What Bloggers Can Learn From Musicians

This guest post is by Jamie Northrup of jamienorthrup.com.

A lot of the keys to being a successful musician are the same as being a successful blogger.

Some of the similarities between these two professionals are that both write a lot, both present their work to an audience, and both can choose to do it for the art or for the money—or even both, like I do!

There are currently three ways to become a successful money-making musician:

Image copyright IKO - Fotolia.com

This is the oldest and most common way to becoming a successful artist. You can either push your demo or get discovered. Either way, you may not have as much control over your destiny, but you usually have some help getting to the top—or as close as possible.

This isn’t the easiest way, but it is probably the most rewarding. You have to work hard, but you get the control over what you do as an artist.

One artist that comes to mind is Master P, who basically sold CDs out of the trunk of his car. He made millions like that, and later founded his own record company. He was worth over $400 million, and was on Forbes richest people under 40 list in the late 1990s.

This isn’t new—it’s been around since television has been around with shows like Star Search—but it seems to have exploded in recent years with shows like American Idol, X-Factor, and others.

It’s a great way to become a star and showcase your talent, but it can be hard to even get into the early stages of the competition.

When you look at these options, you can see that attaining blogging success isn’t much different. You can join a “tribe,” do it yourself, or enter blogging contests—but chances are, like me, you fall in the second group of people trying to do it on their own.

Some of the techniques I use to be a successful blogger are similar to the ways DIY musicians gain success.

Think of a song as a blog post, and an album as a blog.

There are several techniques that work for both musicians and bloggers.

The first is guest posting. The same thing happens in music: guest posting is pretty much the same as one artist featuring another one in one of their songs. It’s a great way for either the musician or the blogger to establish themselves with a new audience, and get their name out there.

The second technique, which is quite similar to the first, is remixing a song. Lil Wayne is famous for doing this on his mixtapes (unreleased or non-mainstream albums). This artist would take popular songs and remake them with his own words. Bloggers do this quite often as well—I actually try and do it once a month. My latest attempt was “remixing” a popular post from Think Traffic.

The final link I like to draw between successful bloggers and successful musicians is that both write about what is hot—the trends. There’s no surprise that when you blog or sing about what’s in the news, you’ll get recognition. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not, but apparently there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Choosing to blog on your own isn’t the easiest way to earn blogging success, but if you don’t quit, you will succeed—just like self-made musicians.

Do you see any other ways that bloggers are like musicians?

This post was written by Jamie Northrup, a web consultant based in Montreal, Canada. Jamie runs several different blogs, and tweets using his web handle DeuceGroup.

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Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish

By James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com.

I’ve published seven books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), and the last two I’ve self-published.

In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers.

Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Man Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See (the latter was just published last month and is #2 for Motivation on Amazon’s Kindle store as I write this), I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books published with traditional publishers, combined.

Image copyright photogl - Fotolia.com

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish, rather than use a traditional publisher?Why bloggers should self-publish.How to go about self-publishing.Advances are going to zero: Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because there’s so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.Lag time: When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback, and Kindle within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it’s a grueling process—book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs—that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.Marketing: Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific example. After I published with Penguin, they met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com.” Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I wrote my own review. As a joke. I also had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt from the book. In other words, I felt the publisher did nothing, but took credit for eveything. Ultimately, authors (unless you are, for example, Stephen King) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.Better royalties: When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I made with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights, instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights to my work, and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).More control over content and design: Look at this cover, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous. Now look at the cover for my last book. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate. Also, when you self-publish, you don’t have any teenage interns sending back editorial comments that you completely disagree with. You control your own content.You have content: I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder, which has 47 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts.You have more to say. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that. So what? It’s okay if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words, but usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words long. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain why this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog. With my last book, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog: Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer when you go out there now to syndicate your blog elsewhere, or to get speaking engagements. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.Nobody cares: Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher.How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, traditional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

There’s lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

For my last two self-published books, as I mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the book was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts.

But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

I used Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon and has excellent customer service. The team at Creatspace let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within.

For my first book I did this by myself. For my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on fonts (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used one of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free.

With Kindle, Createspace charges $70—and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now your book is available in paperback and Kindle versions!

Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around ten speaking engagements, handing my latest book out.I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.Writing guests posts for blogs like ProBlogger helps, too, and I’m very grateful.Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to having a book publisher handling them for you). For instance, n a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion that lets readers get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) free.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me.

You can do this also. And you should do it. There are no more excuses in this environment. Do you have questions about self-publishing? Let us know in the comments!

James Altucher has written 7 books, has started and sold 3 businesses, and has blogged successfully this past year at jamesaltucher.com. He also writes for the WSJ and other media outlets. He exposes himself way too much on his blog.

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Gain Exposure and Build Relationship with other bloggers with Blokube

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

As part of my weekly contribution here, I will be starting a series where I will be reviewing some great tools I think bloggers should use every once in a while. Every resource I review will be free, and will also be something I personally like and think deserves a review.

The resource I will be featuring today is Blokube, a great promotion site for bloggers that I’m honored to be a moderator of.

If you read my last blog post featuring 4 unique ways to generate traffic to a blog, you will notice my second point talks about social blogmarking sites.

The concept of social blogmarking sites is still new to most bloggers, and I’ll try to give a short description to help you understand.

I’f you’re reading this I’m sure you know sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious. They are social bookmarking sites where people are able to submit content from other sites across the internet, and where the most voted content ends up staying on the homepage. That is exactly how social blogmarking sites work, just that a blogmarking site only accepts submission from bloggers.

Relationships: While traffic is great, ultimately, relationships is what brings about results for bloggers. Since Blokube is a website focused on bloggers only, you will have the opportunity to network with thousands of bloggers from all over the internet who might take an interest in your work. Blokube also has features that make this easy, such as a chat room, a messaging system, the ability to comment on submissions from other bloggers, and the ability to add people as friends.

Traffic: Blokube currently has over 5,000 members, most of whom are bloggers. By submitting your content to Blokube you will be able to get your content in front of other bloggers, and as a result get more traffic to your blog.

