Saturday, February 5, 2011

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This guest post is by Justin P Lambert of Words That Begin With You .

Quick question: are you having fun?

I mean, you’re sitting here reading Problogger, so you’re likely a blogger, or at least thinking about jumping in. And you’re likely interested in making some money from your efforts. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

But are you having fun?

He looks happy to be writing...
Courtesy
of Douglas R. Witt (flickr)

Maybe you’ve been at it for a while, or maybe, like me, you’re just a babe learning to crawl at this point. Either way, there’s a universal truth of blogging you’ve probably already figured out: it ain’t easy.

A tough gig

If you’ve done what you’re “supposed” to do blogging is tough. Editorial calendars, social media, building a list, seeking subscribers, tweaking the theme, ads or no ads… Wow.

Back in the ancient days of online journals, (you know, like 1996) most of the folks who “blogged” before “blogging” was even a word did it for fun. They had a particular interest, or just a desire to share their thoughts and activities with the world long before status updates and tweets were even on the horizon.

These folks probably didn’t think about making money from their online activities at all, or at least not seriously. Not long ago, Skelliewag wrote a really beautiful post about the transition that happened later on.

Darren also shared a quote from his wise-beyond-his-years son: “tell the world something important.”

Together, these two uber-experienced bloggers taught me a valuable lesson, grabbing my metaphorical wheel just before I hit the metaphorical guardrail, if that makes any sense.

You see, I started my blog just over six months ago, and I learned quickly that it was hard work. But good writing always is. The payoff, for most of us any way, is that we enjoy writing. Or, at least, we enjoy getting our thoughts out there for others to read/see/hear and interact with. This is something I lost track of, somewhere around post #13.

I started getting so wrapped up in my posting schedule and my analytics, actually writing the posts became an annoyance. “Man,” I’d think, “I wish I could get this over with so I can get back to Twitter!” It got to the point, only four months into my blogging, where I burnt out and suddenly went from posting daily to three posts in a month!

I spent most of that month kicking myself and desperately trying to figure out what happened. The answer blew me away when it finally arrived: I had sucked every ounce of enjoyment out of writing a blog because I had gotten too involved in “blogging”.

So, I ask you again: are you having fun?

How to have fun

Now I’m not going to sit here and try to preach to you about how to fix this issue. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. But since I realized how close I came to giving up, I’ve done a lot of thinking about why things changed. And I’ve come up with a few items that I know are going to help me.

I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts in the comments too, because most of you are far more experienced than I am in struggling with this issue, so I know you’re going to have more ideas to share.

Relax

You know what? While consistency is important and your readers deserve to receive what they’ve come to expect, no one’s going to lynch you if your post is a day late every now and then.

I had a tough time figuring this out, and when life got in the way and I missed a post or sent it out late, I felt the need to fire off apologies to my subscribers and wallow in self-pity.

Give me a break. Do your best. Then relax. It’s just a blog.

Converse

I quickly morphed from sharing interesting information that I thought would be of real value to my readers to slicing off chunks of pre-made content and stringing it out over weeks in order to ensure that a post on a particular subject would go out every Monday for the next four weeks.

This approach is kind of like inviting people over for a turkey dinner and then serving them Spam. I was short-changing my readers and my conscience was nagging me like mad, which is no fun. I lost the conversational aspect of my blog in favor of a series of mini-lectures that (not surprisingly) got little if any comments.

Make sure you give your readers what they deserve: your best every time. Even if that means you can’t post as often. Make sure it stays a conversation, not a choppy lecture. Who has fun at a lecture?

Focus … or not

I struggled for a long time with the question of niches and specializing, and felt like a failure from the start because I just couldn’t narrow myself down to a niche.

I created my blog as a means of sharing my expertise and engaging an audience in connection to my work as a freelance writer. But I don’t specialize on a particular writing format or project group, so how could I blog on just one niche? Yet the experts say I should. Oh woe is me!

It took me a long time to realize that my generalist scope is who I am. Anything less would be boring to me and that would automatically become boring to my readers. So if you’re like me, having a tough time finding a niche that satisfies you,

Get over it!

Think about what you want to write, then think hard about how to connect it all in an understandable frame that your readers can latch onto. It’s better for everyone involved. Like I said, I’m still learning. But I’m finally having fun with my blog, like I was back in June when I first started. I hope you’re doing the same. Because if you’re not, it shows. Believe me.

Please, share in the comments your suggestions for having fun with your blog, how you overcame issues that were keeping you from having fun, or how you plan to do so starting now!

Justin P Lambert is a freelance writer who has been blogging for seven months and has enjoyed it for two. He’s working on it. Drop by Words That Begin With You to see how it goes. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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10 Marketing Strategies You Can Implement Today

If you run an online business, blog or website you know you need to be marketing. Maybe you aren’t sure where to start. These ten tips are things you can start implementing right away to grow your business and start getting the word out about your product or service. These tips should be used over and over to continually grow awareness of your blog/product or service. Use them weekly, but they are easy enough that you can start using them today.

1. Interact on related blogs & forums. Simply find blogs and forums that are in the same niche or category as your site and start interacting with people. You can leave comments, offer helpful advice and suggestions or just get to know people.

2. Write and distribute to article directories. Writing an informative article is something you can do today. There are many article directories that will allow you to post your article for free. Not only is this a way to give readers pertinent information but you also get a backlink in your bio or resource box.

3. Guest blog. You may not get a guest blogging spot today, but you can write the blog post and start contacting blog owners to see if they are interested.

4. Create a compelling email signature. You need to do this in your autoresponder signature as well as your personal email signature.

5. Create videos and put on Youtube. Videos are getting more popular every day. You can create several short videos, upload them to Youtube and then share the links with your readers, in your email signature, on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t like seeing yourself on screen? That’s not a problem, you can create Power Point Presentations for the visual and then read from a script so all that’s “seen” of you is your voice.

6. Write a review. You can write reviews on products you’ve tried, ebooks you’ve read, webinars, videos, books you’ve read, affiliate programs. The list is endless on things you can review to help your readers and give you exposure.

7. Tweet to your followers. You don’t have to get on Twitter every single day and bombard your followers with tweets, but you can use Twitter as a strategic source to build your following, set up your personal brand and reach out to others looking for your information.

8. Share your stuff on Facebook. You can set your blogs to post on Facebook through Networked Blogs, you can set up plugins that allow you and others to share your blog posts on social networks. Utitilize these tools for yourself too. Your readers aren’t the only ones who can use them–you can too.

9. Email your list. This one is pretty self explanatory, you can email your list once or twice a week with updates, promotions and other stuff. If you don’t have a list, start a list building campaign and start sending people to your opt-in page.

10. Create a free report. You can write up a report to give away that contains relevant information to your website, product or service. Brand it with your website address in the footer so people know where to go to find more information.

These are all pretty simple methods you can start doing immediately to grow traffic to your blog or website. Do you have any simple solutions not mentioned here that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you.

