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Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started

January 22, 2021

 


Part 7 – Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started


Here is one of the most important and often overlooked things new bloggers don’t do – growing your email list starting NOW!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard:

I wish I would have started building my email list sooner.

If you’re not building an email list from Day 1, you’re making a HUGE mistake.


What’s an email list?


You’re probably on a few (or a lot) of email lists. In fact, you’re a part of my ‘Get Started Blogging’ email list where I send you this great blogging information each day.

An email list lets you collect the email addresses of your website visitors so that you can contact them later on.


Why would I want to build an email list?


You might think the most important part of blogging is having people visit your website. Visitors mean more advertising revenue TODAY, right?

Wrong.

While having people visit your website is important, being able to connect with your visitors in the future is ten times more important.

It’s also worth ten times more money.

Pretend for a moment you’ve been blogging for eight weeks and now you have enough content to put together an awesome eBook.

Who are you going to sell it to?

How will you sell it to all those people that have been visiting your blog for the past eight weeks?

How will you get them all to come back so you can tell them about your amazing new eBook?

Unless you have a way to contact them – you can’t.

Email is the #1 way to connect with your readers.

I’ll repeat it because it’s so important:

Email is the #1 way to connect with your readers.

Email is better than:

• Sending a tweet

• Posting to Facebook

• Posting to your blog

• Paid advertising where you pay to advertise your product/service

The reason email is king, is because everyone reads their email. Compare that to a Facebook post where someone may or may not receive it. When was the last time you didn’t at least read the subject of an email before you deleted it? At the very least you saw every email you received.

I hope I have you convinced to start collecting email addresses.


Email lists are the golden egg


Stick with blogging, and you’ll build an email list that has 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or more names on it.

Say you’ve put your eBook together.

Or you’re a food blogger, and you’ve come across this fantastic new kitchen thermometer that you have to tell everyone about (like my favorite the Thermoworks Super-Fast Instant Digital Thermometer)

Or you’ve got a recommendation for a great $100 product that you get $30 in affiliate commission.

You put together a newsletter and send it out to your list and…

Ca-Ching!

The money starts rolling in.

You’re providing value to your subscribers by telling them about something that is going to:

• solve their pain

• give them pleasure

In return, you earn money for helping them. It’s win-win.

When Katie & I ran our green building training company, we built an email list of over 100,000 paying customers. Each time we would come up with a new product we emailed the list to tell them about it. We were helping them learn new things that would improve their careers (better jobs, more income, promotions).

During new product launches, we could make $10,000 in 48-hours by emailing our list announcing the product.

And remember – as an affiliate you don’t even have to make products. Some bloggers like Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income earn over $100,000 in affiliate income each month just by recommending other people’s products.


Choosing an email service provider


Email service providers maintain your email list for you. For instance when a website visitor wants to sign up for your newsletter to stay in touch with you. The provider gives you software tools that let you add the newsletter functionality to your website.


The top three email providers for new bloggers


1. MailChimp

2. AWeber

3. ConvertKit


Which one should you use?


MailChimp

MailChimp is free to get started, and it’s free for your first 2,000 subscribers. That’s a deal!

You’ll find some people recommend AWeber. When I first started blogging I used AWeber too. So many other people said ‘use AWeber!‘.

I have a sneaky suspicion why – because AWeber has an affiliate program!  People make affiliate income when you sign up with AWeber.

MailChimp doesn’t have an affiliate program. I get paid nothing if you use them.

Remember when I talked about being honest in your product reviews and how that honesty will help build you a loyal fan base? I just gave you an example. Recommending the best product to you (MailChimp) is more important to me than earning an affiliate sale from AWeber.

As someone who has used both products, I found MailChimp to be much easier to use.

ConvertKit is a product with a much higher price point ($79/month). As I’m writing this, I’m evaluating the product. You don’t need to invest in bigger and better services until you start making money blogging.

I’ve been using MailChimp for over a year, and I love it. But my fellow bloggers that have been blogging for a while (2+ years) are moving to ConvertKit. So I’m going to see what all the hype is about.

Keep it simple and free – go with MailChimp.


How To Collect Email Addresses


If you’ve ever signed up for a newsletter – why did you do it? You have to come up with a compelling reason to get a blog visitor to give you their email address.

A reasonable goal I’ve heard from professional email marketers is this:

For every 100 website visitors, you’re doing well if you can get two email addresses.

A 2% conversion rate – that’s your goal. Anything higher and you’re amazing. Anything lower and there is room for improvement.


Getting people to subscribe


To get someone to subscribe to your newsletter you need a compelling reason. Too often I’ve seen bloggers have something like this one their website:

Subscribe to my newsletter

Ask yourself – what would be the reason? There isn’t one. Compare that to this:

Sign up for my monthly newsletter and I’ll send you amazing coupons to save money on your groceries. Plus if you sign up I’ll email you a cookie.

