Blogging info av: Roy Werner Karlsen
Sand Sculpture Art sandsculptureart.blogspot.com
Kunst | Kultur. | Sandskulpturer | Malerier | Bilder | Tegninger | Foto | Kurs
Jeg har plassert min blogg i Sarpsborg på norske bloggkart!
STRIKKETUSSA strikketussa.blogspot.com
en blogg om strikking, kaker og interiør
Edelstein edelstein.blogg.no
Den som spør etter sitt eget vett blir aldri klokere
SUP▲RKiMZ superkimz.blogg.no
KarinFoto | Nyfødtfotografering | Babyfotografering www.karinfoto.com
Kine`s Hjem kineirene.blogg.no
Blogger om alt mellom himmel og jord + litt til :)
Dagens-puls Tema dagenspuls.blogspot.com
Ervin. erviin.blogg.no
- pleksi.wordpress.com
MYLDRA myldra.blogg.no
tirsdag 23. oktober 2012
How to become a blogger: Part 7.
Hey Guest
Blogging Article by:Roy Werner Karlsen
Ok this is it!
If you are like most people, this is the ultimate level of what you want to achieve for your blog...
Monetization!
I hope by now you can see the path that I've been leading you along. It's been a path where I've helped you understand all the essential building blocks, the foundations, for setting yourself up with a really powerful income-generating blog.
Like I said on previous occasions... it's no use trying to monetize your blog unless you have first been able to provide some excellent value over the long term, built up some nice traffic, and also a nice consistent following of keen fans.
Only after this, are you able to start making a decent income from your blogging activities.
It's different for everyone, but as an example of one of the blogs I'm currently working on, www.freemagiclive.com, my emphasis there has been to create an extreme amount of value upfront for a whole 6 month period, to generate a consistent stream of traffic, and to build a nice and solid fan base of rabid fans.
From my point of view, the blog now is finally ready to get monetized only now after 6 months!
But of course, your path be very different to mine. It may only take you one month, or even 3 months to get to a similar stage. It all depends on the kind of niche you are in, the kind of content you are creating, and how well you can connect with the people inside you niche.
So, if it's already been 4 months, and you have not made a cent from your efforts yet, that may be ok. If you're like me, and only want to start monetizing your blog after 6 months, after you've built up some nice content, and a nice following, that's fine.
But the bottom line is that you really try to provide massive value up front first, BEFORE you even start to think about monetizing your blog.
I'm hammering this into you, because it's absolutely critical to your success as a blogger... at least for the method of blogging that Yaro and I are teaching.
So, with that out of the way, lets get into the meat of todays's lesson...
There are 2 main models for monetizing your blog...
1. The easy, but lower leverage model
2. And the hard, but more profitable model
Lets first have a look at...
The basic premise of the easy model, is that you sell advertising space on your blog, a bit like a magazine does with advertisements inside their pages.
If you know how to get traffic to your blog, it's simply a matter of letting other businesses now about it and getting them to advertise their products and services on your site.
And of course, there are a number of different ways of doing this. Let's take a look at 3 easy methods:
One of the easiest and fastest ways for setting up ads on your site is to use something like Google Adsense, which is one method of contextual advertising.
Setting up something like this could literally take you about 30 minutes to get set up and ready to start making an income (sometimes there is a 48 hr time lag between signing up and your ads going live).
All you have to do, is sign up to the Google Adsense program and then put the right code on your blog to start displaying ads from other people on your website.
While this is one of the easiest, and fastest ways of setting up ads on your site, it's certainly not the most profitable way. But it's simple and easy and may be a good starting point for you just to get a feel for it.
There are other similar services around, but basically, they all work on the same premise: you provide the traffic, and they automatically provide the links to advertisers on your site.
Here's the page for signing up for the Google Adsense program:
https://www.google.com/adsense/
Other similar services include:
- Yahoo's Publisher Network
- Chitika
- WidgetBucks
Let's now take look at the next level up from this...
This is another easy tactic to implement on your blog. It's by adding banners on your blog, and embedding in them, your unique affiliate link to someone else's product.
Every time someone clicks on the banner on your blog, they'll get taken to the advertisers website, and if they purchase their product, you'll get paid a commission.
How to do this you ask?
It's easy when you use a cool little plugin known as Max Banner Ads plugin. You can download it from here:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/mba/
Just as in the first strategy, this method can work really well if you get a lot of traffic to your blog already.
While it's a great strategy to implement in any case, it's still not the best way to leverage your blog for monetization. More on this soon.
Ok, next up is...
This strategy is a bit more labour intensive, but it can provide you with a more secure level of income.
The way it works is that you get paid for doing a detailed review about a specific product, and then posting it on your blog.
There are many different services that will pay you a set fee per review. Here are some of the services that you could use:
- http://www.ReviewMe.com
- http://www.SponsoredReviews.com
- http://www.PayPerPost.com
But, of course, you can also approach product owners and ask them for a fee to write a review for their product. This is a bit of a hit and miss strategy as you may find it difficult to find someone willing to pay you some cash to do a review on their product.
But if you're keen, you can go to a place like www.ClickBank.com and search for appropriate products there and then contact the product owners.
But my recommendation is to just use the above services for this.
Next up is my favorite monetization strategy for the magazine model, because it requires the least amount of effort for the greatest return...
For this, it's key that you already have an established stream of traffic to your blog. And the more traffic you have, the more you can charge.
Essentially, what you do here, is get other people to pay you a monthly fee for the privilege of advertising their product or service or website on your blog.
You can have different options of course, with different pricing points.
The most important thing here is that you can convince your prospective advertisers that you have enough traffic to support the price that you are asking for.
And the best way to do this, is to provide your prospective advertisers with the exact statistics of your blog traffic.
For a great example of this strategy, have a look at Yaro's advertising page here:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/advertise/
Of course, the higher your traffic numbers, the more you can charge advertisers for the privilege of advertising on your blog.
An easy rule of thumb in the industry is to look at your daily unique visits and divide by 10 to give you a monthly charge rate.
For example, if you're getting 500 unique visits a day to your blog, you can charge $50 per advertiser on your blog - roughly. But it also depends a little on the kind of niche you're in as well.
That's it for the easy, but lower leverage model. Let's now move onto the hard, but more profitable model...
If you really want to skyrocket the profitability of your blog, this is the model you want to go for.
Yes, it does take more effort to get it to work, but it's totally worth it if you can pull it off well.
There are at least two avenues you can take here:
a. Selling other people's products (affiliate marketing)...
b. And developing and selling your own products...
Let's look at each of these two strategies now...
This is one of the easiest ways of taking your blog's income level to the next level.
But it's only easy once you've already built up a loyal following. And for that...
... ok, ok... I won't tell you again. I think I've drilled this into you enough now.
Now this is key:
For this (and also the next) strategy to work well, you need your own email list. Sure, if you have lots of traffic to your blog you may already get some good results, but with an email list, the number of people who buy from you will just be increased manifold.
Yaro and I have had some of our most successful campaigns by sending out a handful of well crafted emails to our email lists.
Let's have a look at an example to give you an idea of what is possible with this.
Say you have an email subscriber base of around 10,000 people. If you send out an email, around 20% of them are likely to click on your link which equals 2,000 people.
Then, of those 2,000 people, say 3% may buy the product from you, which equals 60 sales.
If the product price is 47, and you got 50% of the profits (because you're an affiliate), you will have made 1,410 bucks from your little email promo.
Not bad for sending out just one email!
Of course, this is only an example and results could vary greatly for this, but there are a number of things you can do to increase your conversion rates to make this a reality.
So, where do you find products to promote?
The best one we've found so far is ClickBank.
They are the largest digital provider on the net, and they've really made the whole process very easy. All you have to do, is sign up for your own account that does not even cost anything, and then you can start promoting other people's products.
You can sign up for your own account here:
http://www.ClickBank.com
Other methods or other places you can go to find affiliate products are:
- http://www.PayDotCom.com
- http://www.cj.com
- http://www.Azoogle.com
Ok, let's now move onto the final monetization strategy for your blog... this is the ultimate one...
Developing and selling your own products is definitely the most profitable thing you'll ever do for your blog.
So, once again, the idea here is that you use your blog to help you get traffic and build your email list, and then you promote your new products on your blog and also to the people on your email list.
This is an extremely powerful way of marketing.
And the reason for this is because you've used your blog to help build your list. And what this has done, is create a very strong relationship and bond with the people on your email list.
And remember the equation:
Big List + Great Relationship = High Income
It's as simple as that.
So, the only next challenge is to create your own products.
There are at least three kinds of products you can create:
- Text based products
- Audio based products
- Video based products
Text is the easiest to create, but has the least perceived value. Audio is a little harder to create, but has a higher perceived value. And of course, video products are harder again to create, but they provide a MUCH higher perceived value.
Nowadays, Yaro and I normally use text based products as the stuff we give away for free, and then create video products based on those text products, that we then sell for a premium.
If you're just getting started with this, I recommend you go for the text option first, build up your confidence with selling things online, get an income set up, and then move onto the more advanced product creation strategies.
Inside another course, I may teach you how to create your very own digital products, and then how to sell them properly using online marketing strategies.
But with the tools and strategies I've already explained to you inside this course, you should now have a pretty good idea of how you can go about creating your own digital products that you can market on your blog and to the people on your email list.
This is how Yaro and I have made most our income online. So, it's a really beautiful model.
That concludes everything I have to say about this mini course. You should now have absolutely everything you need to help you set up your blog, create amazingly powerful content, get massive amounts of traffic, and then start monetizing like crazy.
I really hope you've enjoyed this mini course and that you've found it very helpful indeed. I've really poured my heart and soul into these lessons and I've even considered to sell them instead of making them available at no cost. That's how valuable I think they are, because in some respects, I did not hold anything back.
So, all you have to do now, is take these lessons step-by-step, and start implementing your very own successful blog.
These very same lessons have worked for Yaro, myself, and many many other people as well. And I can't see why they won't work for you as well!
But it does take effort :)
Here's to your blogging success!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Blogging Article by:Roy Werner Karlsen
Ok this is it!
If you are like most people, this is the ultimate level of what you want to achieve for your blog...
Monetization!
I hope by now you can see the path that I've been leading you along. It's been a path where I've helped you understand all the essential building blocks, the foundations, for setting yourself up with a really powerful income-generating blog.
Like I said on previous occasions... it's no use trying to monetize your blog unless you have first been able to provide some excellent value over the long term, built up some nice traffic, and also a nice consistent following of keen fans.
Only after this, are you able to start making a decent income from your blogging activities.
It's different for everyone, but as an example of one of the blogs I'm currently working on, www.freemagiclive.com, my emphasis there has been to create an extreme amount of value upfront for a whole 6 month period, to generate a consistent stream of traffic, and to build a nice and solid fan base of rabid fans.
From my point of view, the blog now is finally ready to get monetized only now after 6 months!
But of course, your path be very different to mine. It may only take you one month, or even 3 months to get to a similar stage. It all depends on the kind of niche you are in, the kind of content you are creating, and how well you can connect with the people inside you niche.
So, if it's already been 4 months, and you have not made a cent from your efforts yet, that may be ok. If you're like me, and only want to start monetizing your blog after 6 months, after you've built up some nice content, and a nice following, that's fine.
But the bottom line is that you really try to provide massive value up front first, BEFORE you even start to think about monetizing your blog.
I'm hammering this into you, because it's absolutely critical to your success as a blogger... at least for the method of blogging that Yaro and I are teaching.
So, with that out of the way, lets get into the meat of todays's lesson...
There are 2 main models for monetizing your blog...
1. The easy, but lower leverage model
2. And the hard, but more profitable model
Lets first have a look at...
-------------------------------------------------- 1. The Easy, But Lower Leverage Model --------------------------------------------------
The basic premise of the easy model, is that you sell advertising space on your blog, a bit like a magazine does with advertisements inside their pages.
If you know how to get traffic to your blog, it's simply a matter of letting other businesses now about it and getting them to advertise their products and services on your site.
