a few years ago. I was watching a documentary on Stanley Kubrick and he had an interesting way of piecing a movie together.
He said, “If you have 5 or 6 “non-submersible units”, you could piece them together and have an entire movie.”
The “non-submersible units” were actually mini stories that would each float on their own. They were then connected together as an entire movie or story. So, I began to think of blog posting and writing advertising copy the same way. You could have the separate sections of the blog post and each of them could stand on their own as mini articles that related to the whole post.
In advertising copy it would be a little trickier because these parts would have to be joined seamlessly; one flowing into the other unnoticed. But you could use subheads to initially get the different sections of your piece fleshed out. You don’t have to use the Kubrick method, but it helped me think of all the parts of my posts easier and now it’s a system I usually work with.
The Victor Schwab Method of Using Subheads

Victor Schwab (1898-1980) was a copywriting genius that many advertising copywriters refer to today. His book, “How to Write a Good Advertisement” rests on the shelves of anyone that is serious about copywriting as a career.
Victor had his own take on how to write subheads for his copy that may help bloggers. He liked to think of subheads as “rungs on a ladder”. These rungs made it easier and more enticing for the reader to continue on through the piece (or in our case ― blog post). He concluded that the weaker and fewer the “rungs”, the more likely the reader was to stop reading. Victor also liked to think of these rungs as “booster stations” of power and interest that kept the reader interested and engaged. He thought subheads were like a chain of power stations that once arrived at, would make the reader interested enough to move on to the next part.
In Victor’s analysis, subheads served 3 main functions in copy.
1. To keep the reader with you for as long as possible. When a person looks at a post, they may feel like it’s a lot to read. Subheads will make a post (especially a long one) look like it can be more digestible.
2. Because people’s attention start to drift so easily, breaking up the text on a page will help them to keep reading.
3. To link all of the parts of the copy together. If a person reads your totally awesome headline, they may click a link and leave your page if it looks like they have a ton to read. If readers scan the subheads and the sections look like they’re interesting enough to read, it is very likely the reader will scan the post and then go back to read the entire piece.
How to Write Riveting Subheads Step by Step
Hopefully by now you can see the importance of writing subheadlines. They are a crucial part of your readers experience when they begin to scan your piece. While every writer has to find his or her own system writing, here is a step by step method of writing subheadlines that may help you.
Step 1: Introduce them early on. Only write a paragraph or two before you put one into your post. If you’re going to outline your post using subheads, then keep in mind you’ll be using them early in your piece.
Step 2: Don’t make all of them declarative in nature. Try to make some of them ask questions. Think of who, what, where, when, and how when you sketch them out. Just like headlines, you want them to create curiosity in a reader.
Step 3: Make sure that they are sequential in character. If you are using these devices as an outline tool, then you’ll be able to easily see the sequence of the different parts of your post. Make sure that each part moves in a logical progression from one to the next.
Step 4: Make sure they represent and introduce what’s in that section. Don’t just write a post and then drop a bunch of subheads into it, try to think of what each section of the piece is about.
Step 5: Make sure that the subheads link the different parts of your post together seamlessly. You want to use them to lead the reader from one part of your post to the other if you can.
Step 6: Try not to regurgitate the information in the subheadlines. A better idea would be to capsulize the section it precedes. Always move forward with these devices.
Step 7: This is kind of obvious, but you need to make your subheads stand out from the rest of the text on the page. A good practice is to use bold print with a font that’s a little larger than the normal text on the page. You want to hang onto your audience by keep them interested in your post as well as whetting their appetites for more.
Step 8: Don’t worry too much about how much you are using these headings. You want to use them as much as you need to. Just make sure you are emphasizing the most important points and benefits.
Step 9: Try to make subheads interesting. Remember, about 90% or so of the people that land on your site will skip out to look at cat videos or read about the latest breast implants the Kardashians have purchased.
An easy way to make them interesting is to write subheads in a way that creates curiosity while spelling out a needed benefit. Just like using keywords in a post, you don’t want to over use subheads, but you don’t have to be paranoid either. Just use them naturally as you need them.
The Subhead Right after the Headline
Oh, before I forget! There’s one other type of subhead worth mentioning and that’s the one that occurs after the headline. While most copywriters use this device, most bloggers don’t, I’ve seen Reader’s Digest articles that do. (Incidentally, Reader’s Digest has some of the best headlines on their articles in the business of writing. I would think that creating a swipe file (collection) of these titles would be very valuable to anyone writing articles and blog posts.)
Figure 5.3

CREDIT: READER’S DIGEST - (Text deliberately blurred for copyright reasons.)
Right beneath the title, is a subhead that offers another tantalizing piece of information. This usually offers an additional reason or benefit that the reader will get if they read the article or post. Incidentally, this is another way of reinforcing the headline and making sure that people won’t be put off by the long body copy.
Note: You are learning some different terms in this book and I might as well teach you one more that copywriters use for writing headlines and subheads. Even though it’s a little different with blogging, the pre-headline, headline and sub-headline used in copywriting is sometimes referred to as “deck copy”. Just in case you ever decide to study copywriting, (which I highly recommend) if you ever see that term you’ll know what it means.
Write Out Subheads More Than Once
Just like the headline, subheads need to be written with care. You should write them and rewrite them several times if necessary. If you can, try to imagine that you are a reader and you have a mild interest in the post. Using the guidelines we’ve already talked about, try to think of what would keep you reading the page, especially if you’re just scanning.
Considering your subject matter, what would you like to read in the subheads that would keep your eyes on the page? Don’t be afraid to add a little “Bazinga” to your subheadlines either. You don’t want them to be boring, but at the same time, you don’t want to mislead your audience either.
Write ‘em Out ―Suck ‘em In
Just remember, the main use of subheadlines is to get your reader to get and stay engaged. You want to ensure that he or she doesn’t leave your post and then forget about you. The best way to get really good at writing subheadlines is to write a lot of them, rewrite them, and do it frequently.
Now, go out there and knock them out of the park. If you write them correctly, subheads will increase your readership.

Chapter 6 - How to Write Viral Blog Posts in 6 Easy Steps
Sometimes, I find myself thinking that there is entirely too much information being created in the world today.
Let’s look at the stats on this:
● There are about 1,053,000 books published a year in the U.S. alone
● Since 2010, eBook sales have jumped 117% making a big dent in the sales of published books
● One hour of YouTube video is uploaded every minute
● In 1999 there were fewer than 3000 websites and now there is over a billion
● The lifespan of the average website is a mere 100 days
● Russia has over 7,300 TV stations, China has over 3000 and the U.S. has over 2000.
As you can easily see, information is getting a virtual workout. There are millions of writers creating content every day, but how much of it is high quality content and relevant?
Recently, I went to a prominent website about blogging and it was addressing the problem of why people weren’t doing well in their blogging efforts.
The subhead said, “Create Killer Content” and had about 200 words on the subject.
My reaction was, “Yeah, no kidding.”
I personally think it’s a “no brainer” to conclude that in the near future the quality of information will have to be much better. No longer will the quick and easy practice of giving simplified answers or making horribly edited videos be enough to generate interest in what you have to say. The information will have to be far better, offering quality formatting, compelling content, and handing readers information that they can digest and use quickly.
In other words―the seekers are going to get far more sophisticated in their tastes and in order for bloggers to meet this level of sophistication they will need to produce high-quality content.
Standing Out From the Crowd
If you’re going to do blogging for any type of business or venture, whether it’s selling door knobs or creating content for a charitable organization, you need to make the best content humanly possible.
Here are some facts about blog posts that you may find interesting:
● Blog posts with 3000 words or more get far more traction in the search engines than 500 word posts.
● Posts that have a large, relevant graphic at the top will gain more readership than posts that do not.
● Posts that use bulleted lists engage readers more than posts that don’t.
● Headlines with numbers in them are read far more frequently than posts that have standard headlines in them. (Example: 10 Ways to Write a Better Blog Post)
● Posts that include relevant videos get ranked higher in the search engines.
● Posts that frequently use infographics in them get higher readership.
● Blogs that are interactive usually get higher return visits than blogs that do not.
● Vlogs (Video Blogs) that have good quality videos, move to the top of the search engines for relevant keywords much quicker than standard posts.
These were just some of the main factors that are currently ruling the blogosphere, and as we’ve seen since the late 1990’s, they’re subject to change.
Making a HUGE Dent in the Blogosphere
Believe it or not, well before the birth of the Internet, there was a cadre of writers that had this content thing figured out; they were called “advertising copywriters”. These were writers that sold products using nothing but words. The top writers in this industry had their craft down to a science, and many of them made millions of dollars from this trade.
One of the ways these copywriters would learn how to write compelling advertising copy was by studying each other’s writing and it’s a practice that’s used today by industry copywriters. If you really want to create great body copy for your blog that will promote your business and increase your bottom line, I would suggest following some of these writers and studying what they are doing:
Jon Morrow – An incredible blogger that makes an impressive six figures a month. I’ve personally taken his “Guest Blogging” course and it was one of the best courses I’ve taken the time to purchase and study.
Neil Patel ― He has written extensively about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and blogging, and is a superstar Internet marketer at a very young age.
John Carlton ― John Carlton is one of the best copywriters living today has generated millions of dollars for his clients and written some of the best advertising copy ever. Any writer could gain a load of valuable knowledge from reading his posts and taking one of his courses,
Gary Halbert ― The late copywriting genius that is referred to as “The Prince of Print” is still considered to be the holy grail of copy writers. You can read archives of his letters and copy here: The Halbert Letters.
There are loads of great bloggers and copywriters, out there and you should take the time to visit their sites and read what they have to say about writing words that will impact and get others to take action. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to keep an organized file of these writers and their posts, and learn as much from them as you can.
But the bottom line is; if you want your blog posts to really stand out from the crowd, then learning a bit about advertising copy will greatly increase your chances of getting read and taken seriously. Since I have personally studied and written both advertising copy and blog posting, I have come to the conclusion that there are a many similarities between good ad copy and good blog posts.
This chapter is going to show you how to write the body copy of your post, while keeping the ides and tactics of advertising copy and ad copy elements. If you follow the outline procedure that I presented to you in the chapter on subheads, you’ll have a good idea of how to outline your post. Once you have your research, headline, and subheads in place, you can then begin to craft your epic blog post.
The Different Types of Blog Posts
There are several different methods you can use to write your post, and depending on the type of writer you are, you can decide on which of these formats you want to focus on and use.
Copywriters use these devices sometimes interchangeably from one client to the next, but you can still use some of them to make your blog posts more interesting.
The “Just the facts, ‘Ma’am” Blog Post
In copywriting, this is your basic copy wherein you just introduce a product or service. In the realm of blog posting, this would be just your basic post that lets people know something has happened or about something that is going to happen.
It is just very informative in nature and has no bells, whistles or any other type of devices that needs to hammer or sell a product, service or idea.
“The Storyteller”
This is the copywriting device that seems to be used the most and you can very easily use parts of it to draw people into your post. If you’ve watched any infomercials for more than 5 seconds you’ll see some of this pattern emerge.
Trauma (Crisis, Problem) --> Looking for a solution --> Personal Revelation --> Salvation (Product, or Service) --> Value of solution --> Unbelievable Low Price --> Bonuses --> Call to Action
(Please See Figure 6.1 Below)

Since you are just writing blog posts, you won’t be using all of these steps, but the basic premise is:
Here’s the problem, and here’s the solution.
Usually this copy or post will present a grim proposal or situation that resonates with the reader. Just like any advertising copy or blog post, this always works better when the reader is looking for a solution that you have.
There are four main sections of your post or copy that you need to be aware of:
1. The Painful Opening – In this section you’re going to paint a grim picture of what the reader is experiencing, fearing or trying to get out of. You want to make it sound dramatic and painful enough to draw the reader in because they can identify with it.
2. The Journey – This is where you relate a story of how you (or someone you know of) is trying to find a solution to a problem and all the trial and errors that go along with it.
In advertising copy it looks something like this:
“I tried everything I could to cure my backache, yet nothing worked. I tried pills, weight loss, different types of mattresses, and even sleeping on the floor! Nothing worked!!”
This type of dialogue about the journey that the person is on can sometimes go on for pages. But the main idea is that the person is looking for a solution and can’t seem to find it.
3. The Stroke of Luck – In this section, your protagonist accidentally finds the solution to their problem. It wasn’t because he was smarter, braver or wiser; it was because he was lucky. Why? Because with luck anyone can do it!
If you wrote:
“One day I found the solution to my problem, because I had a degree in medicine and was a licensed chiropractor.”
If the scenario looked like that to your average reader then the problem would have to be solved by some sort of special knowledge or skill. Immediately, you would probably lose a large number of your readers because they wouldn’t have the necessary skills to solve their problem.
Versus: “ Luckily, one day I was talking to a friend and he just happened to give me the book, “How to Crack Your Back Pain in One Day”. At first I was skeptical, but once I read the solution my back got better, the air smelled fresher, and I now have a new job!”
See? This example will resonate with readers far better because it doesn’t require any special skill or knowledge. Anyone could fix the problem, which is why the average person would relate to this message better.
4. The Solution – In ad copy, you’ll introduce the product somewhere along this point, but in blog posting, unless you’re talking about an actual product that you’re going to be using, you’ll just show the reader how to fix the problem.
5. The Call to Action (CTA) – In copywriting, this is where you’ll literally tell your audience to take some sort of action. (Also known as a “Call to Action” or CTA) You may think that a CTA has no place in a blog post, but you’d be wrong; you even have to use them in your blog posts. If you look at the end of most of my posts you’ll notice I end them with something like this:
“Now that you know how to write a great newsletter article, you have enough ammo to go out and write inspiring commentaries that everyone will want to read. Take these tips I’ve given you and use them in your articles and you’ll see your readership increase as well as your subscription rate.
Don’t forget to comment on this post and let me know how you liked it…”
See how I did that? So, you’ll want to inspire your reader and spur them on to take some sort of action by writing a CTA in almost all of your blog posts.
Across the Coffee Table Copy
Basically, this is where you write like you’re having a conversation with a person sitting across the table from you. I usually try to write all of my posts like this and I recommend that you do the same. You can combine this type of conversational copy with the other types of copy listed above but you have to remember to keep this type of writing in the context of your audience.
What do I mean by that?
Well, if you’ve done your initial research, you’ll know that you need to speak in terms and manners about things that matter to your readers. A college aged entrepreneur uses terms and ideas much more differently than a fifty-three year old accountant. This means that you’ll need to be very familiar with your audience.
Dan Kennedy, the famous marketer, actually goes to visit and interview people that are in the target market that he is writing to.
In his words:
“I want to know everything I can about the person I’m selling to. What he wears, how he eats, the terms he uses, how he handles his money; I need to have the absolute best picture of this person that I can.”
The more you know about the market you are writing to, the much easier and better your writing for your target market will be. There are other styles of writing for an advertisement, but with blog posts unless you’re writing for a highly technical crowd, you’ll want to keep it mostly conversational and casual.
The Basics of Writing a Post
Before you start writing your post, there are a few basics that you’ll want to keep in mind as you write.
Rule 1:Make it personal as possible.
As I stated in the previous section, you’ll want to make sure that you thoroughly know, understand, and relate to the people you’re writing to. To take that idea a step further, you’ll want to write just like you are speaking directly to the person or people in your target market; in other words, try to make it sound as personal as you can.
If you’ve done your homework, you should know a ton about your audience and that will enable you to write in a way that speaks directly to them; it will almost seem like you’ve been reading their mail. Imagine yourself sitting across a coffee shop table talking explaining to a friend what it is you want them to know. Use the type of slang that they would use, phrase your sentences and ideas in a casual and informal tone.
Rule 2: Dumb it Down
Please don’t think I mean this in a bad way. However, you want to make sure that you’re not speaking over the heads of your audience. If you are writing your blog for college professors and high-level officials at a chemical plant, then put on your Poindexter glasses and let the 5 syllable words fly.
However, if you’re writing for the general public, then you’ll need to lighten up a bit…
… like say…down to the eighth - grade level.
No kidding.
Turns out that the average person today reads at about the eighth grade or less, so you need to write simply and clearly. If you are using Microsoft Word to write with, there’s an easy tool built into the word processor that you can use called the Flesch – Kincaid Grade Level Option.
To use this tool in Microsoft Word, go to File --> Options --> Proofing
Figure 6.2

