Blog Profit Master Plan by NowoPublishing

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Table of Contents Introduction to The Blog Profit Master Plan ..................................................................... 5 The Benefits of Blogging ............................................................................................................................ 7

Building Your Master Plan ....................................................................... 9 Perfecting Your Plan: Choosing the Best Blogging Options .......................................................................................................... 9 Self-hosted vs. Third-Party Hosting ...................................................................................................... 10 Choosing a Blogging Platform / Software ............................................................................................. 11 Fast Installation ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Fancy Plan: Using Tools, Widgets and Other Features of WordPress .............................................................................................................. 12 Integrating Multi-Media ........................................................................................................................ 15 The Master Plan so far ............................................................................................................................... 17

Starting Your Blog Profit Master Plan ................................................... 18 Start ........................................................................................................................................................... 18 Starting Your Blog ................................................................................................................................ 18 What Does a Good Post Look Like? ..................................................................................................... 19 The Secret of Never Running Out of Ideas............................................................................................ 20 The Midway Point ..................................................................................................................................... 23 Championship Business Blogging ............................................................................................................. 24 Communicating with Clients and Prospects .......................................................................................... 25 Creating Posts that Attract Search-Engine Traffic ................................................................................ 26 Weaving Together Content With Promotions........................................................................................ 28 This Roundup ............................................................................................................................................ 29

Delivering The Master Plan .................................................................... 30 The Subtle Touch: Indirect Monetization Strategies ................................................................................................................ 30 Landing Freelance Writing Contracts .................................................................................................... 30 Getting Lucrative Book Deals ............................................................................................................... 30 Creating Speaking Engagements ........................................................................................................... 31 Offering Consulting ............................................................................................................................... 32 Building a List ....................................................................................................................................... 32 The Not So Subtle: .................................................................................................................................... 34 Direct Monetization Strategies .................................................................................................................. 34 Offering Advertising Spots .................................................................................................................... 34 Creating Sponsorship Opportunities ...................................................................................................... 35 Earning from AdSense Revenue ............................................................................................................ 35 Selling Your Own Products or Services ................................................................................................ 35 Promoting Affiliate Products or Services .............................................................................................. 36 Posting Paid Reviews ............................................................................................................................ 37 Accepting Donations ............................................................................................................................. 37 The Roundup ............................................................................................................................................. 38

Fortifying Your Master Plan ................................................................... 39 The First Move… ...................................................................................................................................... 39 Social Media Marketing ........................................................................................................................ 39 Content Marketing ..................................................................................................................................... 41 Link Campaigns (Search Engine Marketing) ........................................................................................ 42 Pay Per Click Marketing........................................................................................................................ 44 Joint Venture Marketing ........................................................................................................................ 46 The Second Move ...................................................................................................................................... 47

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact The Roundup ............................................................................................................................................. 50

Conclusion: Time to Reflect ........................................................................................................................... 51

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Introduction to The Blog Profit Master Plan Welcome to The Blog Profit Master Plan! I’m really excited about sharing the information in this book with you. And that’s because if you want to make money online, you should have a blog on your site. Indeed, you can make a fortune with a just a simple blog and nothing else… and this book will show you exactly how to do it! Over the next several chapters you’ll discover: ✓ How to enter the blogging ring like a champion… even if you’re brand new! ✓ The quick and easy way to get set up – you can be blogging literally within minutes after you read this quick section! ✓ Everything you need to know “fancy footwork,” including blog themes, widgets and plugins. ✓ You’ll discover how to dominate the ring using these deadly writing tips. ✓ You’ll find out the secrets of delivering a one, two punch that will have your blog pulling down the easy money. ✓ Plus you’ll find out how to defend your championship title by getting hordes of eager visitors, reader, subscribers and customer to rush to your blog! And much, much more! Are YOU ready to step into the ring of The Blog Profit Master Plan? Then follow me…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The Benefits of Blogging Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s pause a moment to define what a blog is and how it will benefit you and your business… Definition: [blog] The word “blog” is a shortened version of the phrase “web log,” and it’s just what it sounds like. Specifically, it’s a frequently updated, dynamic website (or portion of your site) that you use to stay in contact with your prospects and customers, share information and so on. A “blog platform” or blog software is what makes blogging easy, even for those who don’t know a thing about websites or HTML. Instead of people having to constantly update a web page with new articles (and then upload this new page to their site), blogging software allows bloggers to create posts and submit them to their own sites instantly – no technical skills required! Now, the phrase “web log” may be a little misleading. Some people still have the idea that a web log is an online diary of sorts, where the only people who use blogs are teenage girls wanting to share their angst and their drama with the world. Sure, you can still find these sorts of diaries. But today, nearly every major business also uses blogs. You’ll see blogs on media cites, on ecommerce sites, on political sites, on entrepreneurs’ sites and much more. And you can bet these blogs are being used seriously, to get serious benefits…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The Benefits of Blogging So, what types of benefits might you expect once you start blogging? The advantages include but are not limited to the following: ▪

Blogs are easy to use. I’ve already mentioned this great benefit. Fact is, blogs make it EASY for anyone to add and manage content to their website, even if they don’t know HTML coding from a slice of pepperoni pizza.

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Blogs are Web 2.0 friendly. “Web 2.0” is all about social interaction, community and content-sharing. Obviously, blogs fit in perfectly with this emerging model of the “new” web.

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Blogging allows your clients, subscribers and prospects to interact with you. Although you can use blogging as a “monologue” (i.e., a one-way conversation with your readers), it doesn’t have to be used that way. Indeed, you can allow comments and turn your blog into a conversation with your clients and prospects. Doing so helps you build a relationship, build trust and boost sales.

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Blogging makes your site “sticky.” When you update your blog with good content frequently (at least once a week if not more), your visitors will start coming by more frequently to see if you’ve updated your blog. In other words, your site will become “sticky.” And that’s a good thing, because the more times a visitor returns to your site, the easier it is for you to build a relationship and earn trust from that person.

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Blogging allows your users to help you generate content for your site. When you allow comments on your blog, you’ll quickly find that your users will start posting good content. At first, you may have tentative readers who simply post things like “good article.” But eventually, especially as your readership grows, some of your users will post replies that are as long (or even longer) than your original blog post. In short, your blog becomes more valuable due to the users and the content they’re posting.

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Blogs can help establish you as an expert in your niche. While it’s true that nearly anyone can set up a website or blog on the web, the content that’s posted quickly separates the experts from the pretenders. And that means if you keep posting solid content, you’ll soon establish yourself as an expert. 7

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

▪

Blogs attract traffic. If you seek to post useful, engaging articles and comments, other people WILL link to your blog. They might link to a particular post on their own blog, or you might see them talking about your posts on a niche forum. Either way, you can get a buzz going in your niche, with all the links pointing back to you.

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Blogs are search-engine friendly. Finally, another major benefit of blogging is that blog platforms themselves are search-engine friendly. This is particularly true of platforms like WordPress, that seek to organize your post titles, categories and tags (keywords) into a searchengine friendly format. Bottom line – Google and the other search engines love blog content. You can expect the Google bot to visit often and index your blog… If you frequently update your blog with good content.

Now that you know the main benefits of blogging, it’s time to get down to the details…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Building Your Master Plan As mentioned previously, you DON’T need any technical skills to get your blog up and running fast. In this section, you’ll discover some of the blogging platforms you have to choose from, and the “whistles and bells” that you’ll find on many of these platforms. Let’s start with the platforms…

Perfecting Your Plan: Choosing the Best Blogging Options There are plenty of ways to get started blogging. In its most basic form, you could simply use a regular HTML web page that you constantly update. However, that would be a lot of work, especially when it came time to archive previous posts. That’s why it makes sense for you to use a blogging platform, which makes uploading and managing content automatic. Now, before we get into the details, let me just say this up front: I strongly suggest that you use WordPress (WP) as your blogging platform. That’s because: •

It’s easy to use.

•

WP is constantly updated with new features (including blocking security loopholes).

•

There are lots of plug-in tools (also known as “plugins”) you can use to make blogging easier.

•

And there are even plenty of themes (designs) you can use so your blog fits your niche.

