30 Day Blog Launch Blueprint

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Introduction First of all, Thank you so much for grabbing this book. Over the next 30 days you will be creating and launching your authority blog. But before we get started let me give you a little background of the Authority Blogging Model.

We are living in a day and age where blogs are everywhere. It seems that almost everyone has some type of blog, whether it be a celebrity or your average joe. People blog on their own website, social media, video blog, and the list goes on forever. There are all types of blogs and they exist for a number of different reasons.

Blogs are way of the future for online business. You constantly hear the buzz words content marketing. Blogs have become an essential part of making money online for one simple reason.

They work!

A lot of people are doing it big online with blogs alone, while others are growing their main business with a blog. Many have quit their day jobs and have taken blogging on full time and are now living the dream lifestyle you only seem to read about.

Well that’s what this book is all about. It won't happen overnight and you won't be rich tomorrow but by the time you finish this training you will have all the information you need to create a powerful authority blog.

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Taking action and putting the methods into action are whole different story. Before you even go through book you need the drive to make blogging work for you. Having this drive and mindset will allow you to put the pieces in place and lead you to success.

Consider this course the complete guide to launching your authority blog, meant to not only teach the basics but to also provide you the strategies you need for long­term blogging success.

Let's……….Get………..Started

“Blogging your way to success” Let me be the first to tell you: this will not be easy and if you are looking for a get rich quick scheme then you might might want to look for a new method.

This course is about authority blogging but it’s much much bigger than that. Authority blogging is about setting yourself up for success in creating an online business. Know that blogging is not a business but ​ it is a tool that you utilize to build authority, and drive traffic to your business​ .

Before we get too deep into things I would like to explain conceptually what authority blogging is and how you can create an authority blog.

What Is Authority Blogging And How Can You Create A Business From It?

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Think of authority blogging as becoming the powerhouse or leader in a specific niche with your blog. When someone is searching for information related to your niche you want to be the go to person for that information.

To establish authority you don’t have to be the most knowledgeable but you do need to be the most helpful. This can be done by providing your audience the information they’re looking for. Basically, ​ you don’t need to be an expert in your niche to start an authority blog.​ That will come with time as you build your blog. You do however, need to know what topics to cover, what people are looking for, provide them that information and be as helpful as possible.

Too often people put a stop to the process as they fear that they’re not an expert. Or fear that they’re not the authority to write about a specific topic. I challenge you to overcome this fear and realize that in time you will become the expert. Heck, with proper research you don’t need to be the expert.

The more research you do and the more things you learn the more you will know about your topic. This will allow you to help more and more people. You don’t have to be smarter than everyone in your niche but you do have to know more than your audience.

Then, you help them get to your level of knowledge and experience by answering their questions.

Why Authority blogging?

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Why is authority blogging one of the best ways to start an online business? Authority blogging is sustainable, profitable, and one of the most enjoyable way to make money online.

Most methods are based on a lot of variables. Things rapidly change, things that used to work don’t work, new things start to work that didn’t before, and many other unpredictable factors in most online business models But one thing remains constant​ : Authority blogs make money every single month​ .

Authority blogging is sustainable. If you invest your time and effort into an authority blog you can build a quality online business that will make you money every single month.

That is what it is all about. Getting rewards for your efforts online is one of the greatest things you can achieve as an Internet marketer.

So now that we know what authority blogging is let's get into the actual process of creating a profitable authority blog.

Key to success The key to success with authority blogging is consistency. The reason for this is that consistency produces productivity which leads to results​ .

Everything you approach on your blog should be based on consistency. This doesn’t mean that you need to make a blog post every day but what it does mean is you set

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aside a certain amount of time every day to work on your blog. You want to plan your activities and stick to the plan.

Just think about this, you can start out writing 300 words a day to post to your blog. 300 words a day might only take you around a half hour. If you did that five days a week you would have 1500 words added to your blog every single week.

Now think about what you could do with video content, podcasting or even working on your own products.

Doing this keeps you focused, productive and working on your business almost every day. How many days have you spent on an Internet marketing forum or someone else’s blog trying to learn new tactics and at the end of the day you have nothing to show for?

All those hours wasted searching for techniques when you could’ve been putting work into your blog , products, or putting money in your pocket

I’m not saying that consuming others content or trying to learn is a bad idea but what I am saying is that if you set aside time to work on your blog every day you can still be productive while doing those other things. This method ensures that regardless of what you do that day you still get something done for your Internet business.

Quick tip:

I do want to point out that every day you won’t have the creative juices, or the means to get something done. There’ll also be days where creativity and ideas are coming out like crazy and you are able to overproduce on your goals. This is okay. The two will

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typically offset each other. Try to make an effort to stick to your goal every day knowing that some days it just won’t happen but do your best. In the end it will work out if you stay focused on the task at hand.

Now head to day 1 to start building your business!

Day 1 – Choosing A Niche Goal:​ Narrow down a small list of potential niches to enter

Resources:​ Google Keyword Planner, Forum directories, Article Directories, Niche Forums

Today is the day you take the first step towards creating a successful blog. The main goal for today is choosing your niche. There are two primary methods of thought for choosing a niche for your blog.

1. Choose a niche for profitability 2. Choose a niche that you have an interest in As someone who has done this for a while I recommend you that you choose something you have an interest in or are at least willing to learn about it. This does not mean that you can ignore whether or not there is an audience for that niche or that it is profitable.

That is important too. You need to meet somewhere in the middle and have a combination of both.

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I am a strong believer that the most important thing when choosing a niche is selecting something that you have an interest in. Blogging requires a lot of content creation and consistency. Without an interest in your topic you will quickly lose motivation in creating content and working on it.

How to come up with niche ideas:

● ● ● ● ● ●

Brainstorming your interests Listing what you are good at Browse forum directories Browse article directories Browse Niche Forums Use a keyword planner to expand on your list of ideas

There are so many things to consider when choosing a topic for your blog. When it comes to authority blogging it is very important that you select a topic that you’re going to be willing to invest a lot of time in. Authority blogging is a much different than building smaller niche sites and it requires a lot of content and a lot of work.

Try to choose something that is both something you’re passionate about or have an interest in learning about. Also, you want to choose something that’s profitable.

Something that other people are passionate about and are willing to spend money on.

Lets look at an example:

Interest: Mountain Biking

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Within these forums you can get a ton of information. In this next screenshot you can see how a simple forum can help you narrow down your niche into deeper categories.

The further down you go the more passionate of an audience you can find. This is where you have a better chance to build an audience and profit from. Take a look below.

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Next let's head over to Ezinearticles to get some ideas. I like to go to the Ezinearticles sitemap. It breaks things down by category and subcategory. From there you can pick a sub­category and drill down to articles. This site is loaded with potential ideas for you to look at.

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Take your time and go through all these sites and make a long list of potential niche ideas. Then narrow it down into things you are most interested in blogging about. With authority blogs you want to have a lot of people searching for the topics you cover.

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Obviously there is no one size fits all but we like to enter niches that have at least 30,000 monthly searches in total for the main keywords that we will be targeting. Again, this number is not set in stone, consider it more of a guideline. This will ensure there is a large enough market out there to target. This is part of the profitability piece of the puzzle. Use this information to eliminate some of the smaller niches before moving on to the next step.

Day 2 – Analyzing The Market Goal:​ Explore niche ideas to find out if they have potential, narrow down to the niche of your choice.

Resources:​ Keyword Tool, Affiliate marketplaces, Google Search, Buzzsumo

On day two it is time to take your potential niches from step one and begin researching them. In this step you need to use keyword tools such as the Google Keyword Planner along with google search to get an idea of what the market is for your niche.

With your keyword tool of choice you want to get an idea of search volume. You also want to look at related keywords and their search volume. Doing this will give you an idea of the potential search volume you could receive for each keyword.

Analyzing The Competition

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Once you have taken a look at search volume it is time to check the competition.

