Month: June 2015

Welcome to day one of building a better blog! The ProBlogger podcast is off and running with a new episode every day this month with a theme designed to help boost your blogging skills and todays podcast episode is now live for you to listen to.

The original 31 Days to Build a Better Blog helped so many people both when it was released, and across the years since then, and it’s exciting to be able to change it up with updated information, new challenges and a supporting podcast.

Day one is all about encapsulating the purpose and spirit of your blog.

What is it about? Who is it for? Why should people read it? In the podcast we go through the reasons to have an elevator pitch, what type of elevator pitch might be best for you, and, of course – how to create one.

There’s also a challenge at the end to take you straight from knowing to doing. As a bonus it doesn’t even take long, but will have a lasting impact on how you make decisions about your blog, and how you come across to others. Having an elevator pitch is invaluable.

Head here to listen to the first day and stay tuned throughout July for more tips to help you build a better blog!

Don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher to get future updates.

Further Reading on Elevator Pitches:

Michael Hyatt goes through the basics of why you need an elevator pitch, and how to create one. He also has a video that helps to explain.

The 9 Cs of Elevator Pitches

This infographic from HubSpot has information with a wider reach (think businesses with a product), but will visually help you break down the steps you need to take to sum up yourself and your business.

And a Pinterest board dedicated to Elevator Pitch information.

Also: If you’re interested, you might want to check out this post from someone who did the original 31DBBB challenge, and their tips for getting the most out of the month.

Originally at:

31DBBB Day One: What Makes a Great Elevator Pitch?

The post 31DBBB Day One: What Makes a Great Elevator Pitch? appeared first on @ProBlogger.

Today I have great pleasure in introducing you to the brand new ProBlogger Podcast and the next incarnation of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Over the last couple of years I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said ‘Darren you really should start a podcast’.

I’d always nodded my head but quietly list in my mind a long list of excuses not to including ‘I don’t know how…’ to ‘I’m so busy…’ to ‘what if nobody listens…’

But earlier this year something changed when people suggested I start a podcast.

I’m not going to tell you exactly why I changed because I tell you that in the first episode (that went live on iTunes over the weekend) – but it was like a switch got flicked somewhere in my mind and I found myself starting to dream about starting one of my own (and as I did my list of excuses began to dissolve).

I decided while on a month long break in the US in April to create a ProBlogger podcast and in my presentation at Chris Ducker’s conference in May I announced I was going to create it and after one of the attendees (I’m looking at you Lane) pressured me to put a date on when I’d do it I impulsively said it would be launched within 2 months!

Little did I know how much of a job I had in front of me because rather than start off with a steady weekly show I decided that my first month of podcasting would be a daily show based upon the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook!

Episode 0 is Live

Today Episode 0 of the podcast went live on iTunes and day 1 of the 31 Days to Build a Better blog series will kick off on Wednesday (1 July)! You can find show notes and listen to the podcast on our podcast site here.

In the first episode:

• I share why I decided to start podcasting
• I talk about 2 traits of successful blogs that inform how the podcast will work
• I share my plan for the first action oriented 31 days of short sharp podcasts based around 31DBBB

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Having run this month long challenge numerous times before I know the potential it has to help bloggers bring about transformation on their blogs.

Tens of thousands of bloggers have taken the challenge (and many have completed it numerous times) so I’m excited to be doing it again and would love to have you along on the journey.

Don’t feel you need to do it daily (it’s designed to do at your own pace) but please do subscribe to the podcast here on iTunes.

Please Help Us with a Quick Review and Rating on iTunes

Once you’ve listened to the first podcast (it’s only 16 minutes) please take a moment to give us a rating (hint… 5 starts is good) and a review – it helps us get the word out about the challenge and the more on it the better for everyone!

A Note about the 31DBBB WorkBook

This podcast series is based upon the 31 Days to Build a Better blog workbook and follows the same 31 days in it – however you do not need a copy to follow along.

While there’s definitely more material in the eBook (in fact there’s a bonus 7 days includes in that) you will give value from the podcast without it.

However if you do want to have your own copy of the 31 days of material (plus the 7 extras) to use on an ongoing basis please use the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout from the sales page to get 50% off the workbook for the next month.

No pressure though – as I say you can get a lot of value out of the podcast alone if you choose to do so.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The ProBlogger Podcast Is Live and We’re Kicking Off with a Challenge!

The post The ProBlogger Podcast Is Live and We’re Kicking Off with a Challenge! appeared first on @ProBlogger.

All secrets are being revealed on ProBlogger this week! We’ve had the morning routines of superstar bloggers and online entrepreneurs, and also their number one life hack (especially for time management). Today, they share how they keep going when the going gets tough.

HEATHER ARMSTRONG: Author, speaker, and blogger at Dooce

One, I am the sole provider for my children. Keeping them housed, clothed, fed and happy is the highest priority in my life. Two, I love where I am in my life and cherish the experiences that have brought me here to do what I do. I stay motivated so that I can create even bigger and broader experiences.

Heather will be presenting the keynote session: The Courage of Compassion: Transforming Your Experience with Criticism

MRS WOOG: Mouthy 40-something housewife from the burbs. Blogs at Woogsworld

Because I have the best job in the world and I want to keep it.

Mrs Woog will be on the panel for: How to monetise a personal blog with Heather Armstrong

BENJAMIN MANGOLD: Director of Digital and Analytics at Loves Data + Google-certified expert for Google Analytics

Seeing people learn new things and exploring new ideas keeps me motivated. When you see things ‘click’ for someone it’s extremely rewarding. I also love it when I hear how the work and training we do at Loves Data has helped someone – it’s an incredible feeling to receive a card, an email, or a chocogram, from someone saying how much they appreciate what we do.