Links: Links submitted to Blokube are also indexed quickly by the search engines, and since those links are directed back to your blog you will be benefiting a link boost by submitting your content to Blokube. It can be difficult to get links online, so it is important to make the best of every link opportunity you have.

I have been using Blokube since it launched, and I have noticed what works. Below are some things you can do to get the best from Blokube.

Use the Right Titles: When you’re submitting your site to any form of social media/community site the best way to ensure your content stand out is by using the right titles. You need to realize that there are thousands of other bloggers looking to get exposure for their content, so the best way to stand out is to have a title that clicks!

Engage: One thing I have learned about marketing is that if you’re in a competitive environment the best way to get results is to get noticed, and online, one of the best ways to get noticed is by engaging. By commenting on submission from other bloggers, by adding other bloggers as friends and chatting with them occasionally, by voting interesting content you discover in the community, you will be able the chances of your articles getting more votes, and as a result leading to more traffic for your blog.

You can check Blokube out for yourself at Blokube.com

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50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit

A few weeks ago here on ProBlogger we launched a product I’m really proud of—the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit written by the Web Marketing Ninja (the guy who has helped me shape my own blogging business model over the last few years).

The kit is essentially based around three things:

a comprehensive ebooka library of 21 templates, documents and examples to help you develop your own blogging business modela 70-minute bonus recording of a Q&A webinar that the Ninja, Chris Garrett, and myself did last week for buyers of the kit.

The kit is really about helping bloggers who want to get serious about turning their blog into a business to do just that. You can read the full details of what’s included and who it’s for here.

We launched the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit with a limited-time 50% discount (down from $99.99 to $49.99).

The kit has had some really positive reviews and feedback so we’ve left the discount open a little longer than we’d anticipated, but that discount ends in around 36 hours time (this Friday, US time).

So if you’re looking for some teaching from an experienced online marketer on how to make your blog profitable, grab your copy of the kit today.

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Why Bloggers Should Pay Attention to the New Affiliate Tax Laws

This guest post is by Yasmine Mustafa of 123LinkIt.com.

The Business Insider recently reported that ten thousand affiliates were recently dropped from Amazon’s Affiliate Program with little warning.

How much income would you lose if you were no longer permitted to use the program?

This is an issue that bloggers in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are currently facing. They were instantly cut from Amazon’s affiliate program due to a new affiliate tax law.

Update: Amazon dropped the ballot fight last week and cut a deal with California on the collection of sales tax. According to CNN Money, they have not stated whether or not they will reinstate their CA affiliates.

How did it happen? What can you do to avoid this law from passing in your state?

Online retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence are not required to collect sales tax like brick-and-mortar businesses. Big companies like Wal-Mart who are taxed see this as an unfair advantage and are paying lobbyists to push what is now called the “Amazon tax” or the “affiliate nexus tax.”

In short, this affiliate tax states that online merchants can in fact be taxed if they have a “nexus” or connection within the state. Affiliate marketers are one of the groups of people viewed as a connection. As a result, state governors in the above-mentioned states are signing a law that taxes Amazon and other online vendors through its affiliates. They are now being treated as having a physical presence and are subject to pay taxes.

Amazon has reacted immediately. Wanting to avoid being subject to costly tax inquiries from the government, they are cutting connections to every state that passes the affiliate tax by terminating agreements with all affiliate marketers, leaving many bloggers with decreased incomes and some with no incomes from their blog. As long as there are states that do not tax its sales, Amazon has stated that it will continue to avoid affiliate marketing in the states that do. As of June 30, 2011, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have been affected by the nexus tax.

The war is not lost and bloggers can make a difference in fighting back or preventing the affiliate tax law from passing in their state.

Visit the Performance Marketing Association (PMA) Tax Nexus site to further educate yourself and join one of their state-specific Google groups.Join PMA’s fight in the reversal of the tax currently underway in certain states. To learn more, visit PMA’s contribution page.Bloggers can write their state representative and explain how the legislation will harm their income. The best letters are concise and honest, and include supporting examples. About.com has a great structure on how to write letters to Congress that is worth checking out beforehand.

If you have been affected by the affiliate tax, there are other options consider.

Find other affiliate programs to join. Some of the most popular that can fulfill Amazon’s inventory include Barnes and Noble, Buy.com, Best Buy, Newegg, the Apple Store, Wal-Mart, Target, and Sears.Sign up for an affiliate tool that aggregates all the affiliate programs and automatically embeds affiliate links in your blog. These include 123LinkIt (Disclaimer: I am the Founder of 123LinkIt), Skimlinks and Viglink.Relocate. This is a drastic step but worthwhile if your revenue warrants it.

Will national standards for taxing online retailers be implemented?  How will all this affect bloggers and small businesses? Let us know in the comments!

Yasmine Mustafa is the Founder of 123LinkIt.com, a service that allows WordPress bloggers to earn affiliate revenue from product keywords in their content. It is currently the #1 downloaded affiliate plugin in WordPress.

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Bushido for Bloggers: What Samurais and Bloggers Have in Common

This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure is the most famous text on bushido, the warrior code of the samuari. Written in an era when Japan was obsessed with warfare and martial prowess, the book offers instruction on how a samurai should live and die.

The most famous line in Hagakure is, “I have found that bushido means to die. It means that when one has to choose between life and death, one quickly chooses the side of death.”

Modern scholars find such a statement horrifying. The author’s obsession with death is disturbing. Even the Edo Confucians of the time condemned Tsunetomo’s morbid teaching.

But if you look past the shock and absurdity of the statement, there is logic and sensibility behind Tsunetomo’s advice. In fact, once you understand what the statement is really saying, you realize that Tsunetomo is not preaching obsession of death; he is preaching freedom from its obsession.

What Tsunetomo is saying is that being afraid of death attracts it. Fear of death paralyses the warrior in battle stopping him from thinking clearly and acting correctly. When you accept death, however, you neutralise its paralysing effects. You become apt at dealing with the stress of combat. You become better at mobilising your martial skill, therefore increasing your chance of survival.