Nonetheless, let me arm you with knowledge about your other options…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Self-hosted vs. Third-Party Hosting There are two ways you can host a blog. a) One option is to install the blog on your own domain name. For example, your blog will reside at www.yourdomain.com/yourblog. b) The second option is to use a blogging service and host the blog on their site. For example, your blog will reside at http://yourblog.someoneelseswebsite.com. The advantages of hosting on a third-party site include: ✓ No installation necessary. You simply create an account, customize your blog and start blogging instantly. ✓ It’s usually free. ✓ You get the benefit of nearly instant traffic since your blog becomes part of a much larger network (i.e., your blog may get linked to the other blogs). You’ll also likely get listed in the search engines fairly fast. Now while these benefits sound good, let me say this – DON’T CHOOSE thirdparty hosting. Reasons:  You DON’T have ultimate control over your site. If the host shuts down one day, your blog could cease to exist. If they think you’re breaking their rules, they may terminate your account.  Some third-party hosts have strict rules. For example, you can’t remove their advertising, you can’t use the blog for commercial purposes, or you can’t have certain types of blogs on their network (e.g., adult blogs).

Tip: If you’re still interested in third-party hosting, then use thirdparty blogs to drive content to your self-hosted main blog. For example, you can set up a network of second-tier blogs on places like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, MySpace.com and other social sites. Then use these blogs to create backlinks to your main blog.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Once again, here’s the bottom line – host the blog on your own domain. That way, you retain full control and get all the benefits of traffic and backlinks without any of the worries that your site will disappear tomorrow.

Choosing a Blogging Platform / Software The next step is to choose your platform or the blogging software (also known as “blogware”) you’re going to use to manage your blog. If you run a search in Google for “blogging platforms” or “blogging software,” you’ll unearth dozens of potential solutions, both free and paid. You’ll see third-party hosted platforms such as Blogger and LiveJournal. You’ll also see blogware such as WordPress, MovableType, Blosxom, Serendipity, and much more. Again, I strongly recommend that you use WordPress, which you can find at WordPress.org (if you go to WordPress.com, you’ll find WP’s third-party hosting option).

Fast Installation Once you choose your blogware, you’ll generally need to download the blogware to your computer, and then upload it to your website according to the instructions. Fortunately, WordPress is easy to install. Indeed, they call their installation their famous “five minute” installation. Still, if you’ve never installed a script on a website before, the instructions may sound like a foreign language to you. The answer? Choose a webhost (like HostGator.com) that uses “cPanel.” Hosts that use cPanel have a “one click” installation of common scripts (Fantastico), and WordPress is included among those scripts. That means you don’t need to know a thing about uploading files, changing permissions or anything else in order to have your WP blog up and running in just a click.

Tip: While “one-click installation” through cPanel is the quick and easy way to get your blog running, you should double check at WordPress.org to see if you’ve installed the latest version of WP. Alternatively, once you’ve installed it, log into your admin panel and take note of whether you need to upgrade. 11

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The reason is because WordPress does update their software fairly frequently, particularly to deal with security holes. As such, it’s important that you have the latest version to guard against hackers. Fortunately, upgrading is easy. And indeed, check the bonus “Knockout WordPress Plugins” report that came with this book, as there you’ll find a plugin to help make upgrading even faster and easier. Now read on to discover some of WordPress’ cool features…

Fancy Plan: Using Tools, Widgets and Other Features of WordPress Once you’ve installed WordPress and logged into your dashboard (also known as “admin panel”), spend some time familiarizing yourself with the features. You may run into terminology (as well as features themselves) that are unfamiliar. I’ve explained some of the most common features and terms below: ▪

Themes: A blog theme is just another word for your blog design. WordPress comes with a default theme, which is fairly bland. However, you can find thousands of themes (both free and paid) simply by running a search in Google for “WordPress themes.” You’re sure to find something that’s the perfect color, includes the perfect graphics and otherwise “fits” with your site. If not, many of these themes are customizable. That means if you find one that’s close to what you want but not exactly, you can tweak it. Alternatively, you can hire a WordPress theme designer and coder to create an exclusive theme according to your specifications.

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Plugins: Plugins are tools that give your WordPress blog more features, benefits and functionality. The reason plugins exist is because the WP developers realized that if they included every cool feature possible in WP’s core, the software would become “bloatware.” Plus, most people would have no need for all the additional tools. The solution? All these additional tools are separate. That way you can just install and use the ones you really want, and ignore the others.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Now, there are plenty of plugins you can use. Some of the best ones are the sitemap tools, the anti-spam tools, the SEO-related tools, the monetization-related tools and a whole lot more. Because there are so many amazing plugins for you to choose from, I’ve included the “Knockout WordPress Plugins ” special report with this book that is a compilation of my favorite tools and plugins. I’ll refer to it here and there throughout this book, so please keep it somewhere easily accessible. You may even want to have it on your desktop, because you’re sure to access it often when you start blogging! ▪

Widgets: Widgets work the same as plugins, in that they give you more flexibility and functionality on your WordPress blog. The difference, however, is that widgets reside on the sidebar of your WordPress blog, which is why they’re often referred to as “sidebar accessories.” The other catch is that only WP themes that are “widget enabled” will allow you to install and use these tools.

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Posts: A post is the content you submit to your blog. It could be an article, a link to something interesting, short commentary on someone else’s blog post, etc.

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Categories: When you post, you can post to a certain category of your blog – that is, a specific subtopic on your blog. These subtopics help you organize your blog better, helps your readers find what they’re looking for, and can even help your search engine rankings. For example, let’s suppose you have a fishing site. Your categories may include fishing for: “trout”, “Northern pikes”, “Walleyes”, “catfish”, “sunfish”, and so on.

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Comments: When you make a post, you have the option of enabling comments for your posts. Just as the name implies, enabling comments gives your visitors the ability to comment on and discuss your post. And that makes your blog "sticky," as readers will return repeatedly just to watch the discussion unfolding.

▪

Tag: A tag is just another name for a keyword. You can use tags to help your blog readers find posts that they’re interested in. for example, if they search your blog for a particular keyword, then every

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

post that includes that keyword – either in the content itself or as a tag – will turn up in their search results. In addition, tags are useful for search engine purposes. If you use certain keywords in your content, in the title of your post, and then again as a tag, it may help with your ranking for that keyword. Finally, tags are useful for when you notify blog directories (like Technorati.com) that you’ve updated your blog. Blog directory users often search for posts that interest them using post tags, so choosing the right tags can increase your traffic. Which brings me to the next term: ▪

Pinging: Pinging has multiple meanings in blogging. You may hear about a “pingback,” which is similar to a trackback in that you notify another blogger that you’ve discussed his article on your blog. More commonly, however, you’ll hear bloggers talking about “pinging” a blog directory. This is when you inform a blog directory or search engine that you’ve made a new post… that way they can send a bot to crawl your site and index this new post. You can ping the top blog directories with one click using a free service like pingomatic.com. However, if you’re using WordPress, then you don’t need to use those services. That’s because WP automatically pings the directories the moment you post.

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RSS: RSS refers to “Really Simple Syndication,” and it comes standard with WordPress. The benefit is that people who have RSS readers can subscribe to your blog “feed.” Whenever you make a new post on your blog, the updated feed is sent to the person’s RSS feed reader – that means they can read your blog comment from their desktop, without the need for actually visiting your site. In addition to giving individuals the ability to subscribe to and read your blog in another format, RSS allows you to share your content with other websites. If they have a feed reader on their site, they can pull your content into your site (with your permission, of course). (That’s where the Really Simple Syndication name originates.)

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Trackbacks: If you decide to write a blog post about someone else’s blog post, you can leave a “trackback” on his blog (if enabled) to let him and his readers know you’re discussing one of his posts.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The bonus is that your blog post is then linked to his blog post, and so you’ll likely get visitors flowing back and forth between your blogs. The other big advantage is that you can get another blogger’s attention this way – it’s just one way to get the attention of a potential joint venture partner, for example. ▪

Scheduling Content (Automatic Blogging): Typically, a post appears on your blog as soon as you click “publish.” However, you can schedule content to appear at a later date. One way to accomplish this is by dating the post using a future date. The other (seemingly more reliable) way to do this is by using an autoblogging or autoposting plugin. The reason for doing this is to turn your blog into a nearly hands-off venture. You can pre-populate your blog with several posts, and then set up a schedule where your blog automatically posts a new article every few days or every week. For example, you can load up 52 articles, set up a weekly schedule, and your blog will run on autopilot for a full year. There’s a catch, however. If you do this, you need to make sure you’re loading and posting “evergreen content.” In other words, this is content that needs to be as fresh on the day it’s posted as the day it was created. As such, you can’t refer to “new” products, theories, strategies, etc. Instead, you need to create posts around time-tested and proven strategies, products, topics, etc.