Benjamin will be presenting the session: Metrics that Matter: Google Analytics for Actionable Insights

KELLY EXETER: Owner of Swish Design, a boutique web and graphic design company.

Habit. I’m very good at negotiating with myself and can talk myself out of doing anything so relying on motivation to overcome this just makes life too hard. Instead, I’ve created habits around the things that are important to me/just need to be done. For example: writing and exercise are super-important to me but it would be so easy to de-prioritise them in amongst everything else going on in my day. So being in the habit of getting up early and doing them as the first order of the day every single day … it means I never have to go looking for motivation.

Kelly will be presenting the session: Blogging voice and the art of creating meaningful connections through writing

RUTH SOUKUP: Founder of LivingWellSpendingLess.com

Honestly, I don’t have to try very hard to stay motivated—I LOVE what I do! I can’t think of a job that I would enjoy more, or that would allow me to combine all the things I love. I get bored easily, but the blogging world is always changing. I enjoy strategizing & the process of trying to get ahead of the curve. My biggest problem is not getting motivated, but trying to find the time to implement all my ideas. This year my husband made me promise to take Sundays off, which I have, but I often find myself wandering around the house wishing I could work on my latest project!

Ruth will be presenting the keynote session The 5 Ordinary Habits of Extraordinary Bloggers, and breakout session Pinterest Marketing 101: The Three Elements of the Perfect Pin

NAT KRINGOUDIS: Women’s health revolutionist and fertility fixer at natkringoudis.com.au

If you are fully aligned to your vision, living and breathing it, it all falls into place without too much effort. It’s so important to fully integrate yourself in your message and what you do. The rest then will simply follow and flow. With this in mind, I don’t need to stay motivated, I’m generally always motivated.

Nat will be presenting the session: How to create your gangbuster e-product

BRANDON COWAN: 21-year-old co-founder and Director of Crazy Dog Apps

Simple (sort of)… I live my life using a bit of Steve Jobs’ philosophy – if I find that I am not enjoying something in life and know that I can do something better, I will make the switch or adjust my life accordingly. By always doing what I want, I will always be motivated to do what I do.

Brandon will be presenting the session: Creating Business Ideas

PAMELA WILSON: Big Brand System and Copyblogger Media

I really, really love what I do. My full-time job is Vice President of Educational Content at Copyblogger. I am running the day-to-day operations of the Copyblogger blog, which is an honor and a wonderful challenge, too.

Along with Editor-in-Chief Stefanie Flaxman and Chief Content Writer Demian Farnworth, we set the tone and editorial direction of the Copyblogger blog, and plan how we’ll complement the written information with editorial images that help tell the story of each post.

In addition to that, I’m overseeing the educational content offered at Copyblogger Media, and there’s a lot of it!

I’m a teacher at heart, so both of these jobs make me feel like I’m contributing to help people make progress in their businesses and their lives.

That’s all the motivation I need. 🙂

Pamela will be presenting the session: Design 101: How to Use Design Basics to Polish Up Your Blog, and How to Create a Content Event That Builds Your Email List

DAN NORRIS: serial entrepreneur, award winning blogger and the author of the best selling business book The 7 Day Startup

I work on what I love and what inspires me at the time so who wouldn’t be motivated to do that? I do lose focus a little bit sometimes so I have a few things that pull me back into line like chatting with other entrepreneurs, listening to podcasts and speaking at and attending conferences.

Dan will be presenting the session: How to use your blog to supercharge your small business

CAROLINE MAKEPEACE: Co-founder of y travel blog

I think about my old life waking up every morning to an alarm to go to a job I hated and my first words uttered were “Oh F***!”. That memory makes a 15 hour day working on my blog easy to do. I also have a very engaged email communication relationship (which I’ll share more about in my session). Each week, I read stories about my reader’s lives, fears, hopes and dreams and I’m so so inspired to continue working to help them. I seriously would have quit if it were not for those emails.

Caroline will be presenting the session: From Blog to Business – the steps you need to take from to create a profitable business online

THE EVENT

There are a handful of tickets left, so be quick to ensure you don’t miss out! You can go here to purchase.

PBEVENT is Australia’s biggest and longest-running blogging conference. Our first 400 tickets sold in around 20 minutes this year, firmly establishing it the ‘go-to’ event on the blogging community’s calendar for training and networking.

In 2015, ProBlogger Training Event is presented by Olympus and will be relocating to the spacious RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast, ready for over 650 bloggers on August 14 and 15.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

10 PBEVENT Speakers Tell How They Stay Motivated

The post 10 PBEVENT Speakers Tell How They Stay Motivated appeared first on @ProBlogger.

I’ve seen so much good content lately on the subject of blogging – I always love a downloadable schedule that someone else has taken the time to create, and sneaking a peek into how others make money is such an eye-opener! I’ve curated a couple of links you might find helpful as we try to kick ass on the internet this week.

6 Social Media Templates to Save You Hours of Work // Hootsuite

There’s everything from a template to help you create a social media strategy to guide you in your daily online activities, to audit checklists, content calendars, and image size cheat sheets for download to streamline your workflow.

Facebook Rolling out Significant Upgrades to Ads Manager and Power Editor // Marketing Land

They say big improvements are coming that will increase the congruity of ad creation and editing with data and metrics as well as the usability and searchability within an account. Get excited!

6 Ways to Grow Your Blog Audience // Social Media Examiner

Practical tips on the subjects of blog promotion, consistent scheduling, offering subscription points, expanding your content, and finding content through readers. You can also listen to an audio recording of the article.

How I Made $132,339 Last Month Blogging // StartupCamp

Dale Partridge gives an income report for April, broken down into each revenue stream, and colour-coded to signify whether it was higher or lower than last year. He also includes some links you might find helpful to grow your readership like he has.

