How to Create a Membership Program that Rocks

This is a guest post by Mary Jaksch of A-List Blogging Bootcamps.

Many bloggers dream of adding a membership program to their blog. And with good reason. A membership program can create raving fans, will make your blog stand out, and can even create a great revenue stream. But most membership programs fizzle out because the creator made one or more of five critical mistakes in creating and running it.

In the last couple of years I’ve set up two successful membership programs, the A-List Blogger Club, with over 800 paying members, and the free Goodlife ZEN Fitness Challenge, with over 350 members. And I’ve helped quite a few bloggers to plan and set up successful membership programs. I’ve learned what works, and which mistakes to avoid.

Initial questions

Before I share my tips with you, let’s consider a few important questions.

Is creating a membership program really worthwhile?

A membership program is a lot of additional work for a blogger, so it’s important to think carefully before you establish one. The upside is that a membership program boosts a sense of community on your blog, creates goodwill, and can be a great source of income. The downside is that it’s hard work to maintain a membership site. In other words, you have to work your backside off in order to make it a success.

Paid or free?

Whether you want to create a paid or unpaid membership is a decision you need to make before you start. It’s hard to convert a free program to a paid one without losing most of your members. If you are dead keen on starting a free program, make sure you have a plan of how to monetize it in the future. Otherwise, it will become a drag on your time and energy. (You’ll find some suggestions on how to monetize a free program further down).

What’s your offer?

If you want to create a paid membership program, you need to make a crushing offer in order to get people to join. And you need no-brainer benefits in order to get people to stay.

If you start a paid program, just creating a forum isn’t enough. If you offer some kind of training as well, you’re off to a good start. Because people expect information on the Internet to be free, and they don’t want to spend money in order to just bitch and moan about their life on a private forum. But many are willing to pay for new skills.

For example, for membership of the A-list Blogger Club (which Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and I run jointly) we offer free access to any future A-list Blogging Bootcamps, as well as to all the material of past Bootcamps. Members get a monthly interactive masterclass, plus members-only monthly training seminars. All this for an under-the-radar price of $20 a month. Members regularly tell me that we’re giving away too much. True. It’s our intention.

How can you over-deliver?

Take-home tip: offer “too much” for a price that’s “too low”. It’s not enough to have a crushing offer. There are some important pitfalls you need to avoid if you want to create a successful program. I’ve sighed over many new programs that were doomed to fail, just because the blogger made one of the following mistakes.

5 Critical mistakes that can kill your program

Mistake #1: There isn’t enough momentum

You need momentum in order to start a membership program. That is, you need a bunch of people who are ready and eager to join. I reckon that you need at least 50 members in order to make it work. If you have less than that, the program will most likely fizzle out. Nobody likes hanging out in a dead forum where zilch happens.

When Leo and I started the A-List Blogger Club after our first Bootcamp, we started with 45 members. The first month was touch and go because we had barely enough momentum. I used to post on the forum about ten times a day, just to keep the thing alive. Then, as soon as we hit over 100 subscribers, the forum burst into life.

When I created the Fitness Challenge on Goodlife ZEN, Leo Babauta suggested creating a forum so that members could report how they exercise each day. Over one hundred readers had expressed that they wanted to join the Fitness Challenge in comments on my introductory post. So, from day one, I had over 100 members in the program. Now numbers have swelled to over 350 and the forum is a lively place.

Make sure you have at least 50 people who will start your program from day one.

Mistake #2: You start because you think it’s a good idea.

Many bloggers tell me that they want to start a membership program. I applaud the idea in principle. But warn that it’s not you, the blogger, who needs to think it’s a good idea. Your readers or participants need to clamor for an ongoing program. My suggestion is to create something on your blog that creates a buzz – and only then start a program.

Let me give you an example: Project 333—which was started by Courtney Carver of Be More With Less—is the kind of project that’s begging for a membership program. The project is about creating a wardrobe with only 33 items that you can live, work and play in for three months. The project has had a huge buzz on Facebook, and Courtney is now developing the project on her blog. I see that her latest post about the project has over 100 comments. That’s a sure sign of enough momentum for starting a membership program.

Mistake #3: Your program lacks clear benefits.

You need to give prospective members a good reason to join. I’ve seen a lot of limp programs especially in the self-development field that offer this kind of “benefit”: This program is a place where you can share your journey of development. Boring, right?