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Friday, February 4, 2011

Direct Response Marketing – Ways to Crush Your Competition

Every once in a while I will meet someone who is very smart about the industry in one area, but not taking a full advantage of what they have available to them. One of these instances was when I met with Rich Gorman at DK’s ThinkTank last year. Rich is a really smart guy, and he’s making some serious money online. Rich is already fully dedicated to his work at Health Converter, but once I told him about the power and benefits of blogging, he just had to get started. A few months later and Rich is up and running with his own flashy and content loaded blog at DirectResponse.net.

Direct Response Blog – Must Read Content

Rich’s blog is off to a great start. What’s going to be exciting for Rich, is that he most likely has hundreds if not thousands of awesome topics to write about, and since he just started, his blog will be full of killer content for a while. Here are some of my favorite and most useful posts since DirectResponse.net went live.

This post might seem like generic information, but once you actually put everything in place and realize how crucial it is to your success and business, you will appreciate the value in this post.

An excellent post that walks through various ad copies and landing pages. The easier and more direct you make your ad campaigns and landing pages for your customers, the more money you will make.

This one is a personal favorite, and perfect for anyone that has ever has someone come up to them and say, “I’d love to sit down with you at the show and pick your brain sometime.”. Believe it or not… we really do value our time!

direct response

What Can Direct Response Marketing do for You?

Having a blog is all about getting your name out there and building contacts. Rich is now putting his name out there and wants to help others succeed, and build a super networking group around himself and his blog. Whether it means partnering on a new project, or simply hiring Rich for his wealth of knowledge and consulting, I’m sure you will be happy with the results. Just from sitting down with Rich at ThinkTank, I still think back at some of the crazy ideas, insane numbers and potential projects we discussed over breakfast.

Be sure to check out DirectResponse.net and add it to your blog reading arsenal.

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10 Little-known Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog

This guest post is by Onibalusi Bamidele of YoungPrePro.com.

Getting traffic to a blog is the major challenge a blogger faces. Many have read about various traffic generation strategies, but they find it difficult to get traffic to their blogs because these tips are no longer as effective as they once were. For example, guest blogging used to be very effective, but now that a lot of people are doing it and talking about it, it’s no longer as effective as it used to be.

Here are ten little-known tips to get traffic that I’ve discovered from my own experience. Implementing all ten tactics at the same time isn’t that effective; the way to get the best from these tactics is to choose two or three tactics that you think you like, and focus all your efforts on them for a period of time. You will be amazed at the results you will get.

1. Secret blogging clubs

A major and underutilized way to get traffic to a blog is by joining secret blogging groups or clubs. Very few people are using this particular method, but it can be very effective if you focus your efforts on it.

Secret blogging clubs consists of a group of bloggers with one aim: to help each other spread the word about their blogs with a view to generating traffic for each others’ blogs. The concept is simple: you join a club with around 50 members, share each others’ post with your fans and followers (around once a week), and this will generate more traffic, since it exposes your blog to a wider audience.

You dont need to worry about spamming and the likes, because groups like these are heavily moderated. Also, it is not necessary to share every link that is posted to the group—you only need to share the links related to your niche, that you feel are valuable.

A great example of an effective secret blogging club is the DailyBlogTips Retweet Club by Daniel Scocco. A post of mine that went viral through a secret blogging club was my guest post on getting more blog comments—it presently has 97 comments and 87 retweets on a site that averages 15 retweets and 40 comments per post.

2. Social blogmarking sites

Another underutilized but effective way to get traffic to your blog is by making use of social blogmarking sites. Even though this concept looks similar to social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit, it operates differently.

A social blogmarking site can be useful irrespective of whom you are and your status on the network. All you need to do is write your best post and give it the best title. Submit it to your favorite social blogmarking site and, if it’s voted onto the site’s homepage, it will send a stream of traffic to your blog. The articles that make it to the front page are not determined by the authors who submit them, or dependent on the domain name of the author’s site. The quality and title of the article is all that matters.

I also respect social blogmarking because of the quality of traffic it sends. The visitors that come from the blogmarking site I’m involved with (Blokube) spend an average of ten minutes on my blog. Presently, this is one of my best traffic sources, as far as traffic quality is concerned.

3. Ning communities

Getting traffic to your blog through Ning communities is a great way to get traffic to your blog, yet few bloggers use this method. I learned this formula from Kim Roach and it keeps on sending me traffic, even months after I use it.

Like blogging, a lot of people have a version of themselves or their business on Ning.com. You can create a portal in the form of yourusername.ning.com, which can also be a great way to get traffic to your blog.

All you need to do is help community members with their questions, and reference your blog if necessary. There is also a place where you can submit your blog posts for the whole community to see—another great traffic source. If you plan on doing this, you don’t necessarily need to write new posts: you can submit some of your old posts with a link back to your blog.

Not all Ning communities bring results. Some communities will send you zero visitors, while some will send you hundreds, so it’s important to be wise when choosing a community you want to join. I have discovered that what works is to make sure you join a Ning community that’s related to your niche, and has over 5000 members.

4. Free, no-catch ebooks

This is another powerful but underutilized tactic to get more traffic to your blog. I didn’t use this strategy until recently, but when I did, I got awesome results.

To use this technique, write as many free reports as you can. A report is a simple, seven-to-ten-page ebook. Make sure you embed links to your blog in the ebook, and encourage readers to visit your blog. Then, distribute the ebook to free ebook directories, post it to your favorite forums, ask other bloggers to help you share it, and do as much as you can to spread the word about it.

What has worked best for me is sharing it on my favorite Internet marketing forums, like Digital Point Forums. After utilizing this particular strategy, I saw a spike in my traffic: I got an additional 60-80 visitors per day for some days, and over 100 new blog subscribers.

5. Content syndication

I’ve noticed that a lot of people are not using this particular strategy, but it can be highly effective to syndicate your blog content to big online portals in your niche. Most of these portals are visited by countless people every day, and syndicating with them will go a long way to give your blog a traffic boost.

Great examples of some of the best content syndication sites I’ve found are Alltop and The Daily Brainstorm.

6. Blogging collaboration

It pains me to see that this particular traffic strategy is not better utilized. In 2010 I collaborated with a lot of well-known and respected bloggers to give my readers some entrepreneurial advice.

I was able to work with 24 successful online entrepreneurs, who contributed to the post, and shared it with their Twitter followers and Facebook fans when it went live. This sent me double my usual number of daily visitors and, eventually, more subscribers and followers. It is also one of the most shared posts on my blog.

Collaboration is a great tool and every wise blogger will use it sometime. Try to get some of the top bloggers in your niche to contribute to your blog; once the contribution is live, encourage them to share it.

7. Online podcasts

This is another great and underutilized way to get traffic to your blog. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income is very popular for his podcasts, and has been able to build a successful blog based on this and other methods.