Here’s why it works:

The frequency is clear – The newsletter will be sent monthly, so the subscriber knows when they can expect to hear from you.

You show the benefit of subscribing – Your coupons will save them money. You’re helping them solve a problem – everyone wants more money.

You show personality – Everyone knows you can’t email a cookie. By sounding like a human instead of a boring company, you build a connection with your readers.


Your offer


Come up with an offer to get people to subscribe. It’s been proven if you have a free offer (something of value) people are much more likely to subscribe.

You’ve probably seen plenty of offers, but here are a few to consider:

• Top 10 Tips On XYZ

• 5 Ways You’ve Never Heard Of To XYZ

• How To XYZ In Just 10-Days

• 49 Tips On XYZ

Your offer doesn’t even need to be unique. You can take a blog post or posts you’ve already created and re-package them into a free giveaway.

Here are the offers I use on my blog:

• How To Save $1,000 In One Week

• This blogging course that you’re in showing you how to make money blogging.


Collecting emails


Here is a fantastic tool I recommend: SumoMe

Benefits of SumoMe:

1. FREE! – You can’t beat free. The basic templates are all free. If you want to get fancy someday you can upgrade to a paid account.

2. Easy – It’s simple to add to your WordPress Blog

3. Connects to your MailChimp account – You’ve got a free email collection tool that connects with your free MailChimp account. Isn’t blogging amazing and cheap?

4. Tons of Features – SumoMe comes with 12+ free tools to grow your website and to collect email addresses. My suggestion is to install all of the email collection tools and see which ones work best.


Don’t go crazy


While SumoMe has all kinds of free tools – every one of those tools you add will slow down your website a little bit. Only install what you need. I recommend installing:

• Welcome Mat

• List Builder

• Hello Bar (optional)

I tried all three on my blog when I got started. I have since scaled it back to just having a single popup that appears when someone is leaving my blog. The single popup works well for me based on the results I’ve measured over time.


Action Items


That was a lot to take in! It all boils down to this:

Building your email list is super-important.

1. Sign up for a free account at MailChimp to store email addresses.

2. Sign up for a free account at SumoMe to collect email addresses.

3. Start collecting email addresses on your blog

How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared

January 22, 2021



Part 8: – How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared

In this part I’ll give you many of the writing tips I learned the hard way (by writing terrible blog posts when I started).

Writing Killer Headlines

What causes you to read a blog post?
The title!
It’s the most important thing. Without a good blog title, your post won’t ever get read. A great headline will cause people to click and read your blog.
A bad headline does the opposite.
There is an art and science to writing great headlines. Let’s keep it simple, so you don’t get too bogged down. See if this book is at your library:

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich (http://amzn.to/2drGU1T)

I like the book – it’s expensive. It’s a swipe file of headlines you can copy and vary according to your topic. Which is why I say check it out from the library if you can.
Here is a freebie headline swipe file  (http://s3.amazonaws.com/localbiz/Ultimate+Headline+Swipe+File.pdf) hold and copy link.
I just pulled up on Google.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel – find a good swipe file of headlines and just fill in the blanks.

Here is an exercise you should try:
1. For every blog post write ten headlines (yes, 10) in five minutes.
2. Use a headline analyzer

Headline Analyzers

To create better headlines use a headline analyzer to check your ideas. Both of these are free:
• CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer checks how good your headline is.
• Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
You’ll get different results from each because they measure things differently. One might give you a high score and the other a low score for the same headline.
Try not to get bogged down creating the perfect headline. A good headline is better than not publishing your post.
What do you do with all those extra headlines you wrote? Try different versions when you’re sharing your posts on social media. When you share your content, you don’t have to use the same title as the one on your blog.
AVOID USING ALL CAPS IN YOUR BLOG TITLE!
It makes it seem like you are yelling at the reader. Capitalizing one or two words for emphasis is OK!

Writing Really Really Really Really Long Posts

If you want to rank higher in search engine results write longer posts. A blog post that is 1,000 words long is seen as having greater value than a blog post that is 300 words long on the same subject.
Studies have proven this.
At a minimum, your blog posts should be 500 words long. If you have to choose writing three blog posts that are 500 words each or writing one long 1,500-word article on the same topic – write one long article.
I know what you’re thinking –
But I’ll have three articles instead of one!
The more time a reader spends on a single page the better. Search engines record the time readers spend on a page. My best blog posts are the ones that take over 5 minutes to read, and Google ranks them very high in search results.