Just below the center of the screen you should see a box that says “show readability statistics” and put a check in the box next to that.
Figure 6.3

Hit the “OK” button in the word options box.
Once you do that, you’ll be taken back to the document that you were working on.
Now, when you are ready to proof your document and see what grade level you’re writing at, you can click on the Review Tab at the top of Microsoft Word Page and click “Spelling and Grammar”.
Figure 6.3

Once you do a spelling & grammar check, you should see a box that pops up that will tell you what grade level you are writing at.
Figure 6.4

If you are in the 8.0 to 8.5 or so range, you should be alright, anything above that and you may lose your audience.
If you find that you are above that grade range, a simple solution would be to go through the text and find the bigger, more complex words and see if you can use smaller, more familiar words to replace them with. A real easy way to do this would be to use the Thesaurus feature under the Review tab in Microsoft Word.
Rule 3: Use Contractions
If you’re not familiar with using contractions they’re real simple to figure out, especially since I just finished using one in this sentence. (You are = you’re.)
Using these devices in sentences will serve two purposes. First, it will make your writing seem more conversational, and second, it will help you break up a more formal tone to your post if that’s what you want to do.
Just like anything else, you don’t want to overdo it. Just make sure that you salt and pepper contractions throughout your post or article so it’ll seem natural and relaxed.
Rule 4:Format Your Post for Easy Reading
Writing for the Web is much different than writing for the digital world. Studies have shown that people look at the printed page much differently than they do a blog post or a webpage. So, you will need to format your blog posts differently.
As we discussed in an earlier chapter, use headers and subheads to break up your post. If you haven’t read the chapter on how to write these units, you should go back a few posts and check it out. The main reason for subheads is to break up the text for people that like to skim articles. If you’ve written good, relevant subheads, a person that skims your blog should be able to get the gist of what you’ve written and what your entire post is about. This is what advertising copywriters have been doing for eons, and it works so well that it’s pure gold.
Use lists whenever you can.
I like to use bullet statements as well as numbered lists. Once again, this will break up your blog piece so that it is easier on the eyes. In advertising copy, lists of this nature are used to present lists of benefits or features. With blog posts, you can do the same thing as well as use these lists for giving step by step directions and instructions.
Format the post to make it more interesting.
If you look at work by the best advertising copy men in the business, you’ll see that they’ll do everything and anything with their writing look more interesting.
They underline key points, use bold lettering as well as italics to make sure important points get read. They will do virtually anything to make sure that the material gets read.
In the example Figure 6.5 below, you’ll see a sample by one of the top advertising copywriters in the business. Notice the use of bold lettering, italics, dynamic subheads, lists and other elements that make up the print. (Of course, Webpages use much shorter paragraphs than a printed example like this.)
Note: I do realize that this image of my example (Figure 6.5) is blurry; it has been done deliberately. I merely want you to see all of the text formatting as well as how much it is used. Notice how it breaks up the page and makes the writing easier to read.
It is even more important on the Internet to do this because of the way the average person’s eyes read on a screen. You’ll want to break up your paragraphs into one and two word sentences. Standard paragraph practices on blog posts do not apply.
(Please note that I blurred the page to avoid any copyright infringements. I just wanted to give you a clear example of how much these devices are used by master copywriters and advertisers to gain a reader’s attention.)
Figure 6.5 (Notice the bold print bullet statements and other formatting.)

Use a Picture at the Top of Your Post
Studies and statistics have shown repeatedly that a picture of some sort will get readers to look at your article. Here’s my personal strategy:If you can make it interesting and somewhat relevant to your post, then so much the better.
However, don’t mislead your reader. Years ago, someone got the brilliant idea to put the word “Sex” in bold letters and then immediately the advertisement said, “Now that I’ve got your attention…”
That is a really bad idea. Your audience will soon realize they’ve been had, and once that happens, “click” they are gone, and if they’re mad enough they’ll never come back. I will say that there’s a grey area on this and you can stretch it a bit if you generalize you pictures somewhat.
If you’ve followed my tips on writing a headline, you should already have a way to tell your audience what you’re post is about, so the picture actually becomes the eye catcher. Personally, I like using radical stuff to catch my audience’s eye. (Figure 6.6) Incidentally, graphics like this are great to use when you’re posting to social media sources like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Writing Your Incredible Body Copy Step by Step
Ok, if you’ve read this chapter so far you’ll see that there are additional steps that need to be taken before you make a post go live.
Figure 6.6

Step 1:Load up and Digest a lot of Relevant Research
Read, study and gather as much information that you can about your subject. You no longer have to go to the library to get books because we now have up to date information from a thing we call “The Internet”. Just make sure that you are going to reliable sources of information.
One of the best ways of doing that is by checking to see whether or not the writer has a published book. Publishers can’t afford to get a bad reputation so they usually make sure that the research has been done thoroughly. Also, look for the big players on the Internet in your target market. If you are in a particular niche or industry and see the same name popping up again and again, check them out. You’ll be able to tell whether or not they are reliable by the quality of information and work they are doing.
Usually, when someone is good on the net word gets around fast. (Same thing when someone is really bad too.)
Step 2:Use Subheads to Outline Your Post
I’ve written extensively in Chapter 5 on how to write subheads and use them in your blog posts. They are very valuable in outlining your post so that you can get your main sections down. At this point, don’t worry about whether or not you’re going to use all of them or not, just get your main ideas down.
Step 3:Take a Mental Laxative and Blast it All Out
What I like to do after I’ve studied my subject is to “take a mental dump” and get it all into the word processor. Just write as much as you can and don’t worry about anything, to include formatting, subheads, etc. Once you run out of steam on a certain section, go to another section that you’ve outlined with your subheads and get that written out. Since you’ve already done all of the groundwork, this part of the writing should come rather quickly now.
Step 4: Refine and Add To Your Sections
Once you flesh out all of the different sections of your post, you can now go back through the piece and begin the process of refining the work. The best way to do this is to actually read the piece aloud. If you do this, you’ll see all sorts of mistakes and places that you can make improvements that will make your post sound logical and conversational. As you read through your writing, you’ll not only see what you can fix, but you’ll also notice that you can add material and see places where you can also use informative graphics.
Step 5: Make Sure You Have a Good Call to Action
Make sure that your audience takes some sort of action that will help out your business and move it forward. Unless you’re just blogging for fun, you’ll want get your readers to sign up to your free newsletter, take your course, buy something, and comment on your blog or any other action that moves your business forward.
Step 6:Double Check Your Work. Before you publish your post, make sure that every part of it is polished and refined. A good way to ensure that there aren’t any mistakes in your work is to print out your post and scour it. Get out a ruler or some sort of straight edge and go through the entire piece line by line. This will eliminate the chances of making mistakes and leaving errors in your work.
Start Writing with Confidence
If you follow these steps and procedures you’ll be writing great posts in no time. Don’t forget to do your research up front so you’ll have your material handy before you start writing. Remember, the more preparation you actually do before writing your post, the much easier and faster it will go.

Chapter 7 – How to Generate Great Blog Post Ideas in 5 Quick and Easy Steps
Generate interest ….or die. It’s really that simple.
You will not hold an Internet surfer’s interest very long if your post is boring and does not resonate with the reader. You’ll have to write posts that hold the interest of your online audience and that’s not an easy task to do, for sure.
So what are some of the steps you can take to ensure that you’re writing compelling, life changing posts and information that people will want to devour the second you push the “publish” button? Actually, the answer is quite obvious.
You have to write really great content that’ll get noticed, draw in a crowd, and get them involved in your business or mission.
Plain and simple, but how can you do that?

Path 1: Give Them Something that Helps
This is a rather common idea for almost any kind of content on the Internet, but you want to help people solve a problem. The old business model said: reel them in, sell them something and grab the money. And that might work for a while but after the initial honeymoon period is over your audience will get wise to what you’re up to.
The reality of writing anything for the Internet is that readers and content seekers are far more sophisticated now than ever. If you cannot produce high quality content that hits a nerve and keeps them focused on your post, “click” and they’re gone.
Not only that, but people are sick to death of spam and being sold to all the time. Websites that give nothing more that shallow, short bursts of content that are mere masks for suckering you into giving up your email address will lose out – big time. You need to have a different mission that helps them with a problem, while giving them a way to become a part of something. In essence, the new business model says, “Give them the gift that keeps on giving.”
Believe it or not, when it comes to content marketing and writing for the web today there’s a new mindset at work;the more you try to help others out with your knowledge or expertise, the more they will be willing to do business with you.
I like to refer to that as the “Barbershop Effect”. (AKA the “Beauty Parlor Effect” if you’re a woman.)
If you go down to the local barbershop and sit a while with the boys, you get used to the people and the environment. The barber is friendly, he seems to have a genuine interest in you as you wait your turn, or get your hair cut.
You meet others there and while you wait your turn, you sit and chat while playing checkers. You’ll learn stuff about politics, business, and news while making friends and exchange valuable information with one and other. Before you know it, you can’t wait to go back and get your hair cut again.
Having an online business or blog is just like that. With this business model, you’ll want to help people and give them something extra of value. If you are able to help them and do it consistently, they will begin to see you as an authority and refer their friends to you. So your task is to find out what your herd or audience is looking for, while helping them as much as you can. If you can show them a way to solve a problem without charging them for it, you’ll have grateful clients, customers, and an audience that will return and refer you to their friends again and again.

Path 2: Organize Valuable Information for Your Audience
Thanks to the Internet, information is being dumped on us like Niagara Falls. Almost 300 billion email messages are being sent out in one day alone. Facebook gets over 200 million photographs a day and YouTube uploads 300 hours of video per minute.
Sorting out, placing, and arranging content that’s similar in scope so that people with similar interests can view that information, is quickly becoming a valuable asset on the Web.
The person that does this is known as a curator. The best and easiest example of this is the social medial site, Pinterest. On Pinterest, people can share items, articles, videos, and pictures of things that interest them. They usually place these things into categories that other people are interested in.
Pinterest is actually a site that has information curated by its users and therefore the information gets cataloged or collected by the members as a matter of course.
However, individual bloggers can also curate information on their sites as well. If you are a person that owns a site about electric bicycles, you could easily have a blog that reviews different types of electric bikes and have them categorized into different categories. You could also have a page that compares the different bikes and how they compare to one and other.
If you want to see a real slick idea of how this can work without being boring, check out Harley Davidson’ssite on motorcycles. They’ve managed to showcase their work, while impressing the people that view it.
This is definitely not an easy task. There is a huge time requirement that gets sucked up looking up and verifying information. However, in the context of blog posting, you can do a series of posts on different resources or items in your niche, that you could work on for years.