While the podcasting technology is not new, very few people utilize it. Yet you can get more eyeballs to your content by creating a great and informative podcast relating to your blog. Submit it to the iTunes podcast directory and as more and more people search for podcasts relating to your topic area, they will end up discovering yours and, if it’s good, might end up visiting your blog.

8. Online groups

This particular approach is almost as old as some of the biggest websites on the Internet, so I’m amazed to see that very few people use it. I didn’t realize the power of this tactic until the day I woke up to see a spike in my website traffic generated by a LinkedIn group.

A lot of people still congregate and look for solutions to questions in online groups; many of these groups are also highly respected by Google, so they are indexed and ranked quickly. Thus, you have a great potential of getting traffic to your blog by utilizing good groups. The post I published to the LinkedIn group I mentioned attracted over 200 visitors from that group in the week it was published.

Two of the most popular online groups are Yahoo groups and LinkedIn groups—check them out.

9. Authority sites

I didn’t realize how powerful authority sites were until I interviewed successful entrepreneur Raymond Lei. He wrote a Wikipedia page in which a link to my interview with him was listed as one of the resources. This link sends me continuous traffic from Wikipedia even today.

You can use this strategy with some of the biggest websites on the Internet; since most of these sites find it easy to rank for competitive keywords in the search engines, you may find it easy to get traffic from them. For example, you can read and review some of the top books in your niche on Amazon while including a link back to your blog. Or interview the top bloggers in your niche, then include your link as a resource in their Wikipedia page.

10. Webrings

This is also a very effective traffic generation strategy that many people overlook.

A Webring is a collection of websites that are linked to each other. A major advantage of using a Webring is that it also helps you get high quality links which means both short term direct traffic and long term search engine traffic for you. Probably the most popular Webring is Webring.com.

These are my favorite little-known traffic tactics. What are yours? How have you got traffic to your blog? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Visit YoungPrePro.com to learn how Onibalusi makes over $3000 online monthly and how he gets over 10,000 visitors to his blog every month. Download his guest blogging guide to learn how to get thousands of visitors from guest blogging. Also, make sure you follow him on twitter @youngprepro.

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Let a Launch Buddy Help Boost Your Blog

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

While I write blog posts, I don’t really refer to myself as a blogger. I’m just someone who likes sharing my experience to those who want to listen (or read), hoping it will help you in some way. My real passion is in sales and marketing, online and offline, and in all honest.y I’d prefer working with a designer to craft a set of optimized landing pages, or spending an entire morning massaging some email copy, than figuring out how to best communicate the result to the world.

I know that it’s a bit of a contradiction, but I write because I like helping people, and more than that, I like helping people I trust and respect. I don’t get paid for these posts; I post under a veil of secrecy so there’s no impact to my personal brand; and, most importantly, I don’t expect anything in return. And as a result of my willingness to help, I discovered something last week:

When it comes to launches, two heads are so much better than one.

Two heads…

A friend of mine—let’s call him Bob—was preparing to launch his first product of the year: an ebook. He’d reached out a couple of times to get my feedback on things like the title, cover, and interior design. A long time ago, I’d offered to help out where I could, to help him build a framework for his product launches. So as the launch loomed, we caught up one evening and went through the plans. We were able to cover a fair bit of ground in a short period, and we didn’t change the entire approach—just tweaked things here and there.

Instead of describing the what, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the why. Why did this collaboration help shape something good into something better?

  • I was able to take a first-impression viewpoint of the product and promotional messages.
  • I was able to read at the copy as someone who might buy the product, not someone who’s intimately involved in it.
  • I was able to add layers from my own experience to the launch, from a foundation that was already strong.
  • Collaboration on thoughts and ideas resulted in progressive, actionable outcomes.
  • We were able to validate or question each others’ unsubstantiated opinions.
  • We were accountable to actually put things into a documented plan.

I hope the launch goes well for Bob, and that in some way, my contributions will help him achieve his goals.

Break the isolation

One thing I’ve learned from being closer to bloggers than ever before is that while you’re a well-connected group, when it comes to launches, product development, and money, a lot of bloggers work in isolation. I’d like to see that change.

To me, launching a product is a critical step in your blogging journey—one that turns all your hard work into your reward. Having a buddy who not only brings objectivity to your approach, brings fresh ideas so something you’ve been probably obsessing over for months (or years)!

It doesn’t need to be a money thing—it’s a favor thing. You help them, they help you.

Finding a launch buddy

Finding your launch buddy is not about finding the most experienced marketer or product launch expert you can. It’s about finding someone you trust, and are happy to open up to.

All your challenges, your strengths, your weaknesses, all your commercial agreements, targets, traffic, audience, your ability to pay expenses—you need to be able to share them all. You also need to find someone who’ll respect that as the product owner, you get the final say, and someone who, when your opinions differ, will let you both move on quickly.

My anti-technology Mum, given the full picture, would be able to help you more than the best product launch expert in the world if you only gave them half the story.

So if you don’t have one already, for your next launch—or perhaps your first—consider adding a launch buddy to your team. Or have you already used a launch buddy to help perfect and finesse a product launch? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Stay tuned for more posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja—a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger.

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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Massive Growth at HostGator is Exciting to Watch

hostgatorIt’s always great to see awesome companies online succeed, especially ones that you have been working with for many years. The funny thing about online companies, is that they really don’t need to do “real world advertising”, since they can do it so cost effectively and well online. An extremely well known hosting company in the internet marketing space is HostGator, and not only do they host a great majority of affiliate related sites, but they also make affiliates a massive amount of money as well! Over $400,000 is paid out to Host Gator affiliates every month! How sick is that!?

Host Gator just sent out one of their monthly mailing and it had some pretty exciting highlights for the company, which saw explosive growth in 2010. Here are just a few of their company highlights.

HostGator in the News

In 2010, HostGator grew by over 2 MILLION domains! At the beginning of 2010, the company had 2.9 million domains, and are now at nearly 5 million domains. The company has also expanded to over 500 employees, along with 64 new reps to handle customer support. But even more fun and exciting is how HostGator is making a big name for themselves in the offline world… look out GoDaddy, here comes HostGator!

hostgator

The latest additions to the HostGator branding and marketing campaigns include billboards, a real NASCAR sponsorship and even being seen in an EA Sports UFC video game. Will we soon see a new celebrity sponsor for HostGator next? HostGator doesn’t just spend mad cash on ad campaigns… they’ve also donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund.

I’m glad to see HostGator doing so well. Not only do they host millions of web sites, but they have also made a ton of affiliates a TON of money over the years with their amazingly successful affiliate program, which is available through their in-house affiliate program and through Commission Junction.

HostGator Web Hosting Solutions – Save 20%

I have a few servers with HostGator and you should too! Web hosting plans start as low as $4.95 a month. Another excellent perk of hosting with HostGator is they have one click install software for many applications and programs like WordPress. If you are setting up a ton of mini sites or completely clueless when it comes to installing software, HostGator makes this extremely easy to setup. Use coupon code ZACJOHNSON to get your first month of only for only 1 penny!