An often­overlooked aspect of blogging is a competitive analysis. It is easily overlooked because it is much more exciting to begin blogging and doing your own thing instead of doing research and analyzing other blogs. But let me give you some advice, ​ this is one of the most critical steps in creating a high quality blog.

With a competitive analysis you can find out a lot of things from other blogs. You can also take your competitive analysis as in depth as you see fit. An in­depth look at the competition can give you a lot of valuable information.

Start analyzing with a simple Google search. Searching your keywords will give you an idea of who is ranking for them and how powerful they are.

I like to look at metrics including pagerank, backlinks, and more. I also find it very important to take a look at the sites that are ranking and get a feel for them.

● Are they blogs or static html sites? ● Are they optimized very well? ● Do they look like quality sites? ● Are they selling or promoting anything? ● Strengths/weaknesses? ● What kind of content are they producing? ● How often are they creating content?

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Bonus tip: ​ There is a very cool website ​ buzzsumo.com​ that lets you search for top content and influencers based on keywords that you type in. They have an algorithm that ranks the content and influencers based on social shares, pagerank, page authority, and more. This is a great place to look for competitors and influencers in your niche. It can also be a great place to get ideas for content, products, partnerships, guest blogging spots, finding writers and more. Definitely make a note of this site.

Here is what looking at the top content for the “golfing niche” shows:

Here is what looking at the top influencers for the “golfing niche” shows:

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Measuring The Competition

I like to take a look at the top 3­5 competitors in depth. I will then answer all the questions listed above. I like to track this information in a competitive analysis spreadsheet that will help me develop my business strategies and help me identify weaknesses in the market later on in the process. Here is an example of what this spreadsheet looks like:

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Final Stage Of Niche Research The last part of research is getting an understanding of what types of products and affiliate programs exist for the niche. This will allow you to identify what type of products are in the niche and what is profitable.

Look at competitor products, generate your own product ideas, look for voids in the market, and even look at affiliate marketplaces and affiliate programs to get an idea.

When you look at affiliate marketplaces you are just trying to get an idea of what kind of products are available for the niche. This doesn’t mean that you have to monetize with affiliate products. Do this step to get an idea of what is already out there and to get potential product ideas.

Checkout affiliate networks such as Amazon's Affiliate Program, Clickbank, Commission Junction, and many more.

Another great way to find affiliate programs for your niche is Googling your main keywords along with the words “affiliate program.”

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If you niche was Mountain Bikes you would Google:

Mountain Bikes Affiliate Program.

Its as easy as that.

Choose A Niche For Your Blog Now that you have done all the research it is time to choose your niche. Consider all the things you reviewed today and make your decision. Also, don’t forget to consider your interests. It is really hard to write about a topic you are not interested in so this is key.

Day 3 – Defining Goals & Business Direction Goal:​ Define business goals, layout business direction

Resources:​ Word Processor or Spreadsheet

Today you want to define your goals, objectives, and overall business direction. You will want to do the following:

● Define Objectives & Goals ● Set deadlines (short term and long term)

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● Set monetary and analytical goals (profit, traffic, subscribers, etc.)

All of the steps in todays plan will have an instrumental impact on the results of your blog. Everything you do on your blog will need to consider your business goals and objectives. It is hard to be successful without having a direction. This is where a lot of bloggers fail, they begin blogging without a goal in mind.

This step can be tough because you may not know exactly what you want to accomplish or if it is feasible. What you want to establish is a baseline. With your best judgement you will make some assumptions. Later we will look at our goals and overall direction and see where we stand.

I find it best to make a plan and stick to it. Giving it a good amount of time will really allow you to analyze if it is realistic or the right path to take. It is easy to change directions too often and spin in circles without accomplishing anything. For best results, put a plan in action and follow it for six months. This will give you enough time to determine if you should continue on that path.

Objectives And Goals What are the main objectives for your blog? What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Be specific with what you are trying to accomplish. In six months are you trying to make $50 a day with your blog? If so, put it down. Are you trying to attract 1,000 visitors a day to your blog? Are you trying to build an email list of 1,000 subscribers?

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Whatever your goals may be put them down. With your goals set quantitative targets and a time­frame to accomplish them. This will keep you on track and give you something you can analyze. Later on you will be tracking results against these targets.

Day 4 – Finding A Target Audience Goal:​ Identify your target audience

Resources:​ Niche Forums, Google Search, Other Blogs, Word Processor, Quantcast.com​ , ​ Google Trends

Today you will be finding and identifying your target audience. Through this detailed research you will know exactly who to target with your blog and what they are looking for. This will let you create content that they are interested in and products they want to buy.

Finding your target audience might be a little harder than you might expect. You may also find that your target audience is a lot different than what you might think. So how do we go about finding our target audience?

The first thing you need to do is analyze what you’re blog is about. What niche did you choose? How will you be helping people? Now that you know the answers to those

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questions, you need to find out where people in your niche are hanging out and find out what they’re talking about.

I like to start looking for my target audience in forums within my niche. Forums are helpful in many different ways including finding your target audience.

Forums alone may be enough to help you find your target audience and the main questions they are looking to answer. People come to forums looking for help or to share ideas. This can help you find out exactly what they are trying to achieve.

Forums can also help you discover your keywords to target and the content you’re going to create. However, there are many more ways to find your target audience.

One way is to look for other blogs or websites in your niche. Look at who they are targeting and what type of content they are creating.

Another great place to find your target audience is social media and sharing websites.

See what kind of content people are sharing with videos, pictures, articles, and more.

Look at what type of questions and interactions are happening.

Once you have a good idea of who your target audience is, define them in as much detail as you can. This will help you create content and products that fit exactly with what they are looking for. Put this down in a document so that you always know who you are targeting with your content.

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Create your customer avatar:

Now you want to create your customer avatar. This will represent your ideal customer and who you will target with your authority blog. In a document define this customer.

Add the following information about them.

● Gender ● Age ● Location ● Occupation ● Income level ● Education level ● Marital Status ● Personality Description ● Interests ● Behaviors ● What social media sites are they on?

Go online and find a picture of someone who represents your ideal customer. Include this in your customer avatar as well.

If you are unsure of this information here are a few good places to look.

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Quantcast​ – This site gives you demographic information based on a website your provide. Take a similar or competitor site and put it into Quantcast to see what information it provides.

Find it here: ​ https://www.quantcast.com/

Google Trends​ – Google trends can be very informative but for this task we just want to get location information. Type your keywords into Google Trends and you will see a regional interest section like the screenshot below.

Be willing to do whatever it takes to find your target audience. I highly recommend that you don’t make the mistake that 99% of bloggers do and not identify your target audience. This will make it really hard to grow your audience quickly and effectively.

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Day 5 – Keyword Research Goal:​ Come up with the primary and secondary keywords you will target

Resources:​ Niche Forums, Google Search, Other Blogs, Keyword Tools

Discovering your main keywords Now that you have a great understanding of who your target audience is you need to analyze what they’re talking about, what problems they have, and how you can be the resource or answer to those problems. This will help us with keyword research. I like to take this approach first before going to the keyword tools.

You can also analyze what keywords your competitors are targeting by looking at the source code of their homepage. In the meta­description you will usually see a brief summary about the website or blog that will include some of their main keywords. Their blog categories are also a good indicator of the type of keywords they are targeting.

This will give you an idea of what some of your competitors are targeting and what you may or may not want to target as well. I certainly do not recommend that you copy their keywords exactly but get an understanding of what kind of things they’re targeting.

You may find that targeting different keywords than your competition is a better option.

This allows you to differentiate your blog and maybe target some keywords that are not

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as competitive. This gives you the potential to have a better chance of reaching more traffic.

All the things mentioned above are a great way to find potential keywords to target for your authority blog. However, you want to use common sense when you choose your keywords. Coming up with the main keywords for your site isn’t a mathematical equation. Use your experience and judgement as you do your keyword research.

Think about what you want your blog to be about and what keywords fit into that topic.

Ultimately, this might be the best way to find your keywords but the other options will be there to help you or give you ideas that you may have not thought about.