If you’re unfamiliar with blogging and WordPress, what you’ve learned in this section may seem a tad overwhelming. However, once you actually start working with the software, you’ll find it incredibly easy to use. So don’t let the new terms overwhelm you! If you install the software right now, you could have your first blog post up in just five minutes from now!

Integrating Multi-Media It’s time to get serious. I’m going to share something that very few bloggers know, and even fewer utilize. Namely, the importance of integrating multi-media.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

You see, people can generally be divided into three categories: 1) Those who visual learners. They prefer to get their information through visually-oriented material. They tend to respond to phrases like, “you see,” “picture this,” “imagine that” and similar. 2) Those who are auditory learners. As the name implies, they prefer to learn by listening. They tend to respond to phrases like, “listen up,” and “I hear you.” 3) Those who are kinesthetic learners. These are people who learn through emotion, touch and hands-on experiences. They tend to respond well to phrases like, “Let’s get in touch” and “How do you feel about it?” I’m sure you’ve seen some evidence of this before. Just browse a business forum, and search for topics on videos, audios and text. Some people will say they LOVE videos, and others will claim they wouldn’t watch a video if you held gun to their head. Others prefer reading, and still others prefer to listen to a presentation while they’re doing something else (like going for a walk). Now, if you want to appeal to all three of these types of people, you need to integrate pictures, diagrams, audios and videos alongside your regular text posts. Check the “Knockout WordPress Plugins” report for plugins that will help you manage your multi-media. In addition, you need to use language that appeals to these different learners. That means you should mix visual-oriented, touch and emotion-oriented and hearing-oriented phrases into your writing, audios and videos. Doing so will help you build rapport with your readers… and that directly translates to more subscribers and more sales.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The Master Plan so far… Congratulations – you’ve stepped into the “The Blog Profit Master Plan” arena by learning how to get your first blog set up fast, plus you learned about some of the terminology and jargon. Since you’ve read this far, I already know you’re going to be a real master! Now comes the fun part – learning how to dominate the arena by finding your “voice,” figuring out what to post, and much more. Keep reading…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Starting Your Blog Profit Master Plan The sooner you start posting on your new blog, the sooner you can start pulling in search engine traffic, get indexed in the blog directories, get rabid readers and much more. In this section, you’ll learn how to write posts like a championship blogger…

Start Having an empty WordPress text box just waiting for you to fill it out with a post can be a little overwhelming. What should you write? How often should you post? You’ll find the answers to these and more below…

Starting Your Blog Sometimes we think our first blog post needs to be the most insightful, exciting post the blogosphere has ever seen. But that kind of thinking can cause us to freeze up and write nothing at all. Look, your first post DOESN’T have to be any sort of big “welcome message” or anything out of the ordinary. Just choose from the list of topics your readers might be interested in learning more about, and start reading. (More about where to get content ideas in just a bit.) However, here’s the thing: You’ll want to pre-populate your blog with at least five or six posts immediately. That’s because you want your blog to look busy, and you want your very first blog readers to see that you have a valuable resource. Too often, blog readers have visited a blog with a promising first post or two, and the blog owner never came back to update the blog.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

So even if you just started your blog, you want to post several articles so your blog doesn’t look like a ghost town. Once you get those initial posts up, then you’ll want to post every few days or at least weekly thereafter. As mentioned previously, you don’t have to do this manually – you can set your blog up to “drip” content on a regular basis. Doing so will give your readers something to look forward to, and it will get the search engine bots coming back frequently as well.

What Does a Good Post Look Like? There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to blogging. Indeed, you may find some niche readers responding to long, informative posts better, while in a different niche you’ll find that posting short posts seems to produce more response. Solution? You need to test it for yourself. Make posts of varying lengths, and see which ones get a better response. You can track your response in terms of: •

Readers who take a specific action at the end of a post, such as subscribe to your newsletter, watch a video or buy a product.

•

The number of readers who comment on the post.

•

The number of others who link to your post (e.g., the buzz your posts causes in your niche).

Obviously, if your goal is to sell products on your blog, then you should be focusing on posts that tend to convert well in terms of readers who click on your links and become buyers. On the flip side, if the goal of your blog is to raise your status in the niche, then you may be more concerned about what kind of posts get blogged about in your niche. As a good rule of thumb, start with posts that are 300 to 600 words in length. You may also see what other bloggers in your niche are doing. And naturally,

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

you’ll also want to “mix things up” by making posts of different lengths (which keeps your blog visually interesting).

The Secret of Never Running Out of Ideas Sometimes new bloggers can get a little overwhelmed when they think about the possibility of managing a blog for years to come. They think they’ll run out of ideas by the time six months have passed. Let me say this right now: I guarantee that if you follow the 21 tips I’m about to give you, you’ll NEVER run out of ideas for blog posts. Here they are in no particular order: 1) Use keyword tools. You can use free or paid keyword tools (like Google AdWords’ keyword tool, or similar) to uncover what sort of things people are searching for in your niche. These search terms should give you hundreds or even thousands of ideas for article topics. 2) Visit marketplaces like ClickBank. Search through products in your niche to see what sorts of products people are buying. Then create articles around these hot topics. In addition… 3) Read sales letters of niche info products. Most sales letter include dozens of “bullet points” or even the table of contents from text products. You can turn each bullet point into blog post. 4) See what people are saying in reviews. Amazon is a good place to get product reviews. If you spend some time reading these reviews, you’ll find out what topics people like in your niche. Certainly, you’ll mine dozens of ideas simply by spending a few minutes reading what people are saying about books in your niche. 5) Go to article directories. Visit directories like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, ArticleCity.com and similar to see what other authors are writing about. 6) Visit video sites. Search for your niche keywords on YouTube to see what sort of videos people are creating. You may create videos around similar topics, or even audios or text posts. 7) See what your competitors are blogging about. Visit your competitors’ blogs to see what they’re writing about. Then take

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

these topics and write about them using your unique experience and viewpoint.

Bonus Tip: Be sure to sign up for their newsletters while you’re on their site, as the newsletter will give you more ideas. 8) See what people are talking about on niche forums. Browse niche forums to see what topics are hot today, as well as what types of topics keep coming up repeatedly. 9) See what people are Twittering about. Go to Twitter and start following people in your niche. What are the topics of their “tweets?” (Note: Twitter is a micro-blogging site.) 10) See what people are talking about on social networking sites. Go to MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites in your niche to see what people in your niche are talking about. Join the niche-oriented groups so you can get a ringside seat on these virtual conversations. 11) Use social bookmarking sites for inspiration. You can find out what topics are hot in your niche by seeing which topics are bookmarked by a lot of people on sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us and similar. 12) See what people are asking about on Yahoo! Answers. Browse categories in your niche to see what sorts of questions are hot today, as well as what sort of questions tend to get asked often. 13) Figure out your niche’s “frequently asked questions”, and write articles around these topics. Once you figure out the frequently asked questions (FAQs) in your niche (by using forums and Yahoo! Answers), create a series of blog posts with answers to these questions. 14) Ask your readers to submit questions. This is self-explanatory. You can create a blog post asking your readers to submit questions that you can answer in future posts. Or you can ask people on niche forums and social media sites to give you their questions. 15) Offer commentary on hot topics in your niche. If people are already blogging about hot topics in your niche, you can join the conversation and offer your viewpoint. Don’t be afraid to take a strong stand or offer a strong opinion.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