Setup Your HostGator Account Now.

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7 Signs Your Blog is Bound to Fail

There are rules to everything if you truly want to succeed; blogging also is not exempted and there are several rules you should follow if you truly want to build a successful blog. Some people are not aware of these rules and some people see them as unimportant and this only leads their blogs to failure.

Bloggers make a lot of mistakes and there is nothing bad in making mistakes because mistakes are one of those things that make us human. However, there are also some very deadly mistakes we shouldn’t make as a blogger. This post will be talking about 7 signs that show that your blog is bound to fail.

1. Your Writing Sucks

Many people make a great mistake of thinking that what matters most when trying to build a successful blog is how they market their blog, but they’re so wrong. Quality content is the foundation of every successful blog and there is now how you can escape this. If you can’t write then you can’t succeed as a blogger.

I was once of the notion that marketing and promotion is all that matters when it comes to blogging; how wrong I was! I learned the hard way that content is what matters most when I wrote a guest post that sent me over 1000 visitors in one day and I was unable to retain at least 50 of those visitors.

2. You Believe Marketing is Unimportant

Another major mistake many bloggers make that end up costing them their blogging career is being of the notion that marketing is unimportant. It doesn’t matter how great or unique your content is, you need people to read it, you need people to spread the word about it and you need people to give you their opinion about it.

Your content is only the beginning and foundation of your blog, you need marketing to get to greater heights.

3. Inconsistency on Your Part as a Blogger

Being inconsistent is also a very deadly mistake most bloggers make. Your readers see you as a leader and they expect you to meet some standards, one of those standards is being consistent with the content you produce on your blog. You shouldn’t just write on your blog once in a month and then start writing everyday; if you want to be posting when you like, stick to it, and if you want to be posting 3 times a week make sure you also stick to it.

4. You Don’t Care About Your Design

Sure! It is content that matters (or at least I have heard that several times) but that also doesn’t make your design unimportant. A lot of bloggers make a very grievous mistake of thinking that all they need to do is put their best in their content and forget about the rest. Doing something like this might seem fine, naturally, but the outcome used to be more dangerous than expected.

Your content is really important but another thing of more importance is how you present your content. Your design makes your content more beautiful, attractive and presentable so you should make sure you give the best of your content.

5. Only Caring About the Ephemeral

Some bloggers also make a great mistake of only caring about the present and completely forgetting the future. As a blogger, your future is far more important than your present and a wise blogger will always make sure he is the one who determines his future.

One great example of this mistake is focusing on getting more traffic than focusing on getting more subscribers. Your daily visitors can stop visiting your blog anytime or they can easily forget about your blog but your subscribers will always get your content no matter what and catering for them is the best way to secure your future.

6. You Take it Solo All the Time

Many bloggers also make this mistake without being aware of the future consequences. In the beginning, even God knew the importance of partnership and being together and that is why he created a woman to support man. You won’t go far doing everything on your own; you will need to launch a product, do one thing or the other which you can’t do all alone and utilizing the power of networking is a great way to get all these done without hassles.

7. You Are Too Selfish

Selfishness is a killer and it has crept into the lives of many bloggers unaware. If everything you think about when it comes to your blog is yourself you should know for sure that the funeral of your blog is around the corner. A wise man will put himself and other people around him into consideration before doing anything. Any decision you will make about your blog that will only benefit is very dangerous and you should make sure you rethink it to see if it is for the best; otherwise, drop it!

Over to You

The above signs are deadly signs of blog about to fail, if you’re a blogger make sure you spread the word about this post so that others can be aware of these mistakes. Also make sure you share this post on your favorite social bookmarking and networking sites.

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Do You Republish Other People’s Content? You’ll Want to Read This

Earlier this week Google’s “head of web spam”—Matt Cutts—posted on his blog that they’re implementing a change in their algorithm that impacts those that publish content from elsewhere on the Web.

The changes are all about ranking the original sources of content higher than those who scrape/republish/copy it. This has always been Google’s intent but increasingly some have been seeing scraped content ranking higher than original sources.

In Matt’s words:

“The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”

This has a couple of implications for bloggers of different types.

For those who produce blogs with original content, it hopefully means not being out-ranked by other sites reproducing your content (with or without permission). As someone who finds his own content appearing on other sites many times a day (many times without credit of the source), for me this is a welcome change.

For those who do use scraping (or syndication) strategies, this news might stimulate a rethink in that approach. I know there are times and places for syndication (particularly if you do so with permission), but this serves as a reminder that in most cases if you’re looking to build a prominent and successful blog, you need to produce something that’s not only relevant and useful, but is also unique.

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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

How Does Personal Branding Fit in With Your Business?

Have you taken the time to sit down and decide what your business really is? Most people never really think about it on the level that I want to share with you today. Ask any business person, whether online or offline, and most will tell you their business is delivering information, or a product or a service. These are things you do in your business but your real business is you. You are your business. If people don’t like you or feel compelled to buy from you, then you really have no business. And it may be time to figure out why it is people aren’t buying from you. Maybe you have a great product, but if customers aren’t drawn to you for some reason, they will never know about your great product or service.
In many cases you need to sell yourself before you can sell your product or service. You do this by branding yourself. You also need to brand your business entity, but it’s just as important to brand yourself. I’ve ran across several marketers with personal brandings; the mostly sane marketer, the sweetie marketer, the sassy marketer (my own personal brand.) These are titles you remember and makes it easy to find in a search. You may not remember which product or service they offer, but if you can remember their personal brand, you can find their information real quick. You need a personal brand to sell yourself. If you can’t sell yourself, chances are you can’t sell a product or service either.
The second thing you should realize is that your business is a people business. It’s people who are looking for your information and become customers. If you’re not getting up-front and personal with your audience or target market, it’s likely they will find someone else who they can relate to on a personal level.
We all have days that we post to our blogs or websites and leave out our personality, but if you want to continually reach your audience you need to give them something to keep coming back for. Information is great and content is king, but customers are looking for a more personal experience these days. Many businesses, especially brick and mortar businesses, have forgotten about the personal experience with their customers.
I purchase a lot of information and content from online sources. I look for high quality materials but I also purchase from people who have marketed themselves with a great personality. I look at how they’ve branded themselves as much as I do at the quality of their product or service.
If you’ve left personal branding out of your business model, it may be time to go back to the drawing board and inject yourself into your business plans.
What have you learned about how personal branding affects your online business? Does it make a difference? Please share your thoughts and opinions.

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Niche Travel Blogging Demystified

This guest post is by Matthew Kepnes of Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site.

If you look at all the travel blogs out there, you’ll notice many common themes. People tend to write a blog that falls into an overarching category like cruises, backpacking, solo travel, or digital nomad travel. They don’t refine their offerings any further. What readers are left with is thousands of blogs about the same thing, and a crowded field where no one really dominates. There are no leaders, no experts, and the bloggers’ voices get lost in the crowd.