And of course, there are a number of different ways of doing this. Let's take a look at 3 easy methods:
-------------------------------------------------- a. Contextual Advertising --------------------------------------------------
One of the easiest and fastest ways for setting up ads on your site is to use something like Google Adsense, which is one method of contextual advertising.
Setting up something like this could literally take you about 30 minutes to get set up and ready to start making an income (sometimes there is a 48 hr time lag between signing up and your ads going live).
All you have to do, is sign up to the Google Adsense program and then put the right code on your blog to start displaying ads from other people on your website.
While this is one of the easiest, and fastest ways of setting up ads on your site, it's certainly not the most profitable way. But it's simple and easy and may be a good starting point for you just to get a feel for it.
There are other similar services around, but basically, they all work on the same premise: you provide the traffic, and they automatically provide the links to advertisers on your site.
Here's the page for signing up for the Google Adsense program:
https://www.google.com/adsense/
Other similar services include:
- Yahoo's Publisher Network
- Chitika
- WidgetBucks
Let's now take look at the next level up from this...
-------------------------------------------------- b. Banner advertising --------------------------------------------------
This is another easy tactic to implement on your blog. It's by adding banners on your blog, and embedding in them, your unique affiliate link to someone else's product.
Every time someone clicks on the banner on your blog, they'll get taken to the advertisers website, and if they purchase their product, you'll get paid a commission.
How to do this you ask?
It's easy when you use a cool little plugin known as Max Banner Ads plugin. You can download it from here:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/mba/
Just as in the first strategy, this method can work really well if you get a lot of traffic to your blog already.
While it's a great strategy to implement in any case, it's still not the best way to leverage your blog for monetization. More on this soon.
Ok, next up is...
-------------------------------------------------- c. Doing Product Reviews And Getting Paid For Them --------------------------------------------------
This strategy is a bit more labour intensive, but it can provide you with a more secure level of income.
The way it works is that you get paid for doing a detailed review about a specific product, and then posting it on your blog.
There are many different services that will pay you a set fee per review. Here are some of the services that you could use:
- http://www.ReviewMe.com
- http://www.SponsoredReviews.com
- http://www.PayPerPost.com
But, of course, you can also approach product owners and ask them for a fee to write a review for their product. This is a bit of a hit and miss strategy as you may find it difficult to find someone willing to pay you some cash to do a review on their product.
But if you're keen, you can go to a place like www.ClickBank.com and search for appropriate products there and then contact the product owners.
But my recommendation is to just use the above services for this.
Next up is my favorite monetization strategy for the magazine model, because it requires the least amount of effort for the greatest return...
-------------------------------------------------- d. Sell Ad Space On Your Blog For A Monthly Fee --------------------------------------------------
For this, it's key that you already have an established stream of traffic to your blog. And the more traffic you have, the more you can charge.
Essentially, what you do here, is get other people to pay you a monthly fee for the privilege of advertising their product or service or website on your blog.
You can have different options of course, with different pricing points.
The most important thing here is that you can convince your prospective advertisers that you have enough traffic to support the price that you are asking for.
And the best way to do this, is to provide your prospective advertisers with the exact statistics of your blog traffic.
For a great example of this strategy, have a look at Yaro's advertising page here:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/advertise/
Of course, the higher your traffic numbers, the more you can charge advertisers for the privilege of advertising on your blog.
An easy rule of thumb in the industry is to look at your daily unique visits and divide by 10 to give you a monthly charge rate.
For example, if you're getting 500 unique visits a day to your blog, you can charge $50 per advertiser on your blog - roughly. But it also depends a little on the kind of niche you're in as well.
That's it for the easy, but lower leverage model. Let's now move onto the hard, but more profitable model...
-------------------------------------------------- 2. The Hard, But More Profitable Model --------------------------------------------------
If you really want to skyrocket the profitability of your blog, this is the model you want to go for.
Yes, it does take more effort to get it to work, but it's totally worth it if you can pull it off well.
There are at least two avenues you can take here:
a. Selling other people's products (affiliate marketing)...
b. And developing and selling your own products...
Let's look at each of these two strategies now...
-------------------------------------------------- a. Selling Other People's Products --------------------------------------------------
This is one of the easiest ways of taking your blog's income level to the next level.
But it's only easy once you've already built up a loyal following. And for that...
... ok, ok... I won't tell you again. I think I've drilled this into you enough now.
Now this is key:
For this (and also the next) strategy to work well, you need your own email list. Sure, if you have lots of traffic to your blog you may already get some good results, but with an email list, the number of people who buy from you will just be increased manifold.
Yaro and I have had some of our most successful campaigns by sending out a handful of well crafted emails to our email lists.
Let's have a look at an example to give you an idea of what is possible with this.
Say you have an email subscriber base of around 10,000 people. If you send out an email, around 20% of them are likely to click on your link which equals 2,000 people.
Then, of those 2,000 people, say 3% may buy the product from you, which equals 60 sales.
If the product price is 47, and you got 50% of the profits (because you're an affiliate), you will have made 1,410 bucks from your little email promo.
Not bad for sending out just one email!
Of course, this is only an example and results could vary greatly for this, but there are a number of things you can do to increase your conversion rates to make this a reality.
So, where do you find products to promote?
The best one we've found so far is ClickBank.
They are the largest digital provider on the net, and they've really made the whole process very easy. All you have to do, is sign up for your own account that does not even cost anything, and then you can start promoting other people's products.
You can sign up for your own account here:
http://www.ClickBank.com
Other methods or other places you can go to find affiliate products are:
- http://www.PayDotCom.com
- http://www.cj.com
- http://www.Azoogle.com
Ok, let's now move onto the final monetization strategy for your blog... this is the ultimate one...
-------------------------------------------------- b. Developing And Selling Your Own Products --------------------------------------------------
Developing and selling your own products is definitely the most profitable thing you'll ever do for your blog.
So, once again, the idea here is that you use your blog to help you get traffic and build your email list, and then you promote your new products on your blog and also to the people on your email list.
This is an extremely powerful way of marketing.
And the reason for this is because you've used your blog to help build your list. And what this has done, is create a very strong relationship and bond with the people on your email list.
And remember the equation:
Big List + Great Relationship = High Income
It's as simple as that.
So, the only next challenge is to create your own products.
There are at least three kinds of products you can create:
- Text based products
- Audio based products
- Video based products
Text is the easiest to create, but has the least perceived value. Audio is a little harder to create, but has a higher perceived value. And of course, video products are harder again to create, but they provide a MUCH higher perceived value.
Nowadays, Yaro and I normally use text based products as the stuff we give away for free, and then create video products based on those text products, that we then sell for a premium.
If you're just getting started with this, I recommend you go for the text option first, build up your confidence with selling things online, get an income set up, and then move onto the more advanced product creation strategies.
Inside another course, I may teach you how to create your very own digital products, and then how to sell them properly using online marketing strategies.
But with the tools and strategies I've already explained to you inside this course, you should now have a pretty good idea of how you can go about creating your own digital products that you can market on your blog and to the people on your email list.
This is how Yaro and I have made most our income online. So, it's a really beautiful model.
That concludes everything I have to say about this mini course. You should now have absolutely everything you need to help you set up your blog, create amazingly powerful content, get massive amounts of traffic, and then start monetizing like crazy.
I really hope you've enjoyed this mini course and that you've found it very helpful indeed. I've really poured my heart and soul into these lessons and I've even considered to sell them instead of making them available at no cost. That's how valuable I think they are, because in some respects, I did not hold anything back.
So, all you have to do now, is take these lessons step-by-step, and start implementing your very own successful blog.
These very same lessons have worked for Yaro, myself, and many many other people as well. And I can't see why they won't work for you as well!
But it does take effort :)
Here's to your blogging success!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Part 7 of 7
mandag 22. oktober 2012
How to become a blogger: Part 6
Hi Guest
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to Part 6 of the Become A Blogger Mini Course!
You are now getting closer to the "apex" of this mini course - to start making money from your blog.
But if you've read The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, you'll know how important it is to first create massive value up front, before you can even start thinking about traffic generation techniques and making money from your blog.
But if you've followed all the steps up until now, and you've been faithful in generating lots of high value content for your audience, you are now in an excellent position to start getting floods of new traffic to your blog.
The traffic generation techniques I'm about to reveal to you are very powerful for helping you get hordes of new traffic to your blog.
BUT...
The catch is that you first need to implement the previous lessons from this mini course.
By implementing the strategies and tips I've already given you this far, you will be a in a great position to take advantage of these powerful traffic generation techniques.
But if you have not "done your bit" yet, the following techniques won't be as effective for you.
So, make sure you go through the previous lessons again, and make sure you "checked all the boxes" for making your blog a resounding success!
With that out of the way, let's jump straight into what's coming up...
Generating traffic for your blog is no small topic. And that is why I have decided to break this part of the mini course into three lessons.
Here's what you'll get inside each of these three lessons...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 1 ***
- The 4 Cornerstone Principals Of Long Term Traffic Generation...
- The 4 Main Ways Of Getting Traffic To Your Blog...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 2 ***
- Five Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Multiple Streams Of Traffic To Your Blog...
- Four Powerful Long Term Strategies For Attracting Floods Of Fresh New Traffic To Your Blog...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 3 ***
- 11 Amazing Tips To Help You Get Zero-Cost Traffic From Search Engines...
- How To Make Sure You Stay On The Right Track...
- Your Action Plan For Super Boosting Traffic To Your Blog...
Today's email will cover the first lesson, and then the subsequent two emails will go into the information for lesson 2 and 3 above.
After that, we'll finally get into the final topic for this mini course - how to monetize your blog!
Ok, are you ready? Let's get into it...
The number one biggest issue for successful online businesses is that of attracting a sustainable, long term stream of high quality traffic.
But before you can even start thinking about generating traffic to your blog, there are 4 key principals that you need to know about.
With these 4 cornerstone principals as your base you will be in a much stronger position to drive a truckload of highly qualified traffic to your blog again and again.
Here are the 4 principals...
If you've been online for a while I'm sure you will have heard the phrase "Content Is King".
That's very true of course, especially when it comes to successful blogging.
But, not only is content king online, but it's also the major "currency" for helping you "buy" people's attention, and driving insane amounts of traffic back to your blog.
And it's not just any kind of content either.
Your content needs to be valuable as perceived by your audience. In the end, if your audience, does not think that your content is valuable, they won't be coming back to your blog, and telling all their friends about it too - which is what you want of course!
So, this is really the starting point of all traffic generation for your blog. And this also happens to be one of the few ways that you can truly stand out from the rest of the thousands of other bloggers in the blogosphere.
Inside part 4 of this mini cruse, I outlined various strategies to help you create powerful content to help you stand out from the crowd.
So, with that information at your side, you are now in an excellent position to keep on pumping out amazing content that will ultimately help you attract a substantial and sustainable level of traffic to your blog.
I've already touched on the importance of providing massive value for your audience through your blog, but this is such an important issue, that I decided to add this as another Cornerstone Principle.
Once again, the important thing here is that you create content that is perceived as valuable by our audience - the people who come to visit your blog.
And the best way to find out exactly what this is, is to simply ask people what they want to learn about, and then giving it to them.
A few days ago, I interviewed the world's most well known professional blogger, Darren Rowse from Problogger.net - he told me that one of the best ways of creating content for your blog is to simply respond to questions you get from the people who visit your blog.
This is such a simple piece of advice, but don't underestimate it's power. After all, this advice comes straight from the world's number one professional blogger!
If you can go out of your way to provide exceptionally high value content to your readers, you will already stand head and shoulders above most other bloggers online.
Becoming successful as a blogger online is very similar to becoming successful in ANY undertaking.
Often it's more about WHO you know and not so much WHAT you know, and especially the KIND of relationship you have with those people WHOM you know.
The great thing about blogging, is that it's the *ultimate* way of building long lasting relationships with real people all over the world.
