PureBlogging

Part of being a blogger is to write interesting content, but another part of your job as a blogger should be getting to know your readers. When you learn more about your blog readers, the following could happen:

1. Increased affiliate sales. Knowing more about your blog readers helps you decide which products to promote.

2. Repeat visitors and new subscribers. Once you get to know more about your blog readers, you’ll be able to give them what they want. Moreover, if you write the content they want to read, they might subscribe to your RSS feed.

Now that you know the possible benefits to getting to know your blog readers, I’ll tell you how you can learn more about them…

1. Post a “call to action.” A “call to action” is where you’ll ask your blog readers for suggestions on topics they’d like you to blog about. See “Your Assistance is Needed, Please” as an example of a “call to action” post.

2. Monitor your blog’s stats. Your blog’s stats will tell you which of your past blog posts are the most popular, where the largest percentage of your visitors come from and what days of the week you get the most visitors (schedule your blog posts for these days). A great program for gathering these stats is Google Analytics, which is free.

3. Poll your blog readers (weekly or monthly) to collect demographics. The polls will not only tell you more about our readers, but you could post the results on your “Advertise” page. Some questions you could ask in your polls include annual income, occupation, age, gender, online shopping habits (what do they buy the most) and what type of books they read. Let’s elaborate on those possible poll questions, shall we?

The annual income of your blog readers helps you decide what kind of products to market. For example, if the majority of your readers have a low income, you don’t want to sell them products and services that are too expensive. Instead, focus on marketing products and services within their budgets.

When creating a poll to determine the annual income of your blog readers, make the question a multiple choice (i.e. Less than $20,000; $30,000 – $49,000; More than $50,000). In addition, let them answer all your polls anonymously. To do this, just include the question and the choices. Don’t ask for their name or e-mail address. Besides, many may not participate if you ask for this information, especially when they’re revealing their income.

Ask them to choose their occupation. Some choices could include professional blogger, professional writer, website designer, editor, publisher and/or etc.

When attempting to determine the age and gender of your blog readers, you could create a two question poll to collect both the age and gender. Furthermore, you can make the questions multiple choices or allow them to type in their answers.

By asking your blog readers what they buy the most when shopping online, you’ll be able to offer products that you know the majority of your blog readers buy. This too could be a multiple choice poll, but list choices related to your blog. For example, a blog on dog grooming probably attracts readers who buy dog-grooming products, so you could include choices such as dog toys, books on dogs and/or etc. Be sure the answer is set to allow your blog readers to select as many products as they wish.

Allow your blog readers to tell you what types of books they read. Then, if you’re not already a member of Amazon Associates, join and create a widget for your blog’s sidebar that includes books based on the results. If the greater part of your blog readers enjoy books about blogging, then include those books in the widget. Later, you can change the books on your widget by logging in to your Amazon Associate account.

What are you waiting for? Start getting to know your blog readers today, and then deliver what they want based on your research and polls.

Popularity: 11% [?]

All the cool stuff happens at the edges of things. In nature, the transition between two ecosystems is called an ecotone. The two ecosystems overlap each other and the give and take between them is greater. Between a positive and a negative charge, a transfer of electricity takes place. In an extreme form, we call it lightning. When the first world and the third world commingle, opportunity abounds for everyone. At the forefront of any field, be it technology, music, art, whatever, there is the edge.

But not just the edge. There is the edge of the edge: the “cutting edge” or the “bleeding edge” we call it. That’s where the juice is. That’s where you want to think about being. If you’re in the middle, you’re in a very crowded space and it’s hard to stand out. The people in the middle look to the people at the edges for ideas and for inspiration. The cool stuff happens at the edge and makes its way towards the mainstream (where, of course, after a while, it isn’t cool anymore, but there’s always new cool stuff coming down the path).

Being on the edge makes you a transfer agent for the edge heading into the mainstream, and you can siphon that energy. You can build a smaller audience at the edge that grows and becomes mainstream after a while. You can make money off of the difference between economic and technological “ecosystems” by occupying the ecotone area where there is overlap. You can blog from there, from the edge.

photo by Binary Ape

Popularity: 8% [?]