What’s important here is to think about what aspirations members share. Common aspirations are the glue that holds members together. For example, fans of Project 333 want to experience practical minimalism, the participants of the Goodlife ZEN Fitness Challenge want to get and stay fit, and the members of the A-List Blogger Club want to become better bloggers.

Once you’ve got the handle on the common aspiration, it’s easy to formulate clear benefits. Just make sure you don’t use what copywriter Clayton Makepeace calls “faux benefits”, that is, features masquerading as benefits.

Mistake #4: You let spammers and ranters into your forum

People who join a membership program get hacked off if they read spam comments in the forum. To scan the forum for spam is one of the necessary tasks of maintaining a good program. Make sure that only registered forum users can post. And assemble a group of moderators to help you with the task of keeping your forum clear of spam and rants.

Set the culture of the forum by responding in a friendly, supportive way to comments. Create guidelines and make sure members adhere to them. If you get nasty people in your program, don’t hesitate to give them a warning, and block them if they continue to flaunt your guidelines.

Mistake #5: You pluck a name out of thin air.

I’m often amazed at the names bloggers come up with for their programs. Take a name like “Cut Your Coat”. You might think that “Cut Your Coat” is a dress-making program. Wrong. It’s about self-development—but who would have thought that?

Make sure that the name of your program clearly states what it’s about. The purpose of the program needs to be self-evident. If you need to explain the name, bin it immediately.

How to monetize a membership program

The best way to monetize a free program is to create digital products that are tailor-made for your ‘captive’ audience. For example, I’m in the process of creating ebooks and podcasts about fitness and motivation for the Fitness Challenge at Goodlife ZEN. The key is to create products that can help your members to participate successfully in the program.

If you run a paid membership program, you can create courses or digital products to sell to your members. Survey your members to find out which relevant skills they would like to develop.

How to set up a membership program

Setting up a free membership program is easy. All you need to do is to add a forum to your blog. I use the free WordPress plugin Simple:Press. It may not the best forum software, but it’s easy to install, and it preserves the appearance and branding of your blog.

If you want to set up a paid membership site, I suggest using the WordPress plugin Wishlist Member. It’s a premium plugin and costs $97—but it’s worth it. Wishlist can be adapted to many different program structures. And it’s easy to integrate with payment processors, such as Paypal or 1Shopping Cart, or with email responder services, such as AWeber, or Mailchimp.

So should you create a membership program right away?

Whatever your plans for a membership program may be, don’t be in a hurry to create it—especially if it’s going to be free. Wait until you have enough momentum, as well as a real reason for setting up a program. Then think carefully about the structure you are aiming for. You need to know exactly what you want to offer, and how you are going to deliver it in your program.

Don’t settle for mediocre. Instead, create something of real value. Most of all, be insanely useful. Create something that can change lives.

Over to you—if you’ve run a membership program, what are your tips?

Mary Jaksch has created the Great Fitness Challenge on her blog Goodlife ZEN. She is passionate about blogging and is co-founder of the A-List Blogger Club.

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How Your Blog Can Score You Free Travel

This guest post is written by Anthony from The Travel Tart.

When I first started my travel website in 2009, I just wanted to get my travel writing out there, because I was frustrated with the way traditional media worked. Little did I know that having an online presence would lead to opportunities for press trips to all corners of the globe, and I did this from scratch!

In 2010 alone, I went on press trips to Fiji, the United Kingdom and South Africa. I have also recently become partners with a major adventure travel company that will provide more opportunities for press trips in the coming year.

When I talk about press trips, I mean trips where all expenses such as flights, meals, accommodation, and activities are covered. Considering I only started my blog in 2009 with virtually zero knowledge of how the Internet worked, that’s pretty good!

Would you like to use your travel blog to travel the world? This is what I’ve learned from my experiences.

Blogging has advantages over traditional media

Traditional media such as newspapers, radio, and television have a scattergun approach: they broadcast all sorts of information to everyone, but this information isn’t relevant or interesting to all of these eyeballs.

However, being a blogger with an online presence means that one can use multimedia such as writing, photography and video for the website. These media can be used to portray the same story in different ways.