It is a great paradox that by accepting death you increase your chances of surviving in battle.

But you are not a samurai. Why do Tsunetomo’s words matter to you?

Copyright Galina Barskaya - Fotolia.com

Whether it is dying in battle or failing as a blogger, fear of failure paralyses people. Like samurais in combat, would-be bloggers get so consumed by the fear of getting it wrong that it stops them from starting on their idea.

After the excitement of researching the idea, of thinking of the possibilities, of counting the potential dollars in your head, doubt starts to set in. Do I have the time to do this? Will the people I have to market to or network with like my products, ideas and style? Will I be able to make this blog successful in time to quit my job?

You put off the idea for a week, a month … before you know it, another six months have passed and you are not much closer to execution of your blog idea.

I certainly felt this way when I decided to start my blog. I wanted to get the design right. I wanted to get my strategy right. While some of the planning was important, much of it was just procrastination. I wanted to launch in November 2010, but I ended up launching in May 2011—six months behind schedule. In the end I stopped trying to get it perfect and took the plunge, and am glad for it. Improvement, like education, is a lifelong activity. You cannot wait till you know everything before you start.

Even after they get started, many bloggers do not give it their all. They do not work at it seriously enough. Why? Because that way they can still hold onto the mental comfort of, “I could have made it if I tried.” Just think of how many people you have met who will look at a successful person and say, “I could have been him or her if I tried as hard.”

Unfortunately, mental comforts do not put food on the table. They do not make you a celebrity. They do not win you interviews or awards. All they do is keep you ticking along until you are six feet under and not in a position to do anything.

If you are such an individual, Tsunetomo’s words could not be timelier. Accept failure. See it is as another aspect of life, as another season in the year, as another colour in the rainbow. Do not think of it as an end, but another starting point.

Don’t buy it? Then take a look at the list below. These are famous individuals who failed before they succeeded.

Abraham Lincoln went bankrupt running a general store. Had to surrender everything he had, including his horse and navigation gear. Then went on to become the President of America.Walt Disney went bankrupt after his first film studio failed. Then invented Mickey Mouse and started the juggernaut that we today know as Walt Disney.Henry Ford went bankrupt after starting his first car business, Detroit Automobile. Then founded Ford Motor Company and never looked back.

Failure is not the worst thing that could happen to you, it is mediocrity. Failure lets you move on, mediocrity just stalls you.

Is the fear of failure holding you back? Has it done so in the past? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Aman Basanti has written for a number of A-list blogs including ProBlogger, MarketingProfs and Business Insider. He shares his secrets to getting guest posts on A-list blogs in his new FREE e-book – Guest Posting Secrets: 25 Tips to Help You Get More Guest Posts. Visit Ageofmarketing.com/guest-posting-secrets to download it now for FREE (No opt-in required).

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7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog

This guest post is by Peter G. James Sinclair of Motivational Memo.

Before I aggressively started to build my Motivational Memo blog at the beginning of this year I had already owned a web design company for over seven years.

During that time I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in web design, and now that I have entered the blogging industry I continue to see the same mistakes being made by many bloggers.

So use this quick checklist to analyze your own blog.

Have you clearly identified your audience?What’s in it for the client when they come to your blog?Do you have a call to action?Is your blog outstanding? What do you do differently from others?Do you sell the right things—most profitable and easiest to deliver?What are the best things you are doing in your niche?Have you a clear purpose for each web page?What action do you want your visitors to take?Do you provide quality information?Are you building a list?Are you selling a product or service?Are you gathering referrals?Are you building a relationship with your readers?Have you built credibility and authority in your niche?Have you promoted your success through a Press, Awards, or Featured-in page?Do you realize that you are building an asset that you can sell?Do you know that you need more than one website if you want to make money from blogging?Do you write headlines that are benefit driven?Does your writing stand out amongst the crowd?Do you provide proof either through testimonials, comments, featured articles, endorsements, and statistics—in text, audio, and video format?Is your call to action clear?Does your offer provide great value?Does every page have a benefit-laden headline?Do you demonstrate how you stand out in your niche?Do you use proof of claims you make about products/services?Do you provide one call to action with clear instructions per web page above the fold?Do you make no-brainer offers even for opt-in?Are you enthusiastic without hype, but rather provide enthusiasm with substance?Do you write the way you speak?Do you avoid jargon?Do you use a double-readership path—provide headlines and sub headlines that make it easy for readers to skim your piece before reading the entire article?Is your domain name clever, quirky, or meaningless?Have you used your business name, unless you are well known? Have you used your personal name, unless you are well recognized?Have you used a .net where there’s a .com site available?Have you used the Google Keyword tool to identify some of the keywords people are searching for on the Internet in your niche?Have you chosen a domain name that grabs your attention through clear communication?Do you use white writing on black or colored background that makes it hard for people to read?Do you have a cluttered or confusing layout?Is your top banner large or complex and slow to load?Do you use big blocks of text?Do you write text in all-capitals?Do you provide captions (where appropriate) on photos that are keyword rich and benefit-driven?Do you use too many fonts, colors, and sizes?Is your blog quick to load?Do you have a clean, simple, narrow banner at the top of your blog that creates the right feeling on your site?Do you break up text with sub headings, bullet points, and photos?Do you have a white background and use colored headlines and black text?

For blogs to make money, there is usually an attached web page that will promote products, courses, etc. So you might need to analyze these pages as well.