Once you have generated a decent amount of potential keywords it is time to pull up one of your favorite keyword tools such as:

● Google Keyword Planner ● Word Tracker ● Longtail Pro

Plug each of the keywords you gathered in your prior research into the keyword tools.

Use these to generate a long list of other keywords to target and potential blog post ideas.

Lets look at an example.

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If one of your keywords was internet marketing you could look it up in the Google Keyword Planner like this.

Step 1

Step 2

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Step 3

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In the third step you can download the keywords. I like to download them into a CSV and keep them in a Excel spreadsheet or Google Spreadsheet.

In the next day's lesson we will talk about site structure and SEO which we will discuss how to come up with your blog's main categories. For each of these categories we recommend that you do the steps above. We actually keep an entire spreadsheet that has a tab with each one of our categories. On those tabs you will find keyword data similar to the screenshot above. We weed out the keywords that don’t make sense and make blog posts around the others and check them off as we go.

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Day 6 – Site Structure And SEO Goal:​ Layout your site structure, Choose your blog's categories

Resources:​ Word Processor or Spreadsheet

Today you will be laying out your site structure to be optimized for both visitors and SEO. You want to establish your structure in an organized manner that flows from main blog topic to categories, to blog posts within those categories. We want to funnel our site structure for best results.

One of the first things you need to do when creating your blog is establish categories to make sure you keep your blog content relevant and targeted. Anytime you write content it should fit within those categories that you establish. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a new blog post or a complete series.

Anything you write should fit into your overall content strategy and business goals. So when you choose your categories it is very important that they make sense for your blog and fall in line with the objective of your business. Creating clear concise categories will allow you to stay on topic and create meaningful content for your audience.

Blog Silo Structure

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Your categories will be the foundation of your blog's SEO strategy. Today we will be coming up with a nice silo structure for our blog that will be both good for visitors of your site and the search engines. This type of structure will give your blog organization and improve your sites functionality, both of which are important in the search engines eyes.

The silo structure will format your website in a way that the search engines understand.

So let's look at an example silo structure.

Example niche: Learn How To Play The Guitar

Each one of the items in the secondary level would be your blog categories. So your blog home page would be focused on learning guitar and would link to your categories that are more in­depth guitar teachings. You would then support your blog categories with more in­depth posts related to those categories. So let's expand this.

Now we are getting somewhere. We have a nice structure to our site that is all about learning to play the guitar. It is also very organized so that users and search engines

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can easily find content that is related. Some people may only be interested in learning rhythm guitar. They can go directly to that category which will have a number of posts related to learning rhythm guitar. With this layout the search engines will know exactly what your site is about.

Now you can give your blog an SEO boost by interlinking relevant content within categories. Using the example above I would probably link to my advanced guitar chords blog post from my basic guitar chords blog post.

Quick tip: ​ An often overlooked aspect of internal linking is linking back to your categories or homepage. Using the above example you might be working within the learning basic guitar chords post and somewhere within that blog post might have the words “learn guitar chords” You can contextually link to the learn guitar chords category.

You can also link back to your homepage with relevant text such as learn guitar. By doing this you will send relevant link juice to your categories and homepage that will send link juice to your other posts. A lot of bloggers make the mistake and only link to other posts.

Another thing to point out in this structure is that it works best to only link to posts within the same category. Using the example above you would not link to rhythm guitar techniques from a post in the learn guitar chords category. This makes links more relevant. Some bloggers don’t follow this methodology but it is something that we do.

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Sometimes it is helpful to the user when you link to a post in other categories. In this situation link out to another category but nofollow the link. The Ultimate Nofollow plugin allows you to easily make links no follow from within a blog post. (It is a free plugin).

Choosing Categories When choosing your categories it is important to think back to when you created the main keywords for your blog. As you create your categories you want to keep those in mind. The more relevant you keep your content to your business objectives the better you will be able to convert your traffic. The traffic you receive will be more targeted to your overall goals and strategy. If you do this you have a better chance to grow your blog and your business.

Now that you have your main categories go back to the previous days tip and further your keyword research process for each category. This will help you come with blog post ideas.

Take your keywords and build a simple spreadsheet or word document similar to the example we used above. This will be very helpful when we get to content creation and creating our editorial calendar.

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Day 7 – Base Content Creation (Home, About, legal pages, & More) Goal:​ Create content for standard static HTML pages

Today you want to create content for your static pages. If you are going to have a static home page you will want to create that. You will also want to create the other necessary static pages listed below. Nothing too exciting today but all of these things are necessary to running an authority blog.

Pages: ● About Us ● Contact Page ● Resources Page ● Privacy Policy ● Copyright Notice ● Earnings Disclaimer ● Terms And Conditions ● Website Disclaimer ● Copyright Footer

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If you are unsure what kind of content for any of these pages consider looking at similar sites and competing sites. Use these sites to generate some ideas and inspiration for your pages.

Day 8 – Content Creation Plan/Strategy Goal:​ Come up with a content creation plan/strategy. Create your editorial calendar.

Creating The Content Foundation For Your Authority Blog As we stated earlier, the foundation of your blog will be built upon the content you create for it. Building the foundation for your blog and writing content is extremely important and will require planning to be effective. This means you will need clear and concise goals for the type of content you want to create and focus your authority blog around.

The reason that we want to do this is to ensure that we are creating content for our target audience. We are creating content that will let the search engines know what our site is about and align our content with our keywords. When creating content you want to not only keep your main keywords in mind but most importantly your target audience that you identified earlier. Remember these will be the people buying your products (supporting your business). You have to have the end in mind when you plan out your content.

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How Often Should You Write Blog Posts?

This question comes up a lot. The truth of the matter is that many niches are different.

However, through our testing we have found 2 to 3 posts a week is sufficient. When you create your editorial calendar you will need to know how many days per week you will blog and what days of the week your posts will go live. For best results, keep this consistent. Same amount of posts every week released on the same days.

Create Your Editorial Calendar

One of the most important things that you will do on your authority blog is provide quality content. If you want to treat this like a true business you’re going to want to have an editorial calendar. This document will serve as a very strategic planning tool.

Why is this so important? Your content is your fuel for everything that you do. It is what builds trust and authority with your audience. It is what drives traffic and informs your audience of the products and services that you offer.

What to include on your editorial calendar:

Publish date​ – This is the day the post will go live on your blog

Writer​ – This will be who is actually writing the content or who is responsible for getting the content. Later on in the course when we get more advanced and talk about attracting other writers this column may become much more important than it is in the beginning.

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Date assigned​ – This is the day that you assign the post to a writer.

Type​ – You can have all different types of content. This can be text articles, video, curated content, pictures, infographics and many other things. This is where you want to identify the type of post you’ll be creating.

Keyword​ – This is the keyword that you will be targeting for this specific blog post.

Headline​ – The headline will become the title of your post. You really want to focus on writing great headlines for your blog posts. Headlines that get attention and get people to click to read your blog.

Category​ – This is the category that the post will be assigned to. This is very important especially when you think about the SEO and usability of your site structure. Make sure that you refer back to some of your other planning documents especially your SEO silo structure.

These are the exact columns on the editorial calendar that we use in all of Authority Blogs. Edit the editorial calendar according to your needs and add or remove columns that you may or may not need. Use your blog categories and keyword research you completed in the early steps of this course to come up with at least 20 blog post ideas.

Add these to your editorial calendar.

Down the road you will be launching your blog so keep that in mind as you set the dates for your posts. When you launch your blog you will back date the first 10 articles. So if

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you want to post to your blog 3 times a week remember that those first 10 posts should be backdated from your launch date in intervals of 3 times a week.

Try to come up with at least 20 blog post ideas at this point. When completing the editorial calendar try to come up with good headlines that will entice readers to click on them.