Why Link Building is NOT the Future of SEO // Quicksprout

Neil Patel lays down the law for SEO enthusiasts. Been focusing on link building? You might want to think again!

Have you read something awesome lately? I’d love to see a link and have a chat in the comments.

Stacey is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama or be entertained on Facebook.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately

The post Reading Roundup: What’s New in Blogging Lately appeared first on @ProBlogger.

This is a guest contribution from Dennis Rundle.

Black Hat SEO practices have been going on for years without any signs of slowing down.

Regardless of the efforts Google makes with the purpose to stop black hatters from attacking vulnerable websites, these tactics haven’t become obsolete. Black Hat SEO practices are usually performed with the purpose to trick search engines. Some of these strategies include doorway pages, keyword stuffing, and invisible text.

Doorway Pages as a Threat to Your Website

Doorway, also known as a bridge page, entry page or jump page, is a page that black hatters design for the purpose of gaining top positions in Google’s search results. This page seems relevant to the search engine because it contains the right keywords. It usually includes hidden text, which is stuffed with keywords and phrases that would rank it in the search results.

Who would be interested to attack your website with a doorway strategy? That would only rank you higher, right?

Wrong!

First of all, let’s clarify one thing: doorway pages are a black hat SEO strategy that won’t help your site on the long run.

When a hacker compromises your website, he will incorporate hidden spammy links that will redirect visitors from the search engine (which is listing this page) to illegal or malicious sites that steal credit card numbers, sell pirated software, offer fake luxury goods, prescription drugs, beauty products and slimming pills, or promote adult/gambling content. As an example, here is the comparison of the regular website of Hope is Life against the page that appears when you follow the link from Google search results:

The techniques that hackers usually use for such purpose include creation of rogue files and directories, modification of existing files, or adding URL rewrite rules to server configuration files. If the webmaster isn’t diligent enough, these changes may remain active for a very long time. Since the hacker can place the rogue content outside of the host site’s file system, you won’t notice anything suspicious when checking the integrity of your website’s files.

Here is an example of a Google search that contains a link to a redirecting doorway page:

As you can see, some of these results are hosted illegally on servers that have nothing to do with the keyword in question. The most common keywords that hackers include in such cases include target words such as price, buy, discount, prescription drugs, porn, casino, payday loan, bargain, cheap, free, review, cheap luxury, along with a branded keyword, such as zanax, cialis, viagra, Chanel, etc.

If you conduct a Google search for buy cialis or buy viagra, for example, you will see many doorways on hacked sites that won’t lead to their actual pages.

How to Check if Your Website Has Been Hacked

Cyber criminals have compromised a huge number of websites with the purpose to put their doorways to top search results on Google. In most cases, the hacked websites link to several doorway pages, so the black hatters increase the chances that the search engine will choose at least one of them to display on the first page of the results. This strategy is also useful if Google or the webmaster removes some of these doorways.

This situation puts your website under risk, since it can be a subject to a Google penalty, leading to loss of traffic and a lot of work to fix the damage. Since it can be tricky to determine whether or not your site has been a hacker’s target, you have to be more diligent than usual.

Here are few of the things you can do in order to detect a black hatter’s attack:

How to Prevent Black Hatters’ Attacks

Prevention is always better than treatment. The best way to avoid unpleasant scenarios caused by a hacker is to make your website really difficult to compromise. These are the things you can do for such purpose:

You simply cannot be negligent when it comes to your website’s security. Only your system administrator should have the permission to maintain the site. Never use default names for application administrators, since they make your website an easy target.

You need to use a website firewall in order to provide strong protection for your website. Firewall technology has come a long way since its beginnings, so you can finally find effective, but affordable options that will protect your website.

You can also use an integrity tool that will notify you about changes in the file system. If you are aware of all changes that are being made, you will immediately spot an attack. Also you could also ask for an advice from our professionals http://webmastersafeguards.blogspot.co.uk/

Remember: You need an efficient remedy

No matter how hard you try to protect your website against hackers, it may still become a target at any moment. If a hacker managed to achieve sneaky redirection, you are in danger of greater damage. This means that you need to have a backup plan just in case. If you perform daily backups of your website, you will avoid losing valuable files in case of attack.

Dennis Rundle is CEO of “Webmastersafeguards”, an internet geek, and security enthusiast. His goal is to promote fair and square rules for all websites and to eradicate malware.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Prevent Black Hat SEO Techniques Against Your Vulnerable Website

This is a guest contribution from Tom Van Buren.

Scheduling updates in advance solves a number of social media’s most frustrating problems. It gives your routine newfound flexibility, and it can even make you a better blogger. But there’s one hurdle that scheduling alone doesn’t take care of for you: those updates still have to come from somewhere, and that means you have to write them.

Part of the appeal of scheduling is that it stops social media from interrupting your life every time you want to post an update, but without a sound strategy for actually writing those updates, you might just be trading one type of frustration for another. This post will show you how to write social media updates by the batch, so you can more easily grow your fanbase and drive more reliable traffic to your blog.

Think about more than just your own traffic

Social media is an invaluable resource for driving traffic to your own website, but getting carried away can do more harm than good. Forty-five percent of users cite excessive self-promotion as a reason why they would unfollow a brand on social, which means your strategy has to be a lot more refined than just sharing your own links.

Break down your typical updates into categories by type, so there’s variety to the content you share. In addition to posting links to your own blog posts, for example, you might also use social media for posting tips, linking to useful content on other websites, sharing inspirational or funny quotes, and so on. (Quotes and tips in particular are useful for getting shares, which can help you grow your audience.) These categories will guide you through the next step of the batching process: actually writing your updates.