Do you provide an obvious way to buy online?Do you use a secure payment processor?Do you provide a number of ways for people to purchase—credit card, ClickBank, PayPal, or even for some an printable form, depending on your demographics?Do you provide a money-back guarantee?Do you allow for payments in customers’ local currencies?Is your offer obvious, providing clear instruction for buying above the fold?Do you use a recognized payment processer?Is your opt-in above the fold?Do you provide an incentive for visitors to provide their name and email?Do you ask for too much information?Do you have our opt-in on your sales pages, and did you know that if you do this you could reduce sales by up to 75%?Do you communicate regularly with those who opt-in to your blog or newsletter, and did you know that responsiveness will halve after each three months of no communication?Do you get at least a 25% opt-in result?Do you offer something customers desperately want in return for their name and email?Do you make it easy and obvious to opt in above the fold—a single opt in requiring minimal details?Do you use an automated way to follow up?Do you make offers to your list—your own products/services or others in return for an affiliate commission?Do you give twice as much as you ask by providing good value?Do you believe in the concept of “build it and they will come”?Do you only using one or two marketing methods?Do you only use online-to-online marketing?Do you outsource the marketing or manage the outsourcing properly?Do you test, monitor, and fine-tune?Do you use out of date marketing methods or only use the latest craze in marketing?Do you use multiple marketing methods—free and paid, tried and tested, and new?Do you use offline-to-online marketing?Do you understand your marketing strategy well enough to train others to help you?Do you collect stats on results weekly, or per campaign?Are you marketing to your existing list—email, social media, sms, hard mail, etc.?Do you use SEO, Google Adwords, Google Places?Do you use paid traffic, Facebook PPC, banner ads?Do you build or buy lists in your niche or even pursue joint ventures?Have you ever thought of buying an offline list and developing an online list?Do you write guest articles for other blogs in your niche and even other niches?Do you submit articles to directories?Have you used offline free publicity?Do you seek out referrals?Do you interact regularly through social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn?Do you run competitions?Do you give things away to your database?Do you conduct surveys?Do you partner with online thought leaders in your niche?Do you help your readers to engage one with another?

So there you have it. Tick off all the things that you are doing well, and then begin to implement all the things that you could do better. You will be amazed at the results.

Peter G. James Sinclair is in the ‘heart to heart’ resuscitation business and inspires, motivates and equips others to be all that they’ve been created to become. Receive your free copy of his latest eBook Personal Success Blueprint at http://www.selfdevelopmentmastermind.com and add him on Twitter @PeterGJSinclair—today!

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The same distinction between Bloggers

There is no way to get around this: If you are looking to become a pro blogger, you have some very tough competition. Even bloggers who write for supposedly "minor" issues to confront the reaction of similar topics of blogs. So how do you keep your content fresh when there is someone who can cover the same topic? Believe or not, the web is large enough to handle multiple blogs about your interest, whether it's street art, cooking or insurance advice. The key is to correctly distinguish yourself among your colleagues as the "go to" person for your niche. Here are some tips to separate yourself from the blogging pack.

Select a hot topic and put a new spin on this

You can always enable the timeliness of the content. Navigate to websites that feature news stories related to the topic of your blog and offer your take on the story. If the story is very popular in the blogosphere, try to troubleshoot the issue from a different perspective. Even if the story is not immediately relevant to your location, covers the history and establishes a connection to your issue. For example, if you run a blog on your design could benefit from the buzz surrounding the resignation as Apple CEO Steve Jobs on writing a post about how Steve Jobs affected you as a designer. In this example, we will effectively inform your readers about current events at the same time providing their insight to your aesthetic design.

Get your name out there!

If you plan to have a successful blog, you must post regularly. Even blogs with clever SEO methods may run the risk of opacity. Use the tools available to market your blog to those who might not be able to find otherwise. Twitter, for example, is a great tool for social media, which can grow quickly a blog's presence. Set up a Twitter account for your blog and start the following influential tweeters who share interests of your blog. Tweet regularly and to use hash tags to illustrate popular buzz words related to the topic of your blog.

You should also consider guest posting as a means of distinguishing yourself among bloggers. If you frequently guest post on other relevant blogs and for people to guest post allows your blog is a no-brainer that you should be able to obtain a larger readership. More post on other sites, most readers will notice your presence on the corner of the blogosphere. And when the same readers visit your blog and announcement that have guest posters, even your own, and to contact you in order to publish their own position. Usurp guest network registration and you will be sure to increase your blog traffic.

Write well

The latter cannot be stressed enough. You that your writing should be accurate, interesting and quite short so as to maintain the reader's attention. And don't forget to check everything! You could have a blog with a widely appealing subject fail only because of the extremely shoddy drafting. See through the successful blogs and will take account of the writing style, inspired by the blogger who you admire and try to develop your own style. Create your own voice to your blog, but make sure that the voice is articulate, informed and attractive.

This is a guest post by Carol Wilson, who writes for the insurance companies. She contributed articles on a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business issues. Carol may contact: wilson. carol24 @ gmail.com.

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13 Ways for Bloggers to make money with advertising

I posted recently, my "how bloggers make money MindMap" on Google +. I have a few people ask for clarification around the advertising section, and the meaning of all the options out there. Here is a summary:

These are Chitika services such as AdSense and smaller but also NuffNang or more local ones like (which operates from Australia and Asia). They can probably fit into some of the other categories, as they use different models to deliver their ads.

This is where you sell space for an ad and paid on the basis of how many times it loads. You usually gets paid per 1000 impressions of the advertisement. The rate is much, depending on topic. There are plenty of very low, "remnant" ad networks out there that pay you peanuts per impression, but you can get a higher value niche you better money. I have paid up to $ 40 per 1000 impressions.

These ads paid when someone just takes some kind of action after clicking on the ad. The action would be a sales but also would sign them up for a service that could allow an e-mail address, etc.

This is what AdSense Preview: every time someone clicks on your ad, you'd have a certain amount. AdSense now do a combination of CPC and CPM ads — they mix them.

This is what I do on ProBlogger. I sell ad spots on a month-by-month basis to sponsors for a fixed amount per month.

When you sell a text link on your site, the person buying usually the link for the search engine ranking purposes. As a result, Google frowns on this and you could be risking by doing your own rankings. I do this, not as I see it as a little too risky, but some bloggers still do. Prudent.

Also known as sponsored posts (advertorials), this is where you get paid to review for a product or to promote it in a post. Bloggers have different ethical views on this matter. Generally these days you need to mention that you will be paid for the entry.

If you are working in a niche where people can buy and sell products or there are jobs that people want to advertise this is a good source of income. You must be able to attract both advertisers and they want to see the ads to work, though — so you need traffic and profile.