For some bloggers, that’s fine. They simply blog because they like blogging. They want to interact with others and have no intention of ever making their blog into a business. If they make three hundred dollars selling an ad, they’re probably ecstatic; if they never make any money, they’re probably not fussed.

Yet there are a lot of bloggers out there who do want to make money. Some of them want to make a living, and most would just love for their blog to pay for their travels. In a sea of sameness, though, it’s hard to get the traction you need to become an expert, distinguish yourself, and gain traffic. And as we all know, it’s only then that you can make money from your blog.

The worst mistake

A few weeks ago, a travel blogger I read said that we travel bloggers should look to companies like Lonely Planet and be like them. “Copy the big companies,” he said.

I think this is the worst mistake you can make. You can’t be Lonely Planet, Boots n All, Orbitz, or the like. These companies have decades of experience and money that you don’t have, as well as huge budgets that allow them to stay ahead of the game.

Moreover, there’s no way you’ll be able to get ahead of their brands. Google didn’t wake up saying they want to be Microsoft. They said, “we want to be a new tech company.” That’s what you should aim for. You should aim to be something new. Don’t follow. Lead.

Leading a niche

To be a leader, you need to be niche. That word is thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean?

In simple terms, being niche means that you focus on a narrow topic. For the purpose of this article, I am going to talk a lot about backpacking as a niche. If you look at most travel blogs, you’ll notice that they all focus on backpacking or long-term travel. It seems to be a trend. How do you make yourself different when everyone is writing about the same thing?

Recently, I gave some advice to another travel blogger. He had just come back from a long-term trip to Central and South America, and he wanted to make his website bigger and earn some money from it, so what did he do? He followed the conventional line of thinking and turned his site into a general backpacking blog, and in the process he made his blog just the same as all the other blogs out there. They offered the same tips, advice, and stories that everyone on the Internet does.

I asked him, “How many sites do you see about backpacking in Central and South America?” That made him stop and think. He couldn’t think of any blogs that covered these regions, and he had just spent two years living, learning, and traveling that region of the world.

I told him that he is an expert on that area, and I asked him why he’s trying to cover the whole world. “Cover the area you know about!” I said. “When people ask other travelers where they look for information on a specific region, you want your name to come up first. Be the backpacking site for your area of expertise.”

Your niche matters

One of the greatest things the Internet has done is that it has made all niches marketable. With millions of people on the ‘net at any second of the day, even the smallest hobby or niche has an audience. You may think you are the only one with a passion for photos of horses doing stupid things, but with the Internet, you’ll find that you aren’t. You can bring all sorts of people together with your niche site.

The same is true in travel. No niche is too small. There are blogs covering RV travel, consumer issues, cruises, seniors’ cruises, gay cruises, gay seniors’ cruises, backpacking, long term travel, couples travel, and Asia travel—you can always find interested followers within your area of expertise.

Look at the “top travel blogs.” Out of the top 20 blogs, the majority deal with backpacking, independent travel, or families. Everyone is talking about the same thing.

When you looked at the numbers of those sites, did you notice something? There are a few with really high numbers, but the most are simply in the same area. They are talking about the same general topic, and thus they all share the same traffic.

Now take a look at the site Travel Fish. This is a destination-based site. It’s not really a blog, but it focuses on one thing: Southeast Asia. What kind of traffic does it get? It has an Alexa rank of 33,000 and a Compete rank of 144,000, which averages 88,500. That puts the site at #5 on the list of blogs.

Why does being niche help?

By going super-niche, your blog gains a single purpose. Everything you do focuses around one central theme. It helps focus your content, your marketing, and your audience. Don’t be everything to everyone. Be the best at one thing to some people. You want people to reference your name when people ask where they need to go for help. Travelfish’s single-minded nature allows that site to be the expert, and dominate one field. The owner doesn’t compete with anyone. People compete with him.

There are many travel websites out there. If you don’t go niche, you won’t be able to create a name for yourself. If you really want to make a stellar travel blog, monetize it, and be successful, you must pick one small genre of travel or location in the world, and be the expert on that. Otherwise, you’ll never break out of the crowd.

Matthew Kepnes has been traveling around the world for the past four years. He runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian UK, AOL’s Wallet Pop, and Yahoo! Finance. He currently writes for AOL Travel and The Huffington Post For more information, you can visit his Facebook page or sign up for his

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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

How to Capture Your Reader’s Attention

image of a peacock

“OH MY GOD! Your hair is on fire!”

Well, that’s probably not true. I only said it to get your attention.

Getting attention is the most important part of online marketing. No matter how brilliant your ideas are, you can’t even offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made her look in your direction first.

You have to get your prospect’s attention before you can turn her into a reader, let her know how wonderful you are, or sell her something.

Do I have your attention yet?

Good. Now I’ll show you how to get someone else’s.

Your reader can’t pay attention to everything

The brain is funny like that — in order to understand, the brain has to focus on specific information.

Attention helps us screen out the irrelevant and choose which information will enter, and stay, in our awareness. Our attention decides what to “pay attention to,” because human focus is limited, and we just can’t give our attention to everything.

Your reader’s minds are very selective. So we have to give them a reason to pay attention to our content instead of everything else out there they could be listening to.

There are many obstacles in the path to gaining your reader’s attention

Even if you have the best product, service, or information on the planet, it’s still difficult to get people to give you the time of day. Here are some common obstacles to getting your prospect’s attention:

  • The relentless proliferation of available products, services, and information
  • Increased and increasingly better competition
  • The multiplying methods of distribution
  • Buyer sophistication
  • Information overload
  • The desire for instant gratification

These are all roadblocks you face in the attention-getting game, so you’ve really got to be good at showing readers why their limited attention should be directed to you.

Try these attention-grabbing strategies

  • Help them see what you see. You might be focusing on yourself when creating messages about your business, thinking that everyone sees things the way you do. But they don’t. People won’t “hear” you, or pay attention, until they perceive what you perceive. So you’ve got to make your position crystal clear — help them to see what you see, using storytelling, description, personal experiences, case histories, and anything that will put the prospect in the right position to understand your message.
  • Make it personal. When you make your writing personal, you make it important. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information can grab attention, bring clarity, and help it slip right into your prospective client’s awareness. You don’t have to do a lot of explaining to tell someone his house (or his hair) is on fire — because it’s so personal to him. You immediately get attention.
  • Use emotion. Emotion is a great way to bring clarity to your business messages while making them personal. Emotion also comes with the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving clients a reason to talk about you and your business, and triggering the circuits in the brain that activate behavior and decisions — emotion is much better at that than logic is. Emotional messages get attention.

    • Don’t take chances with attention

    You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention, so don’t take chances with clever, cute, or insider language or visuals, which are often lost on people. Don’t use inside jokes or industry terms, either, unless appropriate for narrow niche marketing. These tactics only tend to confuse audiences, if only for a few seconds, which is all it takes to lose them — and a confused mind does not pay attention.

