Interview: Michael Mindes

Michael Mindes is the founder of Tasty Minstrel Games, a relatively new publisher of hobby board games. Despite primarily dealing with a physical product, Michael is actively marketing over the Internet. Michael especially likes email marketing, blogging, and generating organic results on Facebook, and has seen great success in these areas.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been making money online?
I live in Tucson, Arizona and have been here for most of my 29 years of life. I am married and I have 3 children. During the day, I am a financial advisor/planner (no, you can’t hire me and I am not soliciting business) to pay the bills while I build up Tasty Minstrel Games.

I wouldn’t say I have been making any money online, but I have been actively gathering permission assets and building up authority in the board game publishing arena for about 15 months.

Do you have any experience with affiliate marketing? If so, to what extent?
My experience with affiliate marketing is very limited. Like many other people, I have read the blogs people like Shoemoney, John Chow, and Jonathan Volk for a long time. Like many of those people I gave affiliate marketing a try.

To me, affiliate marketing feels too much like being a transactional stock broker (which I opted not to be). Except that there are tons of people actively scouting and trying to take your best ideas. I would rather have a group of people trust me enough to take my recommendations.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
In life, I am most proud of my 7 years of happy marriage, my 3 kids, and Tasty Minstrel’s progress. In the realm of Internet marketing I am most proud of the following:
• Building a laser-targeted and responsive list of over 3,000 people.
• Having over a 9% conversion rate for people to buy out of my list.
• Building a network quickly within the board game industry.
• Doing all of the above in my spare time.

How did you become successful? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in the Internet? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I became successful as an online marketer by following through with the sales and trust building techniques that I learned by managing people’s life savings and constantly convincing them that their trust is well placed.

I chose to go into financial planning because I could go to work with my father, support my growing family, and have challenging and fulfilling work. I chose to publish board games, because I love games. Games are my absolute and fundamental passion in life.

Obviously any communication method as fast and inexpensive as the Internet will be incredibly powerful. But I did not really feel the scope of it, until I first started bribing people to join my email list. I gave away some games for free, and 545 people signed up for a chance to win in the first 7 days. That was with one forum post.

What do you think it takes to be successful?
Dedication, Honesty, Intelligence, Passion, OTHER PEOPLE (relationships are incredibly important)

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Getting a shipment of 4,000 games with numerous manufacturing issues. It was significant effort to mitigate the damage, but sales were slower, product was lost, and hours have been spent sending out replacement parts.

What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
See above. The initial response is detailed on my blog. Being as transparent as possible on my blog has led to a small army of people that are dedicated to defending Tasty Minstrel Games online, which is wonderful.

What is the future of marketing?
Being able to directly reach people that want to hear from you, and turning customers into evangelists. Building quality relationships over time and email marketing are the solution here.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
In the past I have been distracted by a number of things. Which is why I have so many free eBooks available, including an 80+ page eBook about relationship building strategy and email marketing. Right now I am just working on improving Tasty Minstrel.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
The pressures of having 100% commission based compensation and convincing people to have me advise them on investing their life savings makes you learn fast. When compared to bringing in a $1,000,000+ account, selling some $40 board games seems easy.

What are your greatest strengths?
My stunning good looks. After that, my ability to sell stuff and generate trust through honesty and transparency.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Project management and slacking off. Thankfully, when running a business you can find people to fill in for your weaknesses.

What motivates you?
It will sound cheesy, but bringing families closer together through games. Oh, and providing for my wife and 3 children.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do it and do it now. How long does it take to send a 1-2 line email? Fill out an interview? Make a phone call? Each item takes very little time, and the aggregate of all those actions adds up to some amazing results.

For example, I let these interview questions sit for 20 days. I could have spent the 1 hour to answer the questions and been covered on a popular blog that much sooner.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My father. He taught me probably 80+% of what I need to know in sales and marketing (in life too). The rest I have learned through reading the thoughts of great minds, thinking, taking action, and remembering what works.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
I would like to be involved with publishing board games full-time. Providing modestly for my family and having extra money for emergencies is enough. If money was no object, I would be spending time with my family, playing games with my friends, and helping to change the world.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Alive and married to my wife is sufficient for my needs.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I spend my free time working on building up Tasty Minstrel Games. Life is work, truly challenging and satisfying work is the basis of happiness.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would have started earlier. It would have been nice to realize I do not need an endorsement of any kind to start building a business or changing the world.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Again, cheesy… But my greatest achievement in life is my successful marriage for 7 years and my 3 beautiful loving children. While I am sure I have unfulfilled dreams, it doesn’t matter because I have them. They are awesome.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I like to use Facebook as a natural funnel for Tasty Minstrel, so we have a page for the company and for every game that we publish.

http://www.twitter.com/michaelmindes
http://www.twitter.com/tastyminstrel
http://www.facebook.com/tastyminstrelgames
http://www.facebook.com/homesteaders
http://www.facebook.com/terraprime
http://www.facebook.com/trainofthoughtgame
http://www.facebook.com/playjab
http://www.facebook.com/belfort

5 Content Steps to Take For the New Year

As we approach Christmas and the rest of the holiday season, many are already starting to look toward the new year and finding ways that they can improve their blog.