Save time by writing in blocks

If you regularly schedule your social media updates, you might already be writing them in batches – just very small ones. For example, you might set aside time every morning to write and schedule your updates for that day. While this works in theory, it prevents you from developing a big-picture strategy, and it isn’t saving you as much time as it could.

Use the categories you defined to write as many updates you can within a certain time frame (much like the longstanding Pomodoro Technique suggests). Take 20 minutes to write as many updates as you can promoting your various blog posts, then another 20 for tips, and so on. Writing as much as you can within a certain time period gives you the ammunition with which to load your schedule, and it helps you build and maintain creative momentum as you go.

Writing bigger batches like this may seem like a major time commitment, but think of it like making a weekly trip to the grocery store instead of going every day. It may feel like you’re spending more time at the store, but for as long as the groceries last, you’re not wasting time on things like planning meals, making your list, driving back and forth, unloading the car, and so on. Once the work is done, it’s done.

The amount of time these updates last will vary depending on how often you post, but there’s one final step you should take to make sure that you get as much out of them as possible.

Save your work and re-use your updates

Without the right plan, social media marketing can feel like a neverending zero-sum game – you work hard writing updates, but once you post them, they’re gone, and you start again from square one every time you run out.

This cycle of always starting over from nothing is a major waste of time and your work. If you’re posting to Facebook and Twitter five times a day each, you might be writing as many as 310 brand new updates every single month – more than 75 per week. That’s a lot of effort to put into a task that doesn’t add up to anything.

Instead, maintain a document that saves your status updates. (Spreadsheets are particularly useful, because they allow you to organize your updates by category.) Every time you write a new batch of updates, add it to your document, so that over time, you build up a library of updates from which you can choose ones to schedule. Eventually, you’ll be able to write batches less and less frequently, because you can choose from the updates you’ve already written.

Why post the same update more than once? In addition to saving time, there are two big reasons:

Most of your followers don’t see any given update

Every time you post an update to social media, you’re trying to hit a moving target – and no matter what network you’re posting on, that target is pretty small. Consider these statistics:

• Most Twitter users don’t log on even once a day (and 40% log on less than once a week)
• The average organic reach for a Facebook page is about 7%
• 87% of LinkedIn users log on once a week or less

Only a very small segment of your audience is likely to see any given update you post on social media, so if you share the same thing more than once over time, it’s unlikely anyone will notice – and you never have to feel like you wasted time writing and scheduling a post that didn’t get any traction.

Evergreen blog content drives more traffic

New social media followers always have something in common: they’ve probably seen very few of your updates from before they started following you (if they’ve seen any at all). If they’re new to your blog audience, then they’ve probably been exposed to very little of your blog’s older content, too.

Your evergreen blog posts are literally as good as new to anyone who hasn’t seen them before. If you’re not continually promoting those posts on social media, they’re gathering dust in your archives and going to waste.

This is why it helps to categorize your updates and save them over time. Maintaining a growing stockpile means you never have to go back and write new updates promoting old posts – you can simply keep your existing updates that promote evergreen posts in rotation, so they’ll continue to drive new traffic. Neither your social updates nor your blog posts go to waste, and the work you put into writing both generates cumulative results over time.
If you schedule your social updates in advance, how often do you set aside time to write them? And if you haven’t tried scheduling before, what’s stopping you?

Tom VanBuren is the content and social media manager for MeetEdgar.com, where he writes about social media and online marketing.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

3 Steps to Saving Time by Writing Social Media Updates in Batches

This is a guest contribution from Puranjay Singh.

Around six months ago, I quit my job to make a living as a writer. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy my work; it was just that I wanted to travel and needed the freedom of freelancing. I didn’t know a lot about writing, but I knew I could turn a phrase or two.

Besides, how hard could it be?

The answer: very hard. Freelance writing is a hyper-competitive industry where you are fighting against thousands of writers for the same jobs. Sheer writing skills count for nothing, degrees for even less. Add writers willing to underbid you, and you have a recipe for total disaster.

To succeed, I had to go against a lot of conventional advice. I had to change the way I approached my writing. I also had to bring in all my years of marketing knowledge to get the jobs I wanted.

In the process, I ended up making 2x more money as a writer.

Here’s how you can do the same.

Think Like a Business Owner

I started my freelance writing career like most others – I found gigs online, wrote long cover letters highlighting my education, then waited patiently for a response.

I won a grand total of two jobs this way. My proposal to job conversion rate was an abysmal 4%. Clearly, this was no way to replace a full-time income.

It took weeks of despair and error before I realized my approach was completely wrong. I was thinking like a writer, not like a business owner.

I took a couple of days off and thought hard about why businesses wanted to hire me in the first place. Obviously, it wasn’t because I had read all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets or knew five different synonyms for ‘tempest’. No, they wanted to hire me because they had a business problem and needed a solution.

Ultimately, this problem boils down to two things:

• Businesses need high quality marketing content to sell their products and services.
• Businesses don’t have the time or expertise to create this content on their own.

When you sell yourself as a writer, you are only solving half of the problem (creating quality content). A business will still have to invest time and effort into training and monitoring your writing in order to meet its business goals.

To the business owner, thus, a writer is a cost center, not a revenue center.

Top marketers and consultants know this. This is why they always sell themselves as solutions, not as mere skills. Instead of talking about their education or their experience, they talk about how they can help a business make more money and have more free time.

In other words, you must be more than a writer. You must provide solutions.

This is the bedrock of a successful freelance career. Once you adopt this thinking, you will see opportunities where none existed before. You will become an asset to every business you work with, not just a replaceable writer.

Once you’ve adopted this strategy, you can work on some tactics to get better paying clients.

5 Ways to Get Better Writing Jobs

These are my top five tactics to increase freelance writing income:

1. Position yourself as a premium provider

When I started my freelancing career, I was convinced no one would ever pay me over $10/article. It wasn’t that I was bad writer; it was just that I hung out on internet marketing forums where this was the going market rate.