Day 9 – Get Set Up Goal​ : Get a domain, Get Hosting, Install WordPress, WordPress Setup, Setup Google Webmaster Tools, Setup Google Analytics, Setup WordPress Plugins

Resources:​ Godaddy, WordPress, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics

Day number six is a big day. At the end of day number six you should have a functioning blog. You will go through the process of getting a domain, setup hosting, install WordPress, and various other tasks to get your blog up and running. Everyone will be using different web hosts and systems so we won’t cover each step in detail. The good news is that each web host will have tutorials to follow along to get setup as well as support if you need help.

There are essentially only three things that you need to get your website started. These three things are:

● Domain Name

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● Hosting ● Content Management System

Domain Name First and foremost you need a domain name. Your domain name is essentially your place on the web. For example www.yourwebsite.com.

Website Hosting Once you have your domain name you need somewhere to host it. Think of your domain name as your address and your hosting your home on the web. Your hosting account will contain all the files that make up your website.

Content Management System The final piece of the puzzle is your content management system. For the purpose of this guide we will be teaching you about using WordPress as your content management system. Why WordPress?

● Its free! ● It's amazing ● Easy to use ● Manage your website anywhere that has an internet connection ● No HTML or CSS coding skills required ● Themes for designing your website ● Completely customizable ● A lot of users = great support

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● Unlimited functionality available with plug­ins ● search engines like WordPress ● It is what we use on all our authority sites

We won't go into details as there is already a lot of freely available content on the web about WordPress.

Install Plugins Here is a list of plugins we recommend to get you started.

● Askimet ● Exclude Pages From Navigation ● Google Analytics ● Pretty Link Lite ● WordPress SEO ● WP Super Cache ● Yet Another Related Posts Plugin ● Ultimate Coming Soon Plugin (allows you to build your site while not being live, great for pre launch)

Other Things To Set Up Setup and configure your WordPress Plugins

Setup Google Webmaster Tools

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www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Setup Google Analytics

www.google.com/analytics/

Install A Theme Install a blogging theme that will work well with an authority site. We love the StudioPress themes on the Genesis Framework. We prefer a news or magazine style layout for an authority blog.

Day 10 – Get Social & Secure Your Accounts Goal​ : Secure your social media accounts, Brand them to your authority blog

Today you want to setup your social media and email accounts. I like to start with Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Start with Gmail that way you have an email address to sign up for all the social media accounts. Then go to each of the social sites listed above and sign up trying to use the name of your website if possible. Otherwise just choose something close that resembles your blog.

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For Twitter and Google+ you’ll be setting up a normal account but for Facebook you’ll be setting up a Facebook page. You set up a Facebook page under your normal Facebook account so that way you are the Administrator of the Facebook page. This will be separate from your personal account but must be set up this way in order to create one.

When you set up your social accounts you want to brand them to your authority blog.

This means you should use your logo and color schemes where possible. Take advantage of things like the Facebook page cover photo to add even more branded possibilities.

When choosing which social sites you should have a presence on think about your audience. Where do they hang out online? For example, niches like Home Improvement are Pinterest heavy.

We will get more into how to use social media for driving traffic later. Today you just want to secure your accounts and update them with your logo and information.

Day 11 – Blog Design & Branding Goal: Create a brand for your website and start designing your blog to match your brand.

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Today is the day you start focusing on branding and building a blog design around your brand. You want to make something that stands out and is identifiable as your brand.

Branding is going to be all about taking your blog name, logo and design and differentiating yourself from other blogs and people in your niche. If you have some design skills I would start with the logo and work from there. If not, you may choose to outsource the design of a logo to get what you want.

You can even outsource your logo design on Fiverr or cheap online logo designers.

However, just remember that with branding you want to set yourself apart. Sometimes these cheap logos are just made from stock templates so you might not stand out too much. Just something to keep in mind.

Tagline: It is important to also come up with a nice catchy tagline for your blog. This can be very memorable for your audience and sum up your blog in just a few words. Come up with 4 or 5 words or a short sentence that explains exactly what your blog is about.

Logo When it comes to your logo focus on simplicity. A lot of people go with complex logo designs and that’s not what you want. Go over to Google and do an image search of company logos. Notice how simple and readable the majority of them are? Most of them will be two to three colors, very readable, and simple.

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One thing to really pay attention to is the colors that you choose for your logo. Color can also represent certain Industries or niches. For example, Medical & health related businesses usually use blue in their logos. So think about what kind of colors represent the industry or niche that you are in when choosing colors. This will also come into play when you design your blog.

If you are good at designing then use Photoshop, GIMP, or other similar software to make your logo. If not, you want to outsource this task. A quality logo says a lot about your business.

Blog Design We don’t need to go into too much depth about designing your blog. What you really need to know is to make it consistent with your brand and optimize for results. The reason we don’t focus on blog design is because WordPress and WordPress themes make it really easy to make a great looking authority blog. To top it off you can outsource customization or design for a very low price. Not to mention that most paid themes come with support packages and are usually willing to help you customize the theme. WordPress has a great user­base that is willing to help.

When choosing a theme for your authority blog we recommend going with a paid theme.

Or start out with a free theme and move to a paid theme as you go. Keep in mind that you can get a high­quality theme anywhere from $50 to $100 so you may just want to go ahead and go with it to save yourself some headache later.

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There are a lot of great theme providers out there but one that we use and highly recommend are the StudioPress themes for the Genesis Framework. When creating an Authority Blog we like to choose a magazine or newspaper style theme for our blogs.

Most paid themes give you color options and are easily customized if you are not comfortable with CSS, HTML and PHP. This way you can get everything to look how you want it and match your blog theme to your logo. One of the reasons we use the Genesis framework is that it’s so easy to change colors, add optin boxes and many other features that make customizing it a breeze.

Day 12 – Create Email List Incentive Goal: ​ Create an email list incentive to build your mailing list

Now you want to create an email list incentive to start the list building process. This will be what you offer your subscribers for joining your mailing list. You can do this by creating a free guide, free report, PLR product, email tips, etc. High quality downloads have proven to have a high success rate for getting email subscribers.

Our method for creating an email list incentive is simple. We create a valuable guide focusing on the biggest issue our audience is facing. As we mentioned above, you can

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go grab a PLR product for your niche. However, we have had the most success when we created our own high quality professional guides.

The best part is, creating this guide is much easier than you think. It doesn’t have to be a long report it can be a short report that gives valuable information and answers their questions.

There are a few places that I go to to find what my audience wants to know the most.

● Magazines sites like ​ magazines.com ● Amazon books ● Niche forums ● Other authority blogs

When you look up magazines in your niche you will often find that the answers your audience wants to know most are on the covers of these magazines. Highly paid copywriters are giving you the titles for those questions your audience wants answered.

The same goes with Amazon books. You will see a lot of books covering similar topics.

This is a good indicator that your audience is really looking for this information. You can even go through the reviews of these books to get some ideas for your free giveaway.

Things that the author didn’t cover or what your audience really liked about their book.

This can be a great indicator of what you should create.

Then you have your niche forums. I have found that the best place to go on a forum is the general section. The place where people introduce themselves or are able to ask

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any question they would like. You often see newbies asking questions on exactly what they want to learn. If you go through a number of pages on a forum like this in the general section you will get a lot of ideas from what people are asking. You will start to notice trends and a lot of the same questions will appear. Take note of these questions and figure out how to formulate that into a high­quality guide.

Finally, if you're still struggling to find a direction for your guide you can go to other authority blogs in your niche. See what kind of products they are offering or what their most popular posts are. You can check out comments to see what their audience is asking and looking for. Usually by now you should have found the answer to the question you’re looking for. This method should be used as a last resort or to get further information on what you should create. Sometimes I will look at other authority blogs in my niche just to get an idea of what my competition is.

What constitutes a good free offer, free download, ethical bribe?

There is no question that offering a free download in exchange for an email address is going to increase conversions. Plain and simple somebody is more willing to give you the email address if they’re getting something useful in return.

There is always the question of what you should give. Should you give away ebooks, a training course, a free video, a small report, a free tool, a sneak peek to a training course, etc.