Path 3: Show Them How to Do Things
Tutorials are huge and they kind of go along with Path 1. Anytime you can teach a person how to do something, it will increase your readership. Think about all of the times you went online to find out how to do something or how to fix a problem. Now multiply it by all of the billions of people that are looking for the same type of posts…It’s staggering.
One of the problems with this type of post is that it has to be up to date and thorough in its explanation. Just like writing a blog post, you will have to plan out what it is you’re going to train your audience to do, otherwise you’re just producing a bunch of crap.
The Internet is loaded with brief and quick explanations on how to do certain tasks or solve problems. Usually people throw these tutorials together without taking the slightest bit of time of thinking them through and writing an outline. However, if you take the time to think and plan the process, the tutorials you can create will be lightyears ahead of all of the rubbish that’s being published on the Web.
How to Create a Well Thought Out Tutorial
You need to understand how to explain things in a step-by-step fashion so that it is perfectly clear to your reader or viewer exactly how to do the function or fix the situation.
This is not easy to do. I’m a professional trainer and educator and I have been making professional, instructional videos for the better part of a decade. I’m always amazed at how many times I’ve left out small, yet important details out of my instruction. You have to think out every aspect of your explanation and test it on someone else before you roll it out to your readers.
Here’s a step by step method of creating great tutorial posts that helps your herd get results when they look to you for answers:

Step 1: Research Your Topic — You want to make sure that you are picking a topic that an audience is interested in before to creating your tutorial. There are several ways to do this:
● Lurk on forums where your gang hangs out at and see if you can find a problem or idea that keeps popping up.
● Ask people that frequent your website, or send them an email what they would like to read about from your site.
● Check around on social media sites like Twitter and find out what the hot topics are in your niche or environment.
● Go on Amazon and see what the bestselling books are in your section. Read the comments of these books and see what the people that read them liked or disliked.
● Use Google’s “Searches Related” section at the bottom of their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
Step 2: Create a Definite Topic — Once you’ve found a good idea on what to base a tutorial on, you’ll need to define it so that there is absolutely no question as to what the subject or idea is. This is called “finding your main objective”. You need to make it crystal clear what the main overriding objective of your tutorial is before you start to put it together.
Step 3:Keep the Learning Objectives to Just A Few — If you’re going to be teaching someone a subject that is rather large in scope, like how to create an infographic for example, you may need to break the material down into smaller chunks.
Instead of going through a bunch of random steps, you may need to break the information down into several different lessons; then you can break those lessons down into two or three different parts as well. In education this is referred to as “Chunking”. The main idea of chunking is to keep the number of things that the audience needs to learn to just a few steps.
So, getting back to teaching how to create an infographic, instead of going through the creation of the entire graphic, you could show just how to create a block of color, place words on it and then group the graphic.
The next lesson could go through three other steps or objectives.
Step 4: Outline the Different Parts of Your Tutorial — You don’t have to write out a real detailed outline, but you can flesh out the different parts of your instruction like this:
● Intro (Describe what you’ll be teaching them)
● Instruction (These are the steps that you’ll be teaching them.)
● Conclusion and Closing Comments
Step 5: Use Instructional pictures — Use pictures to help tell your audience exactly what to do. Here’s an example of a good graphic that you can use:
Figure 7.1 Example of an instructional graphic

Try to make sure that you’re creating graphics that have clear directions on them and that your readers understand what you’re trying to explain.
Step 6: Create Great Instructional Videos ― If you’re using instructional videos for your online tutorial, you need to make it as high quality as possible. Take the time to edit it! I’ve been watching and making my own videos for years and I can tell you that nothing is more irritating than a poorly made and edited video.
Here are things you should consider when editing one:
● Take out all of the pauses or whatever sounds that you’re uttering because you can’t think of what to say.
● If you have to demonstrate something, you don’t have to go through a repeated procedure over and over again. (Example: you need to type in words on a bunch of different rows in a page.) Just write it once and skip over all the repeated stuff like a time lapse.
● Skip all slick sound effects, music, and other distractions. In education technology terms those are what are known as “Channels”. Too many channels in an instructional video are distracting.
● Make sure you’re using good quality audio equipment. Using audio that is not very good quality is a bad idea, because it is distracting.
Here's a good example of a video that eliminates all distractions while providing valuable content: Using Venngage and PaintShop
Path 4: Make List Posts
List posts get shared a lot. The reason for this is quite simple, they take a pile of information and turn it into chunks that are easier to read and are much more digestible. If you read my chapter on how to write viral blog posts, I mentioned that people scan blog posts and web pages. Because of this, list posts are very popular because they are very easy to read.
Here’s a step by step method of writing a great list post:
Step 1: Plan out ahead of time how long your list is going to be. If you’re going to create a really huge blog list, go as large as you can. It’s not uncommon to see list posts of this nature with 101 items in it.
Step 2: Keep the items in your list similar. You want to make sure that all of the listed items in your blog post have a similar nature.
If you are making a list of the top 25 adventure movies of all time, make sure that all of the items in your list are adventure movies.
Step 3: Try to format all of your lists the same. If you’re going to use a bulleted format, then make sure it’s the same throughout the post. This creates unity in your list and makes it easier to read without confusing the reader.
Step 4: Make sure to number the items on your list, and that you stick to the number in your title. If you tell your reader in the title that you have 15 of the best sites on butterflies, then number your list of sites and make sure you have 15 of them.
How To Find Popular Blog Post Subjects Step - By - Step
So now that you know what the possible types of posts to write, you’ll now need to know what the best subjects are to write about in your chosen niche. If you follow these simple, easy to follow steps you’ll have more than enough interesting stuff to write about for your audience.

Step 1: Look On ForumsLet’s say your niche is affiliate marketing. You could easily find out what people are looking for by visiting popular Internet marketing forums likeThe Warrior Forum. So you head over to the WF to look for topics related to affiliate marketing.
Figure 7.2

Type in what you’re looking for into the search window. Click on “Enter” and start scrolling through all of the search results. You will be looking for questions or comments that have generated a lot of interest.
Figure 7.3

What you’re looking for is a topic that’s hot and has a lot of people responding to it. If you look closely at the results page on this forum, you’ll notice on the right hand side it will show how many views and replies the post has. Here’s an example:
Figure 7.4

A good result for this would be thousands of views and hundreds of replies. Here’s is a good example of a subject that seems to be hot in the affiliate marketing subject area of the Warrior Forum:
Figure 7.5

So, if you’re blogging about “affiliate marketing”, you could figure out from looking at this post that online affiliate marketers are looking for:
1. How to make hundreds of dollars a day with affiliate marketing.
2. How to do affiliate marketing with 100% free traffic.
You could easily write a blog post on each of these subjects and probably be in the safety zone. There are millions of online forums and you’ll need to find and frequent the ones that are in your niche or target market to do your research.

Step 2: Look at Best Sellers on Amazon: I’ve talked about using Amazon for identifying good niches in previous posts, but you can also look to Amazon for great ideas for blog posts. In order to scope out the books on Amazon that have interesting content that you can use you can easily go the Amazon search feature and look for books that are in your content area or niche.
An easy way to find the best books in your subject area, you can check out the best seller area of Amazon.
Figure 7.6

As you can see in the image above, if you click on the drop-down menu, you can select “Books” from the drop-down list. Once you’ve done that, you can leave the field above blank and then just press “Enter”. You will then be taken to a page that has “’Best Sellers” on its bar- menu.
Type in “Affiliate Marketing” in the search window and hit “Enter”. On the right hand side, you will see a little menu window that looks like this:
Figure 7.7

Click on “Most reviews”.
The reason you want to click on “Most reviews” is quite simple. These are the books that most people are very interested in. If someone has taken the time to read and then write a review of a book then chances are they probably liked it or hated it.
Usually, when there are a lot of really good reviews, people really like the book and therefore the material in those books is pretty good. I recommend that you read a bunch of the reviews to see what people liked or hated about it. That can be a real wealth of information and give you some great ideas for blog posts.
Here’s another step that you can take. Once you’ve found a book in your niche that you really like, you can then use the “Look Inside” feature to gather even more information.
Figure 7.8 ―The “Look Inside” Feature

Using the “Look Inside” Feature allows you to take a look at the table of contents. So, in the case of our “Affiliate Marketing” probe from earlier, we will have all kinds of subjects at out fingertips. Just click on the “Look Inside” logo and you’ll be able to view the table of contents as well as some parts of the book. Almost any or all of the chapter titles could be used as ideas to write a blog post from. You could easily come up with titles for your next blog posts like,
“5 Myths about Affiliate Marketing!”
“6 Ways to Get Affiliate Links”
“The Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing Affiliate Programs”
See how easy that was? In a mere 15 minutes, you could have about 20 ideas that you could write about.

Step 3: Use Social Media to Generate Ideas: If you have a following on Twitter or Facebook, you could always ask your readers what they want to read about. On Twitter you could ask something like this:
"#affiliatemarketing if you could ask an affiliate marketing millionaire just one question, what would it be?"
I can guarantee that someone would take you up on your question, and you could also ask the same thing on Facebook. A really great site to do this on is “Quora”. Quora is a social marketing site that allows you to ask questions and then get answers.
Figure 7.9

Once you ask a question like the one above, you’ll see a screen like this one:
Figure 7.10

Quora will also give you an active list of people that could possibly answer your question. All you have to do to ask them to respond is to click on a box and they’ll be asked to participate.

Step 4: Use BuzzSumoOne of the easiest ways to figure out what subjects are popular enough to write about is to use a source that shows you which posts are most popular on the Web.
BuzzSumois the perfect tool for finding those types of posts. All you have to do to find out which post is most popular, is to go to the site and type in the subject that you’re curious about. Once again, “affiliate marketing” will be our subject.
Just in case you didn’t know, getting your post “shared” on the Internet is a good deal for your blog and your post.
It actually means two things:
1. Your post resonates with someone enough that people will actually go out of their way to share it on social media sites with others.
2. You will be getting valuable backlinks from other people’s websites thus ranking higher on search engines.
BuzzSumo is super easy to use; all you have to do is type in your subject into the search field.
Figure 7.11

As you can see on the left hand side, there is a list of all of the top blog posts with their titles and on the right there are social media shares for those posts. The final tally for all of the shares is on the far right.
The writing strategy behind this tool isn’t to look at somebody else’s work and then copy it. The strategy is to see what the post was and to see what ideas were covered. This is nothing more than an idea generator.
The down side of this is that the free version of BuzzSumo is that you will only be able to view about 10 titles that come up. After that, you’ll have to pay at least $99 a month.

Step 5: Keyword Searches Using Google or KeywordTool.io
Using key word tools like the following will make your job of finding ideas a lot easier while giving you an idea of what keywords people are looking for. All you really need to do is type in the phrases and words that are in your niche and the keyword generator will present you with words and phrases you can easily generate ideas from.
Here are a few of the great Keyword tools you can use:
Google’s Search Engine – When you start typing a word or phrase into Google’s search window, you will immediately see a list of popular words and phrases that people have been typing in.
Once you hit the search button, you’ll be taken to the search engine results page where at the bottom is another helpful tool resides called the “Popular Results” section. That section is a hotbed of keyword phrases that you could easily tweak into a blog post.
Google AdWords also has a tool built into it called the Keyword Planner that’s very useful. It is a great way to plug in words and phrases that will give you ideas for your posts.
Keyword Tool.io―This is a good tool to use to generate ideas as well. With most good online keyword tools like Wordtracker, there is a free service you can use but it won’t show you any of the results.
To get the traffic results for the keywords and phrases that you plug in you’ll have to pay for the use. (Not cheap, the service starts at about $70 and goes up from there.)
Now You Have Some Great Blogging Tools...Start Using Them!
This chapter could have actually been much longer; I could have easily given you a lot more ideas on the subject of generating ideas. Over time, you’ll find your own toolbox of useful sites you can use to assess good blogging ideas. However, the best thing you can start doing as a blogger is use some of the tools that you have now been exposed to.
Once you get started writing, you’ll get used to using one or two of these tools quite a bit, and fall into your own groove of which one’s work the best for you. You’ll also get into the daily habit of writing posts while reading about and trying other methods that will work best for you. A good practice is to always keep reading other writer’s ideas, and continue to expanding your knowledgebase on generating ideas for your core subjects.

Chapter 8 - How to Use Commenting to Rapidly Increase Traffic to your Blog
One of the best ways to get targeted online traffic to your site or blog is to comment on other blogs. The reason why it can be so targeted is because you’re commenting and displaying your thoughts and expertise on blogs that are relevant to your niche.
If you're writing excellent comments on a relevant blog, the links that you leave will probably get traffic that is looking for something you have to offer. So, the traffic you receive from commenting on blogs will be very specific.
Reasons for Commenting on Blogs
There are many reasons why you’d want to comment on people’s blogs, here are the most important ones for you to consider:
Reason 1: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In case you’re unfamiliar with SEO (or Search Engine Optimization), it's the process of making your blog or blog posts attractive to the search engines to get your site to rank near the top of a search query. At least that’s SEO in a nutshell.
One of the determining SEO factors for reaching the top of a search for a post has been linking. Usually, if you leave a comment on a blog, most of the time the owner of the blog will allow you to post a link to your home page from his site. However, search engines like Google couldn’t help but notice that people were commenting and leaving links all over the place in an effort to get links that pointed to their own sites. This meant that these sites, no matter how bad they were, got good rankings in the search engine results pages.
Google also noticed that some people had loads of links going from their site to all sorts of sites that were unrelated in many cases. It turns out that these unscrupulous site owners were getting paid to have links from their sites to other people’s sites. Just getting links, no matter how bad the sites themselves were was the name of the game.
Google, being the incredible search engine that it is, decided to police this sort of action because it wanted to be the highest quality search engine on the planet. So the fine geniuses at Google came up with an algorithm or mathematical code that would look at links and rate them.
There were a lot of factors involved with solving this problem, but the bottom line is this:
● If your links come from a site that has no visible content relationship with the site that is linking to your site, then the link probably won’t be any good. As a matter of fact, Google might even start ignoring you. (For example, a metal detecting site getting a link from a site about sculpting.)
● If you link to a site that has nothing to do with your subject matter, it could also hurt your rankings.
Then the people started posting on blogs merely to get links from the blogs they were posting to. In other words, these people would go to someone’s blog, make a bogus comment (they usually didn’t even read the post, and left unrelated comments that had nothing to do with the post) and then leave a link to their site.
Sometimes the comments hurt the rankings of the blog that was commented on because the links had no relation to the site it was linking to. One of the ways Google policed this linking action was by encoding the links. This was done so that spammers that were merely trying to get links to boost their ratings didn’t get the same boost as the links that were approved by the people that owned the blog.
Thus the “dofollow” and the “nofollow” link attributes were born. Now, most blogs have a built in function that automatically assign the “nofollow” attributes. In the code on your blog, they look like this:
<a href="http://wordpress.org/" rel="nofollow">wordpress!</a>
What this basically does is tell search engines to not follow or count these links. This is to keep the comment spammers from getting your site penalized. However, there are times that you will want a link to count. If the search engines see that you are linking to content that is relevant to your site, they will help rank your site better.
Let’s say that you wrote a post about the best types of software to use in writing reports. So you write about 10 reviews about different software companies and leave links to those sites. Those links and sites would be relevant to your post and you would want them to count.
The search engine gods would then look at your site and the post as a research report and say, “Very good, you have our blessings!” The post you wrote might move up quite a bit in the search engine results for the keywords that really matter in your post.
There is another good reason to use the “dofollow” attribute rather than the “nofollow”. Many really good websites and blogs have people that manage and check links that you post from your site to theirs that are “dofollow’ because it will help their SEO.
Sometimes they see that your site has helped them and they will respond in kind by linking to your site. This is a tremendous help because you will get “link juice” from a site that is rated pretty high by Google or another search engine.
This will also help out your site or post rankings as well. Not only that, but if a prominent site with a large audience links to yours you can bet you’ll probably get loads of traffic from that site.
Reason 2: Branding
Another reason for leaving great comments on posts is because they will leave behind a good impression with your target audience. This is where branding comes in. Branding is a part of marketing, but it is a different way to market.
Let me explain. Marketing is a means of promoting a product by selling, advertising, and any other method you can think of pushing your product to get sold. Branding is the means of marketing your product by drawing people to you by way of influence, reputation and familiarity.
So marketing is selling or pushing the product or service to your target market, and branding is like pulling your target market to your product or service.
How to Brand Yourself on Blog Comments
Build Strategic Relationships- This is an advanced technique that you can use to make that will help you enlist the help of people that influence or big players in your market. Just remember that you need to be cordial and nice when you are connecting with these folks, so make sure that you show manners and good form at all times.
If you're going to get their attention and help, you’re going to need to give a little at first in order to get. And here’s how you do that step by step:

Step 1:Choose Your Gurus
Don’t pick too many gurus to follow, maybe 4 or 5 at most. You will need to frequent and sign up to their blogs and start following them on all of the social media centers they hang out at.
Any way that you can think of connecting to these folks, you should do it. This is to include going to a convention they’re speaking at and saying “Hi!” if you can. I’m not talking about stalking a guru or being a pest, but if you can politely shake their hand and say, “Thanks, man. I’ve learned a ton from you.” You will really make their day and they’ll probably remember you.