I then learned about top content marketers charging big brands $150+/hour to create content. You couldn’t tell my $10/hour article from the $150/hour blog post. The only difference was in the way we had positioned ourselves.

“Positioning” is marketing speak for how a brand projects its solutions with respect to competitors. This is why Rolexes start at $20,000 and why Apple can charge twice the going price for a laptop.

Positioning is also crucial for freelancers. When you sell your services for cheap, you attract cheap clients. By marketing yourself as a premium service provider, you can often charge 2-5x more for the same work.

A few of my favorite positioning tactics are:

• Increase rates. Just as people naturally assume more expensive items on a menu are better, they also assume more expensive freelancers know more.
• A carefully crafted, well-designed brand presence can give your service a ‘premium’ perception.
• Selective clients. Showcase your best clients on your website/portfolio. This can also be websites you’ve been featured/mentioned in. Recognizable brand names have a multiplying effect on your own brand.
• Function like a business. Register as a LLC, use professional billing tools, have a standardized onboarding process (more on this below).
• Professional imagery. Use professionally portrait shots on all your social media profiles. It just makes you come across as more savvy and serious about your work.

2. Don’t market yourself as a writer

Writers occupy the bottommost rung in the content marketing ladder. Sure, they are important, but unless they work themselves into an editorial/managerial role, their responsibilities are as limited as their earnings.

This is why I market myself as a content marketer, not a writer.

As a content marketer, I have a lot more responsibilities – I have to come up with a content plan, create content, then help marketing distribute it. But because it requires more skills and knowledge, it also pays way more.

You don’t have to sell yourself as a content marketer, of course. You can be a blogger who runs a startup’s entire blog independently. You can also be a copywriter who helps businesses sell more with conversion-oriented copywriting.

Your main objective is to get off the bottommost content marketing rung. Once you do that, your income will go up automatically.

3. Operate as a business, not as an individual

I understand this is something many of you will be uncomfortable with, but branding yourself as a business, not just an individual, is the true secret to unlocked 2x higher rates.

Why?

Because businesses hire individuals, but work with other businesses.

I’m not saying that you should get an office and hire employees. I’m saying that you should operate with the rigor and professionalism of a business.

For example, every time I get a new client, I invite them to Basecamp. This serves as our project management tool throughout the duration of the engagement. Besides streamlining our communication, it also tells them that I am serious about the success of their project.

There are a lot of ways you can show off your professionalism, such as:

• Registering as a business. LLC registrations cost as little as $149.
• Using branded templates for content plans.
• Onboarding new clients with a branded ‘welcome’ guide.
• White labeling software, such as WordPress theme backend.
• Sending professional invoices through tools like FreshDesk.

When you do all this, you tell the customer that you are a professional, experienced veteran, not just a dabbler who started a few months ago.

4. Be a specialist, not a generalist

There is a simple rule in business: you get paid more for knowing a lot about one topic, than knowing a little about a lot of topics.

Readers of ProBlogger should understand this better than anyone else. Darren has made a habit of talking about the importance of niche selection. If all things are equal, a niche blog will become far more successful than one targeting a broad topic.

You must approach writing the same way. Don’t pitch your ability to write about “any topic under the sun”. Instead, pitch your expertise in writing about “marketing, SEO and social media” or “DIY and home décor”.

You can also target specific clients, such as small businesses only or startups (like I do).

Sure, this constricts your market, but you also get access to far better paying gigs.

5. Choose higher paying writing work

Author James Patterson made $94M through book sales in 2014.

Screenwriter Shane Black netted $4M for writing the script for The Long Kiss Goodnight.

David Ogilvy wrote copy for much of his life. The company he founded today does billions of dollars in annual revenue.

The point is: writing is a vast industry. It includes everyone from the $2 article rewriter, to the author earning a $1M advance.

The key to unlocking higher earnings is to target higher value work.

For example, few businesses will pay over $100 for a blog post. However, the going rate for a whitepaper is easily over $1,000, for the same number of words.

In business, the perceived value of any content is directly proportional to its impact on customer acquisition. While blog posts are good for traffic, they seldom directly lead to sale. Whitepapers, on the other hand, are typically offered only to a handful of qualified leads

Thus, there is a higher chance of converting a prospect into a customer after she reads a whitepaper. This is why whitepaper creators tend to get paid more than blog writers.

It’s the same with website copy. Good copy has a direct and immediate impact on conversion rates. Copywriters, hence, can often get away with charging businesses upwards of $200/hour.

This is the easiest way to increase your earnings as a writer: write more whitepapers, eBooks and website copy, fewer blog posts and articles.

Your Turn

Building a freelance career doesn’t have to be hard, nor does it have to be underpaying. It takes a few shifts in thinking and approach to get the kind of jobs you truly deserve.

It’s now your turn to adopt these strategies to get the results you want. Start by thinking like a business owner, targeting the right kind of jobs and branding yourself as a premium service provider.

Then share your results and queries in the comments below. I’ll be happy to help as much as I can.

Puranjay Singh is a writer and content marketing consultant. He is passionate about helping small businesses run result-oriented content marketing campaigns. Drop him an email at puranjay@growthpub.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Make 2x More Money as a Writer

The old saying that ‘everybody has a book inside them’ may be true – but for bloggers I’ve found it is probably more accurate to say that ‘every blogger has at least 10 ideas for eBooks inside them’.

I was at a mastermind event recently and a blogger shared her list of ideas for eBooks and courses and then looked at me quizzically and asked – “but which one is the most profitable idea?”

To truly answer the question my blogger friend would need to create and launch all of the products – but it got me wondering if there might be some ways to test her ideas before creating the products to see which might work best as a product.