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Everyone has their opinion and idea of what’s best. I want to give you my take on it and what has proven to work best for me. But before I do that I want to take things from a reverse angle.

What shouldn’t you be giving away?

I’m going to go right out and say it and say that those of you who are giving away a full­fledged ebook or training course are giving away too much. When people come to your squeeze page they want something that they can consume quickly, something that they can put into action right now. When you give away entire ebooks or training courses most people are not going to complete it or implement the teachings inside it.

Now that we know what not to do let’s talk about what you should do. People want something that they can consume quickly and put into action right away. That is why on my squeeze pages you will find free guides or free reports almost every time. I give them something they can consume quickly and start taking actionable steps with and get value from right away.

Now you may say…. no way free reports are overdone or people don’t value them like they used to. That’s why I use a very special formula to create my free reports and guides that give people the most value possible.

Here is how it works:

Find the biggest problem or need facing your niche. Give them the exact steps they need to overcome that problem or need from a high level overview.

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This overview should be motivating and thought provocative.

Here’s the kicker…

Finish the report with two or three actionable steps that they can act on right now. Steps that will get them excited to take action and overcome their problem or achieve their goal.

Here Is Why This Works

● Its content that they can easily consume ● They’re given a method that works ● It motivates them to take action ● They have actual steps that they can put into place right now

You see we’re giving them a method that works. A proven method that works a matter of fact. Its up to them to put the pieces together and make it work and some people will certainly do that. And other people will want help.

These are the people that are going to stay on your list and buy your products. If you have done a great job theming your squeeze page to match the products you are offering you can hit a homerun with this method.

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Day 13 – Landing Page/Autoresponder Goals: ​ Setup Email List, Setup Email Signup Forms, Setup Website Email, Create Landing Page

Today you will setup your email list, create your email signup form, create your website email address, and put together a landing page for your blog. This will allow you to get subscribers which will lead more traffic to your blog and help your monetize your blogging efforts. The money is in the list!

The steps that you will do today are very dependent upon the providers that you use and tools that you use to create your mailing list and squeeze pages.

The Tools Now I’m going to give you a rundown of some of the tools that we use to handle our mailing lists and create our squeeze pages. Keep in mind that there are a number of tools that work well and perform the same tasks. If you already have autoresponder software or squeeze page creating software it’s probably not necessary to go out and invest in the software that we recommend unless you don’t see it being capable of creating what we’re showing you.

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We maintain all of our lists and autoresponders with Aweber. Its professional grade software and handles everything that we need it to do.

All the squeeze pages and sales pages that you find on our blog are created with Optimizepress or WP Profit Builder. Both of these can be ran as a theme or a plugin on WordPress. We use the plugin version on our StudioPress themes..

The great thing about these plugins is that they provide tested templates. Templates that have been proven to convert. If you did a great job creating your free give away you are already well on your way to high conversion rates because the title of your squeeze page should be the name of your free guide or report.

People are opting in because of that free giveaway. Yes there’s a lot of Science and data behind what size font you should use on your landing page. Where to place things.

But let’s face it, a great giveaway is going to convert on an ugly squeeze page better than a bad giveaway on a awesome looking squeeze page.

Day 14 – Learn How To Create Content Like A Pro Goal: ​ Prepare to create expert level content

Content creation​ Content creation includes blog posts, article writing, video creation, podcasting, and more. A lot of the success in authority blogging will be based on the

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content that you create for your blog. You may have the best ideas or be the smartest person in your niche but if you can’t convert those ideas to quality website content it will be useless. To create a successful authority blog everything is an important part of the process. From the design to search engine optimization everything will need be fine tuned and important.

The most important part of your blog, however, will be the content that you produce for it. Quality content will play a major role in the success of your blog. Creating content and marketing that content is what blogging is all about. Your content will be the foundation of creating authority within your niche therefore creating an authority blog.

Starting Out When you first start out it can be tough. At first it might be a little overwhelming. Not only do you have to think about planning content but you also have to consider the design and layout of your blog. Sometimes, you are already exhausted by the time you get to the content creation stage. However, this will quickly fade and you can begin jumping into creating epic content.

When you start out you will hit a point where you ask yourself what do I write about? It's important that you hit the ground running in your blogging efforts and make a great first impression on your readers. You want people to come back to your website time and time again. If you continually create quality content this will happen naturally.

The biggest hurdle to clear is getting started. If you have a pretty good ability to write you are already most of the way there. You don’t have to be a professional writer to write quality blog content. Your subject matter and how you present it will be the key to

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writing quality content. So don’t let your fear of writing stop you from beginning your blogging career.

Writing for the web will probably be different than most of the writing you have done before. This can be a difficult transition for some while others find it refreshing. If you have the experience, skills and knowledge you can take that and make good content.

However, like I said writing for the web is different. You will certainly need to engage the reader and sale your personality.

Outsourcing Content Some bloggers even choose to outsource the content creation process to professionals which is certainly possible. I find the best authority blog method is to create the content yourself and engage your readers with your personality along with quality content.

Professional writers have all the necessary skills to write well but they don’t have your experience, your skills, your opinion or your knowledge. They can only write how you instruct them and on the information that they gather. They cannot write with heart or passion that you could provide. They can provide quality information but it won’t resonate with the readers as much.

Formula To The Perfect Blog Post Coming up with a formula or blueprint to writing the perfect blog post is the easy part.

Taking action and putting the blogging blueprint formula in place is the hard part. When we blog we are trying to get our ideas out and grow our blog. Its unfortunate, but the thing is……. we try so hard to push out content that we forget the essentials of making a blog post the best it can be. So we need to establish a formula to creating the perfect

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blog post every time. With the perfect blog post formula you will learn how to: Create an appealing title for your blog post

● Create content people will share ● Optimize your blog post for search engines ● Properly format your content ● Use images and media to enhance your blog post

So how do we write the perfect blog post?

The hardest part of creating the perfect blog post is actually getting started. You need to have a solid idea that will generate value for your readers. To get things started with any blog post I draft a simple title that conveys the message of what my blog post will be about. I don’t focus on being catchy or writing perfect copy for my title at this point. It’s all about getting your idea on paper to get your blog post started.

Once I have my topic selected it’s time to create a blog post outline. This outline will serve as the skeleton or bones of my blog post. This outline will do a number of different things.

● First of all it will lay out all the things I want to cover in my blog post ● It will allow me to organize things in a logical manner that makes sense ● I will be able to review my outline and make sure that I cover everything that is necessary, and provide the answer my readers will be looking for

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● It will generate ideas. I won’t be staring at a blank screen trying to type the next great blog post

Outlines have become my secret weapon to writing anything. Before I write a blog post, a report, a book, a project, or anything, I outline it.

Perfect Blog Post Title It starts with the title. According to Brian Clark at Copyblogger “On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest” This means that it really doesn’t matter if we write the perfect blog post if no one is going to read it! ​ You have to nail it with the title of your blog post​ There are some important elements your title should include in order to make it irresistible. The perfect title for your blog post will have the following ingredients:

● Curiosity ● Trigger words ● Expectation ● Value

If you can make your reader curious with your blog post title they will be inclined to click to read more. Trigger words position your title to seem more valuable. In this case the trigger word is perfect. Good copywriters use trigger words a lot in their titles. If you want good examples of trigger words check out the titles of product posts in the Warrior Forum WSO section. You will see a lot of trigger words used such as:

● sizzling hot

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● simplest ● instant ● rave reviews ● autopilot ● improved

Writing solid titles is the first step to creating the perfect blog post.

Blog Post Opening Image If you want to write the perfect blog post you need to learn to use some copywriting tricks employed by the pros. There is psychology that backs the fact that you can get more people to read your entire piece of content if you can get them through at least the first few sentences. So to capture your reader with those first few sentences I like to use a blog post image.

To make this work I like to use what I call an opening image. With this image you will align it left or right and wrap your text around it. This will allow you to cut down the width of your opening few lines to a smaller size.This will put more focus on those first few lines which will lead to more people reading your content. Using an eye catching image will also help you reel them in.