Proofread, proofread, proofread

The grammar police will arrest you.
• They send emails
• They write nasty comments
• They will never come back to your blog if you write poorly
If English is your second language and you’re writing for an English audience, it’s even more important to get it correct.
But there is an easy fix. Here is the exact process I have used to become a better writer.
1. Write first. Forget about spelling, proofreading, and grammar as you go along. Just write the dang post and get it 95% of the way there.
2. Proofread. Copy/paste your post into Grammarly. Grammarly is a free online proofreading tool. It catches most grammar and spelling errors.
3. Read your blog post out loud to yourself. You’ll catch any remaining errors including things you’ve written that don’t make any sense if you read what you’ve written out loud. Trust me – it works.
Note: I do not write in WordPress. I lost a really long article once because auto-save wasn’t turned on. I’ve never written my posts in WordPress since. I write in Evernote (it’s free) because it helps me keep my content organized.
That’s my process for every blog post. It’s simple, fast, and free. I don’t hire professional proofreaders, and I rarely get the grammar police contacting me.

Create A Schedule (And Stick To It)

To make money blogging you have to blog. It may sound silly, but you can’t make money working if you don’t show up to work.
At a minimum, you should blog at least once a week. If you blog less frequently the chances of you making extra money decrease dramatically. You need content on your blog to attract readers.
If you don’t blog regularly, your readers may not come back or move on to other blogs.

The Secret To Better Writing

The best way to get better at writing (in fact the only way) is to write more and more.
Here’s a tidbit every blogger will tell you – the stuff you write first is going to be terrible. I know because my first blog posts were too. When you look back 2–3 years from now at your earlier posts, you’ll say the same thing we all say:
I can’t believe how bad this is!
It’s normal. A baby doesn’t get up one day and start running 5k races. They fall on their face and butt over and over again. Then they start to wobble a little. Then they fall back down. In a few weeks, they start walking. And so on.

I encourage you just to write. Your writing will get better. My blog writing has improved 10x since I started. It’s because I kept doing it and reading other blogs to see what made their content great.

Action Items

1. Create a Content Calendar – Keep it simple. Write down the topic of each blog post you will write over the next 30 days. One per week each week for the next four weeks.
2. Create Ten Headlines – Try creating ten headlines for your next blog post using the Headline tools.
3. Read How To Write Great Blog Posts – In my How To Start a Blog Guide I go into great detail about the structure and content of good writing.

How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers

January 22, 2021

 


Part 9: – How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers

What are the things you can do to grow your blog? As your blog grows, it helps you make more money.
You don’t need a massive blog with millions of page views and visitors to make money. You can make a good income with a small, niche site as long as you’re adding value to your visitors.
My adoption website NRFA.org is a very tiny niche. It doesn’t get much traffic at all, but it still churns out a nice profit each month.
Yes, the more visitors you have, the more you can make. You certainly want to do anything you can to drive more traffic to your site and build your email list. The following are some of the top tips to grow your blog traffic. You can explore each of these tips further as you continue on your blogging journey.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the practice of writing your blog posts so they rank higher in search engines. It’s quite a science and way too much to get into.
There are all kinds of books, courses, and websites dedicated to search engine optimization. You can spend hours just learning the basics.

Install the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin

The Yoast SEO plugin is a free WordPress add-on that helps you write blog posts that are search engine optimized. It’s installed on over 1 million blogs – because it’s that good.
It’s an easy way to get started learning SEO. The plugin shows up right in WordPress below your post editor. It will give you suggestions on what to fix for better SEO. Plus it gives you tips on improving the Readability of your post.
Make a note that as you get further along in your writing – maybe a couple of months from now – you revisit this topic.

Guest Post

Guest posting is where you write a blog article for someone else’s website. There are two very important reasons for guest posting:

1. You can drive a ton of new traffic to your website

I guest posted an article on The Penny Hoarder and got 155 email subscribers in 48 hours, and 2,500 new pageviews.
I also guest posted on Ultimate Guitar and got one email subscriber.
You never know what results you’ll get. But you do have to try occasionally to find out.

2. To get links to your website

One of the factors in how high you rank in Google and other search engines is how many high-quality websites link to your website. It’s part of the secret sauce, and Google doesn’t tell us how important it is, but it is important.

For example, Forbes is a very reputable website. Articles published on Forbes.com are more likely to rank higher than articles published on MyDogLikesToSleep.biz (or whatever). Google ranks Forbes articles higher in search results (generally) because of Forbes’ reputation.

If I can get quoted in Forbes or become a contributing author on Forbes.com and the quote/article includes a link to ScottAlanTurner.com, Google will see that link. My website posts get ranked higher in Google because it’s associated with Forbes.com.
The fancy term for this strategy is called backlinking. The more links you have from other reputable websites to your website, the higher you will show up in search results.

The easiest way to get those backlinks is to guest post.

Make It Easy To Share Your Content

All of your blog posts should have buttons that allow your readers to share your posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
And it’s got to be easy!
Here are two tools I have used and recommend.

SumoMe

Another feature of the free SumoMe tool I mentioned in the email list building lesson is the free sharing tools it includes. It’s free!