Step 2: Become Their Biggest Fan
Now remember, I said not to be a pest or a stalker. You want to go on their site and remind them regularly how much you appreciate them. What I like to do is link to their site from mine and then let them know that I did it.
I usually write large 4000 to 6000 word posts that are highly detailed. One of the reasons why I do this is because if I go through the process of commenting regularly on their blog posts― and then mention that I linked to their post from my blog, they may visit my site.
I don’t know about you, but if aNeil Patel,Dan Kennedy, or Yanik Silverjust happens to go to my site to see if I really linked to them, or to just see if I’m blowing smoke, then I want them to see that I’m very serious.
That’s why I take my time writing the best posts I can. And just so we’re clear on this, I won’t ever tell someone that they are awesome unless they really are and I’ve been helped by their work. You want to be totally genuine and honest at all times.
Make sure that you frequent their blog and contribute on their social media sites as well. Many times, posting to sites like Twitter can be a thankless affair and commenting or re-tweeting their post will let them know someone out there is paying attention; I can guarantee that they’ll really appreciate it.

Step 3: Be a Connection to Others
If you notice that there is a particular problem the guru is having, you can point them in the direction of a resource or something that will help them. For example, if they write a post on how to keep track of social media shares, you could let them know about a site that has a tool like that. Even if they already know about it, they’ll probably thank you and take notice of the fact that you apparently know your stuff.

Step 4: Connect them to a great resource or person
This is very similar to the previous step, but worth mentioning. If you're frequenting a blog and you happen to notice that there is a particular headache or problem the blogger is mentioning in their posts, this can be a golden opportunity for you.
If they mention, for example, that they're having problems with a particular WordPress plugin or something like that, you could do some research online to find out if someone else had found a solution to that particular problem. Once you find a good solution to the problem, you can then mention your findings in the comment section of the post where it was mentioned.
This is the sort of thing that really makes your targeted blogger sit up and take notice of you. If you do this enough times, you'll have superstar status and if you ever want to ask him or her for a favor, they'll probably grant it.

Reason 3: Becoming a Maven in Your Field
As I mentioned earlier, branding is mostly an attraction form of marketing. You are trying to draw people into your fold. One of the best ways to do that is by creating a maven personality.
The term “maven” comes from the Hebrew language and it means “One who understands”. By definition a maven is a highly trusted expert in a particular field or endeavor. In other words — a “go to guy”(or gal). One of the best ways to do that is by creating expert status for yourself by making sure that you look and read like a highly competent expert.
Here’s a few ways to do that:
● Give your audience a reason to believe in you. You need to do some serious work on the front end to really pull this off. However, when you are building a body of work and a long list of satisfied clients, you’re gaining valuable experience as well as making yourself stand out as an authority.
● Stand out by posting something that everyone will get a value from. I’ve seen all sorts of crappy attempts at commenting that are devoid of all meaning and ad zero value to a conversation. Usually I see people that say something like, “Way to go Bill! Great post!” Those kinds of comments will not make you stand out as an expert or a maven. You need to really read the post and then add some solid value to it.
● Use an advanced strategy like placing yourself in front of some of the high-rollers. I comment on some of the bigger Internet marketer’s blogs around and I’m not afraid to disagree with them when I honestly have a disagreement. However, if it takes a couple thousand words to make my case, then so be it. I’m always sure to make a darn good case and back it up with all sorts of facts. Usually, I get a response to my comment, which means that I at least caught the eyes of some of the industry players.
● Don’t be afraid to throw some sand into the gears and use discourse. Make people think. Stand out. Be a shape-maker instead of being shaped, and say something dangerous once in a while. Risk takers have a bigger return on their efforts if it pays off, so why not push the envelope once in a while. Take a stand or a calculated risk for once and see if it helps you build your maven status.
● Always use good form. Remember that you’re a pro, so act like one. Always display a professional attitude and make your pictures, profile and writing look like you’ve got a brain.
No matter where you comment at, it is always advisable to leave great, insightful and respectable comments that reflect a professional image.
As a personal note, the Internet has become a hot bed of foul language, bad attitudes and being rude to others. Lately, a lot of people want to be seen as the next “bad-boy” of Internet marketing. I personally think that is a big mistake.
There are a lot of people that will not spend money in places where there is this rude type of behavior. These are very stable people. They are people that will become a part of your party and be loyal. Not only that, these are people that have money to spend and once they trust you, will give you their vote by spending it with you.
When you’re trying to be macho, cool, or relevant by going over the top with all sorts of sexual references and foul language, you’re going to axe out a lot of people. Most beginning entrepreneurs and bloggers can’t afford the luxury of that sort of behavior. I’m not trying to be your dad or anything like that, but you will lose money over this, I guarantee it. You may not see it, but you’ll be turning off a part of your target market by doing this, and is it really worth losing money or part of your target market over?
(Just my 2 cents, but I had to say it.)
How to Leave "Knock ‘em Dead Comments" on Other People’s Blogs
Here are some very helpful tips that will show you how to use blog commenting to increase traffic to your site and accomplish some of the goals you’ve established for yourself.

Tip 1:Make sure you add value. As I spoke of earlier, you want to add valuable points to your comments. If you can find a gap in what was written or if you think you can add to the post, make sure that you comment on it. The higher quality information you can provide, the more you’ll be seen as someone with knowledge of the niche or subject. Remember to be humble and polite in writing your comment so that you won’t come off as an arrogant know – it – all.

Tip 2:Comment as Early as You Can. If you can comment earlier in someone’s blog post, then so much the better. However, if you do it all the time to the same blogs, then you might be seen as some sort of pest.
I only comment early when the post really resonates with me and when I’m real passionate about the subject matter. How do I keep track of the blogs I’m really interested in? I use an RSS Feed Reader that’s hooked up to my Google Chrome browser.

Tip 3: Disagree without Being Disagreeable. I don’t like disagreeing just to disagree, but if I can point out something that goes against the grain, I’ll do it. I talked about this a bit in the Maven persona part of this chapter, but I think it bears repeating.
If you have information or a position that you can take which is contrary to what you’ve been reading, then go ahead point it out. You don’t have to go along with everything you hear on someone’s blog. A little controversy on a subject never hurt anyone, and in some cases, it can actually help sometimes.

Tip 4:Try to Add Some Personality to Your Comments. Hey, just because I’ve laid out a crap-load of rules, doesn’t mean that your writing has to be devoid of your awesome persona. You want to contribute AND influence others, and it’s rather hard to do that while acting like a piece of cardboard. There is no harm in adding some humor, excitement, and passion in your writing and comments.
I’ve read quite a few blog posts in the past and I can tell you from experience that I mostly remember the one’s that got me fired up and excited.

Tip 5:Format your posts if you can. I like to space out my phrases and sentences quite a bit because I know that people get an overwhelming feeling when they read a comment section and it looks like 7 or 8 highly dense paragraphs. When I write a comment, I like to only write sections that have 4 lines at the most, unless it’s a bullet-point section.
I usually write about two lines and then space them out, write a sentence, then space again, much like a standard blog post. This will make it so much easier on the reader’s eyes and yours as well.
How to Totally Wreck Your Blog Commenting Efforts
Here are some tips on what NOT to do when commenting on blog posts that you need to know. (Now you can’t say you were never warned…)

Tip 1:Always Being The First to Comment. You don’t be perceived as a guru-wannabe. There’s nothing more annoying than being one of the first to comment every single time. As a matter of fact, you may want to NOT comment every single time your favorite blogger posts. You don’t want to overdo it because it’s annoying and can be a royal pain in the butt.

Tip 2:Trying to Leave Short Spam Comments. You should never do this, but I see people doing it all of the time. You should never write a real short comment and then leave a link to your site. First of all, you’ll probably get ignored and second, nobody will follow your stinking link. As a matter of fact, it’s hard enough to get people to follow you when you’re laying out super high-quality comments and content. So don’t fool yourself and think for a nanosecond that you’ll do any value marketing by using such a tactic.

Tip 3: Not Knowing What You’re Talking About and Not Reading the Post.Now, this is almost as annoying as getting spammed. As a matter of fact, I really don’t see too much difference between getting spammed and this, to be honest with you.
Commenting on a post when you really don’t have a clue as to what the heck they’re talking about will get you noticed in a bad way. Either that or you’ll get banned from the site eventually.
The whole strategy behind commenting on blog posts is to show off your expertise and to actually get some insight on the information you’re reading about. So rather than waste everyone’s time with not understanding the post or knowing what you’re talking about is pretty stupid.
Concluding Thoughts on Commenting
Commenting on blog posts won’t give you rock star blogging status, but it should be a part of your marketing mix. It would probably be a good idea to keep a schedule of who and when you’re going to comment on blogs, so that you can keep track of where and how much commenting that you’re doing.
Commenting will make it easier for you to make connections in the future, as well as help you gain some authority on your subject matter. Commenting done in the right blogs at the right time can help your site gain traffic as well as help you build your marketing list.
Follow these guidelines as well as you can and you’ll be able to build a solid reputation that will last you for years.

Chapter 9 - Setting Goals for Blogging You Can Achieve Quickly
It’s amazing how many people will put the cart before the horse on their blogs. They’ll actually start blogging before they have any idea as to why they’re doing it.
How do I know so much about this?
Because I did it like that for years like a stupid idiot, that’s how I know so much about it. Without having any stated goals as your guide to blogging, you’re doomed at the start. If you go online and look at the stats on how many new blogs are created and fail each year you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
“There Are About 164 Million Blogs In The World And 50% Of Them Are Inactive.”
~ Social Triggers

The Reason Why You’ve Got to Set Goals for Blogging
When I started my first business on the Internet around 1998, there weren’t very many blogs around. All of the sites that I had built were static HTML and you had to learn that language to build a webpage. I had started an online embroidery business called Ellistrations which was basically an ecommerce site.
Even though I eventually used an HTML editor called Dreamweaver which made the job of using it easier, it was still a tedious process to build and maintain a website. I remember reading an article that there was a thing called a blog which was going to revolutionize the Internet, and I thought, “Yeah, right!” Little did I realize how big the blogging revolution was going to become.
Thanks to the intervention of blog platforms like WordPress and Blogger, anyone can set up a blog and start up a business in no time. I have very limited talent when it comes to online programming, and I’ve personally literally set up a blog in less than 25 minutes.
Note: If you don’t already have a blog, I’ve gone through the entire process of setting up a blog in a previous chapter called, “How to Set up Your Blog in 7 Easy Steps”.
Getting a Blog is Fast and Easy…And That’s Just the Problem
Because starting and running a blog is pretty easy, a lot of people think that they can just log in and start making vast sums of money. If you’ve been doing business on the Internet for more than 5 minutes, you’ll know what a joke that idea is. Just like any other business, you’ll need a plan and the proper tools to get the job done. If you’re new to blogging or stuck in your progress to create a REAL online business, then this post should help you out tremendously. So you’ll need the tools, blogging knowledge, and goals to move your online business forward.
Before you do anything, you’ll need clearly defined goals. I can tell you from experience that without clear blogging goals, and a defined blogging strategy, your business efforts are doomed from the start.

3 Very Good Reasons to Have Planned-Out Strategies for Blogging
Having blogging goals is super important if you’re really serious about your business because it will do three specific things for you.
1. It will immediately tell your readers what your niche and market focus is.
2. It will draw in the crowd that’s most likely to do business with you.
3. By having stated goals, it’ll be much easier to create content.
So let’s go into each one of these goals and use them in real world examples.

Telling Your Readers about Your Niche and Focus
I’m a copywriter by trade, and my focus is copywriting and blogging, so when I sat down to decide which goals were important to my blog I made a list that looked something like this:
Goal #1: Have prospects book my services and hire me.
Goal #2: Have prospects set up a free consultation.
Goal #3: Have prospects inquire about my services.
Goal #4: Get interested visitors on my mailing list.
As you can see, I prioritized my list from my most important goals to my least. Now, whenever I start writing, those main goals are fresh are in my mind.
For example, Goal #1 – “Have prospects book my services and hire me”. The main goal with my blog is to get people interested enough to come to my blog, read my material and hire me as a copywriter.
When I sit down to write a blog post about copywriting or blogging, that goal is in the forefront of my mind. I have to think specifically about what would be important to prospects that are looking for help on their blogs, or in the realm of advertising copy.
I also have to think about the other 3 goals as they apply to my content and site. This is a huge help in the creation of valuable content to my prospects, subscribers and clients.