16) Offer reviews of products in your niche. People aren’t just looking for information about topics, they’re also looking for information about products in your niche. You can review these products (being completely honest)… and, where appropriate, you can link to the product using an affiliate link. 17) Use PLR content for inspiration. You don’t necessarily need to use private label rights (PLR) content on your blog, although you certainly can. At the very least, you can use it for inspiration or use it as the base for a unique article. 18) Revisit some of your old articles and write new articles (with a twist, with added information, etc). You can always revisit topics you’ve covered and add additional information, add new data, change your opinion if the situation has changed, etc. Alternatively, you may just choose to write about the exact same topic but from a different angle. This works particularly well if you’re revisiting content that you’ve posted several months ago (e.g., it’s not something you recently posted). 19) Keep your eyes on offline as well as online media. Check out the radio, TV, newspapers and other print publications in your niche for article ideas. For example, if you’re running a fishing blog, then see what sort of articles “Field and Stream” has written about this month as well as months (and even years) past. 20) Talk to people in your niche offline. You already know that you can survey your niche online. But don’t forget to listen to them offline, too. You may consider joining clubs and organizations just so you can eavesdrop on what people in your niche are talking about, what sorts of problems they have and what sorts of information they’re seeking. 21) Talk to other professionals in your niche. Let’s suppose you’re writing about dogs. Then you may want to talk to people like dog veterinarians, dog walkers, dog trainers, those who own dog kennels and those who own dog supply stores to see what they’ve observed in the niche. There you have it – 21 ways to get content ideas. Each of these tactics can easily bring you dozens, hundreds or even thousands of ideas. Collectively, they’ll ensure you never run out of content or ideas!

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

The Midway Point Imagine for a moment if you were about to compete with the biggest guy in your neighborhood. Would you just stand in place and taunt him? Probably NOT. Instead, you’d use the arena to your advantage. Maybe you’d run this big guy in circles and try to wear him out before you started throwing your famous right hook. You’d certainly be doing some fancy footwork and looking for anything to give you an edge. And let’s face it – if you two weren’t dancing around in that ring, the fight would be boring to the spectators. It would be almost… clinical. Dry. Mind-numbingly tedious. Your blog is no different. You see, you can write dry, clinical “how to” articles on the topics in your niche. But if you’re competitors are writing engaging articles, guess who’s winning? That’s right, your competitor is winning readers, subscribers and customers. That’s why it’s important for you to find your voice. Just like in boxing, you use the blogging “ring” to your advantage. This is a platform that YOU control 100%. This isn’t like an article directory where some snooty article editor is going to reject your submissions. This is your soap box – so use it! For starters, you need to engage your readers by letting your personality show through. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be your actual personality – you can even take on the persona of a character and blog from this character’s voice. Point is, you need to develop a unique style. Here are seven tips to help you engage your readers and increase your readership: 1) Get passionate. Chances are, you chose to blog about this topic because you’re passionate about it, right? So let that passion shine through! Write from your heart. Throw away the grammar rules and write like you’re talking to a friend.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

2) Take a strong stand. Don’t be afraid to form a strong, even controversial opinion. Controversy brings eyes to your blog… and new subscribers to your site. 3) Engage your competitors. You also don’t need to be afraid of stating a strong opinion that’s just the opposite of your competitor – and letting him know it! If he’s stated his opinion, then engage him in little niche sparring by writing about his post and leaving a trackback. The drama will bring readers to both your blogs. 4) Get personal. Do you have personal stories about the topics you’re writing about? Then use them (or use stories about other people you know)! One way to connect with readers is by telling stories. And as an added bonus, it gets you away from dry, clinical articles. 5) Give “how to” information with a twist. Look at this entire book. I could have just written a boring “how to blog” book, but you would have nodded off and fell asleep back on page two. Instead, I’m comparing blogging to bare knuckle boxing. That’s my angle. I’m betting you can find an angle for your “how to” topics as well. 6) Create “top ten” lists. Another way to make your articles interesting is by creating top ten (or top five, or top seven, etc). Again, look at this particular section as an example – you’re reading the “Top 7” ways to engage your audience. 7) Compile niche resources. Finally, another way you can increase your readership is by compiling niche resources into your blog posts. People will point to your post since readers can get all the information they need in one post. For example, if you had a blog about blogs, you might create a post with the top 50 most useful WordPress plugins. If you had a dog blog, you might post a list of the top 25 or 50 dog books. And so on. Now that you’ve learned how to deliver your mater plan in the blogging ring, it’s time for you to learn the secrets of master blogging…

Championship Business Blogging It’s time to separate the business-blogging champions from the hobbyists and “wannabes.” Read on to discover how to use your blog to keep in touch with clients, pull in search engine traffic, and MAKE MONEY…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Communicating with Clients and Prospects I mentioned this before but it’s worth mentioning again – your blog can serve as a communication tool between you and your clients and/or prospects. That means it’s helpful to have comments enabled, so that you can enjoy a conversation rather than deliver a monologue. But also remember this: When your clients and prospects read your blog, they’ll be thinking, “What’s in it for me?” As such, EVERY article they read should deliver benefits to them. It should be about them, their problems and the solutions to their problems… It should NOT be about you. Now, earlier I mentioned that you should get passion, state your personal opinions and even share personal stories. However, you do these things within the context of helping your reader. That is, you DON’T share a personal story just to see your name in lights on your blog. Instead, you share a personal story so that you can tie that story in with a solution that you’re offering to your reader. For example, let’s suppose you’re running a weight loss blog. You can share your personal weight-loss story as a means of connecting with your readers and letting them know how you solved your problem. Then you need to pivot and tell your readers how what worked for you can work for them too. From that point on in the article, you then orient your article to the reader by listing tips and information that will solve their problems.

Tip: One good way to make sure you’re orienting your writing towards the reader and not yourself is to look at how many times you use words like “you” and “your” versus “I,” “me” and “mine.” An article oriented towards the reader will use words like “you,” whereas an article that’s more about its author will use words like “I” and “me.” Now let me give you an example to show you how you can orient your writing towards the readers to keep them engaged:

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

I-oriented phrase: I will teach… Rewritten to a “you-oriented” phrase: You will discover… Another example: I-oriented phrase: A handful of peanuts staves off my cravings. Rewritten to a “you-oriented” phrase: A handful of peanuts will stave off your cravings.

Creating Posts that Attract Search-Engine Traffic As time goes by, your blog readership will likely grow due to not only your own promotional efforts, but also when your readers post links to your blog on their blogs, on niche forums, on social media sites and more. Indeed, later in this book we’ll talk about how to build your traffic and promote your blog. But in this section, I wanted to talk about one promotion in particular: SEO (search engine optimization).

Note: Optimizing your posts for the search engines means writing them in such a way that you rank well in the search engines when someone searches for specific keywords. The reason I wanted to talk about SEO at this point is because it’s completely tied into your writing. While you should focus on writing for your audience first and foremost, you can boost traffic by writing for the search engines (as a secondary goal). Here’s how… 1) Choose your keywords. You can’t write one article around a highly competitive keyword (like “weight loss” or “online marketing”) and expect to rank high in the search engines. In order to rank well, you’ll also need links pointing back to your site (you’ll learn more about that in Step #3 below). However, often you can rank well for “long tail” keywords. These are words that don’t get very much traffic on a daily or even monthly

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

basis. However, because they don’t get much traffic, very few of your competitors are trying to rank for these keywords… and that means it’s easier for you to grab the top spots in the search engines. Now, you may be wondering why you’d even want the top spot for keywords that only get a few searches per day. Why bother, right? Consider this… First, while you may not get a lot of traffic from each of these keywords, collectively the traffic coming in could add up to a lot of visitors. For example, getting five visitors per day might not seem like much. But if you have 100 articles each pulling in five visitors, that’s 500 visitors that you’re pulling in effortlessly (after the initial time or money you put into creating the article). Secondly, even if an article doesn’t end up ranking well, it doesn’t matter. Your overall goal is to provide value for your readers. So if you’ve followed the tips I’ve given you so far about creating engaging content, then any article is valuable… even if it doesn’t pull in a single visitor from the search engine. So, how do you find these low-competition (long tail) keywords? Simple: By using a keyword tool. You can find keywords tools (free or paid) by going searching for “keyword tool” in Google. Or you can go directly to a reliable service like Wordtracker or similar. Simply submit your niche’s broad keywords (like “lose weight” or “trout fishing”), and the keyword tool will return hundreds if not thousands of words and phrases that people in your niche are using to find you (like “losing weight after 40”). You can then take these keywords and plug them into a search engine to get a feel for the competition, or in some cases the keyword tool will assess the competition for you. In Wordtracker, this is called the “Keyword Effectiveness Index”, or KEI – the higher this value, the better. 2) Write content around these keywords. Once you’ve compiled a list of these multi-word keyword phrases with low competition (longtail keywords), then you can start creating articles around them. Use your keywords in the article title, in the category title, in your blog