This is a growing area for me. Some advertisers like to have their brand included in emails that you send to readers. We find some on-site sponsorship banner ads with inclusions in pooling our newsletter is a good way to sell space to advertisers.

Some ad networks (like AdSense) have ways to do this, but you can also sell sponsorship in your RSS feed directly. We use a WordPress plugin called RSS footer to add an ad in the RSS feed of ProBlogger.

Here are a few more ideas I should add to the mindmap ...

Ad networks like Kontera offer this, and I think Chitika and a few others do, too. They are the ads that appear in your messages, turning certain keywords in small ads (they usually change the color of the word and/or underline it so that it appears as a link). When someone is on the word pops up a small ad with a description of a product that they can buy. Some bloggers find these ads convert well, but others find them intrusive.

If you publish, you might be interested in videos YouTube's integration with AdSense, which allows you to earn money from the ads that are displayed in your videos.

Yesterday + Scott Fitzgerald ImageS pace Media, warned me to which have a system that adds ads in your images. These are similar to the ads that you see in the Youtube videos that pop up and that can be minimized.

There are of course other diff of ads and ads that fit in multiple categories above. What types of use, if any?

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The phone is a modest comeback ... for Bloggers

This guest post is www.asittingduck.comby David Edwards of.

I'm not sure why, but when you start blogging, you forget all about how companies are run.

It is true that there are bloggers out there who wake up with full PayPal accounts and affiliate cheques flying through their doors. But if you're in the early days of blogging, this may not be the case for you that sits on your desk. What can you every day, and can help you to make serious cash?

A phone!

What I've done, which has set up for me a very profitable year, is a sales funnel to increase the amount of the earnings in my company built.

I have published, and guest posts and viral videos that me to get some traffic. Then, I have an email list subscription that lets me to build these relationships further — to the point where a phone call from me to a subscriber would not intrusive at all. In fact, potential customers, even if they don't buy from me, I would like to receive a call. Some have said that it was great to talk to someone who has a good perspective on how to make money online.

This technique may not be for everyone-I know that cold calling can be daunting. It really feels as cold call you or your subscriber, though! Imagine Darren Rowse to call to ask if he could help you with your blog. What would you say? "Not interested, Darren!"? Probably not!

Do it right, and you will enjoy a positive response for your call. You may think that because you have only a few subscribers, you not worth so much to your fans as a great player. But you have the advantage, because a great player does not have time to call his subscribers.

Here are my tips for creating successful sales calls:

Work on giving away a free gift to subscribers who will whet their appetite for future products. I use a very short PDF on traffic generation.Send an e-mail once a week or once a month to your relationship with your subscribers.Offer free training videos or useful blog posts and give them a chance to direct e-mail.Once you provide in a few emails, to call them.Once you have created the calls and talked to your subscribers, let them know about your services more highly priced.Repeat the process.

The phone is a modest comeback, and I'd love to hear some of you still use it to build companies from your blogs.

David Edwards is a freelance marketing consultant www.asittingduck.comand the founder of.
His character "Candy The Magic Dinosaur" will be starring in his very own iPhone game this Christmas!

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Usable content: a blogger's introduction

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You’ve probably heard of usability. Back in the day, when the web was wild(er) and free(r), usability proponents like Jakob Nielsen encouraged site owners to stop doing things like displaying yellow text on black backgrounds, shun the Blink and Marquee tags, and focus on helping users do what they wanted to do on websites.

These days, usability is crucial to the success not just of blogs, but of online businesses—much of the information we read about reducing friction and improving sales pages, for example, is based on usability principles. So are the layouts of popular blog themes, online image albums and video players, and so on.

But we can go further than this, to look at the usability of our content. Content usability isn’t often talked about, but as content creators, bloggers should get their heads around this idea.

Content usability focuses on making the information we publish as usable a possible to the users our blogs target.

Copyright Yuri Arcurs - Fotolia.com

An example: if your blog targets people with dyslexia or other reading and comprehension difficulties, you’ll tailor your content to their needs. That might mean tweaking your layout, avoiding certain color combinations, changing your default fonts, altering your writing style, and so on.

Another example: if you run a blog that’s focused on promoting special offers (like a deal-aggregation blog, for example), you’ll want to make sure that every aspect of your content is targeted to readers achieving the goal of taking up those deals. Maybe you’ll make the deal links stand out through color choice. Perhaps you’ll also provide the details of each deal in a sidebar so that users don’t need to scroll through your content to find the links. Perhaps you’ll pull out the key aspects of each deal into a “vital stats” list that appears at the top of every post, for the same reason.

As you can see, the notion of content usability is closely tied to your audience and your blog’s purpose. That said, there are some general usability principles that you should consider in formulating your content.

Aside from the most basic ideas of content usability—accurate spelling, good structure, and so on—there are a few content usability principles that bloggers often ignore.

Darren’s provided some detailed formatting advice for bloggers, and formatting is a big deal for usability.

The real key to formatting usability is to use formatting consistently, so that headings of the same level are given the appropriate markup (second-level headings are all H2s, for example), emphasis is always used in the same way, and so on.

This matters for a range of reasons that aren’t limited to the fact that human beings are reading your blog posts—SEO and screen readers, for example. But at its most basic, formatting tells readers something about the nature of the content you’re presenting, and about its component parts.

If I use italics for emphasis here, and bold here, you may well become confused, even subconsciously. Why are those two items (they could be headings, or titles, or images, or buttons) presented differently? Are they different? Okay, so that formatting might not make my content unusable, but it does reduce its usability. How? By increasing confusion.

Using underlines on web text wasn’t cool in Jakob’s day, and it’s still not—even though web design, and web users, have both come a long way since then.

In the good (or bad, depending on how you see things) old days, underlines on text were reserved for hyperlinks—that was the signal to web users that the text was linked to another resource. It still is on many sites, and many of us still regard an underline as the standard form of web link.

Underline your text without a link—for the sake of emphasis, say—and you’ll confuse more than a few of your readers.

The web offers us a great benefit over every other communications medium in that when we refer to something or someone, we can show readers what that is without breaking the flow of our engagement with them.