    Follow up with a strong second

    Once you’ve managed to capture your reader’s attention, don’t waste it. Getting your reader’s attention is like the first strike of a One-Two punch — if you don’t land the second part, you’re not going to knock them out (and I mean KO in the good way).

    Make sure your second punch, the actual information or message for which you grabbed her attention in the first place, is worthwhile.

    If it’s valuable, you’ve paved the way for easy entry into her attention with future conversation.

    If it isn’t, it’ll be that much more difficult to capture her attention the next time, as your prospect’s brain has already filed your information under “not worth our attention.”

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10 David Ogilvy Quotes that Could Revolutionize Your Blogging

__ShSCuaESlVk_TODWUMK3g8I_AAAAAAAAAec_wUrCCc_jc3I_s400_david-ogilvy.jpgThis week, I’ve been reading The King of Madison Avenue—an interesting biography of ad man David Ogilvy (aff).

I’ve always been fascinated with Ogilvy and see a lot in what he’s done as relevant to bloggers. So here’s some of his more famous quotes, with a few thoughts on how they relate to our medium.

1. “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

How appropriate—both for internet marketers (who are often known for tactics that treat those they target as morons) and bloggers (who can at times talk down to readers).

The idea of treating your reader as someone who you value, as someone incredibly special to you, will take bloggers a long way.

Another Ogilvy quote that relates: “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

2. “The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

I’ve been pondering this one a lot over the last 24 hours and it’s true—some of my best blog posts and projects have emerged out of light-hearted tweets or comments in conversations to friends.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog came about as I laughed with a friend about how bloggers needed a daily devotion (similar to what I grew up with as a good Christian boy reading Every day with Jesus) to keep their blogs on track.

7 Digital Camera Predators and How to Keep them at Bay started as a friend and I joked about things that conspired to kill our cameras.

It’s often the crazy little ideas that we have that first make us laugh that do best. If they get some kind of reaction in us (even one that makes us giggle at how silly they are), they’re likely to also get a reaction from others.

3. “Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”

Think big! While there’s also something to be said for having realistic expectations about what you can achieve with a blog, there’s nothing wrong with having big dreams and aiming to make them a reality.

It can be a bit of a balancing act, but if you aim a little higher you might just find yourself achieving things with your blog that you might not have thought possible.

4. “I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”

If there’s one quote in this selection that most rings true for me it is this one. The posts that I’ve written that have emerged out of real experience, pain, excitement, heartache, and life are the ones that time and time again hit the mark with readers.

Tell stories, share your successes and failures, be yourself, and let your own personal voice come out. You’ll find readers respond in a personal way, too.

5. “I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”

This might get up the noses of those of you who are a little more particular about grammar (and I do thank you for your continued daily emails pointing out my mistakes), but I think there’s something powerful about this.

Write your blog posts in the way that you’d actually speak to them if they were in the chair opposite you. Use language that communicates most clearly with them—even when it might not be the Queen’s English.

Of course there comes a point where grammar and spelling errors can and do get in the way of communicating clearly with readers. Don’t be lazy—the point is to know your readers and communicate in a way that’s relevant to them.

6. “Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.”

I’m not sure I agree 100% with this as I do know bloggers who make good livings from writing about things that they have no real interest in or passion for. However, most successful blogs (and by that I mean more than profit, and am looking at blogs that connect with readers and help build a blogger’s reputation) are written by people who have something genuine to say about a topic they believe in.

While it’s possible to create a profitable blog on something you have no interest or belief in (by gaming the search engines for example), those kinds of blogs are never going to create a connection with readers or do much to raise your profile in an industry.

Conversely, bloggers who create blogs that come from genuine interest and passion for topics create connections with readers that have flow-on effects that lead to all kinds of wonderful opportunities.

7. “If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.”

There’s nothing more heartbreaking for a new blogger when you see your content being scraped onto another blog or your intellectual property being used by others without credit.

I still get upset by this from time to time, however there’s one thing that I’ve noticed despite hundreds of sites each day republishing my work without permission and/or credit. Nobody actually seems to read those blogs.

The key to successful blogging is unique and useful information. People who simply regurgitate what you write, or even repost it word for word, either eventually give up (because nobody reads it) or get caught out (and stop in disgrace).

While there are times when I’ve chased down others who blatantly steal my stuff without credit (there is a line) I find it much more beneficial to spend my time creating more great content than policing how people use what I’ve already produced.

Focus the bulk of your time upon producing and being the best you can be. This will have more positive impact upon your business than the negative tasks of stopping spammers and thieves stealing your old ideas.

8. “First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.”

This one might be a little more appropriate for advanced bloggers who’ve established themselves and are looking to take things to the next level.

There does come a time in most businesses where a solo entrepreneur needs to think about how to expand and grow beyond their own capacity to give their business personal attention.

There are only so many hours in the day. Expanding your team and/or partnering with others is one option to consider. If you do it, look for people whose skills complement and exceed yours, then get out of their way.

9. “Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.”

David was big on testing, and his effectiveness as a communicator improved dramatically as a result.

It’s amazing what you learn when you test different elements on a blog: simple tweaks of headlines, changes in calls to action, different placements of ads, tracking how design changes improve conversion of your objectives … the list could go on.

Great bloggers don’t just write content—they watch to see how people interact with it (and their blog) and use what they learn to improve their future efforts.

10. “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. “

The headline or title of your blog post is the most effective way to get people to read the rest of your post. If you don’t understand—and more importantly, implement—this principle, you’re going to miss out on a lot of readers.

Headlines draw people in, whether they see them in search results, on Twitter, in RSS feeds, or on your blog itself.

Ogilvy is famous for his advice on this: the purpose of your headline is to get people to read your first line. The purpose of your opening line is to get people to read the next one. So invest time and energy into your titles (and opening lines).

Here’s a related quote: “The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”

What’s your favorite Ogilvy quote?

There are a lot more David Ogilvy quotes. Do you have a personal favorite?

Here’s one more that I personally don’t live by, but which I know for a fact a couple of other well-known and quite successful bloggers live by.

“Many people—and I think I am one of them—are more productive when they’ve had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I’m far better able to write.”

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Do You Think Selling Is Easy? Think Again!

A couple of months ago a person approached me to see if I was interested in becoming an affiliate for his “Make Money Blogging” eBook. In his email he explained that he had great plans for the eBook. The price would be $29, and he was expecting to sell 10,000 copies in the first six months.

The numbers got me curious, so I went to visit his blog. According to his “Advertise” page he received 50,000 monthly visitors, and had 2,000 RSS subscribers.

Hhmmm, I thought.

I didn’t want to rain on his parade, so I replied to his email politely saying I was busy with some projects and wouldn’t have time to join as an affiliate (which was true), wishing good luck for the eBook launch anyway.

What I had in mind was something else though, which is: There was no way on earth he would be able to sell 10,000 copies of that eBook in 6 YEARS, let alone 6 months!