Perfect Blog Post Introduction In your opening paragraph or introduction you want to make sure you highlight your key points and make it obvious what people will get out of your article. Your title catches the reader's attention while your introduction hooks them into reading your entire blog post.

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People are busy and don’t want to waste their time. It’s important that you prove early on that you have what they are looking for. Your title made them curious so your introduction should feed that curiosity with what they want to know. Tell them exactly how your blog post will solve the problem they came looking to answer.

The Body Of A Perfect Blog Post The body of your article is where the meat is. The things you highlighted in your introduction will be discussed in depth in the body. I find it best to break out the body section into sections aligned with the key points you identified in your introduction. If you followed my advice of creating an outline for your blog posts than you will be filling in your outline at this point.

The skeleton you originally created will now be filled in. In the body it is key to present the facts and provide all the research you have done for your blog post. Answer all the questions your readers came for. Fill it in with the details they need. In this section you will also answer the common questions of who, why, where, when, what, and how. In the body of your article you also want to link to relevant content and provide resources for your research. Providing verified information gives your blog post validity especially if it is from a high­quality source.

Using Images And Media To Enhance Your Perfect Blog Post We are in a image sharing age. That is why social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram have become so popular. Also, think of how many images are shared on Facebook. How many memes are going viral. How many YouTube videos are being

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watched and shared. Images and media can have a profound effect on clickthrough rates to a blog post.

A good image can truly attract readers just like a solid title will. A good image will get people's attention. If you combine that with an awesome title you will get a ton of click­throughs as the image will get their attention and the title will build curiosity and pull them in.

Blog Post Call to action You’re writing your blog post for a reason. It could be to grow your audience, gain email subscriptions, grow your business, etc. Regardless of what your goal is, you have a goal that you are setting out to achieve by writing content on your blog. This is why you need to use a call to action or multiple of them to get your readers to take action.

There’s much debate to say how often and where you should put your calls to action.

The important thing is that you are using them. I like to include them within my blog post and certainly at the end of my blog post.

They’re basically two thoughts here:

The call to action in the middle of my post might be an affiliate link to a software that I mentioned in my blog post. It could also be a quote that I use that I asked my readers to share on social networks. At the bottom of my post I definitely want to include a call to action. If the reader has made it this far you have certainly made a connection with them and you want to take advantage of that connection by using a call to action. If you provided them with great value in your post there’s a better chance that they will be

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more motivated to take action on something you are telling them to do. Something like subscribe to your mailing list or checking out your latest product.

Perfect blog Post format Having a good format is part of writing the perfect blog post. There are a number of different ways to layout your content. There are certain pieces we want to keep in place with almost every post such as your opening image and your ending call to action.

However, it is important to note that different content calls for different formats and layouts. Let's take a look at two high quality blog post formats.

Layout 1

● Post Title ● Opening image aligned left or right ● Introduction ● Body ● Top Tips for main keyword ● Conclusion ● call to action (could be a link to a product, asking for a subscription to your list, asking for social shares, etc.)

Layout 2

● Headline Opening image aligned left or right ● Introduction ● Subheading

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● Body 1 ● Call to action 1 ● Body 2 ● Conclusion ● Call to action 2

As you can see, this blog post format is slightly different. Both have a lot of similarities but are also different from one another. Find what works best for your content.

Optimizing your blog post for search engines With everything discussed so far you have created the perfect blog post that is optimized for your human readers. Now it is time to look at your blog post from a search engines standpoint. If you don’t optimize your content for search engines you’ll be missing out on organic search traffic. Optimizing your blog post for search starts with keywords.

You must first establish which keywords you plan to attack with your blog content. If you were to use this portion of this report as an example my target keyword is: perfect blog post. Now that I have identified the keyword I am targeting for this blog post I can begin to optimize my content around it. It first starts with the title of your blog post and then you go down. So the keyword the perfect blog post would be in the title of the blog post.

You have to find that balance of optimizing your title for SEO while still creating an attractive title.

You also want to ensure that your keywords are appearing in the URL of your blog post.

This can be done using a few simple steps in WordPress to make this happen. To do

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that you can change your permalink structure in WordPress. Also, if you are using a plugin such as WordPress SEO you will be able to edit the title of your blog post to fit more in line with your keywords. You should also update your images to include the keyword in the alt tag. Just one more step to optimizing your blog post SEO. Now you have the perfect blog post formula. Take what you learned and go write the next perfect blog post!

Days 15 – 19 Pillar Blog Posts

Goal​ : Create 5 pillar blog posts

Pillar blog posts are an extremely important part of building an authority blog. These are the posts on your blog that show that you are the authority on your topic.These would be your 1,000 to 5,000 word posts of your best stuff! This will be tough but over the next 5 Days you will be writing pillar posts for your main blog keywords. The schedule looks like this:

● ● ● ● ●

Day 15 ­ Pillar Blog Post 1 (Main Keyword) Day 16 ­ Pillar Blog Post 2 (Secondary Keyword) Day 17 ­ Pillar Blog Post 3 (Secondary Keyword) Day 18 ­ Pillar Blog Post 4 (Secondary Keyword) Day 19 ­ Pillar Blog Post 5 (Secondary Keyword)

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It won’t be easy but this will make your blog stand head and shoulders above the competition. And you only have to create these once and they will bring in sales, subscribers, and traffic forever!

Days 20 – 25 Blog Posts

Goal:​ Create 5 (10 if possible) blog posts.

Days 20 – 25 will be spent creating more content for your blog. However, these won't be as in depth as your pillar posts that you previously created. These will be posts in the 500­1000 word range. Remember to use your planning docs (editorial calendar) to come up with post ideas. If you really want to amp things up you can try and double these up. Do a total of 10 instead of 5.

Day 26 – Cleanup And Optimize Goal:​ Clean up and optimize your blog, test functionality.

As you approach the launch of your blog you want to do a nice cleanup and optimization review. Go through your blog and do some serious housecleaning. Fix any design flaws or anything that looks out of place. If you need to make any adjustments to the design such as header size, logo, color, do it now.

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Test the following items:

● sign up forms ● mailing lists ● delivery of your free report ● Contact form ● purchase buttons

And any other interactive element on your blog.

Look through your content and scan for errors. Also, look for linking opportunities between posts. Any keywords from another post you see consider internal linking if it's relevant and helpful to the content you are viewing.

Next you want to look at your blog from a strategic point of you. Look for good places in your content to add calls to action and links to your squeeze page. Check the location of your opt­in forms. Is your blog setup to funnel people through your squeeze page?

During the launch we want to quickly build up our subscribers list so we want to make sure that we are pointing our traffic to the squeeze page. Take every opportunity you can to optimize for this. This will have a profound effect on the results of our launch.

The more fine tuned your blog is now the faster you will see results.

Day 27 – Traffic Generation

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Goal: ​ Start creating a traffic generation strategy for your blog

So let’s talk about traffic. Traffic is one of those things that you never stop hearing about. And the reason is…without traffic there is no conversions, there are no sales.

And because of that there is too much discussion on traffic.

Yes traffic is important and yes you need traffic to make sales. But too many people focus so much on driving traffic that they forget about everything else. Let me put it this way, ​ traffic is useless if you are not going to get results when the traffic gets there​ . So if your website is not going to convert then the traffic has no value.

So, only when you are at the point that you know your website is going to convert is when you should put more focus on driving traffic. And people also put so much focus on driving traffic and the amount of traffic that they can get that they forget that targeted traffic is what they need. The overall number of website visits you get isn’t near as important as the amount of targeted website visits that you get.

So hopefully I have drilled that in your head a little bit and you’re not too stressed about driving traffic. And frankly, if you have a converting website then you certainly don’t have to worry about traffic because you can pay for traffic if you are getting a return on your investment. “Yeah OK, a dollar for a click.”

if I’m going to get $5 in return, sign me up every single time.

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So my take on traffic is that if you can convert visitors then you are ready for paid traffic.