What follows are some questions to ask and some techniques to try to do just this.

Just keep in mind that a there’s much more to profitable products than great ‘ideas’. Success will be dependant upon many factors including the quality of what you create, the size of your audience (here are some ways to build it before launch) and the marketing strategies that you use to launch your product.

1. Is the Idea Important and Meaningful to You?

Let’s start with a question that won’t guarantee profit in any way shape or form but which has definitely become the first question I ask any time that I create a product – is it something important to me?

I ask this question for a number of reasons.

Firstly, if the idea is important to me there’s a good chance it’ll be important to others.

Secondly, if the idea is important to me (and others involved in the creation and selling of it) I’m going to produce a much higher quality product and be able to market it much much more effectively.

Perhaps the best example I can give you of this is 31 Days to Build a Better Blog which meant so much to me as I created it and which was so easy for me to enthusiastically promote after.

In fact 31DBBB was created with no intent of it ever becoming a product (it was written initially as a free series of blog posts) and purely because I thought it would help people – it’s no wonder it went on to become my biggest selling product.

2. Does it have a Tangible Benefit?

Having being a part of creating and launching close to 40 eBooks, printables, kits and courses in the last six years, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is around making sure your idea has tangible benefits to those who will buy it.

It might sound obvious but it’s a lesson we learned the hard way (more than once) but producing eBook that we thought were on ‘important’ topics but which didn’t have tangible benefits.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog is another great example of this – there’s a benefit in the title that seemed to grab people.

The other example I’ve spoken about in presentations I’ve given over the years is the story of our photography eBooks at dPS.

Both eBooks were by the same author and were written, designed, priced and marketed in extremely similar ways. Sales on the other hand couldn’t have been much more different.

The first eBook – Transcending Travel: A Guide to Captivating Travel Photography had a very tangible benefit. You’ll take better photos when you travel!

Not only does this have a tangible benefit – it’s in an area that most people have had a painful experience of (getting home from a trip and being disappointed with the images).

The second eBook – Captivating Color: A Guide to Dramatic Color Photography was on a topic we thought was of real importance to photography but in hindsight didn’t have as specific or tangible a benefit.

To this day I think both eBooks are as good as one another (in fact I think the Color Photography one is still more important for photographers to get a handle on) but Travel has always outsold Color (to this day it’s sold double).

Some topics can be tweaked to be more tangible in their benefits while others are much trickier on this front. I’d be leaning to those with obvious benefits in areas that people have a felt need on.

Is There Evidence of People Paying for This Type of Information?

An exercise that is most beneficial to undertake when setting out on this journey to create a product is to do some analysis of the marketplace to see what else has been produced on the topic.

There are numerous benefits of doing this but one of the key ones for me is that it shows whether people pay for that type of information and to see what kind formats of products seem to be doing well.

It shouldn’t take you too long to get an idea of this. Head to your local news stand and see what magazines there are on the topic, head to Amazon and look at the books that relate (and try to get a feeling for how well they’ve sold by looking at their rankings and numbers of reviews), look online to see if other eBooks, courses, membership sites or other products have already been created.

If there are a lot of products on your topic you have some proof of concept but you also might well have a challenge on your hands too as the market might be cluttered. If this is the case it might be worth doing some deeper analysis of the competition.

• What do they do well?
• What formats seem to have worked well and what have not?
• Are there any gaps in the market?
• What marketing techniques do they use?

The more research you do into these questions the better positioned you’ll be in to tap into what is working for others but also create something that stands out from the rest.

Test the Idea

As bloggers we have a real advantage over many other publishers of online products – we have a great way (or a number of great ways) to test our ideas to see how they resonate with people before we even begin producing our products.

For almost every eBook, course or other kind of product I’ve created I’ve first gone to my audience in some way to test the idea. By putting it ‘out there’ some some way I see whether it gives my readers energy but also quite often get feedback that makes the product better or that gives me hints as how to market it more effectively.

It’s never quite the same but usually involves some combination of the following ideas.

Blog Posts

The most simple thing to do as a blogger is to create a blog post (or a series of them) to test your idea. These could take a couple of forms including:

• discussion posts – simply putting up a post that is a ‘discussion’ related post designed to get your readers to talk about the topic, their needs, their questions etc. You need not say it’s research for a product if you don’t want to reveal that – but you could even go to them with a ‘tell me what you want to include’ approach which gives your readers a sense of being involved.
• writing your product as posts – I’ve seen many bloggers create their products in public on their blogs over the years. You might not choose to put the whole eBook/course on your blog for free but it putting your initial ideas onto your blog and then turning that into part of your product can work well. In essence this is what I did with 31DBBB – although I didn’t realise it at the time.

The key with both approaches is to watch the reaction of others to your posts. Are they being read? Are people excited by them? Do the posts actually bring about some kind of benefit to your readers? If there are sparks of energy being created you should follow that energy and keep working.

If there are not – you might want to keep working on the idea.

Note: Of course it takes having some readers to your blog to get these kinds of reactions. If you have a small readership you might want to try some of the other methods below.

Podcasts

Another way to start creating content for a course might be to start a podcast on your topic. You need not to commit to running it indefinitely, rather set out to do a short ‘season’ of episodes to see how people respond to the idea.

Again the benefits of this are:

Webinars

Similarly you might like to run a webinar (or series of them) on your idea. This potentially has the same benefits as the three mentioned in the podcasts section above but has the added bonus of opening up potential for a live interaction and feedback from those listening in.

The questions and responses you get during a webinar are often incredibly insightful and open up areas that you could develop in your product as well as helping you to see how people react against your ideas (which could be stumbling blocks for the to buy your product).

The other benefit of doing webinars before you create your product is that you get your audience used to attending them which can be useful when it comes time to launch your product. Live webinars often work really well as a selling tool during a launch.