Though I don’t typically like New Year’s resolutions, they seem to be mostly self-defeating, it is a great time to look at what you did or didn’t do over the past year and how you can improve.

With that in mind, here are several copyright and content-related steps that you may want to consider taking in the New Year as you use the turning of the calendar as a chance to get a fresh start.

1. Add a Copyright Notice

Even though copyright law does not require any kind of notice for copyright to be affixed to a work, it exists merely by fixing the work into a tangible medium of expression, every site should have some kind of copyright notice on it.

The reason is because it not only puts aside any misunderstandings about the law (many people still feel that works without the notice have no protection) but it also puts the reader on notice, which might have legal benefits down the road.

If you already have a notice, be sure to update it in the New Year and, when you do, make it an automated process so you never have to do it again.

2. Add a License

As important as having a copyright notice is, you also need to make it clear the terms under which others can use your content.

If you don’t want others to use your work and wish to reserve the maximum amount of protection, simply say “All Rights Reserved” and leave it at that. If you want to encourage some sharing, perhaps consider a Creative Commons License or, if you want to be asked first, a Konomark.

Make your wishes clear and those who want to be good neighbors will follow them.

3. Find a Good Stock Photo Site

Images are important to blog posts but simply taking images from anywhere can lead to serious copyright headaches. Instead of using Google Image Search, find a good stock photo site and use those images.

Morguefile and Stock.XCHNG are both great free stock photo sites and there are a ton of microstock photo sites that will sell you images for as little as a dollar.

There is simply no reason to get in a copyright war over an image in a blog post, too many great, free alternatives exist.

4. Start Tracking Your New Content

Start monitoring where your content is being used. Free services like FairShare make it easy to track where your work appears on the Web. by parsing and searching for what’s in your RSS feed This can both help you spot infringements, but also let you know who is talking about your work.

It’s a great way to not only enforce your rights if you wish, but to also follow the conversation and participate in discussions you might have otherwise missed.

5. Spot Check Your Old Content

In addition to tracking where your new content appears, you might want to do an audit of some of your older work as well, in particular anything that you didn’t create, such as guest posts.

You can use services like CopyScape to search for the work, see where else it appears and make decisions about what to do. Specifically, you want to make sure the content wasn’t plagiarized, and see where it is being used elsewhere on the Web.

It probably is not worthwhile to go through and check all of your old posts. But focus on any posts you didn’t write and particularly popular ones. You may be surprised what you learn.

Bottom Line

As much as New Year’s resolutions are broken, something that is the punchline of a bad joke these days, it still makes sense to take advantage of the new calendar to make some changes and adjustments.

One of the things every blogger can do is look at the way they approach their content, as well the content of others, and start making adjustments and improvements to the process.

The result, if done well, will be a safe legal climate, a better understanding of how one’s work is being used and, if desired, better control over one’s creations.

It’s a great way for a blog to start 2011 and and an excellent opportunity to make the new year better than the last.

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10 Realistic Blogging Goals for the New Year

It’s that time of the year again when we ramp up to the New Year and start envisioning what changes we can make in our lives. Since I would imagine that your blog is an important part of your life, I’m sure many of you are looking for ways to add value to your blog. You want to make some positive enhancements to your blog as the New Year comes ringing in.

As a fellow blogger, I too am always looking for ways to improve my blog site and my blogging, for that matter. But I want to set some realistic goals that can be met. Not attaining unrealistic goals can be disheartening. For example, at my present place of employment, we had a VP of Sales who, every month, would project an unrealistic pie-in-the-sky revenue number. It was so unrealistic that the monthly revenue number was never met and eventually his words fell on deaf ears. He wasn’t taken seriously and the sales reps became disenchanted because they could never reach the goals that the VP was spouting.

So, this year, try to set some goals that are attainable. Don’t go into the New Year with the goal of hitting a Page Rank of 6 if that is unrealistic. Don’t strive for a subscriber number of 10,000 if it’s clearly not attainable. Take baby steps and try to take positive steps and maybe you’ll build some momentum in the coming year.