Let’s imagine I’m talking to you about content usability, and I want to mention readability, but I’m not sure if you know what that is. Instead of that nice, subtle link I just included in the previous sentence, I’d probably end up saying something like this:

“So, yeah, content usability includes factors like readability and … oh, so readability’s about how easy it is to read and take in—like, comprehend, really—your stuff. So there are these online tests that let you paste in your content and they’ll tell you how readable it is; they’ll give you a readability score that corresponds to school grades and—what’s that? Oh? You know about readability? Cool. So … what was I saying again? Oh yeah, content usability…”

The web offers us the ability to suggest further reading and deeper insight without breaking the flow of communication, or telling readers things they don’t want or need to know. Links make your content more usable, because they make it more useful. Links help your readers to achieve their goals through your blog. Don’t just mention brand names, individuals, or websites: link to the them. And link to them in a way that helps readers predict what they’ll get if they click on the link.

If your content is going to be useable for your audience, surely speaking to those readers is a big part of the communications picture.

You’ll notice here on ProBlogger that we refer to bloggers a lot. We frequently refer to your blog, your audience, and your niche, as these are all terms that are part of the blogging vocabulary, and we all understand what they mean. As a secondary term, we do refer to your site, but only to avoid repetition. First and foremost, we call ourselves bloggers.

This isn’t about SEO—although of course it helps. This decision is about talking to our audience in the terms you understand—terms that resonate with you. Another example: when I first started with ProBlogger I asked Darren specifically if he (and you) referred to your blog visitors as “readers.” This is standard terminology on this blog, but it wasn’t for other publications I’ve worked on.

This may seem like a minor issue. But imagine you read three articles on ProBlogger, and not one of them contained any mention of blogs or blogging or readers. Imagine if all they referred to was sites and end users. You might start to question whether the content was really suited to you and your needs. You’d probably wonder how applicable—or useful—it was to your situation.

Use the words your readers know, understand, and expect. And use them consistently, so users aren’t jarred by a proliferation of terminology. This will help to make your content more usable, though again your readers may not realize it consciously.

Content isn’t just words—we have at our disposal diagrams, photographs, video, sound, and interactivity in various forms. Often, written content should take a supporting role. It’s up to us as bloggers to discern those moments, and to use the tags, captions, and other tools available to us to augment, rather than replace, the appropriate content form.

In all cases, we should make the most of those possibilities, even at a text level. If your blog post doesn’t fit into list format, don’t write it as a list post. If as you’re writing, you find that your post becomes a list, go back and make that clear in the title and opening paragraphs. Telling users what they can expect—and then meeting that expectation—is vital to usability.

I’ll admit that I can be a bit slow on the uptake as a web user. That’s not good, because I use the web a lot, and I get grumpy when things don’t go as I expect. I can think of plenty of examples, off the top of my head, where usability could be better.

Each of these examples arises as a result of the point I made above: that on the web, we, as bloggers, can link to resources. That’s the up-side; the down-side is that we, as readers and users, can get confused about what can be clicked on, and where it will lead. Very confused, in some cases.

Like Darren’s Workbooks page—I really want to be able to click on the book titles there! I was looking for a book there today (ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business). I scrolled down, found the title, clicked! …aaaand nothing. I had to go all the way to the scroll bar again, drag it down, and click on the link.

Can your blog’s users click on the things they expect to?

Or, take Google’s page header (it’s not a blog, but it deserves a mention). When I started using Google+ I had some questions and started looking for Help. I saw that little cog in the top-right corner, but I thought it provided access to my settings, not help. Even the page footer, standard location for Help and Privacy links, lacks a link to Help!

I expected to see a Help link in this menu bar. Is that so wrong?

Does your blog clearly indicate what’s what, and what leads to where? You might need to do some user testing to find out the truth on this one.

And what about this shot from Copyblogger? This box appears at the bottom of Copyblogger’s right-hand sidebar. I don’t know about you, but I’m a lazy clicker. The box has one link. So (my whiny-teen-alter-ego whinges), why can’t I click anywhere on that box to access the link?

Copyblogger kudos box: not so clicky

Does your blog make users work harder than they need to?

These kinds of issues may require some lateral thinking—or some user testing—to uncover, but correcting them could make your blog, your newsletter, your sales pages, and your content in general, a whole lot more usable.

Okay, so people don’t talk much about content usability. But people who create content and publish it should have a firm grasp and consciousness of the concept and what it means for their users. We’re not always going to get it right, but we owe it to ourselves and our readers to strive constantly to improve content usability.

How can you do that? You could review some of your content using the ideas I’ve mentioned here, and see where you could make improvements. You could play around with wireframing software like mockingbird to create different presentations for your content. Perhaps you know a usability professional who you can speak to about the principles of usability—or you could just pick up a book on the topic at your local library. Once you get started, you might like to do some user testing to see if you are actually making your content more usable for readers.

If you need a little extra impetus, consider that in many cases, better content usability means better content reusability. Format your posts well, use reader-appropriate language, link wherever you can, and employ the appropriate formats for the message you’re delivering, and you’ll be much more easily able to repackage that content into a saleable format down the track.

How usable is your content? Are you conscious of usability as you write and prepare posts for publication? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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You must Post each day on your Blog [misconceptions new Bloggers have # 2]

This post continues our Misconceptions New Bloggers Have series and looks at one of the most common questions I'm asked about when speaking about blogging — posting frequency.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard prebloggers dismiss the idea of blogging because they don't have the time or discipline to produce daily blog posts.

The belief is that to be successful they need to get posts out daily (if not multiple times per day). The reality is that there is no single approach to successful blogging when it comes to how often one must post. There are plenty of examples of highly successful blogs that operate at both ends of the frequency spectrum (I'll highlight some less frequent posters below).

So what can we say about how often you should post? Let's take a look at some of the factors we need to consider.

The blogger/reader interaction is a lot like any relationship — the more you see one another as friends, the more you begin to know about each other, the more intimacy develops, and the more you get to trust each other (a big additive distortion modeling, I know).