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

tags, and sprinkled throughout your article at about a 3% density rate (meaning your keyword appears three times for every 100 words). Don’t use your keyword any more than that, or it may be considered as search engine spamming. 3) Use your keywords in your backlinks. What you’ve done so far is referred to as on-page optimization. It can help you rank well for lowcompetition words or low-competition words in low-competition search engines. But if you want to rank really well in the search engines, then you’ll need links from other, related websites. The reason? Because anyone can create pages around keywords in attempt to rank well in the search engines in their niche. But when you get links from other websites, it’s like getting a “vote” from a third party that says, “This is a good site about X, Y and Z.” Of course, some links (votes) count for more than other links. You’ll get the most benefit from getting one-way incoming links from related, good-quality sites in your niche, particularly those with a high Google Page Rank (PR). The more of these sorts of links you get, the higher your PR score… and the better you’ll rank in the search engines (generally). See the “Defending Your Title” chapter in this book for plenty of ideas on how to gather all those backlinks. Until then, keep writing for your humans first… and for the search engines second.

Weaving Together Content With Promotions In the next chapter, you’ll discover a dozen ways to both directly and indirectly make money with your blog. Some of these methods require that you weave links and recommendations into your content, which is why I wanted to talk about this tactic briefly here. As mentioned before, there’s only one sure-fire way to know what will deliver the highest conversion rates for you: Testing. That means you may test a variety of posts, including both hard-selling and softselling. However, keep in mind that most people don’t come to a blog to read advertisements. As such, an occasional hard sell (direct pitch) post is OK. But it’s certainly NOT something you’d want to post on a regular basis.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Instead, here are three other ways to get your links into your content without creating hard-sell posts: ▪

Do product reviews. If you do an honest review of a product – listing both the strengths and flaws of the product – no one will even think of your post as an advertisement. Instead, they’ll think of it as valuable information from someone they trust.

▪

Create product comparisons. Likewise, product comparisons are also generally seen as good information rather than advertisements.

▪

Weave recommendations into content. Finally, you can weave product recommendations into content, and the article won’t be viewed as a hard-sell. For example, a “how to” article on trout fishing might include recommendations for specific types of bait. A weight-loss article might include recommendations for a particular kind of vitamin. And an online marketing article might include a recommendation for an ebook to learn more about a certain topic.

This Roundup… Again, these are “soft sell” techniques for weaving your links into content. But there are plenty of other ways to monetize your blog, which you’ll discover in the next chapter…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Delivering The Master Plan The moment you stepped into the arena, everyone knew you were a serious blogger. Now you can prove it by turning your words into cash using these direct (“Not so subtle touches”) and indirect (“Subtle touches”) monetization strategies…

The Subtle Touch: Indirect Monetization Strategies Direct product recommendations and selling ad space aren’t the only ways to make money with your blog. Here are five indirect means of getting paid for your efforts…

Landing Freelance Writing Contracts Your blog is proof that you’re a good writer and researcher, especially when you get to the point where you have hundreds of posts on your blog. If freelance writing interests you, then your blog can serve as a springboard into this career. There are a few directions you may go. You can offer your services as a ghostwriter, article writer or even copywriter (if you write good sales copy). Or you can write and submit articles to traditional paying media, like magazines. If you go the ghostwriting route, then make it clear on your blog that you’re for hire. You can also go to the freelancing boards (like Elance and Guru) to look for projects you’d like to do.

Getting Lucrative Book Deals Here again, there are a couple different ways you can make money with this idea. ▪

Turn your blog posts into a book, and either seek out a publisher or self-publish. If you self-publish, then you may look into print-ondemand (POD) services like Lulu or iUniverse.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

▪

Approach a publishing house about a book idea. Here, the idea for your book is closely related to your blog, but you’re not just taking your posts and creating a book. Publishers tend to like those who have “platforms” – that is, an existing way to reach the audience. So it’s to your benefit to have a blog with a large readership.

Naturally, you can also self-publish any type of book related to your blog, and then promote this book on your blog.

Creating Speaking Engagements If you enjoy teaching from podium or stage, then you can make money speaking. (And the reason your blog makes this happen for you is because you’ve established yourself as an expert.) As usual, there are a few different ways you can profit from this idea, including: ▪

Offer offline workshops. You can create your own teaching experiences, such as weekend workshops, conferences and seminars. You may offer small events so you can work individually with the participants, or you can teach hundreds or even thousands from an auditorium. You may even invite other experts in your niche to be guest speakers.

▪

Be a guest speaker at someone else’s event. You may have other workshop organizers inviting you to speak at their events. However, you don’t need to wait around for these invitations – instead, you can get in contact with organizers and let them know you’re available and interested in being a guest speaker.

▪

Offer yourself at local gatherings. You may offer to do talks at local gatherings of related organizations, clubs, charities and so on. For example, you may give a talk for a local weight-loss group. In this case you likely won’t be paid directly for your talk, but you can pitch your products at the end of the talk and/or from the back of the room.

▪

Get paid for your speeches. Finally, one of the other major ways to get paid for your speaking is by offering paid speeches. For example, if you’re in the business or motivation field, you may go around to companies speak or even train them.

Remember – don’t opportunities!

wait

for

invitations.

Instead,

create

your

own

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Offering Consulting Once you’ve established yourself as an expert in your niche (through your blog), then you can easily start offering consulting in your field. Anyone who doubts your credentials just needs to go to your blog and spend a few minutes reading your posts. There are a few different ways for you to advertise your consulting services, including (but not limited to) the following five ideas: ▪

Obviously, you should create a prominent page on your blog that advertises your services.

▪

Secondly, you do co-promotions with other marketers in your niche, where you advertise their products and services on your blog in exchange for them doing the same for you.

▪

Third, you can post your services on classifieds like Craigslist.

▪

Next, you may even find projects on freelancing sites like Elance and Guru.

▪

Finally, you may promote your services networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and similar.

through

social

If you’re using other indirect monetization tactics like speaking at your local groups, be sure to mention your consulting services at every chance you get.

Building a List Finally, one of the last techniques you can use to indirectly make money from your blog is perhaps also one of the most powerful. Namely, you can build a list from all the traffic flowing to your blog. Think of it this way: A marketer without a list is like a ship without sails. Neither one of them will ever perform at their full potential. That’s because what you’ve heard before is true: The money is in the list. You see, there will be people who come to your site one time, like what they see, and decide they’ll come back again later. They may even bookmark your blog. But things happen… and they never return. Your blog is forgotten alongside all the other sites they bookmarked. 32

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Think of this: If this person had remembered to come back, he probably would have become a regular reader. And if you were selling anything on your blog, there’s no doubt he would have become one of your best customers. He’s not the only one. Every day, you’ll have people visit your blog, bookmark it with good intentions, and never return. That’s like money slipping through your fingers. The solution? Encourage these people to join your mailing list. That way you can reach out to them and remind them to come back, rather than relying on them to remember to visit. Your mailing list also gives you an opportunity to further build a relationship with these prospects, and sell more products and services from within the newsletter. In short – your list is a gold mine. Fortunately, getting started is easy. All you need to do is: 1) Get an autoresponder recommended.)

account.

(AWeber or

GetResponse

2) Create a “free gift” to entice people to join your list. This might be a free ebook, audio, video, access to a teleseminar, tool, etc. Anything that your readers will find valuable.