And that's the way you should look at it. Look at your blog as a super relationship building tool. The stronger the relationships you have with people who come to visit your blog online, the more successful you will become.
And how do you build strong relationships using your blog?
Well, first by providing massive value upfront (as I've been hammering into you throughout this course), and second, by engaging people in a live conversation, using your blog as the medium to communicate with.
It's really that simple!
If you can convince people that you truly care about them, and if you respond to them via blog comments and the content that you create, eventually you will become seen as the trusted authority, and people will start seeing you as the "go-to" person for your niche.
Once you have THAT kind of status, you will be in a very powerful position to achieve all kinds of magical things... including making money from your blog!
Building Relationships is key for the success of your blog, but you also need to create what's called multiple "communication channels" to your blog to ENABLE the conversion and relationship building mentioned before.
The general idea here is to create as many "communication channels" as possible. The more channels you create, the more opportunity you will create for others to find your blog and to start interacting with your content and to join in the overall conversation.
Inside Traffic Generation Lesson 2 (the lesson after this one), I will show you some very neat strategies for creating tons of these "communication channels" all of them feeding traffic back to your blog. But before we can get into the details of these strategies, we first need to go over...
Believe it or not, but there are only 4 main ways of getting traffic to your blog.
These are:
Let's now have a look at each of these four areas...
Buying traffic is possibly one of the most popular ways of getting traffic online.
A likely reason for this is because this method of traffic generation is fast, and it's also relatively easy to set up.
But of course, there is a catch...
This method costs money! Duh!
And if you're not careful, you can end up spending a lot of money or programs such as Google Adwords and other similar "pay-per-click" advertising methods without even getting great results.
Another big issue is that pay-per-click advertising is normally much better suited for web pages with very specific content that matches the tag line for the pay-per-click ad.
Of course, your blog will have a lot of other content on it too, and would therefore make something like pay-per-click ads perform very poorly.
So, inside this course, I won't go into much detail for showing you how to set up strategies for buying traffic. All the methods I'll show you will be either no-cost or low cost strategies, and will provide you with a much more long term sustainable stream of quality traffic.
Borrowing traffic is one of the easiest ways of helping you create multiple channels of traffic back to your blog.
These are the kind of strategies that are fairly quick and easy to implement, but can take time to show you significant results.
Over the long term though, these kind of strategies can help you generate a steady flow of traffic to your site. So they are definitely worth pursuing.
The great thing about borrowing traffic is that you can leverage the traffic from other popular sites and attempt to direct a slice of that traffic back to your own blog.
When we get to the strategies part in the next lesson, I'll go into much more detail of how you can achieve this...
If you are in this for the long run, attracting traffic organically will be your most powerful way of generating traffic to your blog. But it may also be the most challenging way!
It basically involves creating massive value upfront using various methods, and then just as a beautiful flower attracts more bees than ugly ones do, so too will your blog attract a lot more high quality visitors - the kind of visitors who come back to your blog again and again, and tell all their friends about it.
The great thing about this method is that it allows you to create a massive leverage machine that will help you drive floods of traffic to your blog for years to come. You create the value ones, but you reap the benefits over and over.
But I'll also go into much more detail for this method to show you exactly how you too can set yourself up for this kind of traffic.
Finally, there is traffic from search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com and a few others.
There are a few clever techniques that you'll need to implement to help optimize your blog for searcg engines. But overall, if you just create consistently valuable content for your blog, you will have gone a long way to "please" the search engines and increasing your chances of getting ranked in popular keyword search results.
The thing with search engines like Google, is that their number one goal is to provide THEIR audience with a pleasurable experience when using their service.
In others words, when people use a service like Google.com, they want to make sure that whenever someone does a search for a certain set of keywords, the most relevant and useful results will come up.
The algorithms that these search engines use are extremely advanced, and can easily tell when people are trying to "beat the system".
But if you just create relevant and useful content consistently, the search engines will eventually pick up on that, and start ranking you really well for your relevant keywords.
This will just happen automatically over time.
Many successful blogs get around 50% of their traffic from search engines, so you really want to get this part of the equation right too.
But inside lesson 3 coming up soon, I will show you some powerful things you could do to ensure you get a significant amount for your traffic from search engines.
And that brings us to the end of today's lesson.
The intention of today's lesson was really just to introduce you to the main concepts underlying powerful traffic generation techniques and strategies.
Inside the next two lessons, you'll be given some hard and fast strategies to help you drive insane amounts of traffic to your blog.
So, stay tuned...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to Part 6 of the Become A Blogger Mini Course!
You are now getting closer to the "apex" of this mini course - to start making money from your blog.
But if you've read The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, you'll know how important it is to first create massive value up front, before you can even start thinking about traffic generation techniques and making money from your blog.
But if you've followed all the steps up until now, and you've been faithful in generating lots of high value content for your audience, you are now in an excellent position to start getting floods of new traffic to your blog.
-------------------------------------------------- WARNING! Read This First... --------------------------------------------------
The traffic generation techniques I'm about to reveal to you are very powerful for helping you get hordes of new traffic to your blog.
BUT...
The catch is that you first need to implement the previous lessons from this mini course.
By implementing the strategies and tips I've already given you this far, you will be a in a great position to take advantage of these powerful traffic generation techniques.
But if you have not "done your bit" yet, the following techniques won't be as effective for you.
So, make sure you go through the previous lessons again, and make sure you "checked all the boxes" for making your blog a resounding success!
With that out of the way, let's jump straight into what's coming up...
Generating traffic for your blog is no small topic. And that is why I have decided to break this part of the mini course into three lessons.
Here's what you'll get inside each of these three lessons...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 1 ***
- The 4 Cornerstone Principals Of Long Term Traffic Generation...
- The 4 Main Ways Of Getting Traffic To Your Blog...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 2 ***
- Five Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Multiple Streams Of Traffic To Your Blog...
- Four Powerful Long Term Strategies For Attracting Floods Of Fresh New Traffic To Your Blog...
*** Traffic Generation Lesson 3 ***
- 11 Amazing Tips To Help You Get Zero-Cost Traffic From Search Engines...
- How To Make Sure You Stay On The Right Track...
- Your Action Plan For Super Boosting Traffic To Your Blog...
Today's email will cover the first lesson, and then the subsequent two emails will go into the information for lesson 2 and 3 above.
After that, we'll finally get into the final topic for this mini course - how to monetize your blog!
Ok, are you ready? Let's get into it...
-------------------------------------------------- The 4 Cornerstone Principals Of Long Term Traffic Generation... --------------------------------------------------
The number one biggest issue for successful online businesses is that of attracting a sustainable, long term stream of high quality traffic.
But before you can even start thinking about generating traffic to your blog, there are 4 key principals that you need to know about.
With these 4 cornerstone principals as your base you will be in a much stronger position to drive a truckload of highly qualified traffic to your blog again and again.
Here are the 4 principals...
-------------------------------------------------- Cornerstone Traffic Principle #1 - Content Is Your Currency! --------------------------------------------------
If you've been online for a while I'm sure you will have heard the phrase "Content Is King".
That's very true of course, especially when it comes to successful blogging.
But, not only is content king online, but it's also the major "currency" for helping you "buy" people's attention, and driving insane amounts of traffic back to your blog.
And it's not just any kind of content either.
Your content needs to be valuable as perceived by your audience. In the end, if your audience, does not think that your content is valuable, they won't be coming back to your blog, and telling all their friends about it too - which is what you want of course!
So, this is really the starting point of all traffic generation for your blog. And this also happens to be one of the few ways that you can truly stand out from the rest of the thousands of other bloggers in the blogosphere.
Inside part 4 of this mini cruse, I outlined various strategies to help you create powerful content to help you stand out from the crowd.
So, with that information at your side, you are now in an excellent position to keep on pumping out amazing content that will ultimately help you attract a substantial and sustainable level of traffic to your blog.
-------------------------------------------------- Cornerstone Traffic Principle #2 - The Importance Of Providing Amazing Value Up Front... --------------------------------------------------
I've already touched on the importance of providing massive value for your audience through your blog, but this is such an important issue, that I decided to add this as another Cornerstone Principle.
Once again, the important thing here is that you create content that is perceived as valuable by our audience - the people who come to visit your blog.
And the best way to find out exactly what this is, is to simply ask people what they want to learn about, and then giving it to them.
A few days ago, I interviewed the world's most well known professional blogger, Darren Rowse from Problogger.net - he told me that one of the best ways of creating content for your blog is to simply respond to questions you get from the people who visit your blog.
This is such a simple piece of advice, but don't underestimate it's power. After all, this advice comes straight from the world's number one professional blogger!
If you can go out of your way to provide exceptionally high value content to your readers, you will already stand head and shoulders above most other bloggers online.
-------------------------------------------------- Cornerstone Traffic Principle #3 - The Importance Of Building Conversations And Relationships --------------------------------------------------
Becoming successful as a blogger online is very similar to becoming successful in ANY undertaking.
Often it's more about WHO you know and not so much WHAT you know, and especially the KIND of relationship you have with those people WHOM you know.
The great thing about blogging, is that it's the *ultimate* way of building long lasting relationships with real people all over the world.
And that's the way you should look at it. Look at your blog as a super relationship building tool. The stronger the relationships you have with people who come to visit your blog online, the more successful you will become.
And how do you build strong relationships using your blog?
Well, first by providing massive value upfront (as I've been hammering into you throughout this course), and second, by engaging people in a live conversation, using your blog as the medium to communicate with.
It's really that simple!
If you can convince people that you truly care about them, and if you respond to them via blog comments and the content that you create, eventually you will become seen as the trusted authority, and people will start seeing you as the "go-to" person for your niche.
Once you have THAT kind of status, you will be in a very powerful position to achieve all kinds of magical things... including making money from your blog!
-------------------------------------------------- Cornerstone Traffic Principle #4 - Setting Up Multiple Communication Channels --------------------------------------------------
Building Relationships is key for the success of your blog, but you also need to create what's called multiple "communication channels" to your blog to ENABLE the conversion and relationship building mentioned before.
The general idea here is to create as many "communication channels" as possible. The more channels you create, the more opportunity you will create for others to find your blog and to start interacting with your content and to join in the overall conversation.
Inside Traffic Generation Lesson 2 (the lesson after this one), I will show you some very neat strategies for creating tons of these "communication channels" all of them feeding traffic back to your blog. But before we can get into the details of these strategies, we first need to go over...
-------------------------------------------------- The 4 Main Ways Of Getting Traffic To Your Blog... --------------------------------------------------
Believe it or not, but there are only 4 main ways of getting traffic to your blog.
These are:
1. Buying Traffic 2. Borrowing Traffic 3. Attracting Traffic Organically 4. And Getting Traffic From Search Engines
Let's now have a look at each of these four areas...
-------------------------------------------------- Traffic Getting Way #1 - Buying Traffic --------------------------------------------------
Buying traffic is possibly one of the most popular ways of getting traffic online.
A likely reason for this is because this method of traffic generation is fast, and it's also relatively easy to set up.
But of course, there is a catch...
This method costs money! Duh!
And if you're not careful, you can end up spending a lot of money or programs such as Google Adwords and other similar "pay-per-click" advertising methods without even getting great results.
Another big issue is that pay-per-click advertising is normally much better suited for web pages with very specific content that matches the tag line for the pay-per-click ad.
Of course, your blog will have a lot of other content on it too, and would therefore make something like pay-per-click ads perform very poorly.
So, inside this course, I won't go into much detail for showing you how to set up strategies for buying traffic. All the methods I'll show you will be either no-cost or low cost strategies, and will provide you with a much more long term sustainable stream of quality traffic.
-------------------------------------------------- Traffic Getting Way #2 - Borrowing Traffic --------------------------------------------------
Borrowing traffic is one of the easiest ways of helping you create multiple channels of traffic back to your blog.
These are the kind of strategies that are fairly quick and easy to implement, but can take time to show you significant results.
Over the long term though, these kind of strategies can help you generate a steady flow of traffic to your site. So they are definitely worth pursuing.