Top Priorities for All Serious Bloggers
When it comes to writing your posts or content, your goals, niche, and reader’s interests will be your guide. However, almost every blog will need a blogging tool kit to meet the goals and objectives that you’ve set forth.
Here is a list of essentials for any blogger that wants to make a big splash online.
Tool #1 ― Email Responder. Email marketing is huge. Almost every online marketer knows the value of collecting and using email addresses. So, you’re going to need a way to collect email addresses and send out professional messages to your subscribers.
There are loads of email services to choose from, but the top 4 are Aweber,Get Response,Mail Chimp, and Constant Contact. In my humble opinion, Mail Chimp offers the best email responder service for new bloggers, because it’s free to use up to the first 1000 or so emails you collect. It takes quite some time to build up an email list, so this is great for budding online bloggers and entrepreneurs.
Tool #2 ―Hello Bar. This is a great way of collecting email addresses! Let’s say you’re already using an auto responder like AWeber and you want to make sure that you’re collecting as many email addresses as possible.
Hello Bar is a pop up tool that you can easily add to your site. Once you add Hello Bar it will automatically pop up with your irresistible offer. The thing I like about this tool is the ease in which you can set it up. You can designate exactly where your pop up will open, what it will say and in the colors you designate it to pop up in. Another great thing about this tool is that it keeps simple metrics on how many people have looked at your pop-up offer.
Tool #3 ― Google Analytics. You can get this tool for free from Google so that you can see how many people are coming to your site. The thing about Google Analytics that bugs me is that it’s got a lot of highly technical information. Unless you’re a highly skilled or educated webmaster, you probably won’t understand most of it.
I only use the basics like how many people that have visited my site, duration on site, and bounce rate. But if you can learn how to read and interpret the rest of the info Google Analytics gives you, more power to you.
Tool #4― Stat Counter. If you find Google Analytics too challenging, then perhaps you can use Stat Counter. Like Google Analytics, Stat Counter will tell you how many people are going to your site, where they came from, and other interesting information.
Even though I prefer Stat Counter to Google Analytics, I find it’s much easier to read and it’s on my level of understanding. So if you want a simpler traffic counter to look at, go to Stat Counter. It too has a free version that you can use, and I’ve been using it for years without paying a dime.
Tool #5― Social Media Feather. This is a plugin that will allow your users to come to your site and share your content very easily by merely pressing a button. You can get this tool very easily if you have a WordPress blog. It’s what is known as a WordPress Plugin and it literally took me under 3 minutes to install.
A Word about WordPress Plugins…
If you’re kind of new to blogging, then you may not have heard of WordPress Plugins. Plugins are plug-n-play tools that make WordPress so easy to use. Basically, Plugins are WordPress applications that allow you to do certain things, like add pictures to your sidebars or help you to optimize your blog posts for search engines like Google.
There are literally thousands of these applications online, and most of them are totally free. Here’s a site where you can view a list of the Most Popular Word Press Plug-Ins.
Considering the vast number of tools at your disposal, you’ll probably want to only use a handful of them. Let’s face it, there’s only so many hours in a day, and if you’re a writer you can’t spend a ton of time using too many of marketing tools. A good idea is to try to NOT let them distract you from your writing, marketing, and clients.
The big problem with Internet Marketing is that it has all sorts of distractions and things to grab your attention. You’ll need to stay focused on getting your writing done. Here’s another tool that you can get that’ll help you stay focused and on track: Write or Die 2.
Your Blogging Strategy Will Kill You or Make You Stronger
Once you have all of your tools and have decided on the main goals you want to focus on, it’s time to start writing. (Hopefully, you haven’t wasted too much time worrying about what niche or market to go into. I don’t want to minimize the importance of your decision, but you don’t want to stall your attempts to get started too much.)
If you don’t have a clue as to what you should write about, take a look at Chapter 7 on how to find great blog post ideas.

Factors That’ll Determine Your Blogging Success
I’ve read a ton of posts and books on the subject of blogging and if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times, excellent content is KEY!
Because content competition is fierce, you will need to produce the best content possible to stay ahead of the pack, no matter what niche you decide to go into. But what constitutes good content on a blog these days? Believe it or not, there’s been a ton of research online that you can access and check that will give you a good idea as to what you’ll need to do to make it in the blogging world.
Factor 1 – Knowing and Understanding the Structure Of a Good Blog Post. Just like copywriting, you’ll need to understand how a blog post is structured. (Please see Chapter 4.)
Factor 2 – Make your posts SEO friendly. Without going into too much depth here, you’ll want to make sure that your posts are using keywords that are relevant to what people are searching for. (Please refer to Chapter 11.) You’ll need to use a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Plannerto find the words and phrases that people are using in their searches. You’ll want to include those keywords in your title, (which will automatically place it into your URL) subheadlines, and body copy.
You don’t want to use your keywords too much, because you’ll get penalized by the Search Engine Gods for it. Just use them naturally and in some of the places I talked about above.
Factor 3 – Post Length. Posts that are rather short don’t get the same traction as longer posts do. As a matter of fact, posts that are more than 2000 words get usually get ranked higher on the Internet than short posts do. This isn’t to say that shorter posts are never successful, because that’s not always the case. Two good examples of this are Seth Godin’s blog that has many posts that are usually under 500 words per post, versus Neil Patel’s QuickSprout Blog that usually has posts in the 3000 to 5000 word range.
My personal take on this is if you can write a really good 500 word post a day and that’s all your business will allow you the time to do, then so be it.
It almost always boils down to the type of business you’re in. If you’re a musical instrument repairman and are using your blog posts to generate local interest in a geographic area for your bricks and mortar business, you won’t need to blog as much as a business that is Internet focused. So, if you’re a writer that wants to land a lot of clients online, then you’ll probably want to blog as much as you can as often as you can.
Factor 4 – Promoting Your Blog. You’ll need to promote your blog as much as you can and there are tons of ways you can do so. As a matter of fact, promoting your blog is just like marketing, you can use as many different ways as you like to get your blog posts in front of you audience.
Get Busy Blogging or Get Busy Dying
I think I’ve given you enough blogging ideas and food for thought to fill up your brain for now. I hope I've convinced you that you really need to set goals for blogging that you can achieve. The main thing that you need to do is to take action ― persistent and consistent action. If you really want to gain the online attention that’ll translate into revenue for your business you’ll invest the time and effort in learning these strategies and factors.
What To Do If You’re Not Getting Any Traffic
Are you feeling depressed that your blog isn’t getting any traffic? The feeling that you’re on the wrong track, is clearly verified by the low numbers in your stats. You’ve been blogging for almost four months now, and the only comments you’ve gotten are in the spam file. So you start slacking up. You’re not posting as much as you were at the onset, and now you’re looking at other ways to make money on the Internet.
You can’t understand where you went wrong, and you’re getting confused about what to do. You took several expensive blogging courses online, and initially you followed their advice to the letter. Now, not only are you depressed, but you’re out a bunch of money too.
You’re starting to get the idea that you were taken by another slick info marketer who sold you a bogus dream. Don’t give up yet dear blogger, because the solution to your problem is a very simple one.
Consistency and Commitment Could Be the Culprit
For some reason, most people don’t plan their online marketing efforts as seriously as their offline efforts. In order to start any type of business that you expect to make money with, you must have a plan ― either a business plan, marketing plan, or both. (If I had to pick one of the two, I would at least pick a marketing plan, because that is the cornerstone of almost all of your marketing efforts.)
A decent marketing plan would have you positioned in a niche properly, help you decide which marketing tools to use, and give you a real good idea of what direction to take your business. It would also demand that you commit yourself to your plan and work it every single day.
Considering the fact that you’ve decided to use blogging as a marketing tool to generate traffic to your business, you need to be committed to posting as much as possible and marketing those posts every single day, long term.
Blogging Must be Done Every Day without Fail
As a business, blogs have a much higher failure rate than restaurants. Of the estimated 170 million blogs out there, only 8 million of them have been updated in the last 3 months.
The reason for this failure rate revolves around planning and commitment. Since most Internet marketers and bloggers don’t take the time to actually sit down and figure out an actual plan, sooner or later they give up. However, if you’ve taken the time to read any marketing books on the subject, you’ll find out rather quickly that any marketing plan requires an element of time.
Jay Conrad Levinson, the author of Guerilla Marketingpoints out in his book that anyone who thinks they’re going to start making money without a good marketing plan in place is doomed to failure. This is especially true for people that are using blogging as one of the weapons in their marketing arsenal. If you’re really going to use a blog as a marketing tool, blogging must be done consistently and persistently.
And by the way, if you’re only using one marketing tool or your marketing plan isn’t diversified, you’re playing with fire. Years ago when Google changed its algorithm, vast fortunes were lost. That was because the people that lost their shirts were only using their websites as a marketing vehicle. If they had used a diverse online and offline strategy to market their wares, they would have had other systems and channels in place that could have taken up the slack. But, because they never collected email addresses, physical addresses, or built a strong online/offline presence through video, direct mail newsletters, or article sites, etc. they lost their market share and in many cases, their businesses!
How to Blog Every Day in 6 Steps
If you really want to commit yourself to blogging as a major part of your marketing plan, you need to come up with a procedure. You’ll need a way to blog without getting burned out and to help you stay motivated and focused. Here are 6 steps to blogging that I’ve found useful in using blogging on a persistent and consistent basis.

Step 1: Prepare Your Work Area for Maximum Productivity!
One of the best things you can do to increase your blogging productivity and avoid distractions, is to make sure that your work area is completely cleared and organized. Not only do you want to keep your computer area clear, but you’ll also want to make sure that your Windows desktop doesn’t have any distracting games or Internet browser tabs open.
Many times, people leave open 15 or so tabs on their browser before going to bed, and when they get up they start reading email messages and checking out friends on Facebook. You’ll be tempted right out the starting gate to do other things that aren’t relevant to your work. So if you are going to leave tabs open, make sure they are relevant to the post that you’ll be writing.
I like to do a lot of research on the front end of my projects, so I’ll read online articles and information before doing any writing. If it’s online material that I need, I’ll try to leave those tabs open from the night before for quick referencing the next morning.

Step 2: Get Away From Other Distractions
Here are some quick and easy ways to get away from common distractions when you’re trying to write:
● Shut down all tabs on your Internet browser that don’t relate to your writing.
● Turn off your cell phone.
● Kick the dogs outside.
● Try to focus on just the task at hand. (If you are multitasking and trying to do a wide variety of tasks, your writing will reflect that fact and you’ll lose your focus. You must get rid of every type of distraction that you can possibly think of so you can start writing.)

Step 3: Time Your Writing Sessions
A lot of writers are now using a technique called the Pomodoro Technique. Basically, this is a time management tactic that will help your productivity and keep you from getting burned out. All you have to do to use this technique is set your timer (I like to use the Google Timer) to 25 minute segments while you are writing. Once the timer runs out and signals you, you’ll take a break for about 5 minutes and do something totally unrelated to writing.
Get some water…
Hit the bathroom…
Consider the national deficit…
Once the 5 minutes are up, you’ll reset the timer again and resume your writing for another 25 minutes. Rinse and repeat. I personally use this tactic, and 25 minutes really seems to fly by fast. The best part: You don’t feel burned-out or tired, even after you’ve done 3 or 4 of these sessions!

Step 4: Set a Limit on Your Writing
If you try to write for long stretches of time until you’re exhausted, you’ll burn-out very fast. Not only that, but you’ll eventually start writing crap, get distracted, and start looking for other things to do besides finishing your post. So limit yourself on how much you’re going to write, and stick to it. You’ll eventually see that not only are you able to get just as much work done, but you’ll do much better, high-quality work.

Step 5: Try to Outsource Some of the Tasks
Writing decent blog posts can be a real time-suck, so if you can get someone to help you with some of the other aspects of your business it will be a big help. As I mentioned before, blogging should be only one part of your marketing mix. If you want to share your posts on social media and get the word out, wouldn’t it be much easier to have someone do it for you?
For example, how about hiring someone to make your images for your blog posts? The easiest way for you to get these menial tasks done is by hiring or outsourcing someone to do these tasks for you. You can easily find someone to do these tasks for you cheaply by going on sites like Fiverr or Elance. I personally hire college, high school or relatives to help me with these menial chores and it saves me tons of time.

Step 6: Always Take Time Out for Family and Friends
If you’re working all of the time and you aren’t spending any time with friends and family, you’re doing this all wrong. Several times I’ve sat in first class sections of airline jets next to millionaires on my travels, and I usually hear the same lament from them, “I wish I had spent more time with my family and friends.”
They never told me they wished they had more money, or better houses, or cars, they almost always wished they had spent more time with family and friends. So my personal advice is to make sure you spend quality time with those that mean the most to you.
Hopefully this chapter will help you establish goals and give you direction as to how to actually realize your blogging goals. Even if you follow just a few of these steps, you’ll be well ahead of bloggers that are just randomly writing. So, sit down and write out a few now, while you have a few fresh in your mind; you can always come back later and finish your schedule and add more goals as you digest some of this chapter.

Chapter 10 - The Field Guide to Guest Blogging
One of the best ways you can quickly get targeted traffic and people of influence linking to your site are by guest posting. Even though you’re guest posting on someone else’s blog, you’ll still need to make sure that you put just as much care into your guest posts as you do into your own blog posts.
The reason for this is simple: you are building your reputation ―not only with the audience but also with the blog owner. This is an asset that can serve you for years to come.
In this section, I’m going to show you how to get other bloggers to accept you as a guest writer, and then how to submit a proposal to them that will enable you to write for their blog.

Getting Started with Guest Posting
You’ll want to keep track of the sites that you’re targeting in your niche. The best way to do that is either with a Microsoft Word document using a table grid, or an easier way would be by using an Excel spreadsheet.
You’re going to want to keep spreadsheets on the different sites, their URL’s, posting guidelines, and how many words they generally use in their posts, etc.