The blog media offer numerous benefits over traditional media:

• Speed: bloggers can post something about an experience on the day, and start attracting traffic immediately. Traditional media people have to write the story, submit it to an editor, wait for approval, and then have the piece published—a process that can often take weeks or even months
• Using photography and video footage can show an experience, instead of telling it. Newspapers and magazines can’t do this. For example, try writing about an experience such as bungee jumping off a perfectly stable rock ledge for a 70 metre freefall. This video communicates the experience much more effectively.
• You can create multiple articles from one trip. I normally do a blogging campaign for these press trips by producing numerous posts, with each one focusing on something different from the trip. The number of posts per trip varies depending on what I experience. As an example, I’ve created 15-20 posts for a two-week press trip, and scheduled these to publish over time.
• The biggest benefit of being a blogger is that you can attract targeted, long-term Internet traffic that has an indefinite shelf life. For example, if someone is Googling “South African Adventure Travel”, you can be sure they’re specifically looking for information on that topic. Also, because people are specifically searching keywords via search engines, this means the traffic consists of people who are interested in these topics, and are therefore more likely to take notice of the information you provide. It’s laser-focusing for your content!

Now I’m going to assume you already have a travel-related blog, or a blog with a strong focus, so I’m not going to tell you how to write travel posts. Instead, I want to explain the techniques I’ve used to build my profile as a travel blogger with the organizations I’ve approached and had sponsor my trips.

Get started

I sell the above benefits of having an online presence, and promote what I can do for a company or tourist commission—and back it up with evidence.

For example, I’ve turned up to travel exhibitions in my town because there are usually tourism commission and other travel industry stands there. Then I start talking to someone at the stand, as they’re usually a public relations employee. This is how I scored one of my press trips.

Also, I use business cards and hand them out as they’re relatively cheap, and I’ve found they’re a great icebreaker.

On the press trip itself

I’ve often been the only travel blogger for most of the press trips I’ve been on—and that means I can be a writer, photographer, and video production person all at the same time!

However, the trips provide exposure to other travel-related contacts, which expands my network and opens up more opportunities—ironically—in traditional media! I’ve also received great feedback from these guys about how video can capture a travel experience so well.

Be proactive and follow up

I have followed up all of these press trips with a report that details the Internet traffic my reports have attracted, video views achieved, and Google Keyword positions for the organization that paid for my trip. Along with this information I include traffic strategies the organization might like to consider, such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon etc.), and so on. This all builds up a body of evidence for my clients, and an even strong track record for me.

Your blog is your advantage

Having an online presence can give you a number of huge advantages over traditional media.

I feel that the biggest advantage is that the Internet is quantifiable. You can provide clients or trip sponsors with traffic statistics, information on where traffic comes from, and even data on how long visitors stay on your site.

Getting on the first press trip is the hardest. But if you can demonstrate a track record of attracting targeted Internet traffic beforehand, your chances of scoring that first one will be much higher. And once you have that track record, you’ll be invited on more press trips! This is how your blog can create opportunities that lead to free travel.

If you’ve managed to score free travel thanks to your blog, what other tips can you add?

Anthony writes about the funny, offbeat and downright weird aspects of world travel today. For more information, you can visit his Facebook Page or

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How to Instantly Kill Laziness and Boost Blogging Productivity

Something terrible happened.

I got lazy and stopped attending to my daily writing and reading duties as an online entrepreneur.

On one of my blogs I haven’t written a single post since December 2nd.

To say I’ve dropped the ball is a massive understatement.

What the hell do you do when you have a few sites going that have tons of potential and are even gaining momentum, but suddenly, a mad scientist injects you with the lazy bug?

Do you just sit there and watch it all go down?

If you want to ensure your online properties have any hope for the future you can’t allow yourself to be sucked down the whirlpool of complacency and indifference. Doing so is guaranteed to make anything you’ve worked hard on go absolutely nowhere.

But that’s NOT what we’re in the game for, right? We’re not doing this for our health. Let’s be honest here, we’re writing post after post, reading books and blogs and all the rest of it so that we can gains tons of readers and make the bloody mula.

You with me on this?

Laziness can hit anyone

We may enjoy what we do. But that’s not enough. Let me tell you something… the lazy bug can infect any and all people regardless of passion. And if you let it, it can destroy your dreams.

I wish I could say this laziness and complacency that overcame me was a result of my busy schedule, but the reality is, it was due to my lack of will.

To be perfectly honest, I hit rock bottom. Not on drugs or alcohol mind you. But on incessantly watching YouTube videos, reading tweets, and in general, wasting time like my life depended on it.