1. Tweak your Theme
I purchased a fully functional WordPress theme for my blog a while back and I really like it. The thing is, I’m probably utilizing a fraction of its functionality. This year I am hoping to learn more about all of the bells and whistles that my theme can do for my blog site. I’m hoping to tweak my theme in an effort to present my visitors with a new look and feel. Try not to stay stagnant with the look of your blog. Take advantage of what your theme can do for you. If you’re not happy with your current theme, there are plenty out there that you can purchase for a reasonable amount.

2. Become SEO-savvy
I am guilty of being an SEO novice. I understand the concept but I have yet to truly implement it on my blog site. We all want to rank high in the search engines and, in order to do so, we must become SEO-savvy. You could outsource and use a consultant or you could buy one of the many books out there that speak to SEO. I’m planning on buying a book and boning up on the subject.

3. Collaborate
There are many other bloggers out there in your niche. Consider a joint venture or a collaborative effort with one or many bloggers in your niche space. It may be mutually beneficial. Chances are you are already commenting on their posts. Get to talking and you might find that there could be a project you could work on together that could boost your blogs’ visibility.

4. Advertise
One of the best ways to advertise that your blog actually exists in the blogosphere is to guest post. I know that you’ve probably heard over and over that guest posting helps your blog become noticed. The reason you have heard this is because it is true. Daniel, the owner of this illustrious blog, is letting me do so with this post. I simply could not reach as large an audience without Daniel allowing me this opportunity. Seek out the larger blogs in your space and request to guest post. Don’t be intimidated. They can only say “No”. But if you are persistent and write a quality post, chances are your name and your blog link will be in lights in front of a whole new audience.

5. Outsource
I learned quickly that there are technical aspects of the blogging world of which I may not have the expertise. Instead of trying to do everything, it may behoove you to seek out a consultant who really knows what they are doing. There are many WordPress consultants who charge a reasonable fee if you want to move from one theme to another or if you just need some technical expertise. And when it comes to graphic artists, I found one to create banners for my sites and will use her to create some more images that I hope to use for marketing my online business. Outsourcing may save you a lot of time and aggravation at a nominal cost.

6. Take the time
Time management is always an issue for us blog owners. If you are not a full-time blogger and have a 9-5 job, you must take the time for your blogging. Set aside your lunch hour at your day job and devote it to your blog. Even if you are just writing your blog post in a notepad, you can then transfer it to your WordPress blog at your convenience. Writing the content is the hard part and if you can get it done on your lunch break, you’ll be way ahead of the game.

7. Take back your blog
If your blog has had some type of popularity, chances are there are other blog owners who want to guest post on your blog. This past year I got into a bad habit of publishing too many guest posts on my blog. The problem is that anyone who subscribed to your blog did so because they liked your writing. If you are constantly publishing others’ work then your regular subscribers will become disenchanted. Make it a point to keep the guest posts on your blog to a minimum. Even if you can’t post as many articles, it will be well received by your regular readers.

8. Take a break
This past year I was forced to take a break in my blogging due to a loss in my family. What I actually learned from this experience was that the break helped me revitalize my feelings toward blogging. When I eventually got back into it, I had a whole new sense of exhilaration toward writing. It is definitely worthwhile to take a break in your blogging if you feel you have become stagnant. You may find that it will really help you approach your blog in a new light when you get back into it.

9. Join a forum
I belong to a couple of forums on blogging. What I have found is that it gives me a connection to other bloggers and it also gives me an outlet to ask questions and, more importantly, to get answers. A forum will typically charge a reasonable monthly fee but it will definitely be worth it if you make it a point to participate.

10. Relax
Blogging is supposed to be fun. Hopefully this is the reason you got into blogging in the first place. So, if you can’t post on a regular posting interval, don’t let it consume you. Enjoy the experience and enjoy the process of writing. If you can only post once a month, make it a quality article. Quality over quantity should reign supreme when it comes to posting. Remember, your blog is your brand so don’t diminish what that brand means.

Try to make some positive strides in your blogging in the coming year. Enjoy the process and make the coming year a great one for you and your blog.

About the Author: Bob Bessette writes a blog called TotallyUniqueLife which is geared toward practical solutions, tips, and advice for your life.

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How I Use My Blog as a Fulcrum and You Can Too

Every now and then the “a blog is not a business” meme will come around again. Each time someone will challenge me about it.

Look, I agree. A blog is no more a business than a book is a business if you want to be strict about it. But why does it matter?