Social Media

Social media is another of my favorite places for testing ideas. In fact it’s often the first step for me as it’s so easy to put an idea out there and get pretty quick reactions.

My first testing ground is usually Twitter where I’ll ask a question, put up a hypothesis or even bluntly ask a ‘would you be interested in….’ question.

The beauty of Twitter is that you don’t tend to get people seeing and being influenced by other people’s responses (unless you dig for them). Having said that – sometimes you want a more communal response so I’d then be heading to Facebook where I have often done exactly the same kinds of updates (asking questions, starting discussions etc).

Of course social is a place you should be sharing the blog posts we’ve already talked about writing – get the ideas in front as many people as you can!

Boost Your Social Posts

One of the challenges of not having an established readership or following on social media is that you can ask questions and start as many discussions as you like but get no response whatsoever.

If this is the case you may wish to try boosting/advertising your social media updates to get more response.

I know not everyone feels comfortable with boosting posts on Facebook but for a relatively small outlay it is a decent way to ensure your posts are seen by exactly the type of people you’re trying to reach. You can specify for your post to be shown to people in certain locations, genders, age groups and with certain interests (and much more) all for just a few dollars.

Set Up a ‘Group’

Another idea that is related to social media that you might like to try is setting up a Facebook Group (or a group on a platform like LinkedIn) on the topic of the product you’re thinking of creating.

I’ve recently been playing with Facebook Groups on a number of fronts (including the FeelGooder group) and it strikes me that a group would be a brilliant place to help you test and develop your idea.

While this isn’t my current goal with the FeeGooder group it wouldn’t be hard to take your idea for a product to such a group to ask them for feedback and even to get their contribution to creating it. The benefits of doing so is that you not only get to test and refine the idea but you could also have your first highly engaged customers and advocates for it!

Surveys/Polls

I love using surveys to test ideas for products. We have used them in two main ways:

• Long Run Surveys – I’ve written about the main survey that we use on dPS previously. It collects feedback from readers everyday via our autoresponder series. The benefit of this is that we have a steady stream of ideas, questions and interests coming in from our readers which informs what products we create. We also have a question in the survey that specifically asks them what topics they’d buy products on that tests the ideas we have for future products.
• Product Specific Surveys/Polls – The other type of survey we’ve run a few times is in the lead up to launching a specific product. For example if I were creating an eBook on travel photography I could do a survey that asks readers about the gear they use, the places they travel, the problems and challenges they’ve had, the questions they have etc. These kinds of surveys can also test other things like price points, formats, titles etc depending upon where you’re at with the production of your product. I find this type of survey not only gives you ideas for making the product better but can often highlight potential blocks that people might have in buying which will inform your marketing.

One ore tip with surveys – always be on the look out for a good stat that you can use in your marketing. For example – we ran a survey in the lead up to launching our Photo Nuts and Bolts eBook which revealed ‘73% of digital camera owners wish they had more control over their camera‘. That became the headline for the sales page of that eBook.

Pre Sell Your Product

This is the only technique in this post that I’ve never done but I know of bloggers who have used it with great effect. In essence they create a sales page for their product before they create it and ‘pre-sell’ it to their audience.

In some ways this was almost like a crowd-funding type approach.

In each case I’m thinking of the blogger was upfront in telling their audience that the product was not yet complete and they gave those who pre-bought it a discount for putting their money up.

By pre-selling their product they had proof of concept before or during the product creation. It also gave them more incentive/accountability to actually finish the product (as people had already paid).

In one case the blogger discovered by putting their product up for pre-sale that there was not enough interest for the product and so refunded the few people who bought it and abandoned the idea.

Another blogger involved those who bought the pre-launched product in the creation of it by inviting then to a private VIP Facebook group to discuss what they wanted included and to build some community among buyers. He also gave the access to the product in stages (it was a course so he could release lessons regularly over the weeks after they made the purchase.

The only warning I’d give on pre-selling products is that you need to really be able to follow through and deliver. You could easily destroy your reputation and potentially end up in legal trouble by taking money for a product you didn’t deliver.

How Would You Test Your Product Idea to Assess its profitability?

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences with this topic.

Have you tried any of the above ideas? Have you got other ideas to add?

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Tell if Your Idea for an eBook or Course Is a Profitable One

This is a guest contribution from Ali Luke.

Here’s a safe bet:

You’re struggling to find enough time to write.

Virtually every blogger and entrepreneur has the same problem.

Maybe you want to write great content to build your business – but there are so many other things you have to do too.

I know first-hand how much of a challenge this can be. I started out writing around a full-time day job; today, I juggle work around my two year old daughter and baby son.

I don’t know your personal situation. But I can take some guesses:

• You have a lot on your plate – sometimes you feel overwhelmed.
• Big writing projects get shunted to the end of your to-do list.
• When you do have some time to write, you never seem to get far.

Sound familiar?

Here’s how to turn things around, in six straightforward steps:

Step #1: Come Up With a Bunch of Ideas for Your Blog

Since you’re reading ProBlogger, it’s a pretty safe bet that you have a blog (or you’re about to start one). Do you ever find it hard to come up with enough ideas for it? Maybe you’re managing to keep up a regularly posting schedule – but you know you should be doing some guest posting, and you never seem to get round to it.

The easiest way to make faster progress on any writing project is to set aside dedicated brainstorming (or, if you like, daydreaming) time.

Grab a notebook or a bit of scrap paper, and jot down as many ideas as you can in fifteen minutes. Don’t judge your ideas, just write everything down.

Try This:

Schedule 15 minutes, once per week, for brainstorming. You’ll soon have a stockpile of ideas that you can turn to whenever you need one.