Hopefully you’ll never get as bad as I was. And luckily there’s a technique that can get you out of laziness and into productivity even if you haven’t reached rock bottom.

Overcome resistance to work with this technique

The solution to inertia is putting yourself in jail.

Not the kind of jail you go to when you steal a Twix bar from the local 7-Eleven, of course.

What I’m talking about is called the ‘jail of productivity’. This jail, my friend, will guarantee that you get serious work done.

And the best part is, it won’t let you out until you’ve actually accomplished something.

All you need to do to put yourself in the jail of productivity is simply set a timer and work non-stop until it sounds. This technique permits no excuses and leaves you with nothing in its wake except hardcore productivity.

How setting a timer saved me from laziness

Realizing I was letting days go by without getting much work done, I committed myself to setting a timer every day and working non-stop until it sounded.

By doing the above, I eliminated all outs available to me. I couldn’t watch another YouTube video, I was on the clock! I couldn’t check twitter; that’s not allowed while the timer’s running.

Using a timer took me from rock bottom laziness to becoming a diligent worker.

I began my laziness recovery program with setting a timer and reading important blogs for 20 minutes each day and writing 30 minutes each day. The timer guaranteed I got 50 minutes of focused work in every day. That may seem small to you, but it’s a testimony that I’m on my way to full and complete recovery from my laziness addiction.

Why setting a timer is the best way to get you to work

If you’re in the planning stage of getting to work, this can last for hours. “Preparation” can consist of watching YouTube videos, reading the news, eating, TV, almost anything.

But we all know the truth… the “preparation stage” to getting to work is nothing more than procrastination disguised as necessity.

Setting a timer, on the other hand, kills preparation. Setting a timer gets you right to work!

It also makes the work you do concrete. If you merely say you’re going to work on something, you have no idea how much time you’ll be investing into working. When work time is undertermined, your mind gets discouraged because it begins wondering how long and dreadful it’ll end up being which leads to procrastination.

But when you set a timer, committed to working for an allotted time, you’ve created a time frame that’s absolutely concrete. There’s a glorious light at the end of the tunnel which continuously entices you toward completion of your goal.

Where to find an effective online timer

I’ve actually created an online timer called Tick Tock Timer.

It’s specifically designed to kill your procrastination and get you to work without all the nonsense.

I know it’s ironic that the very creator of a tool to beat procrastination fell into a whirlpool of non-productivity.

But it just goes to show you, any tool at your disposal, no matter how effective, is useless when you’re not using it.

If you’ve contracted the lazy bug, putting yourself in the jail of productivity (setting a timer) just might be the solution.

Give it a try.

About the Author: Bamboo Forest created Tick Tock Timer, an online timer that helps you stop procrastinating, get to work, and stay focused.

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Effective Free Link Building Strategies

Backlinks are one of the most important factors to consider when you are trying to get a good rank in search engines for your blog or website. Backlinks are often called Seo fuel and they are the most important off site optimization methods. In this article I will tell you some effective methods which can be used to build backlinks fast and easy.

Content

If you have unique and quality content then people will probably link to you. If you are looking for websites related to Technology News, the first web site that probably comes into our mind is Techcrunch. Almost every Tech websites links to Techcrunch why is that? The answer is simple, because Techcrunch delivers quality and unique content. The TechCrunch website has a massive amount of content published on an hourly and daily basis.

Commenting

Leaving comments on relevant blogs could get few backlinks but don’t leave spammy comments or the moderator will delete it and you will be banned from leaving future comments. Instead leave thoughtful and meaningful comment. Not only will this contribute to the overall blog experience, but it will also help in getting people to read your comment, thus encouraging them to visit your site.

There is also a wordpress plugin called comment luv which automatically places a link to the commentators last blog post. Many blogs are currently using this plugin to increase comment activity. All you have to do is look for blogs with comment luv plugin and leave meaningful comments. Personally I don’t use this method because it’s very time taking and instead I invest time in making quality content for my guest posts.

Link Exchange

Exchanging links is one of the most common methods to gain backlinks. While link exchanges are beneficial, search engines pay more attention to one way links. Another alternative is to do a three way link exchange which is more beneficial and the most importantly search engine gives more importance to it rather then a reciprocal link.