Rather than worry about definitions, let’s understand what is really important.

• Can a blog make enough money to provide an income? Yes. Blogging is the source of my income.
• Is blogging a route to earning an income long term? Yes. I have been doing this full time since 2005 and I earned a side income before then.
• Will every blog or blogger make an income? No, many bloggers do not even try, and many fail just as many businesses fail.

But what about that blog versus business thing? It isn’t going to go away so what is it really about?

A blog used for business is a means to an end. The blog is not the business but it does fuel a business.

Just as a really good business can be built around a magazine (just ask Felix Dennis) a successful blog can be the engine behind a decent business like mine if you get a lot of things right even if you make a bunch of mistakes (and I do, constantly).

Most of you will already be aware that my approach is indirect monetization, making money because I blog rather than from it necessarily. I make money more “business to business”, sharing my knowledge and experience to grow an audience of people who know like and trust me. I call it “Authority Blogging“. Darren is pretty much the poster child for the other kind of blog income, direct monetization, but as you will see if you check out his more recent income reports, even though he still makes a significant amount of profit from things like Adsense, his approaches to making an income are becoming more and more indirect.

How my business makes money

If we look at my income from last year it comes down to this list. I don’t share amounts, that’s just something I don’t do, but it has always added up to enough so far and I hope it continues.

1. Programming, site build and web development – These are the things I started out doing in the early 1990′s but I mostly stopped doing in 2o10. I still get called on to do this occasionally but I just don’t have time and there are a lot more cost competitive people out there.
2. Consulting, mentoring and coaching – My face to face consulting ended last summer when I traveled down to work with Darren. I cancelled my appointments and dropped the bombshell that I was moving to Canada right after Blogworld. That could have gone better but I still do remote consulting and coaching. While most friends and productivity gurus prod me to stop “selling my hours”, I love client contact and the grounding in reality this gives me. I would hate to be working in a theoretical world, I need my ideas to be tested in real world projects. Coaching is incredibly rewarding when you see your clients make progress and grow their freedom, lifestyle and businesses.
3. Speaking and training – People are often shocked to find out a shy introvert like me enjoys teaching and speaking. Speaking to large groups does scare me, but I get a kick out of passing on experience and knowledge. Hopefully I can do more workshops and speaking in 2011 now we are starting to settle into our new location. With speaking you can get paid directly or indirectly, just like blogging. Recently I got more serious about not being taken advantage of and making sure I got compensated for expenses, time and opportunity costs associated with all the preparation and travel involved. With training there are workshops where people pay for a ticket and tailored where a company pays for you to come and teach. The only workshop I was involved in for 2010 was the Melbourne Problogger workshop which was great, but wasn’t really intended to be a big money maker. Online events are a growing source of income, though.
4. Digital Products – The way I do my own digital products is labor intensive to set up but provides an almost passive income after the fact. There are also affiliate sales, though I don’t really do a lot of that because I focus on only recommending products that I can stand behind. Increasingly this category is becoming a priority source of income. It was the thing that kept the business running for the latter half of 2010, and has helped a lot in the past with family health crises and other occasions where I couldn’t work for any significant time period. While I have had some lovely clients who have been very understanding, even so you don’t want to have to rely on loyalty and generosity to keep your business afloat. Having an income detached from working hours is a life saver.
5. Writing – In the past writing used to be a major source of my income, but now it is vastly reduced. Partly because of the “selling hours” thing which is always difficult when you don’t have many hours to sell, but also because I pulled out of all the niches that didn’t contribute to my core communities. As well as time spent writing there is also all the time keeping current in all the many subject areas you are writing for. Something has to give. I haven’t written for a print magazine for a long time now, and apart from a chapter for a social media book, the Problogger second edition was my last book in print. I do enjoy writing, I just need to find a way to fit it back into my business workflow.

You will notice I do not list how I make money from ads. I have made money from ads in the past. I’m trying to think if I made any in 2010. It’s not really my approach to online income.

For the first time 2010 saw me not make any money from software or online services. In fact as of December 2010 I don’t currently have any continuity income. Also in 2010 I didn’t have any physical product sales. These are things I aim to fix in 2011.

The WHY behind the HOW

Why I can make money this way is more important than the how in my opinion.

This brings me to the point of this article.

My blog is the source of my income. What I build here with this blog is the trust of an engaged audience and enough authority to offer advice, products and services.

I don’t need massive traffic to earn a living, just to attract the people who want what I can offer and are serious enough to invest in my solutions. This means I don’t spend all my time writing blog posts, I work on my business and blogging is part of that. Go back a few years ago I had the tiniest of lists but I provided a good enough experience and my customers got results so that my business grew.