How come? First of all because the product was not a novelty, nor revolutionary, and it aimed at a saturated market. Second, the product creator didn’t have a strong name/reputation, nor a big audience in place ready to buy from him.

In fact if I was to make a guess I would say he sold 100 copies at most.

Probably this was the first time the guy was trying to sell a product, and that is why he grossly overestimated the numbers.

I have been there myself. When I launched my first eBook I already had a blog with 20,000 subscribers. The topic of the eBook was appealing, and I had put a lot of work on it, so I figured that at least 10% of my readers would buy it (i.e., 2000 people). Boy I was wrong!

After 30 days or so I had sold only 200 copies. I was really frustrated, but the whole experience taught me a good lesson: selling is never easy, no matter what.

Practically speaking this means that you should aim to have a great product, with great marketing, and possibly with a great audience in place who is eager to buy from you, before you start selling. And even if you manage to get all these 3 factors, remember that it will still be hard to convince people to buy.

Again, selling is never easy. If it was, everybody would be rich!

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Monday, January 31, 2011

5 Ways To Network Your Way To Blogging Success

Networking has become a buzzword over the last few years and with the explosion of social media, it has become “the way” to build a business.

We all know the vast power of social media and the role it can play in your success as a blogger. However, there are still many, many blogggers who are not taking advantage of this phenomenon.

When I say taking advantage of it, I don’t mean posting your weekend activities on Facebook or tweeting out random thoughts you have throughout the day.

What I’m talking about is using social media to build relationships with your peers and with those who are in social circles that you want to be a part of

The Power Of Networking

Networking is especially important for a new blogger. If you think you can go it alone and see the same level of success, then by all means try it. However, if you want to speed up the process of building traffic and gaining new readers and subscribers, then you need to leverage other bloggers audiences. This is where networking comes in.

Great content is the starting point for a successful blog, but when you are just beginning, nobody is going to read it because you have no traffic. Building significant levels of traffic takes time and that’s part of the blogging process, but why not help yourself and begin networking with bloggers who have already achieved what you want?

For example, I have a fitness blog which has been running since 2008. It has never received more than 300 visitors in any given month. Why? Because I have not networked one bit. I have written my posts and done nothing to get people to read them.

Now take my current blog, I have focused my attention on building relationships through networking and have had much greater success. Here some of the things I have done which have helped grow my blog quite rapidly:

1. Use guest posting.

We have all heard that guest posting is a great way to reach out to more readers and build traffic. A few important things to keep in mind when using this method are:

  • Find a blog in a similar niche.I see a lot of bloggers who want to submit their post to a high traffic site even though it is in a completely different niche. Big mistake. Even if you get some traffic from it, chances are that they will have little interest in your topic. There is no point to driving traffic to your blog if nobody wants to read it or opt in to your newsletter.
  • Interact with those who comment on your guest post. Don’t just reply with a “thanks for the comment”, ask them questions and get them talking to each other, that’s how you will get them to come to your blog and become your readers too.

2. Use Twitter.

For months, I was resistant to Twitter because I thought it was a glorified chat room. When I was finally convinced to get on board by a friend, I discovered its potential. In my opinion, Twitter is themost powerful of all social media streams. Just in the last month, I have been in contact with “A” list bloggers and gotten their radar, formed relationships with very successful business owners and bloggers, and made several friends in the process. When used correctly, Twitter can be incredibly powerful and can have a huge impact on your business.

3. Be Useful.

Anyone can self promote and send link after link promoting their own stuff, but the real potential for massive traffic is when others start doing it for you. I can send out 20 tweets about my own most recent post and get a few visitors.

One tweet from someone like Pat Flynn, Brian Clark, or Yaro Starak will send 50 or 100 times the traffic that I could promoting myself. How do you get these big names to promote you? You need to get their attention. Email them something that will interest them, sell their products as an affiliate, send them a personal and unique Tweet, but you HAVE to provide value.

Successful bloggers are incredibly busy people and inundated with emails, calls, and everything else all day every day. You need to stand out, be different, and NOT be looking for a handout. “Please RT this” will not work with these folks.

4. Make Friends.

I have been lucky enough to meet a few people on Twitter who I can now call friends. It just so happens that these friends have blogs that are MUCH more successful than mine.

My intention is to build on those friendships and hopefully learn some things about blogging along the way. If you have a hidden agenda and are just using your “friendship” for your benefit only, it won’t last too long and you will have burned a very important bridge.

If we constantly ask our network to promote us, it will most likely ruin the relationship. However, if we are providing a good resource for people and our content is high quality, we may find that we get promoted without even asking. Just being mentioned in a high profile bloggers blog can send hundreds or thousands of visitors to our sites. The important thing here is to focus on building a network of friends, not promoters.

5. Give, Then Receive.

If you can adopt the philosophy that you need to give before receiving, you will be in a much better position in the long run.

If you can consistently promote high quality sites and valuable resources to your network, you will find that you will begin to build credibility and trust. These two things are absolutely critical to a building a successful blog.

People love to share information. It’s our job to share high quality and valuable information. If you find a new blogger who seems to have great ideas, by all means, send out a tweet. If you come across a fascinating article, share that too.

Don’t worry about others promoting you right now, that will come in time (assuming you have good content). Your focus should be on providing helpful resources and offering that information to your network. Over time and with a little luck, you may get the attention of the people whose blogs you have been promoting. That’s when great things can happen.

If you are not building your network in some capacity every day, you are severely limiting the growth of your blog. Make a commitment to building relationships with those in your niche and start building mutually beneficial relationships today!

You will be amazed at the difference it can make.

About the Author: Steve Roy is the owner of EndingTheGrind.com, a blog dedicated to helping people get out of their miserable jobs, build an online business, and live with passion!

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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Understanding the Difference Between “Want” and “Want to Buy”

This guest post is by Ryan Barton of The Smart Marketing Blog.

As I was sitting at a café over breakfast, the couple nearby flipped through their Sunday paper. As I tend to do, I eavesdropped on their conversation.

“Will you look at that bedding? That’s wonderful!” “Oh my God, I’d die for those shoes.” “I love that movie, and it’s on sale!”

Aside from my habitual eavesdropping problem, the conversation’s simplification of the “want” impulse is vital to your online success.

Buying versus browsing

There’s a significant, actionable difference between admiration and buying intent.

The first is an attraction, a respect, a good feeling. “That car has beautiful lines.” “Wow, a front-facing camera and it supports Flash?” But regardless of all those positive thoughts, admiration lacks a fulfilled need.

The second says, “not only do I admire this service or product, but it’s exactly what I’m looking for.” “My New Year’s resolution was to focus on marketing, so this is perfect!” The product satisfies a real need—not a flighty want.

Earlier this year, Lemon and Raspberry subscribers said they’d absolutely love to win my ebook, Smart Marketing, during Amy‘s New Year’s blog party.

“Ooooh I’d LOVE to win this! I’m always up for some good marketing insight!!,”said one reader. Another agreed,“I would love to read this book. Maybe I can count it as one of the many books I resolve to read this year.”