The great thing about borrowing traffic is that you can leverage the traffic from other popular sites and attempt to direct a slice of that traffic back to your own blog.
When we get to the strategies part in the next lesson, I'll go into much more detail of how you can achieve this...
-------------------------------------------------- Traffic Getting Way #3 - Attracting Traffic Organically --------------------------------------------------
If you are in this for the long run, attracting traffic organically will be your most powerful way of generating traffic to your blog. But it may also be the most challenging way!
It basically involves creating massive value upfront using various methods, and then just as a beautiful flower attracts more bees than ugly ones do, so too will your blog attract a lot more high quality visitors - the kind of visitors who come back to your blog again and again, and tell all their friends about it.
The great thing about this method is that it allows you to create a massive leverage machine that will help you drive floods of traffic to your blog for years to come. You create the value ones, but you reap the benefits over and over.
But I'll also go into much more detail for this method to show you exactly how you too can set yourself up for this kind of traffic.
-------------------------------------------------- Traffic Getting Way #4 - Getting Traffic From Search Engines --------------------------------------------------
Finally, there is traffic from search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com and a few others.
There are a few clever techniques that you'll need to implement to help optimize your blog for searcg engines. But overall, if you just create consistently valuable content for your blog, you will have gone a long way to "please" the search engines and increasing your chances of getting ranked in popular keyword search results.
The thing with search engines like Google, is that their number one goal is to provide THEIR audience with a pleasurable experience when using their service.
In others words, when people use a service like Google.com, they want to make sure that whenever someone does a search for a certain set of keywords, the most relevant and useful results will come up.
The algorithms that these search engines use are extremely advanced, and can easily tell when people are trying to "beat the system".
But if you just create relevant and useful content consistently, the search engines will eventually pick up on that, and start ranking you really well for your relevant keywords.
This will just happen automatically over time.
Many successful blogs get around 50% of their traffic from search engines, so you really want to get this part of the equation right too.
But inside lesson 3 coming up soon, I will show you some powerful things you could do to ensure you get a significant amount for your traffic from search engines.
And that brings us to the end of today's lesson.
The intention of today's lesson was really just to introduce you to the main concepts underlying powerful traffic generation techniques and strategies.
Inside the next two lessons, you'll be given some hard and fast strategies to help you drive insane amounts of traffic to your blog.
So, stay tuned...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Part 6 of 7
søndag 21. oktober 2012
How to become a blogger: Part 5
Hi Guest
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to Part 5 of the Become A Blogger Mini Course.
If you've followed all the steps inside the previous lessons, you should now have your blog setup, with your chosen topic, optimized for the search engines and busy creating magical content that will attract a hoard of traffic to your blog.
But, just creating text for your blog is kind of boring...
And to spice it all up a little, I have a very exciting lesson for you today.
Today, I'll spill the beans on ALL the major tools Yaro and I use for creating content for our blogs, including powerful tools for normal text, images, audio and video for your blog.
Without a doubt, if you use the tools I recommend to you today, your blog will start standing out BIG time from everyone else's on the blogosphere, and people will finally start taking notice of what you're up to.
The tools that we use can be broken down into 4 main areas:
1. Tools for text
2. Tools for images
3. Tools for audio
4. And tools for video
Together, these tools will give you an amazing arsenal of content creation "weapons" to help you blow people away when they come to visit your blog.
For each of the above 4 areas, I'll provide you with content creation tools, editing tools as well as "cool" tools (the kind of tools that will help you stand out from the crowd...)
Ok, let's stop beating around the bush and get straight into it...
For each of the tools I'm about to share with you, there are a plethora of other tools that you can also use.
One would think that it's an advantage having so many tools to choose from. But sometimes having so much choice makes it actually quite hard to distinguish between tools that are useful, and tools that will just waste you time and frustrate the heck out of you.
So, the way to look at the following tools, is to see them as "shortcuts" to help you get the job done.
Between Yaro and myself, we've spent years and years of research on the BEST tools in the industry, and this is a compilation of that list.
The bulk of your content creation is likely to be text. So, it's important that you get this bit right first.
--- Content Creation Tools For Text ---
To kick the process off, I almost always make use of mind mapping for creating new content. The best and also no-cost tool that I've found so far is FreeMind. You can download a copy here:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download
In terms of actually creating text, I use one of two programs - if you're on PC, it's KeyNotes or just NotePad (which comes with Windows):
http://soft.softoogle.com/ap/keynote-download-1160.shtml
And if you're on Mac, it's TextWrangler:
http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/
Both these programs are excellent for creating text fast because they are lightweight and they offer you a very easy way of handling your text articles.
Using something like Microsoft Word for your blog posts can be a bit of a pain sometimes, especially once you're ready to copy and paste your text into your blog.
Often, the text from Microsoft Word contains special formatting, and when you just copy and paste it over to your blog, it can wreak havoc to what the final post looks like.
You'll see what I mean once you start playing around with either Keynotes or TextWrangler - two fantastic programs!
Oh, and both of these programs cost nothing :)
Ok, what if you want to create a professional looking pdf document that you can provide as a downloadable resource for your audience?
That leads us to...
--- Editing Tools For Text ---
Other than just creating text posts for your blog, from time to time you might want to create a downloadable report that you can offer your readers at no extra cost.
Offering you readers with a complimentary report can be a very powerful tool for building trust with your audience, and also helping you spread the word about your blog.
The Roadmap To Become A Blogger is one such example. And in fact, we used the exact same tools I'm about to reveal to you for creating the Roadmap report.
Of course, you can also use these tools to create e-books, and sell them through a service like ClickBank. But more on this later...
Ok, so here's what you need:
If you're on PC, just use Microsoft Word for editing your document and adding pretty pictures etc. I know it's a bit of a pain to use, but it's good enough for what you're trying to achieve here.
Then, once you're done with your document, you can use the Bullzip software to convert your document into a pdf document - the best format for downloading documents on the internet:
http://www.bullzip.com/
If you're on Mac, you have some nicer and easier options...
We just use Pages that comes with Apple's "iWorks" package and it does a fantastic job (this is what we used for the creation of The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report).
What's great about Pages, is that it has a built in feature that allows you to easily export your document to a pdf document - very easy to use.
The best thing about both the above options, is that they allow you to add clickable links inside your reports.
This is essential if you want people to be able to come back to your blog or other web pages while reading the pdf report.
And that's pretty much it - that's all we use for creating our text content and turning them into powerful reports that people can download from our blogs and other websites.
Let's now look at some...
--- Cool Tools For Text ---
There is only one "Cool Tool" I want to mention here for text, and that is the Slide Share application:
http://www.slideshare.net/
It's really more a presentation tool than a text tool, but what's great about it is that you can use it to create automatic slide presentations that you can then embed straight on your blog.
And even better, when other people see it, they can grab the same embed code and embed the very same slide presentation on their own blogs.
It's a bit like YouTube, except that it's only for slide presentations.
SlideShare can be a very powerful traffic generation tool when used right, so I'd encourage you to experiment with it and test it to see what kind of results you get from it.
If nothing else, at least you'll have something cool on your blog that other people will admire and find interesting :)
Ok, let's now move onto...
Next up are some great tools for images.
You know what they say... "An image is worth a thousand words..."
So, if you can use the right kind of images to go along with the content of your blog, you could have a MUCH more powerful impact on your audience, compared to if you only used text.
There's just so much more you can do with images that you can't do with text. So, even if you don't get into audio and video for your blog, at least start using images regularly. It will add *significantly* to the value of your blog.
Ok, let's get into it...
--- Content Creation Tools For Images ---
Unless you're a talented graphic artist, creating the right images for your blog can be a pain.
But the next best and easiest way for finding great images for your blog, is to simply use a service like StockXpert.
This is where you can choose from thousands and thousands of images for your blog without worrying about copyright or royalty payments.
It does cost something, but if you think about how much time you can save by quickly finding the right images, it's really a "no-brainer" decision.
You can find StockExpert here:
http://stockxpert.com
--- Editing Tools For Images ---
Sometimes, just getting an image from a service like StockXpert may not be quite enough for what you are trying to achieve.
For example, sometimes you may only want to use a portion of the actual image, or you may want to change some colors, or simply change the sizes and resolution of your images.
Whatever those changes may be, you'll need some kind of an image editing program.
But don't worry, the following two amazing tools also cost nothing. So you won't have to burn a hole in your pocket.
For just simple image manipulations, you can use IrfanView, a great little program that helps make all kinds of changes to your images.
I mostly use IrfanView for changing the size of my images, cropping, or changing the resolution.
You can get a copy of IrfanView here:
http://www.irfanview.com/
If you're interested in doing some more hard-core image manipulation, I suggest you use The GIMP.
It's an amazing image editing program that allows you to either create your own graphics from scratch, or just simple image manipulations.
I used The GIMP to design the cover for The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, as well as all the other graphics on Become A Blogger.
It's a very powerful piece of software, and you can grab a copy here (also at no cost):
http://www.gimp.org/
--- Cool Tools For Images ---
If you really want to impress your friends with your blog, you'll like the next cool tool...
It's called Animoto, and it helps you create simple slide show presentations with music that you can stream straight from your blog.
All you have to do, is upload a bunch of your photos or images, upload your own music, and voila, the rest is done for you automatically.
Once everything is processed, all you have to do, is grab the embed code, and paste it into your blog - easy peasy.
You can access Animoto here:
http://animoto.com
Let's now move onto the next section...
Creating audio for your blog is great fun and it can add a whole new dimension to your blog. A dimension that your readers will just LOVE!
Trust me on this one...
So, here are a few tools that you might want to start using, if you're not using them already...
--- Creation Tools For Audio ---
A really easy way to create audio for your blog is to do interviews with experts in your niche. You can do this very easily using software like Skype for the interview:
http://www.skype.com
And you can use Pamela Recording software to record the call with:
http://www.pamela.biz/
If you're on Mac, I suggest you use a neat little program called Call Recorder for recording your calls:
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/
Of course, you don't HAVE to interview people to create audio content. You can also record just your own voice using recording software on your computer, like Audacity for example (see below).
--- Editing Tools For Audio
To edit your recordings, you can use one of the following programs (they both cost zero):
For PC users, you can use Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
And if you're on Mac, you can use Garageband:
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
--- Cool Tools For Audio ---
To put the cherry on the cake for audio on your blog, here are two great cool tools:
1. Use the Audio Player WordPress Plugin to help stream the audio straight from your blog:
http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/
Just make sure you export your final audio production to an mp3 file format for this to work.
2. And if you want to get real fancy, use the Odiogo plugin to automatically turn your text posts into podcasts (this is really neat if you like listening to computer generated voices):
http://www.odiogo.com/
Let's now move onto the final part of today's lesson...
Finally, let's talk about some great tools you can use for getting video onto your blog.
--- Creation Tools For Video ---
If you're new to online video, the first thing I recommend you do, is to go to my online video training site where you can learn the basics of video production (again, zero cost):
http://getyourvideoonline.com/
On the above site, you will learn about a number of really great tools you can use for creating your own videos that you can ad to your blog.
But let's just quickly go over the basics...
--- Editing Tools For Video ---
If you're on PC, the best entry level editing program you'll find at the moment is Sony Vegas.
Trust me, I've tested A LOT of different programs, and, while not perfect, Sony Vegas came out tops as an entry level editor:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp
(Just grab the basic one - it does a pretty good job)
If you don't like spending money, you can always just use Windows Movie Maker, which comes with all Microsoft Windows installations.
If you're on Mac, you can do some pretty cool editing with the program that just comes with the operating software, iMovie.
But if you're keen for a bit more video adventure, I'd recommend you get yourself a copy of Final Cut Express (the cut down version of the software that Hollywood movie editors use):
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ (Not too expensive, but really worth it if you're doing a lot of video editing.)
It's what I currently use for all of my non screen-capture videos... and I just LOVE it!