A Word on Do follow

If a blog has a “no follow” attribute, it means that search engines will not follow the links off this individual site, which means that even if you manage to get backlinks from a website/blog, you won’t receive any link juice. Search for the websites with Do follow attribute and ask them for a link exchange instead. There is a Firefox Addon called Do follow 1.1 which tells you what links are Do Follow or no Follow.

Buying Links

If you are too busy to invest the necessary time and effort to build quality backlinks, there are many services out there that can provide the service for a price. One of the popular place to buy backlinks is Text Link Ads where you can find tons of websites selling links, though these types of methods are usually frowned upon by search engines.

Guest Posts

Writing guest posts on website and blogs can gain a lot of quality backlinks, and most importantly, they are free. All you need to do is to find a good website related to your niche and send a quality guest post. Some blogs offer a single backlink if their page rank is very high and while other blogs with lower page rank may offer two or more backlinks. If you have not written any guest posts as of yet, and are writing first time I suggest you go after smaller blogs rather than the larger blogs because they may be more accepting of your post. However, in the end it comes down to the quality of your guest post content.

Article Marketing

There is no doubt that article marketing is one of the most effective ways to get one way backlinks. Article marketing is just like a free advertisement that’s lasts for life time. The easiest way to get started is by submitting original content to article marketing directories, which I have listed below. Many of these article directories have very high page rank and alexa rankings, which may cause your articles to rank very high in the search results.

EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleDashboard.com
SearchWarp.com
ArticlesBase.com
iSnare.com
selfGrowth.com
Buzzle.com
ArticleCity.com
IdeaMarketers.com
ArticleAlley.com
Web-Source.net
SelfSEO.com

Top Commenter

There are lots of blogs using the Top Commentator widget and if you are one of the top commentators you will get a backlink from all pages on the blog, or how many pages are displaying the widget. High PR websites such as Quicksprout.com and Johnchow.com also use these kinds of widgets.

What are your preferred methods for free link building? Please leave a comment with your resources, comments and experience.

This guest post was written by Rafay Baloch, an Ethical hacker, Web entrepreneur and Internet marketer blogs at Techlotips and also the author of the book A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking.

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8 Tips To Launch Successful Challenges at Your Blog

This guest post is by Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog.

Earlier this year, I launched a challenge called 30 Days To Live a Better Life (30DLBL) on my blog. This is a 30-day challenge where participants complete one task a day, for 30 days in the month, that will help them live a better life. When I created 30DLBL, it was breath of fresh air—I’d not seen any such personal development challenges around at the time, and it was fun to do something different rather than just write articles every week. I was very excited about my challenge, and thought I’d probably get about 100 people joining in, or 200 people max.

I was proven wrong. The minute the post went live, there were already a handful of participants. By the end of the day, there were over 100 participants. The number slowly exploded to 200, 300, 500, 800 … to over 1,200 excited participants all over the world, all ready to transform their lives in the next 30 days! Not only that, but people were tweeting about 30DLBL, blogging about it, sharing it on Facebook, and telling all their friends about it. Some readers even specially created new blogs just to blog about their 30DLBL experience. Needless to say, the response totally blew me away!

The 30-day challenge was extremely successful, and many participants’ lives changed in unimaginable ways that month. Many of them rediscovered themselves on a whole new level, set new goals, and created new plans for their future. It was so successful that I later launched a guidebook and a workbook on the upgraded version of 30DLBL. The book sold over 200 copies in less than two weeks of launch, and last month I did a second run of the challenge, with many more runs planned in the future.

Some bloggers have also been inspired by the success of 30DLBL and are launching their own 30/31-day challenges, and it’s great to see them getting down to engage their communities.

Why run a challenge?

First off, you might wonder, why run a challenge? There are four key reasons:

1. Create a breath of fresh air: At that time I launched the challenge, I’d already been running The Personal Excellence Blog for about 1.5 years. After 1.5 years of writing article after article, I wanted to have a 30-day challenge as a breath of fresh air, as Darren did with his challenge, 31 Days To Build a Better Blog. The challenge was designed to complement what I write at the site. It was very much welcomed by the readers.
2. Help readers apply what you teach: Even while we may be writing down the most important insights in our articles, it’s a whole different thing altogether to apply that advice to real life. Some readers may not fully comprehend what you’re writing, while some readers may not know how to apply your insights. A challenge helps them take action.
3. Engage readers: A challenge lets readers become involved. It makes them feel like they’re a part of your site. Launching 30DLBL helped me get up close and personal with my readers in a completely new way. At the end of the 30 days, I’d developed a very close bond with many of my readers.
4. Form a community: With the launch of 30DLBL, I saw the first signs of a true community forming around my blog—a community where readers interact with each other, care for one another, and really help each other grow. This made me very excited about what’s ahead.