Tip: Here’s an enticing “freebie” idea. You can also passwordprotect some of your blog posts, and only offer the password to those who join your mailing list. 3) Create a sales page that sells people on joining your mailing list. Even though your newsletter is free and you’re offering a freebie as a bonus for joining, you still need to persuade people to join. If you’re not familiar with writing sales copy, you can find someone to do it for you (search for “copywriters” in Google, or post a job on Elance or similar). 4) Create an initial series of 7 to 12 messages that are sent out automatically (through your autoresponder) about once every week or every three or four days. This initial series of messages helps your readers get to know who you are and it helps you build your relationship with them.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

That’s it! Just follow these four simple steps, and you’re well on your way to building a big list from the traffic visiting your blog. Now let’s look at the not so subtle (direct) monetization strategies…

The Not So Subtle: Direct Monetization Strategies Here are seven time-tested, proven ways to directly make money with your niche blog:

Offering Advertising Spots If you have a high-traffic, highly targeted blog, then you won’t have any problems finding people who would be interested in buying banner ads or text ads on your site. Generally, you offer these on a “cost per impression” basis, meaning you offer a set number of impressions (let’s say 10,000) for a set price. Alternatively, you may offer to show an ad on your site for a set amount of time, such as one week or one month. If you do this, then be prepared to tell your advertisers up front approximately how much traffic you get on a daily basis and how much of that is repeat traffic. Regardless of whether you’re selling per impression or for a set amount of time, your advertisers will want to know as much as they can about your traffic. They’ll want to know how you pull your traffic in, the demographics (e.g., gender, age, location, etc) and other factors to help them determine if this traffic is targeted to their offer. Finally, if your blog has a high Google PageRank™ (PR), then you can sell simple text links on your site (for example, as part of your front page blog roll). Usually, you sell text links for at least a month at a time.

Tip: Advertise on your blog that you’re selling advertising space and/or text links. Often, you’ll find that advertisers will seek you out. But you can also promote on Craigslist, on eBay, and on websites that broker ads and text links (like BackLinks.com and Text-LinkAds.com).

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Creating Sponsorship Opportunities A sponsorship is similar to a regular advertising opportunity, except that sponsorships often are more than straight ad buys. For example, you may get sponsors just for a contest you’re running, or part of your sponsorship agreement may include co-branding. While you can advertise sponsorship opportunities on your site, you can also go out and actively seek sponsors. That means you can approach companies and ask them if they’d be willing to sponsor your blog. If you do this, be sure that your letter is oriented towards the reader (NOT you) and lists all the benefits they’ll receive if they accept this opportunity.

Tip: See the “Master Plan WordPress Plugins” report for plugins that make it easy for you to serve and rotate text ads and banners on your blog.

Earning from AdSense Revenue Another way to make money on your blog is through Google AdSense or other pay per click contextual advertising. Here you’ll generally get anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars every time someone clicks on one of these ads. The downside is that you have very little control over what types of ads are shown (served) on your site, although you can block specific ads from showing. Another disadvantage is that people leave your blog when they click on your ad. The big advantage is that you don’t have to sell anything, since you’re making money from the clicks themselves (not the sales).

Selling Your Own Products or Services If you have your own products and services, then of course you should be promoting them using your blog. You can put graphics and text link ads on the bottom, top or sidebar of your blog. You can also post recommendations from within your blog posts. If you have your own products or services, then this is the direct monetization tactic you should focus on. If you mix in things like AdSense alongside links to your product, then you’re just siphoning off potential sales (and just for a few pennies).

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

If you focus on promoting your products and services, you’ll make more money than you would with affiliate products or anything else we’ve talked about so far. Plus, there’s the added benefit in that you are building a customer list. And as you’ve already discovered, mailing lists are your meal tickets.

Promoting Affiliate Products or Services Another way to make money with your blog is by promoting affiliate products or services. You may promote them in the sidebar or on the top or bottom of your blog, as well as within the actual content. You may even post direct product pitches from time to time. If you’re interested primarily in selling downloadable information products (which tend to have 50% commissions due to the fact that there’s no cost to reprint and distribute), then visit the ClickBank marketplace for plenty of products in your niche.

Tip: If you want to sell physical books, see the affiliate program at Amazon Associates. Keep in mind, however, that you’ll likely earn very small commissions on physical books, perhaps only 5%. Also check the “Knockout WordPress Plugins” report for Amazon-related plugins you can use to help boost your Amazon affiliate commissions. Otherwise, you may find other affiliate programs – including programs for physical products – using Google. Simply enter your main niche keywords along with words like “affiliate program” or even just “affiliate.” As an example, you might enter a term like “fishing affiliate program” (without the quotes). If you already have a product in mind, then you can enter a specific term like “fishing lure affiliate program” (again, without the quotes). Finally, you can find affiliate programs in your niche by visiting affiliate directories or affiliate networks. Some of the more popular sites include Commission Junction and LinkShare.

Tip: Once you show that you can produce a lot of sales, some affiliate programs automatically bump you up to a higher commission level. If they don’t, ask them! Most affiliate managers will at least consider offering you a higher commission rather than risk losing the traffic and sales you send them. This is particularly true of those selling downloadable products, since they don’t have printing or shipping costs associated with the product.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Posting Paid Reviews Another way to make money with your blog is by joining “pay to post” programs such as PayPerPost. Most often, you’ll get paid for posting positive blog articles about specific companies and products. Sounds like easy money, right? It is – but you need to be careful. You can damage your credibility if you post anything about a product or company just because you’re getting paid to do so. Remember, even though you’re getting paid to do it, it’s an endorsement – and therefore, it will reflect poorly on you if the product or company isn’t up to your high standards. If you’re interested in the paid-to-post idea but you’re not comfortable with endorsing certain companies or products, then as an alternative you may consider offering a similar service direct from your website. Here’s how it might work… Instead of charging for the post, you can charge people a “reading fee” to read or use their products. Then you can post an honest review of the product on your blog. Just let product creators know that you may post a poor review, so they should make sure they have a quality product before submitting it. And make sure they know they aren’t paying for your post, but rather for your time to review their product. (Otherwise, if they’re paying for your post, then they’ll demand positive posts.)

Tip: You can also call this a consulting fee, where you offer feedback to product creators to help them make their products better. As part of the deal, you can then post links and/or reviews on your site to the products you think are good.

Accepting Donations Finally, one of the last major methods you can use to directly make money from your blog is by accepting donations on your site. If you want to accept cash, you can use PayPal, which allows you to create a donation button (where people can give you any amount they choose). Alternatively, you can request things like Amazon gift certificates. As with anything, you need to sell people on donating their money. That means you need to do more than merely posting a donation link – you need to tell people why they should donate. 37

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

In addition, you may use social proof to encourage people to donate. For example, you can post your donator’s names on a “Wall of Fame,” along with their donation amount. Doing so will encourage competition among those who know each other. Other tips: ▪

Run a yearly donation drive to drum up extra donations. Again, bring out the competition in people by using a Wall of Fame page on your site.

▪

Put your donation link on every page of your blog. At the end of your articles, specifically encourage people to donate if they liked your article and/or found it useful.

▪

Offer gifts for those who donate above a certain amount (e.g., offer a free ebook or other gift).

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Make sure people know that you’re not running an organization, so their donations are NOT tax deductible.

▪

Double check your local laws and regulations to make sure the way you solicit donations is legal.

The Roundup… Now that you know how to deliver the one, two punch to monetize your blog, it’s time for you to discover how to promote your blog and get it in front of as many people as possible. Read on…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Fortifying Your Master Plan You’re a master blogger now, and you have plenty of adoring fans. But your competitors are gunning for you. They might even start throwing a few dirty tricks your way just to keep up with you. So here’s what you need to do: Stay in the running, but keep it clean. Sure, you could play dirty and win. But it’s just as easy to play clean and win. (Besides, who wants to be the ear-biting Mike Tyson of blogging when you can be a revered guru?) Here’s how to defend your blogging title and promote yourself…

The First Move… The name of the game is traffic, traffic and more traffic. The more targeted traffic you pull into your blog, the more money you’ll make. Here then are some of the top tactics you can use to find even more adoring fans…

Social Media Marketing Your blog is a social platform. It makes sense, then, to use social media marketing to pull in targeted traffic. That’s because visitors who enjoy social interaction on the social media sites will feel right at home when they find your blog. Generally, social media sites fall into two categories: a) Social networking sites. These are sites like MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, along with all the niche-specific networking sites (see Ning to create your own). These are sites where people can connect with others of like minds and share information. You may also include the more content-oriented sites that have social aspects, like Squidoo, HubPages, and Yahoo! Answers. Here people create content to share, but other members of the site are encouraged to