How to Target Blogs to Write Guest Posts For
Many blogs and bloggers don’t accept guest posters. And while some say they do, they still make it darn hard to contact them for some reason. As you’ve already figured out, if the blog or the blogger is an online authority, it will probably be harder to approach them and get them to accept you as a guest poster. I’m not saying that it’ll be impossible, but it won’t be easy either.
There are all sorts of blogs that do want guest posters, and if you know how to find them, you have a pretty good shot of getting your post on their blog. So, how do you find blogs and sites to write for?

Finding Blogs to Write For
It’s really not hard to find them if you know how. The easiest way is to Google this phrase: “Blogs that accept guest posts”. Here’s a list of the sites that popped up when I hit the “Enter” key after submitting that phrase:
Guest Post Tracker– This is a site that has a list of 928 blogs that allow guest posts. This site also provides a service that helps you track and approach those blogs. Of course, you’ll have to at least give them a name and an email address to get to use some of the services and there are also upgrades that you have to pay for.
Peter Sandeen’s Site– Peter Sandeen is an online marketing specialist, and he’s compiled a list of 140 sites that he thinks are pretty sweet for guest bloggers. He’s managed to put in his 2 cents on why he thinks these sites are great for guest posting. This means that he’s taken the time to check out and evaluate these sites.
The Shout Me Loud Blog– This resource has about 40 blogs that are about blogging and accept guest bloggers. This is a great site for those of you that are bloggers and like writing about it.
The Web Marketing Saga Blog– This blog states, “Get the Most Out Of Your Blog” and it certainly tries to live up to its theme. The owner of this blog, Andre Dubois, lays out an organized list of 386 blogs that he has deemed as worthy of approaching.
Easy M6– This site has an ultimate list to guest blogging, but I would probably say that there are a lot of sites that say they have an “ultimate guide”. (Just take that with a grain of salt.)
Another great way to find blogs to write posts for is to use a search engine and keywords and phrases. (These are also known as “search strings”.) Here’s a list of some of the phrases that you can use:
“Business Blog + write for us”
“Marketing + write for us”
“Info Marketing + write for us”
“Motivation + write for us”
“Health + write for us”
So, whatever keywords that’ll be relevant to your niche will be the keywords or phrases you’ll type in. For example, if you’re in the golfing niche, you can type in:
“Golfing + write for us” or “Golfing + guest post” or even “Guest Posting Guidelines for Golfing Blogs”
Usually when you use the “Guest Posting Guidelines” you’ll be treated to a list of pages that look similar to this:
Figure 10.1

There are quite a few ways to find guest posting sites and you can play around with Google or another search engine of choice and try different keyword strings or phrases.
There are also other resources that you can try that will help you find blogs in your niche. One of them was the Blog Search Engine.
I tried this resource out and used the string format I tried before.
“Golf + Guest Post” turned up quite a few sites that were different from Google’s. I can’t say how long the Blog Search Engine will be around, hopefully it’s one of those Google based engines that has the search engine giant’s blessing; in the past it seems that there are quite a few blog resources that Google didn’t like and aren’t around anymore.

Bearing Down On Your Most Promising Blogs
Once you’ve got a good, solid list of blogs that you can start approaching, you will need to take a look at their status because there are a lot of blogs out there that aren’t worth targeting. You’re going to need blogs that are getting good traffic. Even though the backlinks are nice to get from a higher authority site, the traffic you’ll get from those blogs will be so much more important and better for your mission.

Looking At Traffic Numbers
One of the things that you can easily do is look at a blog’s traffic numbers. However, I want to offer a word of caution. Looking at a site’s numbers can be rather deceptive. You can have a load of people going to a site, but if they’re merely going there to look at it for a few seconds and then leave, then those numbers aren’t going to mean a heck of a lot. (When people go to your site for a few seconds and then leave is called “bouncing” in SEO terms. One of the numbers you need to keep an eye on in your stats is the bounce rate. If your site’s bounce rate is 90% you’ve got a serious content or targeted traffic problem that needs fixing.)
Just recently, there was a site that offered free analysis of your site’s SEO and as you waited for the information to process, you had an opportunity to play a simple little game. As it turned out, a lot of people liked playing the game and were returning to play it instead of using the site’s services.
So sure, there were a bunch of people going back to the site, but they were only going there to have fun with a simple game. I’m sure that the site owner was thrilled with the returning traffic numbers until he figured out that people were going back to merely play the game on his site.
A Very Easy Way to Check a Site’s Traffic
A super easy way to check out blog or website’s traffic is to use an online site that has become an industry standard ― Alexa. Alexa will give you an overview of how popular a site is as well as if traffic has increased or decreased on a particular site of the last couple of years.
Another site that you can use to check traffic and other data is Similar Web. Similar Web is very much like Alexa but it offers you tips on how you can improve your rankings underneath each section of the data.
A Word of Caution about Traffic Sites
If you get curious and decide to check your blog’s or site’s traffic out on each of these data sites ―then expect to be disappointed.
These sites only display the significant websites and blogs that are online. So, if you decide to check out your site and don’t see any data listed you may get discouraged.

Don’t get discouraged!
You need to focus on creating an audience that is addicted to your site and what it has to offer. I know of an online businessman that was making great money selling information products. His rankings on sites like Alexa were non-existent. However, he sold loads of products through different sites like eBay, Amazon and his own sales pages, so he was doing fine.
A Lesson from the Tank
The main idea for most bloggers is to make money eventually. And even when you’re making money, you still have to watch all of your expenses. If you’ve ever watched the ABC TV show Shark Tank, you’ll see people that have sold millions of dollars in products that they have created. Sounds impressive, right? Yet, many times these budding entrepreneurs aren’t taking a dime of it home. They either took out too many loans, or the products they’re selling cost way more to make than what they’re able to sell them for.
What good is all of that work if you’re not taking any of that money to the bank? As I said before, keep everything in perspective. If you check your site’s rankings and they aren’t what you’d like them to be, don’t worry about it too much. If you’re working your blogging strategy diligently, then eventually all of your hard work will pay off.
Better Ways of Determining a Site or Blog’s Traffic
Back in Chapter 2 I wrote about how to investigate different niches that you could build different businesses in. What I pointed out in that chapter was the fact that you could find out the popularity of a subject or niche by looking at Amazon’s best seller list, and then checking out the books that were popular in the different subject nonfiction categories.
If you find a couple of books on Amazon that have a lot of comments on them, then you’ll have a good idea of whether your subject matter or niche is a good idea. If a bunch of people took the trouble and time to buy a book, and then went back onto Amazon’s site to leave a comment, chances are it was a pretty good book and subject, right?
It’s the same idea with a blog. If a crap-load of people took the time and trouble to go onto someone’s blog and write comments, chances are the blog is a pretty good one.
This is better than just checking traffic because it indicates that people aren’t just visiting the blog ― they are also ENGAGED!
Engagement is more important than traffic any day. Engagement means that there is a tribe, a herd, a committed group of people that will return again and again to your site. They like what you’re saying and will buy into your offer, probably without reservation. So when you start checking out the blogs in your niche to write for, take a good look at the comments section.
Usually, a lot of comments means there’s quite a bit of traffic to the blog or site anyway, because out of every 200 people to a site, there is usually one comment. Another thing you can ascertain about studying a blogs comments is how the comments are maintained.
Blogs get a lot of spammers to their sites that post their stupid spam comments and then leave a link. If a blog is run haphazardly then you’ll see the spam comments left. This usually means that the blogger isn’t really paying attention, and therefore the blog is probably not a good one to target for guest posting.
Advanced Comment Research
If the blog looks like a good one with great comments and solid traffic, then you may want to take notes on what the audience is really talking about. Once you start writing your guest blog posts, you’ll have a good idea as to what problems and aspirations the readers are concerned with. Then you can easily write posts that will address the needs of the blog’s audience.
Check for Author Biographies
Another thing that you’ll definitely want to check for on your target blogs is author biographies. If you don’t see a place on the blog that has a space dedicated to the guest posters, then you may want to look elsewhere.
At the very least, the guest post section should contain the following:
1. The author bio should have the bio section on the same page as the post, if possible. Very few people will click through to a link on another page to read a bio on the author.
2. You should have enough room to write several sentences about yourself so that you could entice readers to visit your site.
3. You need to be able to link to your site and not just a social media page or a LinkedIn account. Your link should also have the option to embed keywords or a descriptive link to your site.
Approaching Guest Post Blogs
Once you’ve targeted the different blogs that you want to write for, now it’s time to approach them with your offer. For some weird reason, people choke at this point. Whether it’s because they hate rejection or they can’t stand the process, they just won’t go through with it.
There are a couple of ways you can handle the fear or anxiety about this problem. First, let me wipe any fear you have about approaching bloggers under the table. Most of the professional people you meet on the Internet are really nice. Many times, they’ll go out of their way to help you get started if they can. So, if you email them your offer to write for their blog, the absolute worst thing that will happen is they will politely say, “No thanks.” I’ve received a bunch of those types of responses in the past and I can tell you that the people I approached were always very polite and cordial.
Did I like getting a response like that? Heck no. Did it stop me from approaching more blog owners? Heck no. As a matter of fact, I make it a point to send out 10 more emails for every “no” I receive. I look at people telling me “no” as if it were fuel to market my offer to even more people!
See how that can work for you?
Another good way to handle the rejection is to think of it as a connection. If an owner of a major blog sends you a polite email back saying he isn’t interested in having you write a post for his blog, then he’s at least looked at and responded to your offer. That means you can write a nice thank you back to Seth and he may remember you later on. He may even go to your site and check you out.
Just because a blog owner or editor has rejected your post, that doesn’t mean that he will never let you write for him. What it usually means is that the offer you’re making isn’t what he or she is looking for at this moment. Also, if you are consistently blogging, you will probably get better at your craft and therefore be able to approach bloggers much more professionally and confidently as time goes on.
A Way to Overcome Your Fear of Pitching Posts
If you’re really paranoid about sending out guest posting pitches, then here’s a couple of ways to get your feet wet and help you get started. If you have any friends that have sites or blogs, try pitching them first. Just make sure that if their blog isn’t in your niche, write for them and don’t request a link to your site. Remember, you want relevant links to your blog.
You can also target lesser known blogs that are dying for more content. Just make sure that if you give them a link back to your site, that the blog isn’t one that violates search engine rules and is relevant to your blog’s content or mission.
The Easiest Way to Approach a Blog Owner
One of the first steps you should take when trying to approach blog owners is to find out what his best posts were. In other words, you want to find out which posts were liked, shared, and commented on the most. The reason why you’ll want to do this is so you can write a post that addresses the blog’s most important issues, and therefore be more compatible with the blog’s content.
Many times, the easiest way to find out what the most popular posts were on a particular blog is to go to it and look at the popular post section on the right side of the blog. Once you find this section, you’ll need to read at least 5 of these posts to get a good idea of what the content is like.
You will need to take these factors into consideration:
Voice ―What kinds of phrases are they using? Are they using slang that college aged people would use? Are they using an academic tone?
Length ―How long are the posts? You don’t want to send a 5000 word post to a blog that only uses 600 word posts only.
Headline Length ― How many characters do the headlines have? Count the characters in about 6 or 7 of the posts and then divide by the number of posts you used headlines from. What was the average number of characters?
Formatting ―Are they using subheads? Are the blog posts written in block paragraphs with indents? Take note of any type of formatting that they are using and try to imitate it in your guest posts.
Guest Posters Biographical Information ―Look at how the biographical information for the guest posters is written. You will want to make sure you send your information to them the same way. Gathering information on the blogs you’re targeting is very important. You need to gather as much information as you can, and take notes on the blog and its posts.
Writing material that reflects the blog will speak volumes to the blog gatekeeper or owner, and possibly get you inside the guest posting door.
Two Options for Contacting Blog Owners
At this point you can take one of two paths. You could either contact the blog owner with an offer to write a post for their blog by email, or you could go ahead and write an entire post for their blog using the information you gathered from studying their site.
If you’re going to pitch them by email, here’s the way to do it: (In the subject window of your email, always let them know why you’re contacting them.)
SUBJECT: Guest posting for your blog (Name the blog. If you know the name of the editor or owner and can place it in the subject area, do so. )
Hi, (Name of owner/gatekeeper)
I’ve been a big fan of your site for quite some time now, and I’d like to write a guest post for your blog.
I’ve done quite a bit of research on the most popular posts your blog has had published as well as what your readers are really interested in.
Here are some ideas I came up with that I think will be of interest to your readers:
(List about 3 or 4 headlines here, each on a separate line.)
Headline
Headline
Headline
I’ve already written quite a few posts for other blogs and if you’d like to check them out, here are a few links that I’m sure you’d be interested in:
Link
Link
Link
(If you don’t have too many posts online yet, skip the last part and go straight to the call to action.)
I’m sure you have a post or two that needs to be written waiting in the wings, so please contact me as soon as possible and I’ll get started on another great post for your excellent blog.
Thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
(Your name)
(Your blog or website address if you have one)
Of course, you can rewrite this email to your suiting, but make it short and polite. Most online entrepreneurs are very busy and won’t have time to engage you at length.

What to do if you don’t Hear Back from Them
If you don’t hear back from the blog owner, then give it a week or so and send a second email to them that says something like this:
Dear (Name of blog owner if you have it.)
I sent you an email with a proposal to write a post for your blog on it.
I was just checking to see if you had a chance to read it yet. No hurry or anything like that just wanted to touch bases with you to see if you had an opportunity to read and consider it.
Looking forward to hearing from you, and thanks again for your time.
Sincerely,
(Your name and web address)
If you don’t hear back from them again, send them another email in a week or so.

What to do if they Decline Your Offer
If they tell you, “No thanks” send them another short and polite email that says something like this:
Dear (Name of blog owner if you have it.)
Thanks so much for considering my proposal. I would still love to write a post for your blog someday, so please keep me in mind. I may send you another proposal in the future, if you don’t mind.
Thanks so much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
(Your name and web address)
What to do if they have Submission Guidelines
If the blog owners and editors have posted guidelines for blog post submissions, follow those guidelines exactly as they have them posted and submit your work. Usually, it takes a blog owner a while to get back with you even if they’re going to use your post, so be patient! You can always follow up with them a week or two with a short, polite email asking them if they have received your post.
Remember, always be polite and thank them whenever you contact them.