If you just want to do screen capture videos though, I recommend you use Camtasia for PC and Screenflow for Mac:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm
--- Cool Tools For Video ---
If you want to make your video content "go the extra mile", here are some great tools you could use...
First up is LinkedTube and Overlay.tv.
Both these services allow you to add clickable links inside your videos.
All you have to do, is upload your videos to YouTube as you normally would do, and then use one or both of these services to add clickable links inside your videos.
This can be great for adding affiliate links inside your videos or for driving people to a specific web page, for example a sales page for your new product.
You can find these services here:
http://www.linkedtube.com/
http://www.overlay.tv/
Now, if this does not impress your audience and make you stand out from the crowd, I don't know what will!
As I said right at the beginning of this lesson, there are a plethora of tools around on the internet that you can use to help you stand out from the crowd.
The above list of tools are the ones that Yaro and I have used in the past or are using right now to help us create "wow" content.
It took us years to get to this point, so all you have to do now, is take advantage of these "shortcuts" and see what happens.
Remember to have fun with all these tools and to look at this whole exercise as one big experiment.
If you don't like any of the tools, just don't use them. But I'm pretty sure that you'll like at least ONE of the above tools!
Inside the next part of this mini course, I will show you how to drive hoards of new traffic to your blog using sneaky little traffic generation methods and tactics.
So you'll definitely want to hang around for the next one. Traffic is what ultimately helps you monetize your blog.
But more on this inside the next lesson...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to Part 5 of the Become A Blogger Mini Course.
If you've followed all the steps inside the previous lessons, you should now have your blog setup, with your chosen topic, optimized for the search engines and busy creating magical content that will attract a hoard of traffic to your blog.
But, just creating text for your blog is kind of boring...
And to spice it all up a little, I have a very exciting lesson for you today.
Today, I'll spill the beans on ALL the major tools Yaro and I use for creating content for our blogs, including powerful tools for normal text, images, audio and video for your blog.
Without a doubt, if you use the tools I recommend to you today, your blog will start standing out BIG time from everyone else's on the blogosphere, and people will finally start taking notice of what you're up to.
The tools that we use can be broken down into 4 main areas:
1. Tools for text
2. Tools for images
3. Tools for audio
4. And tools for video
Together, these tools will give you an amazing arsenal of content creation "weapons" to help you blow people away when they come to visit your blog.
For each of the above 4 areas, I'll provide you with content creation tools, editing tools as well as "cool" tools (the kind of tools that will help you stand out from the crowd...)
Ok, let's stop beating around the bush and get straight into it...
-------------------------------------------------- 1. Tools For Text --------------------------------------------------
For each of the tools I'm about to share with you, there are a plethora of other tools that you can also use.
One would think that it's an advantage having so many tools to choose from. But sometimes having so much choice makes it actually quite hard to distinguish between tools that are useful, and tools that will just waste you time and frustrate the heck out of you.
So, the way to look at the following tools, is to see them as "shortcuts" to help you get the job done.
Between Yaro and myself, we've spent years and years of research on the BEST tools in the industry, and this is a compilation of that list.
The bulk of your content creation is likely to be text. So, it's important that you get this bit right first.
--- Content Creation Tools For Text ---
To kick the process off, I almost always make use of mind mapping for creating new content. The best and also no-cost tool that I've found so far is FreeMind. You can download a copy here:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download
In terms of actually creating text, I use one of two programs - if you're on PC, it's KeyNotes or just NotePad (which comes with Windows):
http://soft.softoogle.com/ap/keynote-download-1160.shtml
And if you're on Mac, it's TextWrangler:
http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/
Both these programs are excellent for creating text fast because they are lightweight and they offer you a very easy way of handling your text articles.
Using something like Microsoft Word for your blog posts can be a bit of a pain sometimes, especially once you're ready to copy and paste your text into your blog.
Often, the text from Microsoft Word contains special formatting, and when you just copy and paste it over to your blog, it can wreak havoc to what the final post looks like.
You'll see what I mean once you start playing around with either Keynotes or TextWrangler - two fantastic programs!
Oh, and both of these programs cost nothing :)
Ok, what if you want to create a professional looking pdf document that you can provide as a downloadable resource for your audience?
That leads us to...
--- Editing Tools For Text ---
Other than just creating text posts for your blog, from time to time you might want to create a downloadable report that you can offer your readers at no extra cost.
Offering you readers with a complimentary report can be a very powerful tool for building trust with your audience, and also helping you spread the word about your blog.
The Roadmap To Become A Blogger is one such example. And in fact, we used the exact same tools I'm about to reveal to you for creating the Roadmap report.
Of course, you can also use these tools to create e-books, and sell them through a service like ClickBank. But more on this later...
Ok, so here's what you need:
If you're on PC, just use Microsoft Word for editing your document and adding pretty pictures etc. I know it's a bit of a pain to use, but it's good enough for what you're trying to achieve here.
Then, once you're done with your document, you can use the Bullzip software to convert your document into a pdf document - the best format for downloading documents on the internet:
http://www.bullzip.com/
If you're on Mac, you have some nicer and easier options...
We just use Pages that comes with Apple's "iWorks" package and it does a fantastic job (this is what we used for the creation of The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report).
What's great about Pages, is that it has a built in feature that allows you to easily export your document to a pdf document - very easy to use.
The best thing about both the above options, is that they allow you to add clickable links inside your reports.
This is essential if you want people to be able to come back to your blog or other web pages while reading the pdf report.
And that's pretty much it - that's all we use for creating our text content and turning them into powerful reports that people can download from our blogs and other websites.
Let's now look at some...
--- Cool Tools For Text ---
There is only one "Cool Tool" I want to mention here for text, and that is the Slide Share application:
http://www.slideshare.net/
It's really more a presentation tool than a text tool, but what's great about it is that you can use it to create automatic slide presentations that you can then embed straight on your blog.
And even better, when other people see it, they can grab the same embed code and embed the very same slide presentation on their own blogs.
It's a bit like YouTube, except that it's only for slide presentations.
SlideShare can be a very powerful traffic generation tool when used right, so I'd encourage you to experiment with it and test it to see what kind of results you get from it.
If nothing else, at least you'll have something cool on your blog that other people will admire and find interesting :)
Ok, let's now move onto...
-------------------------------------------------- 2. Tools For Images --------------------------------------------------
Next up are some great tools for images.
You know what they say... "An image is worth a thousand words..."
So, if you can use the right kind of images to go along with the content of your blog, you could have a MUCH more powerful impact on your audience, compared to if you only used text.
There's just so much more you can do with images that you can't do with text. So, even if you don't get into audio and video for your blog, at least start using images regularly. It will add *significantly* to the value of your blog.
Ok, let's get into it...
--- Content Creation Tools For Images ---
Unless you're a talented graphic artist, creating the right images for your blog can be a pain.
But the next best and easiest way for finding great images for your blog, is to simply use a service like StockXpert.
This is where you can choose from thousands and thousands of images for your blog without worrying about copyright or royalty payments.
It does cost something, but if you think about how much time you can save by quickly finding the right images, it's really a "no-brainer" decision.
You can find StockExpert here:
http://stockxpert.com
--- Editing Tools For Images ---
Sometimes, just getting an image from a service like StockXpert may not be quite enough for what you are trying to achieve.
For example, sometimes you may only want to use a portion of the actual image, or you may want to change some colors, or simply change the sizes and resolution of your images.
Whatever those changes may be, you'll need some kind of an image editing program.
But don't worry, the following two amazing tools also cost nothing. So you won't have to burn a hole in your pocket.
For just simple image manipulations, you can use IrfanView, a great little program that helps make all kinds of changes to your images.
I mostly use IrfanView for changing the size of my images, cropping, or changing the resolution.
You can get a copy of IrfanView here:
http://www.irfanview.com/
If you're interested in doing some more hard-core image manipulation, I suggest you use The GIMP.
It's an amazing image editing program that allows you to either create your own graphics from scratch, or just simple image manipulations.
I used The GIMP to design the cover for The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, as well as all the other graphics on Become A Blogger.
It's a very powerful piece of software, and you can grab a copy here (also at no cost):
http://www.gimp.org/
--- Cool Tools For Images ---
If you really want to impress your friends with your blog, you'll like the next cool tool...
It's called Animoto, and it helps you create simple slide show presentations with music that you can stream straight from your blog.
All you have to do, is upload a bunch of your photos or images, upload your own music, and voila, the rest is done for you automatically.
Once everything is processed, all you have to do, is grab the embed code, and paste it into your blog - easy peasy.
You can access Animoto here:
http://animoto.com
Let's now move onto the next section...
-------------------------------------------------- 3. Tools For Audio --------------------------------------------------
Creating audio for your blog is great fun and it can add a whole new dimension to your blog. A dimension that your readers will just LOVE!
Trust me on this one...
So, here are a few tools that you might want to start using, if you're not using them already...
--- Creation Tools For Audio ---
A really easy way to create audio for your blog is to do interviews with experts in your niche. You can do this very easily using software like Skype for the interview:
http://www.skype.com
And you can use Pamela Recording software to record the call with:
http://www.pamela.biz/
If you're on Mac, I suggest you use a neat little program called Call Recorder for recording your calls:
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/
Of course, you don't HAVE to interview people to create audio content. You can also record just your own voice using recording software on your computer, like Audacity for example (see below).
--- Editing Tools For Audio
To edit your recordings, you can use one of the following programs (they both cost zero):
For PC users, you can use Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
And if you're on Mac, you can use Garageband:
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
--- Cool Tools For Audio ---
To put the cherry on the cake for audio on your blog, here are two great cool tools:
1. Use the Audio Player WordPress Plugin to help stream the audio straight from your blog:
http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/
Just make sure you export your final audio production to an mp3 file format for this to work.
2. And if you want to get real fancy, use the Odiogo plugin to automatically turn your text posts into podcasts (this is really neat if you like listening to computer generated voices):
http://www.odiogo.com/
Let's now move onto the final part of today's lesson...
-------------------------------------------------- 4. Tools For Video --------------------------------------------------
Finally, let's talk about some great tools you can use for getting video onto your blog.
--- Creation Tools For Video ---
If you're new to online video, the first thing I recommend you do, is to go to my online video training site where you can learn the basics of video production (again, zero cost):
http://getyourvideoonline.com/
On the above site, you will learn about a number of really great tools you can use for creating your own videos that you can ad to your blog.
But let's just quickly go over the basics...
--- Editing Tools For Video ---
If you're on PC, the best entry level editing program you'll find at the moment is Sony Vegas.
Trust me, I've tested A LOT of different programs, and, while not perfect, Sony Vegas came out tops as an entry level editor:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp
(Just grab the basic one - it does a pretty good job)
If you don't like spending money, you can always just use Windows Movie Maker, which comes with all Microsoft Windows installations.
If you're on Mac, you can do some pretty cool editing with the program that just comes with the operating software, iMovie.
But if you're keen for a bit more video adventure, I'd recommend you get yourself a copy of Final Cut Express (the cut down version of the software that Hollywood movie editors use):
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ (Not too expensive, but really worth it if you're doing a lot of video editing.)
It's what I currently use for all of my non screen-capture videos... and I just LOVE it!
If you just want to do screen capture videos though, I recommend you use Camtasia for PC and Screenflow for Mac:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm
--- Cool Tools For Video ---
If you want to make your video content "go the extra mile", here are some great tools you could use...
First up is LinkedTube and Overlay.tv.
Both these services allow you to add clickable links inside your videos.
All you have to do, is upload your videos to YouTube as you normally would do, and then use one or both of these services to add clickable links inside your videos.
This can be great for adding affiliate links inside your videos or for driving people to a specific web page, for example a sales page for your new product.
You can find these services here:
http://www.linkedtube.com/
http://www.overlay.tv/
Now, if this does not impress your audience and make you stand out from the crowd, I don't know what will!
As I said right at the beginning of this lesson, there are a plethora of tools around on the internet that you can use to help you stand out from the crowd.