That’s flattering; really, lots of kind words. Yet, after the contest ended and the book was awarded, some readers suddenly didn’t want the book; or, more accurately, they didn’t want to pay for it.

This is the “want” gap in action—the difference between liking a product and actually wanting to pay for it.

The “want” gap

Amy’s readers may have liked the idea of reading my book, but they didn’t realize a present need for it. It’s a great idea, and it’d be a nice addition to a library, but there wasn’t enough of an internal need to get them to pull out their wallets.

We see the same principle, but to a greater extent, with larger giveaways. Sure, I’ll take the car, the free cruise, the year’s supply of coffee—but I’m not going to pay for it.

Image by Austin Kleon

Friend and artist John T. Unger experienced something similar with a book of poetry he wrote; the “want” gap was later brilliantly illustrated by Austin Kleon.

John’s poems had a real, emotional impact on a reader; the reader admired the author. Yet all the admiration in the world couldn’t compete with the prospect’s lack of buying intent.

Asking the right question

Businesses tend to forecast and allocate advertising monies based on consumer feedback, which is unfortunately more “do you like?” than “will you buy?”

That’s what focus groups have become, haven’t they?

“Do you like this new and improved artisan sandwich? How ‘bout this car? Pretty isn’t it? Would you go on vacation with this airline?”

None of those questions ask, “would you buy?” And that’s the question that makes or breaks most launches.

Understanding this gap and how you can bridge it is your way to converting admiring prospects into paying, satisfied, and loyal customers.

How to bridge the “want” gap and boost sales

What you may not realize is that admiration is a big step forward in closing the sale. The prospect has already indicated they appreciate you and your product, but they don’t think they need it. That doesn’t mean you’re out of luck; you can fix this.

Here are five steps I use to effectively bridge the gap between admiration and convincing a prospect to buy.

1. Establish your authority

Chances are, before reading this article, you’d never heard my name. If you’re launching a product of your own, you may face the same challenge—obscurity.

If I had released my ebook under Darren’s name instead of my own, the sales would’ve been drastically different than my initial figures. Darren’s an established figure in the industry. Over 167,000 subscribers and 19,000 Facebook fans are testament to this. His community buys into his history of success. My own success isn’t global like Darren’s, but that doesn’t mean it’s not as relevant.

That’s why the endorsement of Hall of Fame speaker and bestselling author, Scott McKain, was so powerful. Scott had a lot ofkind words about my book—and his review told new prospects my book wasn’t a scam, it was real and unique, and they needed it.

That’s the power of word-of-mouth marketing. But it’s leveraging these words that helps you confirm legitimacy and close the sale.

2. Create value

It’s pompous to assume that because you have a product, it’ll be bought. Give prospects a reason to buy. What’s in it for them? Show them value and security in their purchase.

For my own book campaign, my value offering included free quarterly updates. Every quarter, I send my customers an updated digital file that highlights new industry trends and developments. This makes my ebook a living book—it doesn’t gather digital dust, it’s a constant resource.

Plus, it maintains my personal brand awareness among my clientele in a most personal manner.

I also went so far as to include a 100% results-and-satisfaction guarantee with every purchase. Yes, I’m that confident in my content. It works, so why wouldn’t I offer a guarantee?

And as for the prospect, why wouldn’t they buy? There’s absolutely zero risk in making the purchase. If they were apprehensive or worried they’d get burnt, this guarantee eliminates those fears. What’s more, I’ve never had a request for a refund—it’s a guarantee I’ve never been called on.

What type of value-added element can you include in your launch that convinces your prospect that they can’t afford to not buy from you? Can you offer a limited-time price reduction to create a sense of urgency? Or a creative incentive to reward multiple purchases?

3. Put their needs in lights

You launched your product for a reason: you recognized a demand, a need. So don’t be ashamed to tell your audience that you know it. Speak directly to them.

In my case, that meant telling small business owners and first-time entrepreneurs that I understand the daunting challenge they face in marketing themselves. What’s an effective strategy? What offers the greatest ROI? I know the thought of their business failing keeps them up at night. Moreover, I understand that heavy feeling—I’ve been there. And it’s difficult to navigate through new business decisions.

But simply telling prospects you understand their need isn’t enough. You also need to satisfy it. Which brings us to your solution. In my case, I hold the marketing road map to their success.

4. Spell out your solution

For my small business owner audience, it wasn’t enough to say, “Don’t worry about your business failing, I wrote a book on marketing.”

I needed to take a step back and detail the topics I’d covered—targeted marketing, brand differentiation, social media ethics, blogging, and so on—and explain how each topic plays into their success.

Andy Nulman uses the analogy of “virgin contact lenses” as a great way to remove yourself from something you’re deep into, to gain valuable perspective. You, yourself, are in-the-know. You understand what you offer, since you’re the product creator. But for the first-time prospect, you need to say exactly what you do. Assume nothing on their part. Look at your product the way a first-time prospect would, taking nothing for granted.

You’ve highlighted their need, and you’ve detailed exactly what you’re providing. Now, explicitly tell your prospects with confidence, “I am the solution. My product will fix your problem.”

5. Show them what others have

You’re at the mall; you’re hungry. You walk towards the food court, and as you get closer, you begin to smell the variety of foods. “What do I want? What am I in the mood for?” you ask yourself.

And as you arrive at the food court entrance, before you stand 15 different restaurant choices, people with trays of food rushing to and from tables. Your gaze moves across the large room, scanning the signs and lines of each of the restaurant choices. Asian food? Not bad. Pizza place: ghost town. Sandwiches … not really in the mood. But the burger joint is hoppin’.

Without saying a word, every person in each line is telling you their preference—the majority favored the burger over the pizza. And that makes you wonder, what is it about the burger that everybody loves so much? You don’t want to miss out on what the people in the burger line are enjoying. Now, your decision is made: burger it is.

In the digital food court, it’s similar; it’s the online equivalent of, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Show prospects how much your customer base supports you. Show them you’re popular, show them what other customers are buying and how they’re benefiting from it, and force the inactive community to buy in and be part of the “next big thing.”

The hype, the tangible energy in your community, your popularity—they’re all extremely powerful selling tools.

What people want

Your blog, your business, your campaign, your new product—should be less about what you think people want, and more about what your prospects will actually act on. Want to be profitable? Then that’s your focus: what people want.

Save yourself time and money. Understanding this “want” gap and bridging it—conquering it—improves your conversion rate, it motivates you through your new-found success, and it takes your efforts to a competing level.

How have you experienced the “want” gap in your blogging efforts? And how have you bridged it?

Ryan Barton is the author of the “Smart Marketing” eBook and he writes at The Smart Marketing Blog for Small Business Success; you can follow him on Twitter, where he shares entirely too much information. He wrote “Smart Marketing” with the intent that small businesses would glean insightful information and tangible marketing strategies so they too, could compete competitively with industry giants.

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