Blogging has helped me grow my network which has lead to terrific opportunities and joint ventures. I would blog if this was the only benefit I saw.

Rather than pitch, cold-call, write proposals and suchlike, I create content that attracts the right people, I share that content and interact, and I build community and participate in others. Some of these activities are me doing a whole bunch of work for free but I believe you get back what you give. That’s not the whole story though. If you take another look at my income streams you will see a bunch of things I do where I am getting paid to publicise my blog.

With a small amount of effort I can produce big results. My blog is a fulcrum.

The secret is to blog strategically.

Summary

Blogs are not the only answer. Before blogs people still had similar businesses, perhaps built through being an author, working the speaking circuit and newsletters. Blogs allow me to do all that but in addition call on more modern tools and online communities.

Spend some time thinking about how what you do fits into your business. Are your activities attracting customers or are they distractions from what you should be doing.

How does blogging fit into your business? Are you seeing results? Do you have plans for 2011? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments …

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How to Increase Product Profitability After Launch

Many bloggers develop products as a way to monetize their blogging, but one problem that more bloggers are running into is that they become very dependent upon product launches.

A product launch can bring a lot of profitability to your blog, but what happens when things die down after that launch? For many bloggers, the income dries up after a launch, so they’re forced to start thinking about the next one. Once things die down after a spike of traffic from that next product, they’re again forced to starting thinking of another … and another…

Not only can this be an exhausting process (developing products takes a lot of energy), but it can actually give your readers launch fatigue:  they become frustrated with all your promotion and less responsive to your offers.

While there’s nothing wrong with offering multiple products, perhaps it’s worth considering some strategies to maximize the profitability of the products you already have. In this video, I share one tactic that has enabled me to increase sales of products over the long term, rather than just live off the spikes in profit that come after launch. In the video, I also mention an article that explains the topic in detail: it’s How to Extend the Profitability of an Ebook Beyond Launch Week.

See the full-sized video here.

Transcription: Extending the Life of Products After Launch

Today I want to talk today about products. A lot of bloggers have released products, whether they be ebooks, courses, membership sites, software, t-shirts—whatever it might be. A lot of bloggers have been releasing products in 2010. But what I’m seeing is some bloggers getting trapped into this cycle of launching products, and to stay profitable they feel like they need to be launching product after product after product after product. It’s understandable that they do that—and by “they” I mean “we,” really, because this is something that I’ve fallen into and have been challenged about recently.

The reason we do it is that when you launch a product, a good product launch should be a profitable thing, and it will see a spike in your revenue. I’ve posted my income trends over the last six or so months, and you see these months when I launch an ebook, there’s a spike in revenue. It can be an exciting thing, an exhilarating thing, and it can be quite addictive to see the dollars roll in when you launch a product. So if we want to see our income remain high, one of the things that we automatically think of is, well, if I had great income in July, and that spiked my revenue, maybe I need to launch another product to match it.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with launching product after product after product, one of the things I’ve been challenged about lately is actually maximizing the profitability of the products that I already have. It can be easy to get trapped into this mindset of “I need to launch another product to increase my revenue,” but really there are ways of increasing your revenue by better promoting the products you already have. Rather than just seeing a spike in sales, and then seeing it dropping back to normal, what would happen if you could drive sales every day from your ebook?

Now one of the most logical ways to extend the profitability of a product is to do another promotion, and we’re seeing a lot of bloggers do that at the moment: Black Friday sales, where you can get discounts on products, and Christmas sales are coming up. We’ll see a lot of this sort of promotion at this time of year. That’s great—that’s one way of extending the profitability of a product. But again, it just leads to another spike in sales, and then things drop back to normal. So how can you actually increase the volume of sales of your products on a day-to-day basis?

The most obvious way to do this is to simply be promoting it in your sidebar, or in your navigation area, to be promoting the products that you’ve already released. That’s a great way to do it, and if you’re not doing that already, you really should be. Advertise your products where other advertisers would be advertising theirs, or instead of other advertisers advertising theirs. That’s a no-brainer.

Another great way to do it is to go back through the archives of your blog to old posts. Your old posts are still being read by people: people will be arriving at them from Google, they’ll be arriving at them from other blogs that link to them. They’ll be arriving at them from all kinds of places. So if there are relevant topics covered in your archives—they’re relevant to the products that you have—you really should be promoting those products on those particular pages, too.