Eight tips for running a successful challenge

Here, I’ll share with you eight tips to help you run a successful challenge on your blog.

1. Evaluate the role of a challenge in your blog

Some bloggers may prefer to write articles, which is totally fine. Challenges are not necessarily for everyone. Figure out whether you do want to run challenges as part of your blog, and how regularly you want to do them. It can be a once-in-a-while project—for example, Darren runs 31DBBB at Problogger about once every few years. Or it can be a regular affair, which is what I’m planning for my blog.

I love interacting with my readers, getting up close and personal with them, and growing side-by-side with them, and I see a challenge as the perfect platform for me to know them better. Last month I finished a second run of 30DLBL with great success, and it’s now part of my plan to have three 30DLBL challenges every year. On the other hand, I launched a new 21 Days To a Healthier Me challenge in January ’11, where people all around the world get together to live a healthier life for 21 days. I’m planning more new challenges in the months ahead, to get more readers to join in and participate. Through these challenges, I’ve gotten to know my readers on a much personal level than I had previously with just writing articles.

2. Ensure you have a sizable reader base

Before you kick off a challenge, you’ve to ensure that you have a sizable reader base. The last thing you want to do is to have a challenge that no one’s participating in! Bear in mind that there’ll always be dropouts throughout the challenge, so if you have 100 people signing up, you might very well end up with only ten people towards the last week, and that will pull down the momentum. So the more participants you can get starting the challenge on Day 1, the better.

When I kicked off 30DLBL, I had almost 10,000 subscribers. I believe you’re good to go if you have at least 5,000 active subscribers, though I’ve seen people launch challenges with only 500 subscribers and they went well. In those cases,  the outreach was smaller by comparison, and the community, while small, was tight-knit.

3. Offer a tangible, compelling benefit

Your challenge should have a tangible, compelling benefit that draws people to participate. Since people have to dedicate time to the challenge, the benefit has to be something attractive. For 30DLBL, the benefit is about living a better life, and that’s something which was very compelling to many. After all, as growth-oriented people, we’re always looking for ways to grow and improve our lives.

Your challenge should be relevant to the topic of your site. It’s going to be quite strange if your blog’s about cooking and you run a challenge that’s on making money! Since I run a personal development blog, 30DLBL was a great complement to what I’d been writing at the blog. It was a great way to reinforce the ideas and concepts I’ve been sharing since the blog started.

Besides it being a direct complement, your benefit can be a subset of your site’s offering. Think about what your site is about, then brainstorm on the various sub categories that fall under the theme of your site. Are there any noteworthy topics worth starting a challenge on? The Live a Healthier Life in 21 Days challenge I just ran this month has been a great success. While some may think that health and personal development are unrelated, it works as healthy living is part of living a better life. People who are interested in personal development are the same people who want to pay attention to their health and fitness too.

4. Allow enough time for people to join

I posted the announcement post for 30DLBL five days before it started, which provided enough lead time for people to find out about the challenge, share with their friends, and join in. At the same time, I think it would have been better if I posted it earlier. Overall, one week should be more than enough time for you to promote the challenge and spread the word.

5. Set a proper duration: 30 days, 21 days—whatever suits

It’s up to you to design your challenge the way you want. I recommend making it a daily challenge, since it’ll be easier to follow. Duration-wise, I recommend 30 or 31 days (where participants can dedicate a whole month to it), or 21 days if you think 30 days is too long. 30DLBL was, of course, 30 days long, whereas my healthy living challenge was 21 days long. Anything longer than one month will be too long—participants will be likely to lose steam before it finishes.

6. Create channels for participants to engage with one another

A successful challenge is one that allows the participants to interact with one another—not just to interact with you. Establish channels for them to engage with one another. With 30DLBL, I initiated a twitter hashtag of #30DLBL, so that participants can connect with one another. I also created a new forum, with a sub-forum dedicated to the challenge so readers could have their own space to interact with one another. This approach worked very well. Participants used these platforms to give each other support and encouragement, and at the end of the process, many new friendships and bonds had been formed. Many of them added each other on Facebook afterward, and stayed in touch through the forums and Facebook.