Regular posting on your blog puts you and your brand in front of people on a regular basis, and this opens up the opportunity for a deepening relationship. Infrequent posting can lead to readers feeling disconnected, and to even forget who you are completely.

This was highlighted to me once at a conference when, after getting off the stage from speaking, I was almost knocked over in a warm embrace from one ProBlogger reader.

Through her tears she stammered, "I … just … feel … sob … like … I ... sniff ... know … you … so … well! "

Why did she feel that way? Every day she'd received an email from me with advice on how to build her blog.

Of course if we look at "real life" relationships we also have to acknowledge that the amount of time you spend with someone can also have the opposite effect. Have you ever had a friendship with someone that became a little too much? You know the relationships … where the other person leaps in so far that you end up feeling a little smothered!

Posting too regularly can get a little like that too.

I once surveyed readers here on ProBlogger about the reasons they unsubscribed to RSS feeds and the number one answer was "posting too much." Respondents expressed that they developed "burnout" and would unsubscribe if a blog became too "noisy."

There's a tipping point for every blog where one more post just becomes too much and readers begin to disengage.

So what's the tipping point? How many posts will grow the relationship and how many will destroy it?

Unfortunately there isn't a single number that will work for every blog — instead I suspect it really comes down to the relevancy and usefulness of the content you're producing. If what you're writing is going to solve problems and be valuable to them, they will forgive a lot, whether that's lots of posts or a long period between them.

One question to ask yourself on this front is, "What do my readers need?"

On one hand, you might find in answering that question for your readership that they need lots of short, sharp posts because there is a lot of breaking news in your niche that they want.In other cases you might find that your readers actually need thoughtful analysis — longer posts that they have time to chew on before moving onto another topic.

The answers to this question will depend a lot on the type of blog that you're running, the niche or topic, the style and length or content that you're producing, and the types of readers you're hoping to attract.

There are a few more benefits or more frequent posting that are worth mentioning:

More entry points into your blog via the search engines: Daily posting means 365 entrypoints into your blog for search users every year as opposed to 52 if you're posting weekly, or 12 if you go with monthly.More entry points into your blog through social media: Similarly, by publishing and promoting your content, you're also providing more doorways into your blog on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Daily posts give your readers more opportunities to share those links around.More connecting points for RSS subscribers: Similarly again, the more you post, the more alerts or updates those who subscribe to your blog via RSS will get.

On the flip-side, there are benefits or less posts, too:

Potentially higher reader engagement: I've noticed on my own blogs that if I post once in three or four days, the posts tend to get higher levels of comments and conversation among readers when compared to times when I post two posts in a single day. I guess posting frequently posts pushes off the radar or readers faster, as there's always something new coming out.Absence can make the heart grow fonder: I know of a couple of bloggers who post quite infrequently, but have built up almost a cult following, and who build a lot of anticipation among readers for the next post. Posts become highly anticipated and valued, and they get shared around the web at a higher rate than if the posts were coming out multiple times a day (I'll give some examples of this type of blog below).It helps to avoid writer burnout and can lead to higher quality content: After the initial adrenaline rush that often comes with launching a new blog subsides, many bloggers hit a wall when, a few months in, they begin to struggle to find things to write about. The pressure of daily posting can add to this, so a less frequent publishing schedule can give a little more space to write only about the things that they think really matter. They are free to write the most useful content, and to avoid burnout as they do so.

I asked on Twitter for examples of blogs that post less frequently than daily, but which still have been successful. I was inundated with examples. Here are some that were most commonly suggested by my followers:

Zen Habits: updated an average of eight times per month over the last few monthsThe Art of Non Conformity: Chris Guillebeau's blog, which has averaged just under ten posts per month latelySimpleMom: posts more regularly than the above two, but usually has a day or two off per week — a good example of regularity with breaksThe Four Hour Work Week: as you'd expect, Tim's not going to be updating daily on this given his topic (he posts three or four times a month), yet it gets a lot ofUnmarketingcommitment: Scott Stratten commented on Twitter that "infrequency is my middle name." However, keep in mind that Scott's working hard on developing engagement on Twitter — he's closing in on 75,000 tweets!Social Triggers: Derek Halpern posts two to four times per month, but the quality is high and there's a lot of reader engagement.Penelope Trunk: Penelope is another great example of someone who has regular posting but doesn't feel the need to write something every single day.

Check out the other posts in the Misconceptions or blogging series.

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You should write about making money blogging on Make Money blogging [misconceptions new Bloggers have # 3]

This post is the third in a series of studies of misconceptions and myths about blogging, that many new (and some experienced) bloggers about blogging.

We have already discussed the misconceptions that blogging superhuman effort takes (or is simple!) and that you daily on your blog should books.

Contemporary misconception is all about money. It is one that I hear every day when I observe what people are saying about making money from blogging.

Only people who sell make money blogging resources, make money blogging.The most profitable topics to blog about his blogging tips of making money blogging.It is impossible to make money blogging on "normal" everyday topics.

The reality is that most people who talk about making money blogging those trying to create a name for himself in that very niche. I think part of the creation of authority and credibility is to show what you are doing, so that bloggers in this niche are often not Wars of their revenue share.

On the other hand, many bloggers who are making a living from blogging in other niches don't have an avenue through which to talk about it, or don't want to (for privacy reasons or because they don't want to warn the competition to their success).

As a result, is the impression that new bloggers often get that nobody is making money blogging with the exception of a letter about writing.

Let's see some of the realities of working in this niche.