So if you go to Digital Photography School and you look at a lot of the portrait articles that I’ve got there—free articles on the blog—you also see alongside them promotions of the portrait ebook that we produced. Now it’s a bit painstaking to go back through all your archives like that. You may want to find a way to do it by automatically inserting them into a category.
But even if you do go through them all manually, it’s well worth doing. Because, over the long haul, even if those links just bring you one or two sales extra per day, that can be hundreds over a year, and that can really prove to be a very profitable exercise.

Another way of doing it is to write future posts, and when you write about topics that are relevant to your products, again you should promote those products. Just have that mindset as you’re writing things, is this relevant, is this an opportunity to promote one of my products?

Another thing that some bloggers do is run advertising campaigns. I know of one blogger in particular who’s using Facebook ads and Google AdWords to promote their products. They’re not just relying upon the organic traffic coming into their blog—they actually know that those particular pages on their site where they’re selling products convert very well. They’ve fine-tuned their sales pages, they’ve worked out how much it costs them to get people to view those pages, and they’ve worked out that it can be quite profitable to pay for traffic to come to their site, and then sell their products there.

So there are some of the ways that you can do it. The most profitable thing that I’ve done is to actually be doing what Jeff Walker calls a perpetual promotion, or perpetual launch of products to your email list. If you have an email list where you have maybe a newsletter that goes out on a weekly basis, like I do on Digital Photography School, you can build a promotion into the sequence of emails that people get. Using an autoresponder, you can introduce an email that promotes one of your products.

So when you sign up for my photography newsletter, about nine days into the sequence you get an email thanking you again for signing up for the newsletter, reminding you that you’ve already had one of our weekly email updates, and offering you a 25% discount on one of our ebooks.

Then at the six month mark (so I’ve spaced them right out), six months after you’ve joined our list you get another similar email, just saying again thanks for sticking with us for six months now, we hope you’ve had some value out of our newsletters, and again, as another thank you for subscribing, here’s another discount code that you can use to get a discount on another one of our ebooks.

Those emails have converted really well for us. They’re very low sales-y, they’re not high, you know, high pressure—they’re simply, “here’s an offer, if you’d like to take it, please do, if you don’t want to take it, then no hard feelings at all. It’s just a simple thank you for being a subscriber to our list.”

So every day we get several hundred people sign up to our newsletter list, and so nine days after they do, those several hundred people get an email offering them a product, and then six months later, they get another one. So every day, not only do two or three hundred people get an email, five or six hundred people get an email, with those two products. Then we’ll add another one a few months later, and then there’ll be close to a thousand people getting an email every day, being reminded about our products.

Now you may not have that volume of subscribers subscribing every day, but even if it’s just ten every day, that’s 3,600 people over a year that will be getting those promotions, and that can really boost your sales. And in the long run, you can see more sales from that type of approach than the initial spike that you get from a launch of a product.

Now I’m going to link to a post below this video, which gives you more and will show you how I’ve actually done that. It’s an older post on ProBlogger but it’s really relevant to this topic, and I’ll show you how I have set up those emails in my own sequence. So if you’ve got another way of promoting a product that you might have for the long tail, not just for the spike, but to maximise sales over the long tail, if you’ve got a tactic along those lines I’d love to hear about that in comments below.

Thanks for listening and we’ll see you on ProBlogger.

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5 Reasons Why Comparing Your Blog To An A-List Blogger Can Ruin You

Almost everyone has a blog today and the three main things new bloggers want are massive amounts of traffic, tons of subscribers, and lots of money. Let’s stop right there. These three goals are all possible, but in the beginning stages of blogging, they are unrealistic.

Ultimately all they are at this point in the early blogging stages are goals. Its good to have goals, but try to give yourself more concrete goals with a substantial number. Numbers are great, but you should start by looking at a monthly basis with what you would like to accomplish with your blog. So, what’s the ultimate thing holding you back from setting these goals?

You’re reading a blog put together by an A-List Blogger and you see they have 100,000 subscribers marked with a little chicklet in the sidebar, they broadcast their numbers (30,000 visitors a month) on their site to get you motivated, and tell you how great the blogging lifestyle is. That’s all great, but I hate to break it to you. This isn’t going to be you in the beginning stages. This could one day be you, but its going to take quite some time.

What most A-List Bloggers would fail to tell you is how long it took them to get to this point and the countless hours of work they put in until it became something they could call a career. New bloggers make the mistake of looking at what an A-List blogger does and telling themselves, “oh look, they are making money easily online, I can do it too.” Its not that easy and second of all…STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO THEM. The worst thing you could do is compare yourself to an A-List Blogger. You need to factor in a few things…

1. They have been at this a lot longer than you.
2. Many have been blogging before the internet was the “internet”
3. You need to really put in the effort to get the results – day in and day out.