What to do If You Get Rejected
Submitting posts for a popular blog is a challenging task. You will get rejected at some point because that is the nature of this business. However, the rejection rate is far less than traditional publishing was before the Internet came along. So my advice to you is to keep at it and never take it personally. There may be half a dozen reasons why a blog owner does not want to use your post at this time and none of it may be due to whether or not he or she liked your post.
What to Do With Rejected Blog Posts
If you happen to write a decent post and nobody wants to use it, then you have a golden opportunity. You can use that post to promote your business; you can use it on your blog, or you can use it on a site like LinkedIn, Quora, or on a social media channel of your choice.
If you decide to use it on a site like LinkedIn, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content issues on your own site and therefore you can probably post it on a couple sites as well. Another thing you can do with your post is go to lesser known blogs and pitch them as well.
There are bazillions of blogs and blog owners out there, and they are dying for content. As long as they’re in your niche, and a half way decent site, then there’s no reason why they wouldn’t probably give you a shot.

Now it’s Time for You to Go Out There and Nail It!!!
You have all the information you need to go out into the blogging world and start pitching your proposals and posts to blogs. Don’t forget that the more pitches you make to the blogs you’re targeting, the more chances you’ll have for success in this business, so get out there and start pitching.

Chapter 11 ― SEO Basics for Blogging
You may feel overwhelmed and a bit depressed when you read stats on how many people are blogging. Since 2006, there almost 59 million new posts created every month and about 50 million new comments made every day. At last count, there are close to 200 million blogs in existence and more being created each day.
However, according to Technorati, approximately 8% of these blogs have been updated in the last 3 months!

This means that you still have a golden opportunity to stand out among the other blogs because most of what’s being written out there in the blogosphere is pure crap and not written on a regular basis. Most posts are poorly researched, not written concisely, and do not offer readers much value.
As a matter of fact, an overwhelming number of bloggers don’t even consider Search Engine Optimization for their sites or posts. Like most other business ventures, this presents a golden opportunity for people that truly want to use their blogging efforts to generate traffic, create buzz, or make a difference in our world.

Blogging SEO Can Appear Confusing ― But It’s Necessary
One of the chores of blogging is getting posts optimized for search engines like Google and Yahoo! This one aspect of blogging alone is cause for many bloggers to cease their efforts or freeze in their tracks. If you don’t optimize your posts so that others can find you, then you will be sabotaging your blogging efforts right out the starting gate.
The good news is Search Engine Optimization does not have to be confusing.
If you’re confused by what exactly Search Engine Optimization is, a simplified way of looking at it would be, “Any legitimate means of attracting traffic to your site.”
If you make it a routine to follow a basic pattern of simple steps, you can make your blogging SEO so much easier and less threatening. Hopefully by the end of this chapter, you won’t feel quite so intimidated by SEO for your blog posts and be able to easily create the type of optimized posts that will help you bring in loads of traffic for your site.

Top of Form
Simplifying the Challenge of SEO
When most people think about SEO, they start thinking about all sorts of complicated programming and coding that needs to be done in order to get the job done. And while many of the high earning blogs on the Internet do hire specialists to take care of stuff like that, the average blogger can still make an impact with a few simple tools.
SEO isn’t just about adding the right amount of keywords on a webpage, but it’s also about using tools that are easily available to everyone that takes the time to use them.
Here are a couple of tools that should be in your blogging toolbox:

Video – Anyone with a cheap video camera and an inexpensive piece of video editing softwarecan make their own high quality videos.
Videos that are well made can easily be found online, thus increasing your traffic, which is why I’ve included this in your SEO list of tools.
I made a video years ago called “Facebook for Beginners” as a college project for a class I was taking, and that one video brought in a ton of traffic. When I made the video, I had no intention of gaining traffic. All I wanted was an “A” from my professor. Go figure!
Once you make your video, you can easily upload it to YouTube, Vimeo and a host of other video sharing sites. I would recommend that you take your time, plan out your video, and make a high quality one. Everybody seems to be turning out crap, so if you are on topic and have a great video that offers value, you should be able to generate interest and get some traffic from it.
Podcasts – In case you don’t know what a podcast is, the best way to describe it is to think of it as a radio talk show. You can either record yourself, or a guest that you invite on to your “show”. Once you’re done recording your podcast, you can upload it to your site so that other people can listen and download it too.
If you have a good pod cast, you’ll get …Traffic!
Just like video, it is getting extremely easy to create a podcast these days. In order to create a decent one, you’ll have to either use an online service, buy cheap software, or check around to see if you can find a free way to make a podcast.

Pictures – If you can learn how to make your own graphics for your blog posts you can easily help your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
One of the easiest ways for you to create graphics is to use a site I like to use called Venngage. (If you Google it, make sure you type in two “n’s”.)
Venngage is so easy to use you’ll be able to create cool graphics in no time. Just to show you how easy it is to make an infographic, I made a video that explains how to use Venngage in clear, easy steps.
Check it out:
Once you’ve created your graphic or picture, all you have to do is post it to your blog and encode it with an “alt tag” which takes the better part of two seconds to learn. (WordPress and other blog platforms have easy systems for you to use so that you can encode your picture with a title.)

Getting Links
One of the best ways you can get search engines to notice you is to have good, quality links from sites that are valuable. Sites that are authority sites in their particular niche are what you want and those niches must be relevant to yours.
Years ago, if you got any site to link to yours it would move you way up in the search engines. So, Internet marketers started doing all sorts of shady things to get people to link to their sites. Buying links, selling links, lying, cheating, stealing…you know, that sort of thing.
Then Google put the hammer down and it hurt…really hurt. Vast fortunes were lost, especially for businesses that were purely Internet based. Many of the businesses that were doing everything they could to get links were wiped out in a nanosecond. And believe me, the wailing and gnashing of teeth was quite real.
No longer could you merely buy, sell, and trade links. Your site, business, and savvy had to attract relevant links from reputable businesses. Relevant links to your site is still one of the most powerful and important ways you can optimize your site for search engines, and knowing how to get them will attract all sorts of traffic.
However, if your site is poor quality, and your blog posts aren’t written very well, it’s going to be hard to get people to link to your site. So making sure that you have good quality content is a must.
Types of Links
There are two basic types of links that you are going to be using, incoming links and outgoing links.

Outgoing ― Just like linking in, you’ll want to make sure that the links you create and point to other sites are relevant to what you are talking about. You don’t want to just link out to a ton of people on one blog post because Google will be aware of it and in fact, many search engines are aware of the fact that some people are linking out and trying to gain attention from other blogs. They will penalize you for it.
Here’s why that doesn’t work anyway…
Years ago, I wrote a blog post on electric bikes, and I pointed a link towards a site representing the magazine called Mother Earth News. A couple of days later, I got a real nice email from the editor of the magazine, thanking me for linking to their site.
As it turns out the editor was able to check online to see who was linking to their site and when she checked my post out, thanked me and gave me a link back to my site, thus helping out the SEO for my site. Bearing in mind that this is a professional editor, able to tell good writing from horrible writing, it would have really SUCKED if I had written a crappy post.
I wouldn’t have gotten a link from a great magazine, and I wouldn’t have gotten the attention of a pro editor at an awesome magazine. So, the lesson here is: make sure that your links are to quality sites and that they are relevant.