And if you’re not you have one of two choices. Trade your time and effort to acquire free traffic or lose a little money paying for traffic trying to optimize your funnel.

The Importance Of Targeted Traffic An important part of blogging success is targeted traffic is. Targeted traffic is the best way to increase sales and conversions.

So what exactly is targeted traffic? Targeted traffic is visitors to your website that are very passionate or interested in the content or topics of your website. The content of your website is almost tailored specifically to them in one way or another.

This makes them much more likely to click an advertisement, subscribe to your website or newsletter, or even buy your products. These are the users that you will find to be the most interactive and loyal followers of your content.

How do we get targeted traffic?

So now that we know what targeted traffic is we have to figure out how to get that targeted traffic to our website. One of the easiest ways to do this is to put yourself directly in front of them. This means you should be searching for places that your targeted traffic is interested in and present yourself to them in those areas.

Use forum marketing to find targeted website traffic The first place I like to look is forums and other websites related to my niche or content.

Once you find the online forums related to your niche you can then respond to posts

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and add your own posts be being very helpful to the users of that forum. What you don’t want to do is go out there and promote your links and spam the forums as that’s not going to work. By simply answering questions, providing great value, and adding a link to your website in your forum signature you can get that targeted traffic to your website.

Find targeted traffic from similar websites in your niche The other major area to find the targeted traffic is through similar websites. This can be a very touchy area so you have to be careful because some of the websites may actually be competitors. It is important, actually very important that you do not spam their websites or promote your content directly on their website unless it is authorized by the website's owner.

The best way to accomplish this is by simply asking them if you can guest post on their blog or website. So in return for the exposure and a link to your website you provide them with valuable content to add to their website.

The other way to get targeted traffic from similar websites is a little bit more intrusive.

This is by adding comments to their posts. If you’re adding comments and linking back to your website it’s a quick way to get banned and to also not have your comments approved. For best results, I suggest you leave valuable comments on their posts that actually add to the content. If you’re adding valuable information to their content and their readers come across your comment then they’re likely to click through to your website.

Find targeted followers on social media websites

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Your competition is a great place to find targeted traffic and there is no better place to find their fans and followers than on social media platforms. Following your competitors and peers audience on social media is a great way to attract them to follow you. If their audiences are actively following them on social media then there is a good chance they will be interested in what you have to offer. Then it’s up to you to turn that potential traffic into targeted traffic to your website.

Create sharable content Another way to gain value from social media is by creating shareable content. Most people interact with like­minded people on their social media accounts. A lot of their friends and followers will have similar interests as they do. If you are creating shareable content that they can share to their following you can turn your followers, followers, into targeted traffic. Find unique ways to create shareable content such as infographics, attractive headlines, and more.

Using paid advertisements to get targeted traffic There is one other way to do this but you have to use a little bit of cash in order to do it.

This would be to actually buy advertising space on similar websites or forums. This is usually in the form of a banner ads or sidebar ads displaying your graphic along with a link to your website. Although this way can be very effective it can also be very pricey so you have to determine if it’s worth it for you to do this. ​ You absolutely need a converting funnel before you pay for traffic.

Final Thoughts About Traffic

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There are a number of ways to get traffic. Here are the key things I want you to take away today:

● Don’t over focus on traffic ● A converting funnel will allow you to get traffic anywhere you want, even if you have to pay for it ● Targeted traffic ● Find a traffic source that works best in your niche and your blog.

Day 28 – Monetize Your Blog Goal:​ Think about how you plan to monetize your blog and start creating a plan to do it.

Now I’m going to give you the primary method that we monetize every blog that we create and the method that I recommend that you use. Now, I’m also going to give you a list of a number of different ways that you can monetize your blog. But I will tell you this I’m only giving you this list because most people want to have it. Most people want to see what’s out there.

A lot of people are going to have fears about what I’m going to teach you. They’re going to think they may or may not be qualified to even do what I’m about to teach you. And

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here’s my take on it ​ if you are qualified enough to blog on a topic than you’re qualified enough to do what I’m about to teach you​ .

Okay, so the way that I recommend that you make money from your blog is by creating your own products. And notice I did say products not product. And I say this because I want you to have a funnel or multiple products that you can promote to your audience.

In an ideal world you would have a funnel that consists of a core product, multiple front end products, and a top tier product or two. Your top tier training would involve engagement from you whether it be coaching, group teaching, or extremely high level training where your audience can interact with you.

And this won’t happen overnight and you’re not going to have 5 products starting tomorrow that you can promote. But if you are following our advice on working on daily content then there’s a good chance that you have a lot of content already prepared to start creating products from.

Selling your own products to monetize your website is great because you receive 100% of the profits! This can be a huge way to substantially increase the amount of money your website is making.

Other Ways To Monetize Your Blog So now that you know the best way, lets look at some other potential options. These can even be methods that you use alongside your own products or put in place before you create your own products.

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There are so many ways you can monetize a blog. This list includes a number of them.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Build an Email List PPC Advertising Networks Affiliate Marketing Consulting Podcasting Banner and Paid Advertising Premium Website Content Private Member Forums Selling your own products Selling Your Website Branded Merchandise Donations Mentoring

And more. Lets look at each a little more in depth.

Build an email list​ – An email list is one of the best ways to monetize your website. It allows you to send offers such as affiliate products and services to subscribers of your email list. If you launch a product, email subscribers will usually be the first to know about it and the first to purchase it.

It is also a great way to drive traffic to your website to purchase products, click advertisements, and more. If you haven’t yet, start building your list..

Another important aspect to consider about an email list is the relationship you can build with your subscribers. People buy based on a number of factors but trust is one of them.

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If you use your email list to build trust with your audience you can make more affiliate sales and product sales.

As a blogger or website owner email marketing should be one of the number one ways you monetize your website.

Providing Consulting​ – Most of us start a website on something we are passionate about or have become an expert on a particular topic. If you are an expert in your area you can offer consulting through your website. If your website truly shows that you are an expert in your realm then people will be interested in your help on their projects.

Offering consulting can be as easy as having a page on your website offering your consulting information. Make a post about it, link to it, and start providing real help to those who come to you. Over time you can build a long list of customers through the use of word of mouth. If you are providing your customers great service they will likely tell others about your services.

PPC Advertising Networks​ – PPC advertising is a very common way of monetizing your website by getting paid for clicks on advertisements that appear on your website.

Google Adsense is a very popular PPC ad network. Most PPC networks require you to sign up, choose your ad layout, add some code to your website, and get visitors to click them.

The biggest factor in PPC advertising is traffic. These type of advertisements can make you a good amount of money but you need a lot of traffic in order to get a good amount

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of clicks. However, if you have very targeted traffic along with targeted advertisements you may also get a lot of clicks that way.

Podcast​ – Podcasting has become a really great way to extend the reach of your website to a much larger audience. Podcasting allows you to find new readers and subscribers by creating content in their preferred way to consume it. A lot of your podcast listeners will also become followers and possibly subscribers to your website as well. Providing great content on your podcast is a great way to get those listeners interested in what else you have to offer on your website.

While the act of podcasting alone will not directly help you monetize your website, it will help in many other ways. First of all, it will increase the audience size that you interact with. If you are able to convert podcast listeners to website traffic you raise your potential to increase your earnings potential on the ways you are already monetizing your website.

There are multiple ways in which you can monetize a podcast. One of the main ways you can monetize your podcast is by gaining sponsors. Sponsors are usually set up so that the sponsor pays you a monthly amount to do a live read or multiple live reads on your podcast. Podcasts are getting to the point where they are able to reach a very large audience and as podcasts continue to grow the amount of sponsors available will only grow.

Another way to monetize your website through a podcast is to allow advertisers to advertise on your podcast. This is different from a sponsor because it usually involves a

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prepared advertisement that is played on your show. Opposed to sponsors that are normally live reads.

Another great way to monetize your podcast is by having a premium section for your podcast listeners. This basically works by creating a separate podcast feed or password­protected feed only for premium members. This usually contains additional content or any premium content that you can provide your members.