So, here are 5 reasons why comparing your blog to an A-List Blogger can ruin your blogging efforts.

1. Achieving your goals becomes impossible – You are trying to run before you can walk. If you focus on making a 6 figure income from blogging before you’ve made $10, then you’re never going to reach your potential. You need to think smaller in the beginning. Start off with trying to make side cash from your blog, whatever your goal may be. It might be $10 a week. Try doing that first and building upon it. Maybe a couple of months from now, you will reach $20 a week. Thinking smaller makes the larger numbers more achievable.

2. Putting in the work becomes impossible – A-List Bloggers tend to write a blog post everyday. You shouldn’t get into the mindset that you need to do the same thing. Its better to write 3 high quality posts a week instead of 5 sub par posts. Remember, A-List Bloggers have a larger audience who want that daily content. Chances are with your blog only having a few subscribers in the early stages, those readers aren’t going to be expecting a post everyday. Secondly, its about how you structure the mold of your site. If your subscribers become used to 3 posts a week, that’s what they will expect. Don’t feel the need to do exactly what an A-List Blogger does because you will burn yourself out and will not want to do the work.

3. Fun becomes a thing of the past – Start blogging your passion because its something you enjoy. You hear it all the time and its so true, you should be blogging about something because its an interest of yours and not for the money. The majority of A-List Bloggers started blogging as a hobby because they enjoyed it and they were not doing it for the money. Don’t look at the money as your ultimate reason for blogging. If that’s the only reason you are doing it, then you are going to be disappointed as your blog will have no passion behind it and no money.

4. Become Your Own Blogger - The main point I’ve tried to make clear throughout this post is trying to compare yourself to an A-List Blogger can ruin your blogging efforts. Ultimately, you want to become your own blogger. You want to be a source readers want to go to and trust. Don’t copy an A-List Bloggers style, create your own style and voice – separate yourself from them! Instead of trying to compare yourself with them…network with them; they will talk to you! Pick their brain and learn what has worked for them and implement ideas that sound good to you. Rather than become them, become something that is unique.

5. Frustration becomes a continuous process – Blogging is a frustrating process. Most of the time, the things you are trying to accomplish are not going to go the way you want them to. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s blogging. You need to keep trying new and innovative things with your blog. The minute you stop doing this is when your blog becomes like every other blog out there. A-List Bloggers are always changing things up, but don’t do what they are doing. The things that they are doing may not work for you. Instead, pay attention to their habits and pull together fresh ideas that work for you. If you stick to the same idea and give up when something doesn’t work that’s when blogging becomes too much of a frustration and you sit there wondering how do these top bloggers do it?

Look at it this way, no matter what you do, those A-List Bloggers are always going to be at the top of the food chain. They have been at it a lot longer. You can’t expect to be at their level from the beginning. You can eventually build up to that level or somewhere along those lines, but don’t EVER compare yourself to them. It doesn’t matter what they do, it matters what you do and you decide what defines success. You need to feel accomplished with what your producing and not worry about what another blogger is doing. Believe in what you are producing and people will care.

About the Author: Frank Angelone is the founder of SocialTechZone.com and has been blogging since 2008. Since that time he has provided readers with tips on improving their social media reach as well as offering tech tips for improving computer performance.

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Five Ways to Become a Better Writer and Take Your Blog to the Top

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Does great writing matter in blogging?

It’s a debate that isn’t over—yet. But it’s one where more and more blogging experts are emphasizing that your writing does matter, and that readers are drawn in by a strong, engaging voice.

Great writing will:

• encourage people to share your content
• persuade readers to subscribe for more of the same
• get a powerful response—like comments or sales
• make you look like a big player in the blogosphere, even if you’re just starting out.

You might not think of yourself as a writer, but your writing skills will make or break your blogging career. Here are five ways to improve.

1. Blog regularly

If you talk to any writer, they’ll tell you that you need to write regularly. We bloggers, of course, have an advantage here; there are a bunch of good reasons to produce frequent posts (encouraging search engine traffic, and keeping readers engaged, for instance).

Blogging regularly doesn’t necessarily mean daily. In fact, you’ll almost certainly do better by writing slightly less often and putting more time and effort into your posts: after all, wouldn’t you rather your readers were eagerly looking forward to your next in-depth post, instead of skipping past yet another mediocre 300 word piece that you’ve churned out?

To get into a regular blogging habit, try setting up a blogging calendar. Once you’ve found a comfortable routine, it’s easy to keep going.