You good money blogging about blogging. It is true — there is money to be made in this space. Teaching others blog and that a life of it can be profitable. I make enough to live (and some) from ProBlogger every month, and know of at least five or six other bloggers in your niche that on a comparable level would be. As with any subject that has nothing to do with money, this can be a lucrative niche.It's been a busy niche when it comes to finding readers. As a result of the success of a number of (and the public service broadcaster of results), many others joined the hunt for market share in this space. I have not seen figures on it, but I suspect that the result is that it is one of the more crowded niches. As a result, can break into the niche and making a name for yourself can be tough.It's been a busy niche when it comes to products. If you want to make money in the niche Make Money blogging by releasing a product, there are not only a lot of other blogs, but a lot of products that you will have to compete with. Not a day goes by when I'm not approached by another blogger like me to their e-book, course or tool ... Again, it is difficult to distinguish, and I suspect that many bloggers already have bought just enough products, and are not so interested in buying more.There's a lot of suspicion about the topic. Thanks to the nature of the subject has a lot of suspicion about it. Unfortunately, over the years, this niche has attracted its fair share of dubious characters and those less-than-ethical and transparent tactics have used to make a name for itself. This has a lot of suspicion among the public about the niche. I'm kind of glad about this suspicion, I like a lot of people who've seen scammed, but it makes this a tricky area to work in. My recent ban on (and then reinstatement) of YouTube seems to have occurred because many in the niche were tarred with the same brush (most of the accounts had made an end of videos including the words "make money online").Bloggers are perhaps more reluctant to spend money than other target groups. Let us be clear: I'm not calling you cheap! But one of the factors to consider in this area is that the barriers to entry for the blogosphere (unlike other hobby) are very low. You can setup a blog for free, there are thousands of blogging themes, tools, and how-to instructions there for free, and there is plenty of free help within the niche. As a result, many bloggers don't come to their blogs with the expectation of having to spend a lot of money. This can affect the bottom line for those who try to operate in this niche (I will touch on this more below).

I'm not going to pretend that all other lucrative niches. I know a lot of bloggers with decent readerships that are struggling to make money, because their subjects do not lend themselves for monetization. However, my experience teaches me that there is definitely a lot of opportunities in other niches, and that in many ways they can make it easier to make money than the niche blogging tips.

Personally, I have found it a lot easier to build significantly larger audience and higher profits in other niches. My photography blog has about five to six times the readership of ProBlogger, and is more than five to six times as profitable.

The niche photography is very competitive, but there are some other so quickly including:

The market is larger: There are a lot more people around who own cameras than blogs.The audience is more of a public expenditure: I mentioned above that since blogging has low barriers to entry, bloggers are often less likely to spend money. Photography is a little different. People increasingly spend thousands of dollars on cameras, they buy photography magazines and books, they enroll in courses ... There is just more of a willingness to bring in that niche.The audience is not as suspicious: While people still a healthy suspicion of online marketers in this space, there are fewer barriers on this front.

This assessment is not only relevant to the photography space — plenty of other niches are also bigger and his audience that more be used for expenditure.

This is probably not the place for a full exploration of how a niche for your blog (I will also be some links below for more information about that). My general opinion is, however, to choose a topic on which there is a healthy demand for content (it's hard to have a successful blog about a topic that nobody but you bought) and that you know something about (and preferably have a passion or interest).

My co-author on the ProBlogger book, Chris Garrett, last year on the day of the training ProBlogger presented in Melbourne, and used a slide which I think is a great Visual at this point:

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The A-list Bloggers ignore

This guest post is by Buck Inspire.

Okay, you have to think, I have a death wish for the emergence of the wrath of Darren Rowse and other A-list blogs like ProBlogger. But I think I need to get the message out to all newbie bloggers. I struggled mightily myself when I started. I almost quit blogging altogether.

If you want your blog to succeed, ignore A-list blogs at the expense of everything else!

Some A-list blogs do more than others (showing off how much money their blog brings in), but the result is the same. You lose your focus and start obsessing about money. I guarantee it. I understand it's all about the money and they need to show off their expertise and success by their profit and loss accounts. But don't get entranced by the dollar. You will your passion for writing and your own blog Verdun.

Although their income measurement that stands out is, don't get sucked into their other statistics. Hundreds of thousands of fans, followers, and subscribers shows that the A-lister know how to grow a community. But nothing makes you feeling more inadequate than when you look at your ten followers, fans, and subscribers. Add to that their out of this world PageRank, mozRank, Alexa, monthly page views and visitors, and you'll feel more inadequate than a teen coming out of a cold swim. Compare at your own risk!

What's wrong with watching their ads and banners? Nothing, but if you're more interested, of course, you can find out what they charge for advertising space. This ties with income and statistics and fuel your inadequacy. You can't even give away your ad space for a dollar while A-list bloggers easily 500 times that amount command.

Okay, you found me out. Of course you should not ignore A-list bloggers!

They have all been there and done that. They have many years of experience, a wealth of knowledge and tons of great advice to help your blog succeed. However, if you are with their income, statistics and advertising obsess, you will get derailed and you can kiss goodbye to your blog.

We have heard this mantra a million times before, but do you really know why? I came up with a few catchy modes, but they were too boring and generic. Fortunately, I found Eric of the Bay of photography and his guest post the long tail of blogging: why Content Is King. He presents a fascinating look at the long tail theory, how it relates to your blog, it supports up with clear examples and charts. After discovering why content really is King, I even learned a little about photography, too.

In my opinion, is second behind content community. After penning award-winning messages, what good is it if you don't readers to communicate with you? Rather than bore you with my drivel, check out Darren's 8 Tips for building Community on your Blog. I particularly enjoyed tips on the acceptance of the reader the contents, assign reader jobs and give reader homework and plan to incorporate them into my own blog.

There is only one of you and this fact makes your blog special. I thought I found my voice, but after reading Georgina 5 ways to build your Blog to the voice, I can improve this area. I was so focused on my content, I believed that my voice was naturally arising from my post. I neglected picturing my audience and watching my mood when I posted my voice weakened and unconscious. Don't let this happen to you.

It does take time to get blog success because that's not a get rich quick scheme. If this is what you are looking for, you have chosen the wrong way. But if you work hard and to your guns, know before you stick it, your income, metrics, and advertising will also grow. Rather than A-List Blogs and their stats Super-Duper jealous, listen to their advice and apply it on your blog. Don't forget to thank me when you join the ranks of the A-list bloggers to!

Buck Inspire is living a fulfilled life within his means while delve into personal finance sprinkled with restaurants, entertainment, pop culture, technology and travel. If you like what you see here, please consider subscribing to its RSS feed or following him on Twitter.

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