You can also monetize your website through your podcast by promoting affiliate products in which you have an affiliate code for by promoting products on your website.

Basically you can consider these your own live reads as you’re doing an advertisement for products on your website or products that you’re affiliated with.

Amazon affiliate not promoting products​ – Yes, you read that correctly, you can earn affiliate commissions through Amazon without directly promoting Amazon products.

Essentially it works by providing a link on your website to Amazon where your customers or readers can click­through your website to Amazon and anything they purchase you will make a commission off of.

A lot of podcasters are also monetizing from this because they are promoting the Amazon link on their website and on their podcasts. If people like the content you deliver and they want to thank you without buying something from you directly they will often click­through your Amazon link when they purchase things just so that you get a little cut of it. This is a great way for your readers to give a little bit back to you while purchasing things they need.

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Affiliate Marketing​ – Affiliate Marketing is a very popular way of monetizing a website.

Affiliate marketing can be summarized as a way for a merchant to have their products sold by affiliates. In return, affiliates make a commission off of each sale they make.

There are many different ways and platforms for affiliate marketing.

There are websites such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, and Amazon that allow you to create affiliate accounts and sell products from their store on your website to make a commission from the sell. The other part of affiliate marketing is affiliating with companies that you use in your business. A lot of online marketers will have specific tools or services that they endorse and sell products to their customers as affiliates.

Most affiliate programs work by creating an affiliate ID for their affiliates and that ID is recognized when a customer clicks through a link from the affiliate. Depending on the specific affiliate program you associate with you will often be provided banner images, documentation, advertisement recommendations, and more to support your affiliate product sales.

● ● ● ● ●

Affiliate Programs Commission Junction ClickBank e­junkie Link Share

Banner and Paid Advertising​ – Banner and paid advertising is way to monetize your website by allowing others to rent real estate on your website. This method can be very effective and it allows you to cut out the middleman and directly work with potential advertisers.

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Banner advertisements come in many shapes and sizes and also can be placed in multiple places on your website. Some of the more common formats include banner ads directly at the top of your website (one of the first things that visitors will see when they visit your page). Other popular formats are various sizes of banner ads on the website's sidebar next to the website content. These type of advertisements usually require your website to have a large amount of traffic.

Premium Website Content​ – One great way to monetize your website is to have a member’s only area for premium content. This allows you to have an area dedicated to only premium members who pay you a subscription fee to be part of it.

There are many things that you can provide in a premium content section. For example, if you have a tutorial website you could have your most desired or most in­depth tutorials in your premium content section. A lot of websites have benefited by offering many of their services for free but having limitations on the free service. Once their customers realize how powerful their service is and want to expand it they will sign up for the premium content.

Premium content can be in the form of videos, documents, downloads, audio, presentations, tools, support, guidance, and any other form of content. This can be a very successful way to monetize your website especially if you set it up to have recurring subscriptions.

Private Member Forums​ – Similar to providing a premium content area on your website you could also experiment with setting up a private member forums area that

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costs the user to access. Private forums can be a great way to monetize your website because you can set them up as subscription based.

Private member forums can be setup to provide users a lot of valuable information not displayed on your website. One format that works great is allowing members to ask very specific questions and get expert feedback. Being able to provide extremely useful support or information in a private member forum is a great way to monetize your website.

Selling or renting internal pages of your website​ – If you have a high traffic website you can attract many advertisers to your website. One way to monetize this is to allow them to actually rent a page of your website. This allows them to add their content to a specific area of your website that might be more beneficial to them than a standard banner advertisement.

Branded merchandise​ – If you have a popular blog you can also sell branded merchandise. A lot of bloggers have monetized by using their original quotes, logos, and more. Branded merchandise can be anything from t­shirts, mugs, pens, badges, and more. Be creative with your merchandise and start a trend!

Donations​ – One Quick and easy way to monetize your blog is by simply adding a donation button to your website. If your blog or website adds a lot of value to the reader and you have conveniently located donation buttons then there is a decent possibility they would donate to you. Although this method of monetizing your website won’t bring

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in tons of money it can bring in some. It also allows your readers to give back in a way that makes them feel good.

Mentoring​ – If you have a lot of authority, knowledge, or experience on a subject you may consider becoming a mentor. This could be monetized through a number of different methods where you help or mentor others achieve success. This could be through Skype calls, phone calls, webinars, face to face, private forum, and more.

The list goes on forever. You can be as creative with your monetization efforts as you want but remember what I said in the beginning. Product creation is the best way to monetize an authority blog and the primary way we recommend.

Day 29 – Analyze Results Goal: ​ Identify key blog metrics and create a way to track and monitor them

Analytics and Metrics In this training we are going to show you how to analyze and monitor metrics on your blog. One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make when it comes to analytics is over complicating things. They look at metrics that don’t matter and don’t have a measurable impact on the success of your online business.

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Here’s the thing. When we launch our blog we are trying to get subscribers. Subscribers that we can send through our sales funnel and back to our blog for traffic.This means that all the metrics we are going to analyze will revolve around these goals.

The metrics that we are most concerned about are:

● Conversion Rate ● Subscribers ● Value Per subscriber Plain and simple these are the metrics that are going to provide the most value to our business. So let's talk about their importance and how you will calculate each metric.

Conversion Rate​ – This is the number of opt­ins you get (new subscribers to your mailing list) divided by the total traffic your blog receives. I like to look at these metrics on a monthly basis. The formula looks like this:

New subscribers/total traffic

So if you had 100 new subscribers and 1,000 visitors you would calculate your conversion rate like this: 1,000/100=10%

Subscribers​ – This is a couple of different metrics combined into one. First of all, it is the total number of subscribers on your email list. Then measure your net change in subscribers. To do this compare the prior month subscriber count to the current month.

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This will give you the net change in subscribers by month. Finally, look at the amount of new subscribers and unsubscribes.

All of these metrics will provide a lot of value to optimize your content and blog for optins. You can also measure whether your email campaigns are too aggressive or not connecting with your audience by the amount of unsubscribes.

Value Per Subscriber​ – This is the amount of revenue or profit (depending on how you want to calculate it) divided by the number of subscribers.

So if you made $1,000 in a month and your total subscribers is 100. Than your value per subscriber would be $10. This can give you a lot of valuable information. If you know that every new lead on your list is worth at least $10 you know that you can spend up to $10 to acquire a new lead.

You can also use this to scale up. If you have 100 subscribers worth a $1000 a month you know that if you scale to 200 subscribers you should make $2,000 a month.

Day 30 – Prepare For Launch Goal: ​ Prepare your blog for launch and test all interactive elements on your site.

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As you approach the launch of your blog you want to do a nice cleanup and optimization review. Go through your blog and do some serious housecleaning. Fix any design flaws or anything that looks out of place. If you need to make any adjustments to the design such as header size, logo, color, do it now.

Test the following items:

● ● ● ● ●

sign up forms mailing lists delivery of your free report Contact form And any other interactive element on your blog

Look through your content and scan for errors. Also, look for linking opportunities between posts. Any keywords from another post you see consider internal linking if it's relevant and helpful to the content you are viewing.

Next you want to look at your blog from a strategic point of you. Look for good places in your content to add calls to action and links to your squeeze page. Check the location of your opt­in forms. Is your blog setup to funnel people through your squeeze page?

During launch we want to quickly build up our subscribers list so we want to make sure that we are pointing our traffic to the squeeze page. Take every opportunity you can to optimize for this. This will have a profound effect on the results of our launch. The more fine tuned your blog is now the faster you will see results.

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30 Days And Beyond Congratulations! You have now completed you first 30 days and have your own Authority Blog. Now that you have the foundation set up you need to take what you learned about creating content, driving traffic, and monetizing your blog and take serious action!

Carry on creating 2­3 blog posts every week and over time you will be amazed at the amount of traffic you begin to pull in. The next step will be launching your own products and putting together your product funnel building on everything that you have learned in this course.

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