With thousands of new blogs being launched every single day, there is significant competition for the time and attention of readers. However, other blogs aren’t the only challenges to building a successful blog. In this article we’ll take a look at 5 common challenges, as well as some ways to overcome them. Next week we’ll finish the topic with a similar look at 5 more.

1. Blogger’s Burnout

Blogger’s burnout is probably the number one reason that most bloggers give up, they simply get tired of working on there blog and bored with the tasks involved. A new blog usually brings a lot of excitement and energy for a blogger, but over a period of time it becomes much more of a chore and less fun.

The most important key for overcoming bloggers block is to start with a topic that your really enjoy. If you are not passionate about the subject matter of your blog, you will have a much more difficult time staying consistently motivated.

A second key to avoided burnout is simply being realistic. Bloggers that expect or hope to make a fortune in a matter of a few months are the ones that quit in almost no time. Blogging is serious work, and if you can take a realistic approach that allows for gradual growth, you’ll be more likely to stick with it and maintain a positive outlook about the direction of the blog.

Burnout often happens because too much time and energy is devoted to blogging in a short period of time. A third key to avoiding burnout is scheduling. Try to give yourself specific times to work on the blog and do you best to stick with the schedule. Spending too much time on blogging can sometimes be as bad for your blogging health as not spending enough time on it. Balance is always important.

2. Content Creation

Content is king, and coming up with that content is a never-ending challenge. Just when you published a great post and you thought you could relax and enjoy it, your readers will be waiting and expecting another quality post.

If you want to overcome this obstacle, focus on quality rather than quantity. Don’t feel like you have to publish 5 posts a day and you’ll fail if you don’t. Content creation can be less taxing when you can take the necessary time to create your best work.

Scheduling is important again here too. Be sure to plan times for developing new content and try to work ahead whenever possible. Nothing puts more pressure on you than sitting down at the computer and knowing that you need to produce something in 30 minutes with no ideas to start from. Planning and working ahead can relieve a lot of that pressure. Keeping a journal or notebook of ideas is a good habit to develop. That way you’ll always have a starting point when you need an article and you won’t forget half of those great ideas that you have.

Some bloggers choose to deal with this challenge be hiring writers or using guest posts from other bloggers. If your blog is able to produce enough income to cover the expenses of hiring writers it may be a good move if you are struggling to consistently produce content on your own.

3. Making Money

Not every blog has a goal of making money, but many do and the numbers of these blogs are growing every day. Not being able to generate revenue is another leading reason for bloggers giving up.

The challenge of making money can be overcome by breaking it up and earning a small amount of money from a few different sources. For example, if you are selling banner ads, you may also want to consider doing some paid reviews or affiliate marketing to supplement your income. There are a number of different ways to make money from a blog, so don’t limit yourself to just one method that will cap your income.

Some bloggers spend all of their time and energy trying to find the best way to monetize their blog, and they miss out on what’s truly important about being a successful blogger. If you want to make money with your blog, focus on serving your readers by providing the best content possible. If you are able to do this, the opportunity to make money will come as a result.

4. Traffic

Some new bloggers don’t give much thought to how they will go about generating traffic. Unfortunately, this is a challenge that almost all bloggers face every day.

Much like the key to making money is not limiting yourself to one source, the key with traffic is to focus on building diversity. Don’t spend all of your time obsessing over search engine rankings, get out there and build some traffic from a variety of sources. Use social media, comment on other blogs, link out to others, work on building inbound links, do all of these things and the traffic will add up.

Growing your network can also help to generate a significant amount of traffic. Make an effort to get to know other bloggers in your niche and find ways to help each other. Those in your network will be more likely to link out to you, to refer readers to you, and to vote for you at social media sites.

5. Getting Subscribers

Every blogger wants to reach a larger audience. I don’t think it matters how many subscribers you have, you will always want more. However, it’s not that easy. Even on days when you have a large amount of traffic you may only gain a few subscribers, or you may even lose a few. This can be very discouraging.