Incoming Links
These kinds of links are probably the most important part of your linking strategy. You want people from good quality, authority sites linking to you. This will tell the search engines that you have good content so that sites that have authority will want to link to yours. A blog that is new, inactive, and has poorly written content will not fare very well with generating links from other sites. For one thing, good quality sites have a REPUTATION to maintain. So if you’re producing rubbish, they won’t link to you.
Secondly, search engines like Google maintain rankings of sites, so a site that has a low rating because it’s new or inactive will not look good to Google if you link to it. There are many ways to get links to your site, from commenting on blogs to actually sending requests to site owners asking for a link. But just to make sure we’re clear on this, if your site stinks nobody decent will link to it, plain and simple.
(If you really want to read some excellent advice on this, read Michael Bluejay’s webpage called, “Why Your Link Request Failed”.)
Effective Ways of Getting Links to Your Site
Guest Blogging – One of the absolute best ways to get links pointed to your blog while getting loads of traffic is to do guest posting on authority sites. If you’re going to use this method of generating links and traffic, you’ll need to study and learn all about the blog or blogs that you’re trying to write for.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is find the blogs that allow guest posting. Once you find out where the blogs are that allow guest posts you’ll want to carefully read the blogs submission guidelines to see what the requirements are for posting to these sites.
In addition to looking at the guest posting guidelines, you’ll want to also study the blog’s different characteristics like the voice, most popular topics, and slang used. Little things like that will go a long way in getting your foot in the door of your target blog’s posting door.
Commenting on Blogs― This is a good way to get noticed on blogs that have authority. If you time your comments and vary the length of comments just right you may get noticed by one of the big boys in the blogging field.
Just to give you a good idea of how you can stand out in the crowd, if you go to a popular blog post and see that there are very short comments left by everyone on the post, you could do some extra research on the subject and write a longer, more detailed comment than everyone else. Many times there aren’t many comments because the subject matter is more complicated than what other people are willing to pay attention to or comment on, and that could be your golden opportunity. You could easily research the post material and write a mini blog post in the comment section adding additional valuable information to the post.
If you do this and do it well, you will get noticed!
On the other hand, if you notice everyone is making long comments, perhaps a shorter one will get you noticed.
No matter what commenting technique that you decide to try, only pick 2 or 3 blogs to frequent and comment on. There’s only so much time in the day, and you’ll drive yourself nuts trying to comment on 30 different blogs frequently.
The other reason to comment on a blog is to get what is known as “link juice” from that site. Usually when you post a comment the blog will allow you to link from their site to yours. However, some blogs won’t let you get credit for linking from their sites to yours by using a coding thing called a “nofollow” tag on your link. They do that because they don’t want to lose their authority by linking to a site that isn’t too good or important.
However, there are sites that do allow you to get link juice from their blogs, and you can get the list of those sites here: Blogs That Allow You To Get Link Juice!
(Note: some of these sites are outdated and are no longer in existence. So, you may get a dead end from some of the links on this site. Another thing worth mentioning is that if the blog you’re commenting on doesn’t fit in your niche, you may want to skip it.)
Blog Post Keyword Research ― In order to rank higher in the search engines for your post subject, you’ll need to do keyword research and then optimize your posts for those keywords.
This sounds more complex than it actually is, so I’ll give you a breakdown of how to do it in simple steps:
1. Use a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to research the best keywords for your subject.
2. After you’ve compiled a list of keywords to work with, see if you can combine those keywords into short titles for your blog. This will give you an opportunity to create what are known as long-tailed keywords.
3. Once you’ve created some long-tailed keywords check with a keyword tool like the Keyword Planner to see if there are some long-tailed keywords listed there that you can use in your title and a few times in your post.
4. Try to use those keywords naturally in your post. Don’t worry about how many times you need to use them, just keep them in your mind as you write and use them only when you need to.
If you follow those basic rules, you’ll be ahead of the majority of the bloggers out there.
Submit Yourself to the SEO Rule of Submitting
If you want to get maximum exposure to your blog, submitting your blog to blog directories is an excellent way to do it. There are several reasons why you’ll want to do this:
1. You may be able to get a different audience to take a look at your blog, rather than waiting for social media or a similar ship to come in.
2. Sometimes the traffic that comes from blog directories are very targeted.
3. Many of the links from directories will give you links to your site that are “dofollow” links.
An easy way to get more traffic is to submit to blog directories. Here is a great list of directories that you can submit to: The Blog Directory Submission List.
Here is another list of blog directories that you can submit to: The Other Blog Submission List.
If you’re going to submit to a horde of these blog directories, then I would suggest you open up a Microsoft Word file, or a notepad file and have the following information handy so that you can copy and paste from one of those documents into the fields they will ask you to fill out.
You’ll need:
● The name of your blog
● Your name
● Your blogs web address
● Your email address
● A brief description of your blog
Consistency and Excellence is Key
As I wrote about at the beginning of this post, most blogs on the Internet haven’t been updated in the last 3 months. Only about 7 to 8% of the blogs out on the blogosphere actually hang in there and have been updated regularly.
So, without a clear strategy in place, you’ll get confused, start to wander, and not get your writing done. You’ll need to have a list and a schedule of what you’ll need to do in order to stay organized and focused. Here are a few ideas to help you get you started so that you’ll develop good, consistent writing habits.
Go to www.coachme.com and sign up for a free account. Once you have a free account, you’ll be able to set your writing goals and any other goal you might want to accomplish. Once you set it up, Coach Me will send you email notices every day reminding you that you need to write. So, you’ll log in next and the site will remind you to click a button acknowledging you’ve logged in, and show you how many days in a row you’ve been keeping on track. This will remind you that you need to write on a regular schedule.
If you do something for about 90 straight days, you’ll have developed a deep habit that’ll be much easier to maintain and keep your blog posting intact, placing you in that 8% of consistent and persistent bloggers.
Developing Excellence
If you’re really passionate about your blog posting and writing you will eventually develop your own style and begin to write better and faster. As far as the length of blog posts are concerned, the longer posts seem to get noticed by the search engines better than the short ones. If you are concerned about length, you could shoot for 3000 word posts.
Despite all of the data that indicates longer posts rule the roost, I have seen high ranking blogs spew out great 500 word posts and still rank well. One of the reasons for this is that some of these blogs are churning out a post a day. This is possible because they usually have a group of writers helping them and providing content for them. So unless you’ve got a staff or are willing to pay folks to write for you, you might want to shoot for the longer and less frequent method of writing for your blog posts. But it all boils down to what you’re will to do and the amount of time you have to write your posts.
You need to remember that not only do you need to write consistently, but you need to write high quality posts that offer your readers high value. You will need to find out what exactly they are looking for and try to tailor the posts accordingly.
If you can show your readers how to solve problems, or teach them how to fix a problem in a step by step manner you will have a golden opportunity. Si if you want to take away one thing from this chapter, try to remember that in the world of blogging sometimes slow and steady wins the race.
If you can go out there and write high quality posts with regularity, you’ll have a recipe for success in your blogging efforts.
Citations
Chapter 3 - Finding Your Niche Market
Kennedy, D. S. (2006). The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find your Hook, Communicate Your Message, Make Your Mark. Avon, MA: Adams Business.
(Figure 3.1) Cooper, B. B. (2015). Why building a successful blog takes a long time. Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://blog.ghost.org/slow-blog-building/
Chapter 4 - Writing Killer Blog Headlines
(Figures 4.1 & 4.2)Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing, 2015
https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/53/SOI2015.pdf
Kennedy, D. (n.d.). The Ultimate Referral System. Retrieved June/July, 2016, from https://gkic.com/blog/ultimate-referral-machine-wdtw-122714/?
Morrow, J. (2014). How I Wrote Posts That Touched the Hearts of More Than 5 Million People • Smart Blogger. Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://smartblogger.com/jon-morrow-confession/
Patel, N. (n.d.). 7 Ways to Make Your Brand and Content More Likable. Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/02/03/7-ways-to-make-your-brand-and-content-more-likeable/
Patel, N. (n.d.). Get More From Landing Pages: 6 Ways to Use Them More ... Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/01/29/get-more-from-landing-pages-6-ways-to-use-them-more-effectively/
Patel, N. (n.d.). Mastering Content Marketing: 7 Required Principles for Success. Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/01/11/mastering-content-marketing-7-required-principles-for-success/
Chapter 5 - Subheads 101
Teall, E. N. (1984). New concise Webster's dictionary: Composite edition, especially compiled for home, school, and office use. New York: Modern Promotions.
Schwab, Victor O. How to Write a Good Advertisement; a Short Course in Copywriting. New York: Harper, 1962. Print.
Wilson, Marty. "What I Wish I Knew about the Law of Attraction." Marty Wilsons Blog. Reader's Digest, 2010. Web. 27 June 2016.
Chapter 6 – How to Write Viral Blog Posts
Kennedy, Dan S. The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers, Boost Your Sales. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2006. Print.
Chapter 7 – How to Generate Great Blog Post Ideas
"Dark Custom™ | #RollYourOwn | Harley-Davidson USA." Harley-Davidson. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2016. http://www.harley-davidson.com/content/h-d/en_US/home/motorcycles/darkcustom.html#thebikes
Ellis, Mark. "Make Your Blog Post More Readable Using Venngage and PaintShop." YouTube. ElmoCopy, 2016. Web. 27 June 2016. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwtlU5Yw9r0
Chapter 9 - Setting Goals for Blogging
Halpern, Derek. "Why Bloggers Fail." Social Triggers RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2016. From http://socialtriggers.com/why-bloggers-fail/
Guerrilla Marketing: easy and inexpensive strategies for making big profits from your small business; Jay Levinson - Jeannie Levinson - Amy Levinson - Houghton Mifflin - 2007
Resources
Tools for Setting up Your Blog
Blog Platforms
WordPress
www.WordPress.com
If you are really serious about blogging, this is my first recommendation. Created in 2003, WordPress has become the premier blog platform on the Internet. The reason why it’s so popular is because it is easy to use, professional, and very versatile. Because WordPress’s Plugins are so easy to install and use, you can add all sorts of different functions to your blog with a mere press of a button, thus saving you time and a lot of headaches. It literally takes you mere minutes to add functions like calendars, linked lists, email autoresponders, and social media share buttons just to mention a few.
Not only can you easily install WordPress yourself, but you can very easily change the theme (design) of your blog. There are loads of theme builders and sites dedicated to selling WordPress themes that can be purchased inexpensively. Coders that can custom design your theme can be hired online very easily too.
Google’s Blogger
www.blogger.com
The number one reason a lot of people like Google’s Blogger is that it’s free. If you already have a Google email account or access to any of Google’s free online tools, you can have a Blogger account in no time. I have personally used Google Blogger and found it a big help in certain situations. As a technology teacher, I can set up a blog and use it to teach with very quickly (once again, for free) so that my students can access information and lessons I’ve prepared for them. (You can see one of those sites here: Final Project) With Blogger, I can have as many of these blogs that I want to, and delete them when I get finished if I so desire.
The main reason I like using Blogger is because it has a simple way to customize your layout as well as add video, lists, pictures, etc. by using its “Gadgets” feature. This is a huge help if you have to use a blog for a display, or a temporary information center.
One of the best values I get from using Google’s Blogger is using it as a static sales page. If you look at one of my sales page sites here: Mark Ellis Copyyou can see blogger can easily be set up as a simple page to sell products and services very quickly. I would highly recommend that you purchase a domain name (URL) through one of the many domain register companies online, and attach it to Blogger if you are going to do so. (Please see my reason for this recommendation for this in Chapter 2.) You can have all of the sales pages you want for the mere cost of a cheap domain name each. You really can’t beat that.
A major downfall of Blogger is that its themes all look the same no matter what you do to them, so if you’ve seen the design on one Blogger site you’ve pretty much seen them all; thus, it’s very difficult to get a professional, polished look with this platform. Also, Blogger has other limitations to it like comment moderation and the amount of pictures you can use.
TypePad
www.TypePad.com
Like Google’s Blogger, TypePad has an easy to use interface for beginners and there’s a large selection of themes you can choose from. However, TypePad cannot be hosted from your own hosting company because TypePad can only be hosted from TypePad’s site. Also, TypePad is a pain for coders, so if you want to alter your blog’s design, you’ll have to find someone who is intimate with TypePad’s code.
Weebly
www.Weebly.com
Like TypePad, Weebly is another blog platform that’s easy to use but has limitations as far as coding and design. Still, it is pretty popular with many bloggers and some people swear by it.
Hosting Companies & Domain Registration Companies
There are thousands of hosting companies on the Internet and over the years I’ve dealt with my share of them. My advice to you would be to check out the reputation of the company you’ll be working with. Over the last five or so years, I have used the following two companies because their service was stellar. I’m not telling you that these are the only two hosting companies that are great out there, because I’m sure there are others. However, these are the two that I’m currently using and will continue to use as long as they continue to offer wonderful services and pricing.
Note: Once you get a hosting plan from one of these companies you will then get an address to log into your account. This will give you access to your “Cpanel” that will allow you to set up either your WordPress, Drupal or whatever blog platform they have listed. You can do this very easily with a click of a few buttons. If you find it too challenging to do the first time, there’s a chat function that will allow you to talk to a techie that will help you set it up. Both HostGator and GoDaddy have excellent tech support.
HostGator
www.HostGator.com
GoDaddy
www.GoDaddy.com
Domain Registration Companies
NameCheap
www.NameCheap.com
You can get a yearly .com domain for about $11.00. Other extensions like .net, .xyz, .webcam, etc. can be bought for a dime in some cases. However, people are used to domains with either a .com or.net attached to them, so I would spend the money and get one of those.
GoDaddy
www.GoDaddy.com
Also sells domains at a great price as well as other services.
HostGator
www.HostGator.com
Sells domains and offers hosting services.
Software You Will Need for Blogging
I just want to mention that if you have a blog, you’ll already have the word processor that’s built into it. WordPress and Blogger have word processors built into them and those functions have gotten better over the years; you could easily use those to write with. However, I would make sure that you have access to a regular processor on your laptop or desktop because if your Internet goes out, you can still write. If you are using Microsoft Windows or another platform for your computer, usually they come with a simple word processors built in.
Microsoft’s Office Suite
Microsoft’s Office Suite is essential for any business you are trying to run today, but if you can’t afford the entire Microsoft Office Suite, then at least get Microsoft’s Word. I can’t imagine not having a copy of Word if you are going to be writing as a profession. Word has so many functions that it may take you considerable time learning how to use all of them. One of the reasons I like it so much is because it enables me to convert Word’s .docx files into .pdf files (eBook files). You can easily create eBooks with this feature and then sell them online or give them to potential clients and customers.
If you get the entire suite you’ll have access to spreadsheet software (Excel) where you can create lists and maintain budgets. You’ll also have access to PowerPoint presentation software. I use PowerPoint for lectures and to also create online presentations and courses. (You can see how I made an online social media course here using PowerPoint: Social Media Course.)
Google’s Free Products
https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/
If you really can’t afford a decent word processor but still have access to the Internet, I highly recommend the free tools that Google offers online. Google has loads of free online tools that you can use to do spreadsheets, presentations, and even word processing.
If you already have a Gmail account, then you will be able to access all of these free tools very easily. Google’s free word processor is called “Google Docs” and it works very well.
Here’s a list of the Google Products I’ve been using:
● Google Docs – Word processing
● Google Chrome – Web browser
● Google AdWords - Advertising
● Google AdSense – Made quite a bit of money displaying other people’s relevant ads on my site
● YouTube – Create and upload your own videos
● Google Books – A great resource site
● Gmail – My primary email accounts are through this
● Slides – Very similar to PowerPoint
● Drive – You can store a ton of files on here like pictures and word processing files.
Writing Courses
If you are going to make a living or a second income from writing or blogging, then I highly recommend that you invest in your education, whether it’s from a college or an established guru online. I’ve taken loads of courses from universities, colleges and online courses. I’ve also invested quite a bit of money over the years in books both physical and electronic. So here is a short list of some of the courses I’ve taken in the past that may help you.
Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogger Course ― This is an excellent online course that will not only teach you how to do guest blogging, but will show you many of the fundamentals of blogging in general. The course is high quality and logical in its scope and sequencing, taking you through all of the necessary steps of writing great posts. URL for Course: www.guestblogging.com/public/
Dan Kennedy’s Copywriting Course – As I mentioned in an early chapter of this book, blogging and copywriting are very similar. If you get an opportunity to take a decent copywriting course, I would recommend it. Years ago, I took Dan Kennedy’s Copywriting Course and it was one of the best things I could have done to get started in writing. Dan will take you through all of the important steps of learning how to write with words that sell. This course is sold online and delivered through the mail on CD’s. You can order it here: http://store.gkic.com/group-1/copywritting-1.html
John Carlton’s Copywriting Course – John Carlton is one of the most dynamic copywriter’s living today. His Freelance Copywriter’s course and Simple Writing System are two of the finest copywriting courses on the planet. The thing I like about Mr. Carlton the most is that when he writes it is like you’re talking over the fence to your neighbor. You feel immediately like you know the guy, and in my opinion, that’s a good writer for any blogger to learn from and emulate. Here’s the URL: http://www.john-carlton.com
Alex Cohen’s Copywriting Course & Mentoring – If you want to hire a great teacher that can show you how to write highly effective copy, then Alex Cohen is one of the best. He has step by step lessons in series that he will take you through to ensure that you learn all of the techniques and establish yourself as a professional copywriter.
Best Sites to Learn Blogging
This is a list of the sites that I frequent the most. These are the top of the heap sites that offer incredible information and insights to blogging and Internet marketing. You’ll notice that this list isn’t very long. That’s because if I spent all of my time looking at tons of sites, I wouldn’t have any time to write. So I look at the best and learn as much as I can from them.
Neil Patel’s QuickSprout Blog www.quicksprout.com. Neil has loads of great information on his site and his blogging angle usually involves SEO tactics that you can use. Very extensive posts that take you step by step through processes that will help you with your blogging.
Jon Morrow’s Smart Blogger www.smartblogger.com. This site has excellent advice for anyone that wants to learn how to build a profitable blog on the internet. The advice is first class and free to anyone that has Internet access.
Copybloggerwww.copyblogger.com .This is a great learning site where you can gain a lot of valuable information about building an online business. The founder, Brian Clark, started Copyblogger for about $1000 and has grown it into a multimillion dollar enterprise. Considered to be an industry standard, you really can’t afford to ignore using this site as an excellent resource.
Books
ProBlogger - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. This is a great resource book you should have on your shelf that will help you learn the art of blogging. It also addresses many of the more advanced issues involved with blogging for those of us that are more experienced. Here’s the site that goes along with the book: ProBlogger
Secrets of a Freelance Writer – How to Make $100,000 a Year or More. By Robert W. Bly. Bob Bly is one of the top copywriters in the world and has written over 86 books not to mention magazine articles, and information products of almost every kind. It would take a considerable amount of time to list his impressive career here. In Secrets of a
Freelance Writer, Bob reveals his professional trade practices in this extensive and detailed text on professional writing. This is definitely one book you’ll want to have on your resource shelf. To find out more about Bob Bly and his other products, click on this link: www.Bly.com
The Ultimate Sales Letter – by Dan S. Kennedy. If you want to learn how to write persuasive copy and know nothing about the subject at all, this book will get you up to speed fast. Dan Kennedy is one of the world’s top copywriters, and he too has a very impressive list of books, information products, and other media that he has produced over the years. To say that Dan Kennedy understands marketing and persuasive writing is an understatement. The Ultimate Sales Letter is definitely one book you’ll want to use again and again if you want to learn the basics of dynamic copy.
About Mark “Elmo” Ellis
A former jazz trombonist with the United States Army Band, Elmo now specializes in writing advertising copy for educational institutions and education technology products. He holds a Master’s Degree in Education Technology from Boise State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Lynchburg College. Elmo currently lives with his wife on three beautiful acres of land, next to the Valley View Ferry in Richmond, KY.
For a free copywriting consultation for your next project, please contact Elmo at: (859) 797-9560 or send him an email with your contact information and a brief description to: elmo033057@gmail.com
You can also connect with him at one of the social media sites below:
Facebook: Ellistrated AdCopy
Twitter:Mark Elmo Ellis
LinkedIn: Mark Ellis
Listing of Elmo’s Services:
Sales Letters
Donation and Fund Raising Letters
Advertising Copy
Yellow Page Ads
Magazine Display Ads
Video Sales Scripts
Effective Blog Posts
Email Campaigns
Banner Ads
Marketing Consultations
Public Speaking
PowerPoint Presentations