The above list of tools are the ones that Yaro and I have used in the past or are using right now to help us create "wow" content.
It took us years to get to this point, so all you have to do now, is take advantage of these "shortcuts" and see what happens.
Remember to have fun with all these tools and to look at this whole exercise as one big experiment.
If you don't like any of the tools, just don't use them. But I'm pretty sure that you'll like at least ONE of the above tools!
Inside the next part of this mini course, I will show you how to drive hoards of new traffic to your blog using sneaky little traffic generation methods and tactics.
So you'll definitely want to hang around for the next one. Traffic is what ultimately helps you monetize your blog.
But more on this inside the next lesson...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Part 5 of 7
lørdag 20. oktober 2012
How to become a blogger: Part 4.
Hi Guest
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to the 4th part of the Become A Blogger Mini Course.
Inside today's lesson, I'll reveal three *extremely* powerful content creation techniques that will help you crank out content for your blog faster than you ever thought possible!
But first, let's talk about the importance of content for your blog...
Have you ever heard the expression, "Content is King"?
This is one of the most important concepts you will ever need to keep in mind as you travel your journey towards a MEGA successful blog.
Great content is the backbone of any successful blog, and without it, you can simply forget about gaining any kind of prominence in the niche that you are blogging about.
But it's not just *any* content that will do the job...
"The key is to create amazingly valuable and focused content on a regular basis."
Whoah! That's a mouth full!
Let's break it down a bit...
The more valuable you can make your content, the more people will like it. And the more people who like it, the more they will tell their online friends, and as a result, drive traffic back to your site.
Many newbie bloggers don't "get" this, and feel that they might give away too much content without charging anything for it.
But the reality is that the more you give away, the more attention and hence traffic you will generate to your blog over the long run. And of course, with lots of traffic, you basically have "the license to print money"!
But I'm getting ahead of myself here... Let's get back to that statement I just made.
By "focused", I mean content that is focused on your topic of interest - your niche.
Inside Part 2 of this mini course, I gave you plenty of tips to help you find your topic or niche. And all I'm saying here is that it's important to stick to your chosen topic by staying focused on content related to your topic or niche.
Now of course it's important to listen to your blog visitors, and to ask them what they want to learn about, but people will visit your blog because they are interested in your topic. And by staying focused on that topic, you will automatically give them what they want, which will keep them nice and happy.
Creating content regularly for your blog is critical right at the beginning of your blogging career. We recommend you create a new piece of content every day for the first six months... or at the least every two days if you can't handle a new piece of content every day.
This will achieve at least 2 things:
One - it will help you get content out there fast!
And two - it will help you get traffic from the search engines.
The more keyword rich content you create over a period of time, the more chance you'll have of getting noticed by the search engines and getting listed.
But of course, two more additional benefits of creating content regularly is that (1) you will get into the habit of creating great content fast, and (2) your visitors will come to know you better as you "get in touch" with them more often.
And the better your visitors know you, the more they will trust you. And the more they trust you, the easier you will find it to influence them into a certain direction... like buying your products for example!
Ultimately, the content of your blog is THE MOST important aspect for the success of your blog. Without great content, you can't build a following. And without a following, you can't do diddly squat!
Okay... now that you understand the importance of "creating amazingly valuable and focused content on a regular basis" you are ready to move onto the second main part of this lesson...
Coming up with new ideas for content can be a struggle at best, especially at the beginning when you're not used to creating new and original content.
That's why I'd like to reveal to you some magical content creation tips now that will let you crank out content like a professional author on steroids!
Seriously, the tips you're about to read can make a HUGE difference to your creativity and coming up with amazing content for your blog.
Don't be fooled by the simplicity of these tips. Yaro and I use a combination of these ideas almost every day to help us create content. So, this is as good as it gets...
In particular, I'll show you three methods for coming up with content fast and easy:
1. The Mind Map Method
2. The Brain Dump Method
3. And the Talk It Out Method
Please note: The methods I'm about to tell you have been tried and tested over time, but don't feel that you HAVE to use these methods.
The bottom line is that you need to find a method or a technique that you enjoy using and find naturally easy to do.
These are simply some ideas you can use to come up with your own unique way of creating the content for your blog.
Each of the three methods are designed to stimulate your thinking, and to help you get your ideas from out of your head, and onto paper, or in this case, onto your blog.
Ok, let's move onto the first method...
The Mind Map Method could be one of the most powerful content creation methods you will ever use. I use it for almost all of the content that I ever create, whether it's for a blog, an article or even for a video.
It's one of the best methods I've found to help stimulate my mind and to come up with amazing ideas of things to write about, and to create a general structure for my content.
If you don't know what a Mind Map is, I strongly recommend you read Tony Buzan's book on Mind Mapping. He's known as the founder of Mind Maps and inside his book, he explains why it's such a powerful skill to have, once you've learned how to use it properly.
But just briefly, if you don't know what it is, Wikipedia.com defines a Mind Map as:
"... a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea."
I use a program called Freemind for all my Mind Maps, but there are a whole host of other tools that you can also use.
You could even just use a pen and paper if you prefer. But the rules stay the same, no matter what tool you're using.
Freemind doesn't cost anything and it works for both PC's and Mac and you can download it here:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
For example, say you'd like a create a "How To" article on "Cooking Salmon Using A Fry Pan" for one of your key content articles.
You'd start off by creating the central idea as:
"How To Cook Salmon Using A Fry Pan" right in the center of your page.
This will become your main idea where all your other ideas will branch off from.
Then, without any critical thinking, simply just list all the things or ideas that pop into your mind related to this main idea.
For example, if I think about cooking salmon in a fry pan, one of the first things I might think about is what kind of salmon I should be using...
And then maybe, how to prepare it...
And then, how to fry it...
How to serve it...
And maybe some special cooking tips...
You can then develop your ideas further by adding more branches and sub topics underneath each of the branches you just created...
As you can see, you can really go nuts with this, and add as much detail as you like.
The point of it all is to help the creative juices flow in your mind, and then to create some kind of a structure that you can use for when you start writing.
So, once you've got your Mind Map complete, you can go ahead and move the branches around into a logical structure...
That's what's great about doing Mind Maps on a piece of software like Freemind - it makes it so much easier and faster than paper based Mind Maps!
And once you're done with that, you can use the Mind Map as the structure for your article, and simply start writing little bits of content for each of the sections or branches.
This can often cut down your writing time tremendously, and it will also ensure a much higher quality level for your articles.
Ok, that's it for the Mind Map method. Let's move onto the next one...
The Brain Dump Method is a fantastic method for creating content really fast, and ensuring that your content flows extremely well when people read it.
You can actually use the Brain Dump Method in conjunction with the Mind Map Method, but before I tell you how to do that, let's first talk about what the actual Brain Dump Method is.
This is probably one of my favorite methods for creating content really fast. In fact, as I'm writing this email, I'm actually using this very same method.
I first learned about this method from a gentleman called Dr Joe Vitale, and he's now written so many books using this same method, that he's lost count!
So, to me, that's enough proof that it works!
So here's what you do...
Step 1: Come up with the general title or topic of your article...
Step 2: Do all the necessary research you'll need to get a thorough understanding of your topic - unless you already know your topic really well of course...
Step 3: Turn your computer screen off...
Step 4: Start typing with the intention of creating an article focused on your selected title or topic, and just type anything that comes into your head...
And I really mean anything!
For example, if the thought coming into your head is: "I don't know what to write..." - type that out!
Just type.
Don't worry about spelling or grammar mistakes or anything else, just focus on typing whatever comes into your head (of course with the intention of creating a new article!).
Very quickly, you'll find that one idea will lead to the next, and your brain will simply start getting on a roll, and your fingers wont be able to type fast enough.
Before you know it, you'll end up with a number of pages of content in a matter of minutes!
I've personally tried this method many times over, and each time I use it, I am just amazed at how quickly I can create outstanding content.
The reason why this method works so well, is because when you turn your computer screen off, you can't actually see what you're typing (of course), and this prevents the editing part of your brain from wanting to make changes and modifications all the time as you go.
If your screen is off, you brain simply gives you all the content you need, without having to start and stop all the time for editing, and as a result, your final article will flow much better, and your ideas will merge really well to create a very easy to read article.
Of course, after you've done your brain dump, you can turn your screen back on, and then edit whatever you've written.
Sometimes it's much easier to edit something you've already written, than coming up with totally new information from scratch.
Of course you can just do this on paper as well since being able to type well is a key requirement for this method.
If you do decide to do it on the computer though, just make sure that your typing program is actually active - I've had a few occasions where I typed a wonderful article while my screen was off, and then, when I turned my screen back on again, there was nothing there because my typing program was not active. So just watch out for this.
Now, combining this method with the Mind Map Method can be very powerful. What you do, is basically come up with a general structure for your article, and then use the Brain Dump Method for each of the sub topics that you created inside your Mind Map.
Combining these two methods like this can help you stay focused and also ensure that your final product is more structured.
But just try them out separately as well, and experiment to see what works best for you.
If you don't believe that the Brain Dump Method really works, do try it out a few times first, and see for yourself.
I've just been amazed by it so many times now, and I think there is a good chance that you'll be amazed by it too.
Finally, let's move onto the last method...
The Talk It Out Method is exactly that... You "talk out" your content.
This is another extremely easy way of creating content fast and easy.
All you have to do, is come up with your topic or title as you would normally do...
Perform all the research you need to do (read books, talk to people, read relevant information on the internet)...
Get a recording device...
And start talking about your topic while recording.
After you've talked about it and recorded it, simply transcribe the audio, and do your normal editing afterward.
You could even get someone else to do the transcription for you, saving you lots of time to start thinking about your next topic.
That's really all there is to this method. It will work especially well for people who prefer talking over writing.
Another variation to this method is to get someone else to interview you while you record the conversation.
All you have to do, is come up with a bunch of questions related to your topic, and then get your friend or a colleague to interview you while you record the conversion.
You can either do it face to face with a portable recording device, or you could use something like Skype (it's free) and the Pamela recording software that you can purchase for a small charge.
What's great about this interviewing method is that you can use both the audio recording as well as the transcript that results from it, and put both of them on your blog. Your readers will simply love having the option of both audio and text.
That's it for this method - it's a pretty powerful one - short and sweet!
This should give you enough ideas to help you come up with content quickly and easily.
Don't forget that you can modify these methods any way you want to, and even combine them with some of your own methods.
The whole point of it all is to simply help you get those creative juices flowing so that you can get your content out as fast and as easy as possible.
I encourage you to keep on looking for other content creation methods too, and to keep on perfecting your methods and techniques all the time.
Creating great content is the *number one* most important thing for the success of your blog, so the more you can practice, the better!
Inside the next part of this mini course, I'll reveal how you can boost the effectiveness of your blog using clever multimedia tricks and tools - what we call "X-Factor Strategies" for your blog.
Until then!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Blogging Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to the 4th part of the Become A Blogger Mini Course.
Inside today's lesson, I'll reveal three *extremely* powerful content creation techniques that will help you crank out content for your blog faster than you ever thought possible!
But first, let's talk about the importance of content for your blog...
Have you ever heard the expression, "Content is King"?
This is one of the most important concepts you will ever need to keep in mind as you travel your journey towards a MEGA successful blog.
Great content is the backbone of any successful blog, and without it, you can simply forget about gaining any kind of prominence in the niche that you are blogging about.
But it's not just *any* content that will do the job...
"The key is to create amazingly valuable and focused content on a regular basis."
Whoah! That's a mouth full!
Let's break it down a bit...
********************************************** First, you need to create amazingly valuable content... **********************************************
The more valuable you can make your content, the more people will like it. And the more people who like it, the more they will tell their online friends, and as a result, drive traffic back to your site.
Many newbie bloggers don't "get" this, and feel that they might give away too much content without charging anything for it.
But the reality is that the more you give away, the more attention and hence traffic you will generate to your blog over the long run. And of course, with lots of traffic, you basically have "the license to print money"!