2. Learn actively

Just writing regularly won’t get you far. It’s also important to actively learn about writing—to look for areas where you want to improve.

You need to slow down when you write. You need to think about what you’re writing, and how it works to capture reader attention. You need to devote conscious attention to improving your work to make it more effective. More readable. More captivating and compelling.

—James Chartrand, Why You Shouldn’t Write Often, Men with Pens

So how do you give your writing that “conscious attention” which James is talking about?

• Read writing blogs. Ideally, subscribe to them so you get daily tips and inspiration. I’d recommend Daily Writing Tips, Copyblogger, and Men with Pens, for starters.
• Invest in great ebooks. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers is a fantastic resource to have to hand. And if your grammar and spelling could use a bit of work, get 100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid (from Daily Writing Tips).
• Read brilliantly-written blogs, and learn from them. All the writing blogs are great examples, but it’s also a good idea to find blogs in your own niche. If you come across a particularly engaging or well-written post, print it out and go through line-by-line to see how it works.
• Go to a writing class or course. Try your local college, or look online—for instance, Darren and Chris run Creating Killer Content.
• Form a writing circle with blogger friends. You might not be experts, but you’ll probably be able to point out the potential flaws or trouble spots in one another’s work.
• Get one-to-one support from a writing coach. Although this isn’t cheap, it’s an incredibly effective way to get advice specific to you and your writing.

3. Read widely

How much reading do you do outside the blogosphere? When did you last read a book?

Although blogging is a particular form of writing, you can learn a lot from other mediums and styles. You might find a great technique in an advert in a newspaper, for instance, or you could use a brilliant headline that you took from a magazine.

Most books have been through a number of gatekeepers before being published—agents, editors, marketing boards, and so on. Not all books are well written, but many are, and they can give you a sense of what’s possible. Try out some novels (ask friends for recommendations)—novelists have the toughest job of all writers, because they have to convince us to care about imaginary people in made-up situations.

Look for good non-fiction books too—I particularly like the writing style of Richard Wiseman (Quirkology and 59 Seconds) and Chip and Dan Heath (Made to Stick and Switch).

4. Write creatively

As well as reading outside the blogosphere, try writing outside it. Okay, you may not have any ambitions to be the next J.K. Rowling, but by trying out different writing styles, you’ll find yourself becoming more comfortable and fluent in your blogging.

A great place to start is with the Creative Copy Challenge, run on Mondays and Thursdays. You’re given ten words or phrases as prompts, and you have to work them into one short piece of writing on any topic you like.

You could also try these ideas:

• Write short pieces of fiction. These can work incredibly well on blogs, particularly when they offer a different way of looking at your usual topic. A couple of examples are How to Attract The Most Awesome People Into Your Life by Vlad Dolezal and What Hope Really Means by Alex Blackwell.
• Write poetry. I’m really not a good poet (I wrote such awful poetry as a teen that I swore off it for life!), but occasionally I’ll try out poetry because it encourages me to focus on the full value of each word.
• Write the same post or page in several different styles. This is a great exercise if you’re struggling with how best to write something. Your “About” page is a good one to try this with. How about:
  • turning it into a story (not your whole life story, but the story which matters to you)
  • using a question and answer format
  • writing it from an unusual perspective, like Darren’s piece from his son’s point of view.

5. Use feedback

I’ve touched on feedback above, suggesting that great ways to learn are by working with friends or by hiring a coach. But you’re probably already getting plenty of feedback on your writing.

This feedback might come through:

• Tweets (either directly at you, about you, or retweets of what you’ve said): what gets a great response on Twitter? Look at the way you phrased things, and the content, and see if you can figure out why it engaged others.
• Comments on your blog: which posts get the most comments? What do readers seem to particularly like? If you’re experimenting with different styles—maybe writing a short story with a point, like Alex and Vlad did in the examples above—then pay attention to the comments and see what’s resonating with your readers.
• Emails that you receive: these may give you ideas of particular topics to write on (and choosing the right subject for your post is an important part of writing well). In some cases, they may also indicate when your writing has touched someone deeply.

Want to get more in-depth feedback on a particular post? You could ask on Twitter—making it clear that criticism is welcome—or ask on a forum. If I’m working on a high-impact piece of writing, like a sales page, I often ask in the Third Tribe for feedback and suggestions—and I’ve seen lots of other bloggers do the same.

How are you going to take your writing forwards, today?

Ali Luke blogs about writing and the writing life at Aliventures, covering topics like Finding Your Writing Voice. You can

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