Social Warfare

Social Warfare is the sharing plugin I currently use on my website. I used SumoMe at one time and then I switched to Social Warfare. For the life of me, I don’t recall why. I think Social Warfare had an email button and SumoMe didn’t at the time.
You have to decide which features you want and then pick the software that meets your goals.

Share Other Blogger’s Content

If I re-tweet or re-post content from Money magazine, it has zero benefits to me because Money magazine is a massive company that doesn’t care who I am. If the article was good it does benefit my followers.

If I re-tweet or re-post content from a popular blogger – (Stefanie O’Connell for example) – my readers and followers benefit because I’m sharing valuable content from other people.

NOTE: I’ll get into this in the section on Helping Other Bloggers, but be sincere in your help. If you only seek out to get something out of someone else, you won’t form a relationship with that person. I’ve liked Stephanie’s blog and content since I first saw it. She has an amazing story of being broke in New York City, and she’s built this amazing personal finance business in just a couple years. I help Stephanie because I like Stephanie, not because I want or expect to get anything out of the relationship.

It’s not possible for you to cover every single aspect of your topic. At some point, you have to share other people’s content. You’re going to get sick or want to go on vacation and won’t be able to write. Where will you turn? Other people’s content.

Link Your Posts Together

If you write ten different blog posts about different ways to make a sandwich, make an effort to link between your posts if it’s relevant.
For example:
• You have a blog post on making sourdough bread
• You then write another blog post on making an amazing grilled cheese sandwich
If your grilled cheese sandwich uses sourdough bread, link to your sourdough bread recipe.
There are two very important reasons for linking your posts together:
1. It keeps the reader on your site and makes it more likely they will read more of your posts. The more they read, the more page views you get, which increases your blog traffic.
2. Search engines see posts that link to one another as better than a post that has no internal linking. Your post will rank higher in search engines. Ten posts about bread recipes that don’t link to one another aren’t as good in the eyes of search engines as ten posts about bread recipes that do link to one another.
Don’t go crazy – only link to other articles when it makes sense.

Pin on Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the top traffic sources for many blogs. When I sat through a Pinterest session at a recent conference, I was blown away.
Bob over at SeedTime Personal Finance showed us how he was using Pinterest to generate over 1,000,000 page views in a year to his website. HUGE!
I’m no expert on Pinterest, nor do I want to be. I bought my wife Katie a course on Pinterest, and she set everything up on my blog. I’m now getting 1,500 visits a month to my blog from Pinterest.
While that’s much less than the 80,000/month Bob is getting, that’s still 1,500 people a month I may never have reached. I could do much better, but Pinterest is not a high priority for me.
Melissa over at Blog Clarity has the Pinterest course I bought. It’s very inexpensive compared to how much time it would take you on your own to seek out a bunch of free information on becoming a Pinterest expert.

Help Other Bloggers

Are you more or less likely to help me because I’m giving you all this great information for free?
You got that right – you’re more likely to help me. That help might come in the form of:
• Telling people you know about my website
• Promoting me on your social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
• Sharing my content with others
• Linking to my blog from your blog
• Giving me a testimonial
• Referring me to someone you might meet in the future, even if it’s a year from now
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Other bloggers – even if they blog about the same topic – are not competition.
You wouldn’t believe how big the pie is, and there is plenty for everyone.
You can try to go it alone and not help anyone. The result will be it will take you 2-3 times longer to grow your blog. But if you sincerely set out to help others, they will, in turn, help you.
Warning: : When I say be sincere, I mean it. People can smell an insincere pitch a mile away. I was guilty of this when I first started blogging. If you start out becoming friends with other bloggers first, sometime in the future they will help you with your eBook launch, promoting your blog, your course, giving you an introduction to someone – whatever – because you’re friends.

A few months after I started blogging I went to a podcasting conference and ran into Philip Taylor (PT) of PTMoney.com. PT is a great guy. He introduced me to a bunch of people in the personal finance space that had been blogging and podcasting for years. He and I have become friends – I’ve even had him and his family over for dinner.
If PT ever asks me for help with anything, you can bet I will say yes. Because friends do that for one another.
Always give more than you get.

Action Items

A bunch more great of ideas, right? Let’s keep it simple.

1. Add social sharing buttons to your website

Hopefully, you’ve already added SumoMe to your website to start collecting email addresses. If you haven’t – go ahead and install it.

Add the free SumoMe Share tool so your visitors can share your content with their friends, family, and others. The more people share your site and content, the more viral traffic goes back to your site.

2. Identify one blogger you want to build a relationship with

Start following them on social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) and repost one piece of their content 1–2 times per week.
If you want to get gutsy, drop them an email just to say hello and tell them why you like them. Sincerity wins.

3. Install the Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress

Once you get this free plugin installed, it will help guide you in your writing of search-engine friendly blog posts.

The Resources

January 22, 2021
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