But I'm getting ahead of myself here... Let's get back to that statement I just made.
********************************************** Second, you need to create focused content... **********************************************
By "focused", I mean content that is focused on your topic of interest - your niche.
Inside Part 2 of this mini course, I gave you plenty of tips to help you find your topic or niche. And all I'm saying here is that it's important to stick to your chosen topic by staying focused on content related to your topic or niche.
Now of course it's important to listen to your blog visitors, and to ask them what they want to learn about, but people will visit your blog because they are interested in your topic. And by staying focused on that topic, you will automatically give them what they want, which will keep them nice and happy.
************************************************* Finally, you need to create content on a regular basis... *************************************************
Creating content regularly for your blog is critical right at the beginning of your blogging career. We recommend you create a new piece of content every day for the first six months... or at the least every two days if you can't handle a new piece of content every day.
This will achieve at least 2 things:
One - it will help you get content out there fast!
And two - it will help you get traffic from the search engines.
The more keyword rich content you create over a period of time, the more chance you'll have of getting noticed by the search engines and getting listed.
But of course, two more additional benefits of creating content regularly is that (1) you will get into the habit of creating great content fast, and (2) your visitors will come to know you better as you "get in touch" with them more often.
And the better your visitors know you, the more they will trust you. And the more they trust you, the easier you will find it to influence them into a certain direction... like buying your products for example!
Ultimately, the content of your blog is THE MOST important aspect for the success of your blog. Without great content, you can't build a following. And without a following, you can't do diddly squat!
Okay... now that you understand the importance of "creating amazingly valuable and focused content on a regular basis" you are ready to move onto the second main part of this lesson...
******************************************** Three *Extremely* Powerful Content Creation Strategies For Your Blog ********************************************
Coming up with new ideas for content can be a struggle at best, especially at the beginning when you're not used to creating new and original content.
That's why I'd like to reveal to you some magical content creation tips now that will let you crank out content like a professional author on steroids!
Seriously, the tips you're about to read can make a HUGE difference to your creativity and coming up with amazing content for your blog.
Don't be fooled by the simplicity of these tips. Yaro and I use a combination of these ideas almost every day to help us create content. So, this is as good as it gets...
In particular, I'll show you three methods for coming up with content fast and easy:
1. The Mind Map Method
2. The Brain Dump Method
3. And the Talk It Out Method
Please note: The methods I'm about to tell you have been tried and tested over time, but don't feel that you HAVE to use these methods.
The bottom line is that you need to find a method or a technique that you enjoy using and find naturally easy to do.
These are simply some ideas you can use to come up with your own unique way of creating the content for your blog.
Each of the three methods are designed to stimulate your thinking, and to help you get your ideas from out of your head, and onto paper, or in this case, onto your blog.
Ok, let's move onto the first method...
*********************** 1. The Mind Map Method ***********************
The Mind Map Method could be one of the most powerful content creation methods you will ever use. I use it for almost all of the content that I ever create, whether it's for a blog, an article or even for a video.
It's one of the best methods I've found to help stimulate my mind and to come up with amazing ideas of things to write about, and to create a general structure for my content.
If you don't know what a Mind Map is, I strongly recommend you read Tony Buzan's book on Mind Mapping. He's known as the founder of Mind Maps and inside his book, he explains why it's such a powerful skill to have, once you've learned how to use it properly.
But just briefly, if you don't know what it is, Wikipedia.com defines a Mind Map as:
"... a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea."
I use a program called Freemind for all my Mind Maps, but there are a whole host of other tools that you can also use.
You could even just use a pen and paper if you prefer. But the rules stay the same, no matter what tool you're using.
Freemind doesn't cost anything and it works for both PC's and Mac and you can download it here:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
For example, say you'd like a create a "How To" article on "Cooking Salmon Using A Fry Pan" for one of your key content articles.
You'd start off by creating the central idea as:
"How To Cook Salmon Using A Fry Pan" right in the center of your page.
This will become your main idea where all your other ideas will branch off from.
Then, without any critical thinking, simply just list all the things or ideas that pop into your mind related to this main idea.
For example, if I think about cooking salmon in a fry pan, one of the first things I might think about is what kind of salmon I should be using...
And then maybe, how to prepare it...
And then, how to fry it...
How to serve it...
And maybe some special cooking tips...
You can then develop your ideas further by adding more branches and sub topics underneath each of the branches you just created...
As you can see, you can really go nuts with this, and add as much detail as you like.
The point of it all is to help the creative juices flow in your mind, and then to create some kind of a structure that you can use for when you start writing.
So, once you've got your Mind Map complete, you can go ahead and move the branches around into a logical structure...
That's what's great about doing Mind Maps on a piece of software like Freemind - it makes it so much easier and faster than paper based Mind Maps!
And once you're done with that, you can use the Mind Map as the structure for your article, and simply start writing little bits of content for each of the sections or branches.
This can often cut down your writing time tremendously, and it will also ensure a much higher quality level for your articles.
Ok, that's it for the Mind Map method. Let's move onto the next one...
************************* 2. The Brain Dump Method *************************
The Brain Dump Method is a fantastic method for creating content really fast, and ensuring that your content flows extremely well when people read it.
You can actually use the Brain Dump Method in conjunction with the Mind Map Method, but before I tell you how to do that, let's first talk about what the actual Brain Dump Method is.
This is probably one of my favorite methods for creating content really fast. In fact, as I'm writing this email, I'm actually using this very same method.
I first learned about this method from a gentleman called Dr Joe Vitale, and he's now written so many books using this same method, that he's lost count!
So, to me, that's enough proof that it works!
So here's what you do...
Step 1: Come up with the general title or topic of your article...
Step 2: Do all the necessary research you'll need to get a thorough understanding of your topic - unless you already know your topic really well of course...
Step 3: Turn your computer screen off...
Step 4: Start typing with the intention of creating an article focused on your selected title or topic, and just type anything that comes into your head...
And I really mean anything!
For example, if the thought coming into your head is: "I don't know what to write..." - type that out!
Just type.
Don't worry about spelling or grammar mistakes or anything else, just focus on typing whatever comes into your head (of course with the intention of creating a new article!).
Very quickly, you'll find that one idea will lead to the next, and your brain will simply start getting on a roll, and your fingers wont be able to type fast enough.
Before you know it, you'll end up with a number of pages of content in a matter of minutes!
I've personally tried this method many times over, and each time I use it, I am just amazed at how quickly I can create outstanding content.
The reason why this method works so well, is because when you turn your computer screen off, you can't actually see what you're typing (of course), and this prevents the editing part of your brain from wanting to make changes and modifications all the time as you go.
If your screen is off, you brain simply gives you all the content you need, without having to start and stop all the time for editing, and as a result, your final article will flow much better, and your ideas will merge really well to create a very easy to read article.
Of course, after you've done your brain dump, you can turn your screen back on, and then edit whatever you've written.
Sometimes it's much easier to edit something you've already written, than coming up with totally new information from scratch.
Of course you can just do this on paper as well since being able to type well is a key requirement for this method.
If you do decide to do it on the computer though, just make sure that your typing program is actually active - I've had a few occasions where I typed a wonderful article while my screen was off, and then, when I turned my screen back on again, there was nothing there because my typing program was not active. So just watch out for this.
Now, combining this method with the Mind Map Method can be very powerful. What you do, is basically come up with a general structure for your article, and then use the Brain Dump Method for each of the sub topics that you created inside your Mind Map.
Combining these two methods like this can help you stay focused and also ensure that your final product is more structured.
But just try them out separately as well, and experiment to see what works best for you.
If you don't believe that the Brain Dump Method really works, do try it out a few times first, and see for yourself.
I've just been amazed by it so many times now, and I think there is a good chance that you'll be amazed by it too.
Finally, let's move onto the last method...
************************** 3. The Talk It Out Method **************************
The Talk It Out Method is exactly that... You "talk out" your content.
This is another extremely easy way of creating content fast and easy.
All you have to do, is come up with your topic or title as you would normally do...
Perform all the research you need to do (read books, talk to people, read relevant information on the internet)...
Get a recording device...
And start talking about your topic while recording.
After you've talked about it and recorded it, simply transcribe the audio, and do your normal editing afterward.
You could even get someone else to do the transcription for you, saving you lots of time to start thinking about your next topic.
That's really all there is to this method. It will work especially well for people who prefer talking over writing.
Another variation to this method is to get someone else to interview you while you record the conversation.
All you have to do, is come up with a bunch of questions related to your topic, and then get your friend or a colleague to interview you while you record the conversion.
You can either do it face to face with a portable recording device, or you could use something like Skype (it's free) and the Pamela recording software that you can purchase for a small charge.
What's great about this interviewing method is that you can use both the audio recording as well as the transcript that results from it, and put both of them on your blog. Your readers will simply love having the option of both audio and text.
That's it for this method - it's a pretty powerful one - short and sweet!
This should give you enough ideas to help you come up with content quickly and easily.
Don't forget that you can modify these methods any way you want to, and even combine them with some of your own methods.
The whole point of it all is to simply help you get those creative juices flowing so that you can get your content out as fast and as easy as possible.
I encourage you to keep on looking for other content creation methods too, and to keep on perfecting your methods and techniques all the time.
Creating great content is the *number one* most important thing for the success of your blog, so the more you can practice, the better!
Inside the next part of this mini course, I'll reveal how you can boost the effectiveness of your blog using clever multimedia tricks and tools - what we call "X-Factor Strategies" for your blog.
Until then!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Part 4 of 7
Lag din egen Webside
fredag 19. oktober 2012
How to become a blogger: Part 3.
Hi Guest
Welcome to blogging
Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to the 3rd part of the Become A Blogger Mini Course. Inside today's lesson, I'll talk about all the nitty gritty details of optimizing your blog for floods of new traffic.
But before we get into that, let's have a quick recap to look at all the things we covered so far.
Inside the first lesson, I explained in more detail exactly what a blog is.
Inside the second lesson, I talked about a very important subject - that of selecting the right topic for your blog.
Picking the wrong topic could be detrimental to your success as a blogger, and that's why I made sure I gave you enough information to figure it all out.
If you have not selected a topic for your blog yet, don't stress about it. Just be patient and keep doing research and drilling down on the kind of activities that you are truly passionate about.
The next step was to get your blog up and running, and I suggested you use the complimentary videos on www.becomeablogger.com to help you set up your very first blog.
So, let's assume for now that you've been able to select a topic that you want to blog about, and you've even been able to install your very own blog.
So what's next after that?
Before you can start getting traction for your blog you'll need to optimize it.
Unfortunately most installations of WordPress does not come optimized, but lucky for you, there are a few neat little tricks you can implement to get this all sorted out.
There are two areas of your blog that you need to optimize for...
- Search engines - And people
Let's tackle the first one for now...
The essential plugins you'll need to install are:
*** The SEO Title Tag plugin ***
Depending on your theme, this is likely the most crucial plugin you will need to install into your WordPress blog. Some themes (like the Thesis theme for example) takes care of the same kind of issues that this plugin takes care of.
But in most cases, the SEO Title Tag plugin will be "gold" for your blog in the weeks, months and years to come.
Basically, what it does is turn all the titles of your posts into search engine friendly titles.
In other words, using this plugin, search engines will be able to easily pick up on the keywords you use inside the titles of your blog, and therefore increase your chances of getting ranked on the top pages for search engines like Google.com.
You can get the SEO Title Tag plugin here:
http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
*** The Subscribe To Comments Plugin ***
Now this is a really neat little plugin. It's easy to install, and at first sight does not look like much. But boy! Can it help you get more repeat traffic to your site!
The Subscribe To Comments Plugin creates a little check box inside the comments area for each of your blog posts which allows people to subscribe to all the comments that are being made on that particular post.
Then, every time a new comment is made, the person who subscribed to the comments, receives an instant message telling them that a new comment has been made. They can then click on the link provided inside their email that will take them straight back to your blog.
How cool is that!? Simple, but powerful.