The best way to grow your subscriber base is to focus on quality. Maki recently crossed 10,000 subscribers at Dosh Dosh, and quality of content is the number one reason that readers are drawn to his blog. With consistent quality content the subscribers will eventually come.

Aside from just creating the best content that you are capable of, you may also need to stand out some how. What can you do that will make you different and make others notice you and want to follow you on a regular basis?

One simple thing you can do to gain more subscribers is to place your subscription links in a spot where visitors will see them right away and easily be able to subscribe. Make it as easy for people to subscribe as possible.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I have long been watching the amount of weblog tracked on Technorati rise quickly, but never understood with the influx of writers of weblogs, do they all write by themselves to gain recognition in their respective niches or do they collaborate on specific weblogs? This bought to the important question “Whats you blogging aim”?

Im sick of seeing poorly mashed together weblogs with so much Google adsense advertising on them I can’t even tell where the articles are anymore. Then once you start to read the article the overwhelming sense of advertising just devalues whatever you are reading. So why do this?

Blogging is basically the same as any other business; you have to think either short term or long term.

Short term strategy consists of writing as many articles as you can in 3 months, for the last month fill the site with advertising and then after that period sells the site at auction. This has done wonders for sites such as NorthxEast and Sitefever. However, you are really limiting yourself to find the right buyer at the right time and also not scaring the readers off too much by selling the site. For example in the short term you might be able to make $30 per month in advertising on the site, but then sell it for $2500. Therefore, example profit of $2530.  

Long term strategy is completely different and does mean you will have to accept a short term loss to reach a longer term gain. Since there are so many weblogs on the internet these days, it is a lot harder to stand out from the crowd. Hence, I think if you are starting out in the business and you are new to online advertising then you should write your own personal weblog and do a collaboration weblog with others in a specific niche. If this process take six months then you might have a great chance of success with both the collaborative and individual. For example the long term solution would be structured as follows. Individual site gains you $30 per month (on average) for six months, totalling $180. Collaboration weblog, since it has 6 times as many writers, with more chance to greater traffic and more articles then the potential of profit is a lot higher. Additionally, if you find 5 others to join a collaborative weblog with and split the revenue you could potentially bring in at least $1080 per month ($30 x 6 more articles x 6 more traffic). Therefore, you would earn approximately $1080 after six months on the collaborative weblog. Totalling $1260 for the long term strategy and the long term was only six months. Most high level bloggers say that it takes anywhere between 2-3 years to get a weblog into a real business and making decent money and after that time you can be making tens of thousands more. The huge upside has to be in pushing people from the collaborative weblog to your personal weblog and this is where you will really make that extra profit.

Therefore, with so many voices on the internet these days, how will you get heard? More the point is it worth spending your time working on an individual weblog when you can combine your efforts and work together with others? You know what they say two heads are better than one!

Currently, over at Crenk we are trying to get a few like minded writers together and work on a project that will turn a good brand into something special. If you are interested in a long term strategy and want to earn a percentage of the profits from a site, then please get in touch with us.

Popularity: 9% [?]

A couple of days ago I posted a very quick review of the new MyBlogLog widget. MyBlogLog has a widget that lets users see who is visiting a specific weblog. Ive noticed that PureBlogging doesnt have this widget on the site and I have always wondered why!

The service is quite simple and does what it says on the can. However, with the new version of the widget there are still a lot of customisation issues that need to be resolved, but it is still an essential part of any weblog. I have always wondered why PureBlogging has been floating around the 700 rss subscribers number and has never really improved. We have a great list of professional bloggers, but still no results. Im sure the site makes enough money and is in the black, but the MyBlogLog widget has to be the fastest way to mingle with other bloggers and hopefully build a stronger community around your site. Make sure you head over and give it a try!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Last week Michael wrote a great post on methods of getting your ideas down. I’ve found that Moleskine notebooks are the best portable notebooks around; with sites like Moleskinerie and DIY Planner around, I think most Web mavens tend to agree.

It got me to thinking about how I could use my Moleskine to its greatest advantage. So I came up with this little tutorial. Enjoy.

How To Make A Moleskine PDA

Popularity: 14% [?]