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

comment on their content, rate it and so on. You can also develop a social network and create a contact or “friends” list. b) Social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites give users the ability to share their favorite bookmarked pages with other members of the site. Members can then comment on the content and in some cases rate it. Popular bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. Here’s how to start using these types of sites to drive targeted traffic to your blog: 1) Register and create your profile. Be sure to fill out your profile, including a picture and your real name. Doing so helps build trust and makes it easier to build relationships. 2) Start sharing useful content. Most of the social networking sites allow you to post articles and other information on an on-site blog. If you’re dealing with the content sites like Squidoo, then of course you’ll be invited to create an entire page around a niche topic. Either way, go ahead and share useful information. You don’t want to make your pages and blogs into advertisements, however. You won’t get many visitors that way, your pages won’t be rated very highly by other members, you’ll have a hard time building a network (since some people may see you as a spammer), and it may even get you banned on some sites. Remember, you need to give in order to receive. Help people get what they want by offering free solutions, and you’ll get what you want too. 3) Interact with other members and build your network. If you post good content and seem genuinely interested in helping other people, then you’ll have no problem building a contact list or friends list. One note, however – don’t start blasting out promotions. Instead, continue working on building your reputation on these sites, developing relationships and similar. 4) Promote your blog. Once you’ve built up a good reputation on the social media sites, you can start promoting your blog:

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

▪

If you have a secondary blog on a social networking site, point people to your self-hosted blog.

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On Yahoo! Answers, you can drop a link to your blog as the source for your answers.

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On forums, use a signature link to point to your blog.

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You may occasionally “tweet” about your blog on Twitter.

▪

You can have links on your Squidoo lens and HubPages pointing to your blog.

And so on. Just remember to keep networking and sharing good content, even while you’re promoting your blog.

Tip: You may use social media sites to look for new prospects and keep in touch with existing clients. Keep in mind, however, that some of the most valuable people you may meet on these sites could be potential joint venture (JV) partners. You’ll discover how JV partners can help you promote your site just a bit later in this chapter.

Content Marketing You’re a blogger, so content marketing will come naturally to you. After all, it’s about the same as blogging, except that you’re submitting your content to other sites. For example: ▪

You can create and submit niche articles to article directories. The top directories include EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleCity, IdeaMarketers, etc. You can find plenty of other article directories by running a search in Google.

▪

You can use shortened articles to create Squidoo lenses and HubPages, answer questions on niche forums, use as content on secondary blogs and microblogs, etc.

We’ve already discussed the social networking sites that allow content. So let’s focus on article marketing…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

There are several benefits to posting your articles to article directories: ✓ You get one-way incoming backlinks to your site, which is good for search engine optimization purposes. ✓ Some article directories get quickly indexed by Google and other search engines, and they have a high PR (Page Rank). This means that if you optimize your articles for the search engines using longtail keywords, your articles may rank well. End result: More traffic coming to your article… and clicking through to your blog. ✓ Other publishers may use your articles on their sites, blogs and in their newsletters. And that means more exposure and backlinks for you. ✓ You can further establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Once you get a lot of articles online, your name will start appearing whenever someone searches for your niche topics. Here’s how to start getting these benefits: ▪

Keep SEO in mind. That means you may want to create your articles around long-tail keywords.

▪

Write compelling article titles. Readers may just see your title, and they’ll decide whether to read your article or not based on the title alone. As such, use titles that promise benefits and/or spark curiosity.

▪

Write engaging articles. Solve your reader’s problems, but do so in an entertaining or otherwise engaging manner. That will keep your prospects reading all the way to the end of your article, right down to your resource box…

▪

Give your readers a reason to click through to your site. When you submit an article to a directory, you get to use a “author’s bio box,” byline or resource box at the end of your article. Don’t make this space about you, however. Instead, make it about your reader and his/her problem. Then give him a good reason to click on your link.

Link Campaigns (Search Engine Marketing) Earlier in this book, you discovered how to write blog posts that were optimized for the search engines.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

At that point, you learned about on-page optimization, which is when you create content around keywords. But I also mentioned to you that if you wanted to rank well, you needed to do some off-page optimization. Specifically, you needed to get incoming links (backlinks) pointing to your site. Here’s what you need to know about getting backlinks: 🖝 One-way incoming links are better than reciprocal links. 🖝 You want to get links from “good neighborhoods.” In other words, seek out links from other high-quality sites, while avoiding “link farms,” spammy-looking sites, scraper sites and the like. 🖝

If you want to rank well in Google, getting backlinks from pages with a high PR (Page Rank) is good. For example, getting a one-way incoming link from a PR5 site is better than getting one from a PR3 site.

🖝

Get as many links from related sites as possible. As an example: If you’re running a trout fishing blog, then focus on getting links from other fishing sites.

🖝 You should use your keywords in your anchor text. That is, the actual words that create the clickable link should be your niche keywords. Now that you know what types of links you’re seeking, here are 12 general places to get these links: 1) Trade links with other bloggers and webmasters. Since you ideally want one-way incoming links, direct reciprocal linking shouldn’t be your first choice. If you (or the other blogger) has more than one site, then you can triangulate the sites. For example: You link your site A to Joe Marketer’s site B. Joe Marketer links his site B to your site C. In this way, you’ve traded links… but they are all one-way incoming links. 2) Link back to your site on your Squidoo lenses and HubPages. 3) Create mini-blogs on third-party sites like WordPress.com, Blogger and LiveJournal. Then link back to your main blog.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

4) Create mini-blogs on social networking sites and link back to your main blog. 5) Create profiles on sites like YouTube and link back to your blog. 6) Place ads on CraigsList and USFreeAds and link back to your blog (these are only temporary, of course). 7) Link back to your blog from your eBay “About Me” page. 8) Submit and “ping” your blog on blog directories. (WordPress does this for you automatically.) 9) Submit your blog to other relevant directories such as directories, local directories, etc.

niche

10) Comment on other people’s blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do so. 11) Participate on niche forum and leave a link to your blog in your forum signature link. 12) You can also by backlinks on other people’s sites using link brokers like backlinks.com. Google “buy links” to find dozens of similar services. Follow all the tips above, and you’ll not only get plenty of backlinks, you’ll also likely get traffic from people clicking on your link directly.

Pay Per Click Marketing So far we’ve talked about free ways to promote your blog. However, you can also get plenty of targeted traffic using one of the more powerful paid advertising methods: Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. The top search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) all have their own pay per click search engine marketing opportunities. You’ll see their PPC ads showing up alongside their regular search engine results (the paid ads are usually called “sponsored results”). You’ll also see smaller PPC search engine networks like Kanoodle.com. While the smaller search engines tend to have less cost per click, they also tend to have lower amounts of traffic (and in some cases, lower-quality traffic). As

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

such, it’s a good idea for you to start with one of the bigger PPC search engines, such as Google AdWords. Here’s how it works… You choose a set of keywords, so that whenever a prospect searches for those keywords, your ad appears. Next, you choose a maximum “bid” per keyword. The higher bid you place, the higher your ad will appear in the results (although that’s not the only factor, as your ad’s click through rate can affect placement). When someone clicks on your ad, you pay for each click. The amount varies as it depends in part on where your ad appears in the results and what others are bidding per keyword, but the amount will never exceed your maximum bid per click. In order to run a successful pay per click campaign, you need these four things: ▪

A good set of keywords. Ideally, you should choose keywords that are very narrowly targeted. For example, the word “fishing” is entirely too broad for your trout fishing blog, as you don’t know what the person is really after. Words like “trout fishing tips” are better. Something even more specific – like “best lure to catch trout” – is even better, as then you know exactly what the searcher wants. Just go to Google AdWords’ External Keyword Tool and use it to locate these sorts of highly targeted keywords.

▪

A good ad that gets clicks. Next, you need to use your best copywriting skills to create pay per click ads that get clicks. You may also hire a professional copywriter to create your ads.

▪

And a good landing page. Finally, you need a good landing page (this is the page where your prospects “land” after they click on your PPC ad). Don’t just send them to your blog, however. Instead, send them to a page that persuades them to join your newsletter list.

▪

The willingness to track and test your campaigns. Finally, you need to be willing to test and track which keywords, ads and landing pages give you the highest conversion rates. You can do this for free using Google’s analytic tools.