You can get the Subscribe To Comments plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
*** The WWSGD Plugin ***
This plugin is great for increasing your number of RSS subscribers (watch videos #9 and #10 on www.becomeablogger.com to get an understanding of what RSS is).
WWSGD is short for "What Would Seth Godin Do". And it's named after Seth Godin, a well known marketing genius.
The WWSGD plugin creates a small subscribe box at the top of each of your posts each time a new visitor comes to you blog. You can modify the text inside the box, but basically, it lets you ask someone who's new to your blog to subscribe to your RSS feed.
If they then click on the link supplied, they will immediately get directed to the page for subscribing using your RSS feed.
So, whenever you post a new blog post, all your RSS feed subscribers will get notified, and therefore drive traffic straight back to your blog.
You can get the WWSGD plugin here:
http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do
*** The Akismet Plugin ***
This is an essential plugin if you don't like blog comment spam. Yes, you read that correctly, blogs are also plagued by spam. But instead of email spam, the spam comes in the form of comments on your blog.
But luckily the Akismet plugin takes care of all your comment spam issues. There's not much more to it. You just install the plugin, and it then takes care of the rest for you.
You can create your WordPress API Key needed for the Akismet plugin here:
http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys/
*** The Sociable Plugin ***
If you are into the whole social media thing (and you should be if you're reading this!), you'll really want to install the Sociable plugin.
Once installed, it creates a list of icons linked to all the popular social bookmarking sites so that your readers can easily bookmark your blog posts in case they want to come back to your site and find specific information easily again.
Once again, installing this plugin will help you drive traffic back to your site. So it's definitely a keeper!
You can get the Sociable plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/
*** The XML Sitemap Generator Plugin ***
The XML Sitemap Generator plugin is one of the more intense plugins to install.
But it's really worth it.
It creates a special kind of sitemap (called an XML sitemap) of your whole blog that is easily readable by search engines like Google.com and Yahoo.com. And this in turn makes it easier for these search engines to list all your blog pages and posts inside their search results.
So, this is a definite MUST HAVE plugin!
You can get the XML Sitemap Generator plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
That pretty much wraps it up for optimizing your blog for search engines, using plugins.
There are a number of other things you can also do to help optimize your whole blog for search engines. But I'll leave that for another lesson.
For now, the above plugins will be a great foundation to build on and will help you set up your blog correctly for search engines right from the start.
Now, let's look at the next main point...
The first plugin is called...
*** The Threaded Comments Plugin ***
What this plugin does, is create a threaded style commenting structure for the comments that are made on your blog posts.
In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post... and on and on, creating what's called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
For an example of this, make sure you visit the Become A Blogger blog at www.becomeablogger.com/blog. You can get the Threaded Comments plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/
The next plugin is another keeper...
*** The Contact Form 7 Plugin ***
This plugin helps you create awesome looking contact forms on your blog.
By installing the Contact Form 7 plugin, it means that you don't have to list your email on your site anywhere, hence reducing the chance that spam trawlers will pick up your email address and send you a bunch of spam messages.
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is.
And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I've just installed this plugin on a new blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
http://freemagiclive.com/contact/
You can get the Contact Form 7 plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
By using a great looking theme, not only will your blog look more professional, but you will also stand out from the crowd of other people who just use no-cost themes.
Another problem with the no-cost themes is that their coding is often very poor, and could affect your search engine rankings in a bad way.
The one we recommend at Become A Blogger is The Affiliate Theme, and you can grab a copy here:
http://www.affiliatetheme.net/625-4-3-1.html
We're already had lot's of really great reviews from this theme, so make sure you get yourself a copy.
...and that brings us to the end of today's lesson.
I hope you've found it useful and that you'll be able to install all the above mentioned plugins successfully onto your blog.
Don't forget that if you get stuck at all, get a professional technical person to help you out.
If you don't know where to look for such people, try a site like www.elance.com or ask in forums.
Once you've installed all the right plugins and your new theme for your blog, you are ready to move onto the next major stage of your blog - content creation.
Inside the next lesson, I'll reveal some magical content creation tips that will let you crank out content like a professional author on steroids. So, if you're stuck for ideas on creating content, this part will just blow you away!
This next lesson will help you create the back bone of a long term very successful blog.
But I can't reveal too much more than that for now. You'll just have to wait and see inside the next part of this mini course!
Until then...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Welcome to blogging
Article by: Roy Werner Karlsen
Welcome to the 3rd part of the Become A Blogger Mini Course. Inside today's lesson, I'll talk about all the nitty gritty details of optimizing your blog for floods of new traffic.
But before we get into that, let's have a quick recap to look at all the things we covered so far.
Inside the first lesson, I explained in more detail exactly what a blog is.
Inside the second lesson, I talked about a very important subject - that of selecting the right topic for your blog.
Picking the wrong topic could be detrimental to your success as a blogger, and that's why I made sure I gave you enough information to figure it all out.
If you have not selected a topic for your blog yet, don't stress about it. Just be patient and keep doing research and drilling down on the kind of activities that you are truly passionate about.
The next step was to get your blog up and running, and I suggested you use the complimentary videos on www.becomeablogger.com to help you set up your very first blog.
So, let's assume for now that you've been able to select a topic that you want to blog about, and you've even been able to install your very own blog.
So what's next after that?
Before you can start getting traction for your blog you'll need to optimize it.
Unfortunately most installations of WordPress does not come optimized, but lucky for you, there are a few neat little tricks you can implement to get this all sorted out.
There are two areas of your blog that you need to optimize for...
- Search engines - And people
Let's tackle the first one for now...
-------------------------------------------------- How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines --------------------------------------------------There are a number of things you can do for optimizing your blog for search engines. The first and most basic thing you need to do, is to install all the right plugins for your blog.
The essential plugins you'll need to install are:
*** The SEO Title Tag plugin ***
Depending on your theme, this is likely the most crucial plugin you will need to install into your WordPress blog. Some themes (like the Thesis theme for example) takes care of the same kind of issues that this plugin takes care of.
But in most cases, the SEO Title Tag plugin will be "gold" for your blog in the weeks, months and years to come.
Basically, what it does is turn all the titles of your posts into search engine friendly titles.
In other words, using this plugin, search engines will be able to easily pick up on the keywords you use inside the titles of your blog, and therefore increase your chances of getting ranked on the top pages for search engines like Google.com.
You can get the SEO Title Tag plugin here:
http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
*** The Subscribe To Comments Plugin ***
Now this is a really neat little plugin. It's easy to install, and at first sight does not look like much. But boy! Can it help you get more repeat traffic to your site!
The Subscribe To Comments Plugin creates a little check box inside the comments area for each of your blog posts which allows people to subscribe to all the comments that are being made on that particular post.
Then, every time a new comment is made, the person who subscribed to the comments, receives an instant message telling them that a new comment has been made. They can then click on the link provided inside their email that will take them straight back to your blog.
How cool is that!? Simple, but powerful.
You can get the Subscribe To Comments plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
*** The WWSGD Plugin ***
This plugin is great for increasing your number of RSS subscribers (watch videos #9 and #10 on www.becomeablogger.com to get an understanding of what RSS is).
WWSGD is short for "What Would Seth Godin Do". And it's named after Seth Godin, a well known marketing genius.
The WWSGD plugin creates a small subscribe box at the top of each of your posts each time a new visitor comes to you blog. You can modify the text inside the box, but basically, it lets you ask someone who's new to your blog to subscribe to your RSS feed.
If they then click on the link supplied, they will immediately get directed to the page for subscribing using your RSS feed.
So, whenever you post a new blog post, all your RSS feed subscribers will get notified, and therefore drive traffic straight back to your blog.
You can get the WWSGD plugin here:
http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do
*** The Akismet Plugin ***
This is an essential plugin if you don't like blog comment spam. Yes, you read that correctly, blogs are also plagued by spam. But instead of email spam, the spam comes in the form of comments on your blog.
But luckily the Akismet plugin takes care of all your comment spam issues. There's not much more to it. You just install the plugin, and it then takes care of the rest for you.
You can create your WordPress API Key needed for the Akismet plugin here:
http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys/
*** The Sociable Plugin ***
If you are into the whole social media thing (and you should be if you're reading this!), you'll really want to install the Sociable plugin.
Once installed, it creates a list of icons linked to all the popular social bookmarking sites so that your readers can easily bookmark your blog posts in case they want to come back to your site and find specific information easily again.
Once again, installing this plugin will help you drive traffic back to your site. So it's definitely a keeper!
You can get the Sociable plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/
*** The XML Sitemap Generator Plugin ***
The XML Sitemap Generator plugin is one of the more intense plugins to install.
But it's really worth it.
It creates a special kind of sitemap (called an XML sitemap) of your whole blog that is easily readable by search engines like Google.com and Yahoo.com. And this in turn makes it easier for these search engines to list all your blog pages and posts inside their search results.
So, this is a definite MUST HAVE plugin!
You can get the XML Sitemap Generator plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
That pretty much wraps it up for optimizing your blog for search engines, using plugins.
There are a number of other things you can also do to help optimize your whole blog for search engines. But I'll leave that for another lesson.
For now, the above plugins will be a great foundation to build on and will help you set up your blog correctly for search engines right from the start.
Now, let's look at the next main point...
-------------------------------------------------- How To optimize Your Blog For People --------------------------------------------------Next I'll show you two really neat plugins that you can install to make the user experience of your blog so much more pleasurable.
The first plugin is called...
*** The Threaded Comments Plugin ***
What this plugin does, is create a threaded style commenting structure for the comments that are made on your blog posts.
In other words, this plugin allows you to not only reply to a post on your blog, but also to reply to a reply to a post... and on and on, creating what's called a threaded, or nested comment collection.
For an example of this, make sure you visit the Become A Blogger blog at www.becomeablogger.com/blog. You can get the Threaded Comments plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/
The next plugin is another keeper...
*** The Contact Form 7 Plugin ***
This plugin helps you create awesome looking contact forms on your blog.
By installing the Contact Form 7 plugin, it means that you don't have to list your email on your site anywhere, hence reducing the chance that spam trawlers will pick up your email address and send you a bunch of spam messages.
The best part about this plugin, is that it makes it extremely easy for your blog visitors to get in touch with you directly, without knowing what your email address is.
And besides, the implementation of this plugin is just beautiful, and it really looks the part. I've just installed this plugin on a new blog in case you want to check it out for yourself. You can see it in action here:
http://freemagiclive.com/contact/
You can get the Contact Form 7 plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
-------------------------------------------------- What Else Can You Do To Optimize Your Blog For People? --------------------------------------------------There are a number of other things you can do to help optimize the experience of your visitors. One major such thing is to install a decent theme for your blog.
By using a great looking theme, not only will your blog look more professional, but you will also stand out from the crowd of other people who just use no-cost themes.
Another problem with the no-cost themes is that their coding is often very poor, and could affect your search engine rankings in a bad way.
The one we recommend at Become A Blogger is The Affiliate Theme, and you can grab a copy here:
http://www.affiliatetheme.net/625-4-3-1.html
We're already had lot's of really great reviews from this theme, so make sure you get yourself a copy.
...and that brings us to the end of today's lesson.
I hope you've found it useful and that you'll be able to install all the above mentioned plugins successfully onto your blog.
Don't forget that if you get stuck at all, get a professional technical person to help you out.
If you don't know where to look for such people, try a site like www.elance.com or ask in forums.
Once you've installed all the right plugins and your new theme for your blog, you are ready to move onto the next major stage of your blog - content creation.
Inside the next lesson, I'll reveal some magical content creation tips that will let you crank out content like a professional author on steroids. So, if you're stuck for ideas on creating content, this part will just blow you away!
This next lesson will help you create the back bone of a long term very successful blog.
But I can't reveal too much more than that for now. You'll just have to wait and see inside the next part of this mini course!
Until then...
Talk soon!
Roy Werner Karlsen
Become A Blogger
Part 3 of 7
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