Further Reading:

How to Consistently Come Up With Great Post Ideas for Your Blog, Stacey Roberts, ProBlogger

Step #2: Create a Clear Plan Before You Start Writing

When you don’t have much time to write, you don’t want to waste a single minute.

If you find yourself getting stuck and giving up part-way, or if you often have to scrap huge chunks of your blog posts because you went off on a long tangent, then you need to get to grips with planning.

Your plan doesn’t need to be complicated. A few bullet points jotted on the back of an envelope is fine. For maximum effect, though, set aside dedicated time to plan out several posts at once.

Your plan helps you spot any problems before you spend hours writing, and it helps you shape your material into a logical structure: easier for you to write, and easier for your audience to read.

It’s also a great way to blast through any blank page wobbles at the start of a writing session. If you’ve got a plan, you can just copy or type it into your document … and you’re already part-way there.

Try This:

Give different planning methods a go – you don’t have to stick with a linear outline each time. Maybe a mindmap, a set of ideas on index cards, or even a spreadsheet would suit your project better.

Further Reading:

A 5-Step Plan to Improve Every Blog Post You Write, Ali Luke, Copyblogger

Step #3: Use the First Hour of Your Day for Your Main Writing Project

Sometimes, the real problem with finding time to write isn’t that there’s no time at all – it’s that our writing time is scheduled for the wrong part of the day.

If your aim is to “finish the ten things on this list then work on the ebook” … it’s all too easy to let those ten things fill your day. Even if you have a little time left at the end of the day, you’ll probably be creatively frazzled.

The best solution I’ve found is to put writing first. Ideally, set aside an hour – but if that’s just not practical, 15 minutes is fine.

Putting writing first could mean:

• You use the first hour of your work day for your project … trust me, Twitter and Facebook can wait for an hour.
• You get up an hour earlier (not my favorite solution – but I did it for eight months when I had a day job, and it let me build my career to the point where I could quit and write full time).
• You shuffle around some other activities: if you currently head to the gym at 6am, could you go at lunchtime or in the evening instead?

Try This:

For this week only, commit to spending the first 15 minutes of your day (either when you get up or when you start work) on your current writing project. Put a check on the calendar each day you manage it. Next week, aim for 20 minutes per day, and/or more checks.

Further Reading:

Why You Should Get Serious About Your Writing Schedule, Kari, Men with Pens

Step #4: Cut Out or Cut Back

Your time is full already, but at least some of your activities could go in a pinch. This is always going to be a personal decision – something that I might consider essential could be on your list for ditching when life gets hectic, and vice versa.

Here are just a few ideas you might want to consider.

Cut out…

• Voluntary commitments you don’t enjoy and wish you’d never signed up for. Resign in writing, and don’t leave any room for ambiguity or argument.
• Time-wasting activities that don’t add much to your life – do you really need to take another Buzzfeed quiz? Try RescueTime to track your computer activity.

Cut down…

• TV watching. Of course, keep up any must-sees (mine are Game of Thrones and Doctor Who) … but if you’re binging on whole seasons of shows on Netflix, cut back to an hour every evening.
• Even if money’s tight, can you get a maid service once or twice a month? If that’s not an option, can you delegate to your spouse or kids?

Try This:

Look at your non-writing activities and save some time there too:

• 10 minutes per day on Twitter and Facebook, instead of 30, could well get you the same results.
• Template emails will save you time answering common questions, dealing with routine enquiries, and so on.

Further Reading:

Why You Should Flush 90% of Your To-Do List Down the Toilet, Michael Hyatt, MichaelHyatt.com

Step #5: Keep a Time Log

If you’re still struggling, keep a time diary for a week to find out exactly where your time goes.

(If you’ve ever kept a food diary while on a diet, or a spending diary while getting out of debt, you’ll have some idea of how powerful this can be.)

You could use a spreadsheet, a physical notebook, or an app like Toggl. While entering data manually can be a pain, it does make you very aware of how you’re using your time.

Try This:

Be prepared for your time log to throw up some negative emotions – maybe you’re not working as efficiently as you thought. Go easy on yourself, and look for ways to win back just 5 or 10 minutes of productive time each day.

Further Reading:

Why You Really Don’t Have a Time Management Problem, Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing

Step #6: When You’re Writing, Write!

If you’ve set aside 30 minutes to work on a post for your blog, you need to actually write.

That means not stopping after five minutes to check if anything new’s happening on Facebook. It means jotting down any distracting thoughts like “Email John” rather than stopping writing to do them straight away.

When you’re writing (or engaged in any creative activity), you can get into a state of “flow” – you might describe it as “being on a roll” or even “losing track of time”. This is what you’re aiming for, and constantly interrupting yourself will stop you getting there.

Try This:

Work in short bursts. I find that 20 – 45 minutes is about right. If you know you only have to write for another 15 minutes, not for another hour, it’s easier to push yourself to keep going.

Further Reading:

How to Maintain Focus when Writing, Mary Jaksch, Write to Done

You won’t miraculously “find” a few spare hours to write.

You need to make that time – by finding more efficient ways to work and by restructuring other elements of your life to allow your writing to be a priority.

So here’s your first step again: find fifteen minutes, either today or tomorrow, to brainstorm some ideas for one of your current projects.

Get up early, use the ad breaks on TV, write in your notebook on the bus, or whatever it takes. Drop a comment below to tell us what you’ll be doing, and when.

Ali Luke runs Writers’ Huddle, a community / teaching site for all bloggers and writers, with monthly seminars, in-depth ecourses, supportive forums, and more. It’s only open for new members until Friday June 12^th, and we’re about to start a new Summer Challenge for accountability (and prizes)! If you think you might be interested, check it out now.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Follow These Six Steps to Make Plenty of Time to Write (and Enjoy it Too)