And last but certainly not least…

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Joint Venture Marketing JV (Joint Venture) marketing refers to when two or more marketers work together and mutually benefit from their efforts.

Tip: Joint Ventures don’t necessarily need to be purely promotional. For example, you can create a product with one or more partners (such as an ebook where everyone contributes something or a teleseminar where the partners sit on a panel of experts). Indeed, if you create a product with other experts in your niche, your name will be associated with theirs – meaning you’ll be considered an expert as well. Here are examples of promotional joint ventures you can do with other bloggers and marketers in your niche: ▪

Swap links. If you swap links on your blog, then you’re adding each other to your respective blogrolls. (Remember, it’s better to triangulate links so that you have one-way links rather than reciprocal links.)

▪

Be a guest blogger on each other’s blog. Instead of trading just links, you can trade content. For example, you can trade blog articles to post on your respective blogs (and you both get the benefit of a link back and a short bio box).

▪

Mutually endorse one another. You can also mutually endorse one another directly in your blog post. This will create more traffic, as a direct endorsement has more power than blogroll link or even a guest article.

▪

Send newsletter endorsements. You may also mutually endorse one another via your newsletters.

▪

Trade freebies. You may also trade free ebooks, reports, audios, videos and other freebies to give to your respective new subscribers.

▪

Offer a commission for referrals or leads. If you have a product, then you may offer an affiliate commission for each new paying customer. You may also considering offering to pay per lead (such as 25 cents, 50 cents or perhaps a dollar per new subscriber). Tread carefully if you’re paying per lead, as you’ll need to have a good backend offer to recoup the money you’re paying out. You may also

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

get unscrupulous people sending you bad leads just to get the commission, so be sure to only work with people you trust. These are just a few ideas to get you thinking – but don’t let that list limit you!

Tip: Do your due diligence before approaching potential partners about working together. Make sure they have a good history online. Otherwise, your credibility will plummet if you associate yourself with dishonest or other shady marketers. Also, it’s easiest to work with people that you already know. That’s why it’s a good idea to network on social media sites, frequent niche forums, comment on blogs and so on – doing so gives you an opportunity to develop relationships with marketers who some day might be your joint venture partners.

The Second Move The last thing I’d like you to learn about is how to buy and sell blogs for profit. Your options include: ▪

Buying pre-existing blogs in your niche to leverage them for their traffic and backlinks. In other words, you use them to funnel traffic to your main blog.

▪

You can buy blogs that are under-performing, tweak them, and then “flip” them (sell them) for a profit.

▪

Or you can create blogs from scratch, build up traffic and backlinks, and then sell them for a tidy profit. a) Now, just grabbing a domain name, installing WordPress and slapping up a few articles might earn you a few dollars… but not much more than that (unless you have a valuable domain name). If you want to make money using this method, you’ll need to find a fast system to build these sites using templates, and you need to be able to figure out what sellers want so you can build the right types of sites. b) A second and more profitable option is to spend some time building the value of the site and THEN selling it. Or, alternatively, you can purchase an existing blog, build its value and sell it for a profit.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Typically, here’s what buyers are looking for in a blog (and be prepared to show proof as needed): •

A good domain name, particularly something that’s short, memorable, includes the niche keywords, and is a dot com name.

•

Established in the search engines and ranks well for keywords. Blogs that are indexed in the search engines are good – those that are indexed and ranked well for niche keywords are even better.

•

High Google Page Rank (PR). Lots of one-way incoming backlinks usually leads to a higher PR value. And the higher a blog’s PR, the higher the value of the blog itself.

•

Reliable, replicable traffic. Is the traffic coming in steadily, such as from organic search engine results? If so, good. And if it’s coming in from a source that requires constant care (like PPC marketing), then ideally the campaigns should be transferred to the new owner so they can replicate it.

•

Repeat visitors (strong readership). Blog buyers like evidence that a blog has a strong readership with repeat visitors.

•

A mailing list comes with the blog. If you sell the mailing list, just be sure your original terms of service lets subscribers know you may sell the list to someone else.

•

Unique content and graphics. Unique content and graphics is highly preferred over private label or resell rights content.

•

Steady income. Finally, buyers are also looking for proof that the blog makes a steady income through affiliate links, pay per lead offers, pay per click offers or similar.

Your blog may not have all these assets when you sell it. But the more assets it has, the more money it’s worth. Here now are places you can sell your blog (also note that if you’re flipping blogs, you can buy under-performing blogs here too): •

Sedo: This is primarily a place to sell domain names, but they

do accept established websites. Not the best places to sell sites that are just blogs, however.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

•

eBay: Prices tend to be low on eBay, so if you’re selling you may want

to set a reserve and run your ad multiple times, if necessarily. Be sure to set up an “About Me” page to funnel leads to your other offers. On the flip side, because of the low prices, it is a good place to buy under-performing blogs or under-valued domain names for your blogs.

•

DigitalPoint forums (marketplace): Here again you may find this a better

•

SitePoint.com marketplace: You can buy and sell your site through either

•

DNForum.com marketplace: “DN” stands for domain name, but this forum

•

NamePros.com marketplace:

•

You can advertise on places like CraigsList, USFreeAds or even in your local classifieds. You can direct sell, or you can use a two-step methods to collect leads if you plan on flipping numerous blogs.

•

You can inform your JV partners about the blogs you’re selling. If they’re in the same niche, they may be interested in buying them for the traffic, readers, links, content and income. Otherwise, other marketers may be interested in buying them from you, further building traffic, and reselling them at a future date.

•

Depending on your niche, you can also blog about the fact that your blog is for sale. Who knows, someone who reads your blog or who is on your newsletter list may be interested in buying it from you.

place to buy under-performing blogs rather than sell them. This is especially true if you’re selling high-value blogs with assets. However, it tends to be a good place to sell blogs you’ve quickly set up with content. their auction format or classified ads format.

also gives you an opportunity to sell established websites. Tends to be serious buyers.

This is another forum marketplace that focuses on domain name sales, but you can also buy or sell established sites here.

The Roundup… The promotional tactics we’ve discussed in this chapter aren’t the only ways to promote your site – not by a long shot.

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

There are all sorts of other things you can do, including viral marketing, placing classified ads, using eBay as a lead generator, getting free publicity using press releases and much more. However, start with what I’ve given you here, apply what you’ve learned, and you’re sure to see an instant boost in your traffic, subscribers and sales!

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

Conclusion: Time to Reflect… Congratulations, You started this book as a new wannabe, and now you’re a Blog Profit Master Plan Pro! Let’s quickly recap just some of what you’ve discovered over the last few dozen pages: ✓ You learned how to enter the blogging world like a champion… even if you’re brand new! ✓ You discovered the quick and easy way to get set up using WordPress and your web host’s “one click” installation! ✓ You now know how to use some fancy tricks to make your blog better, including blog themes, widgets and plugins. ✓ You discovered how to dominate the blogging world niche blogging secrets and other deadly writing tips. ✓ You found out the secrets of delivering a Master Plan that will have your blog pulling down the easy money – either through direct monetization tactics (like selling ad spots) or indirect monetization tactics (like landing a book deal). ✓ You discovered how and where to flip blogs for a cool profit! ✓ Plus you found out how to fortify your Master Plan by getting hordes of eager visitors, readers, subscribers and customers to rush to your blog! And much, much more – in short, you now know everything you need to know about setting up and running your own highly profitable blog! There’s a lot of blogging money sitting in front of you now, just waiting for you to reach out and claim it. But there’s just one small thing standing between you and that money – namely, you need to take action!

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

And it’s best if you start taking action now (right now) rather than just setting this book aside. So here’s what I want you to do today: 1. Choose a domain name and host it. You can use NameCheap and HostGator, respectively. 2. Install WordPress. HostGator has a one-click installation through their cPanel, or you can get the latest version at WordPress.org. 3. Make your first post. It doesn’t have to be long. Indeed, it can just be a 300-word post sharing a niche-specific tip. Anything is fine, but it’s important you get your blog started today. Once you do these simple steps, and then commit to working through the rest of this book. And don’t forget to reference the “Master Plan WordPress Plugins” report to learn all about the best blogging tools! To Your Success,

“The Blog Profit Master Plan”

Get Your Voice Heard, Your Message Delivered & Create Knockout Impact

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