7. Make your challenge tasks easy to follow

If you make your challenge tasks daily (which I recommend), you want to make them easy to follow. Don’t set tasks which take a week to complete. If your challenge is too tough, your readers may get discouraged and give up mid-way. This will defeat the whole purpose of the challenge to begin with! Make the tasks easy to process—break them up into mini-steps and spell everything out in layman’s terms.

For example, when I first ran 30DLBL, there were several tasks that made the participants feel discouraged, because they couldn’t finish them on time. Subsequently, they kept putting off the tasks and eventually disappeared off the radar. Hence, in my upgraded version of 30DLBL, I revised the tasks such that they could be completed in 30 minutes to one hour, if the person made an effort to do so.

8. Be in tune with your participants’ needs

Your participants are the backbone of your challenge, so stay in tune with their progress every step of the way. Observe what’s happening at ground level. If there’s something going awry, step in to help out. Throughout 30DLBL, my site received over a thousand comments from readers. I read through as many comments as I could and replied to all the questions that they asked. I also made a point of responding to as many participant comments as possible, so that they would be encouraged to share more. This created a tightly-knit community around my challenge.

I also noticed after four or five days in the challenge, some participants were falling behind. Hence, I introduced a three-day break after the first week, so the participants who were falling behind could catch up. It was very much welcomed and many participants were able to regroup themselves and get back into the challenge after that.

Moving forward

Challenges can be resource-intensive, but they definitely pay off. Your readers become more engaged, you help to make a positive difference in their lives, and you can build a community for your site. It’s up to you whether you want to create one, and what you want it to be about.

For me, running 30DLBL has been an extremely rewarding experience, and it’s not going to end there. I’ve planned a series of new challenges which I look forward to completing with my readers. Have you ever run, or considered creating, a challenge for your blog? Tell us about it in the comments.

Celestine writes at The Personal Excellence Blog on how to achieve excellence and live your best life. Check out the life changing 30DLBL program and live a better life in the next 30 days. Get free ebooks 101 Things To Do Before You Die and 300 Inspiring Quotes of All Time now by signing up for her free newsletter.

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The Sure-Fire Approach to Monetizing a Blog

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It can be frustrating building a blog for months only to discover it is almost impossible to monetize it when you try to do so. Many people start a blog because they want to make money from it and it won’t be a good thing to see all their efforts wasted.

As far as monetizing a blog is concerned I made a lot of mistakes I’m not proud of and my main reason for writing this article is to make sure those who read this article don’t make the same mistake. This article will be giving you some tips to ensure you get the best from monetizing your blog.

Decide Your Approach From The Onset

One great debate in the blogosphere is that of monetizing a blog. A lot of people have argued that monetizing from the beginning is the best approach while others believe it is not. When I started blogging I followed the monetize later approach but I discovered it wasn’t the best for me.

Don’t delay monetizing your blog because you’re unsure it is the best for you but sacrifice your time to see what will be better for you – If you’re confused you might want to take a look at some top, average, and new blogs in your niche and see which approach they follow. If you can’t find out what you need you can contact their owners to get more details from them.

A great way to decide which approach is better for you is by having a crystal clear understanding of why you’re blogging. If your number 1 reason for blogging is to make money from your blog you will get the best result by monetizing from day one because you will be able to learn a lot of things along the way and you will also be able to tweak your earning system in a way that will guarantee you stable results over time.

Know Your Audience

A major factor that influence your monetizing decision and the results you get is your audience. The way you will monetize a blog that talks about making money online and the approach you will follow will be completely different from that of a blog that helps you improve your English language. If you take a look at the make money blogging audience you will notice that they are used to clicking ads, paying for services and downloading digital products from almost any blogger but if you take a look at the English learning audience you will notice that they don’t just buy anything but are highly selective about what they buy; first, they are not used to buying digital products and secondly they don’t just buy from anybody but from someone they so much trust and respect. Following the “monetize first” approach will be highly effective in the make money blogging niche while following the “monetize later” approach will be the best option in the English learning niche.

Take Action

This is the problem faced by a lot of bloggers, especially those following the monetize later approach. I followed the monetize later approach as a blogger and my major problem was taking action, I will be telling myself that I want to create a services page to start monetizing my blog, I want to create a resources page etc. but the truth is that I never got started with anything. This continued for months and I never knew how much I was missing, I was able to force myself to take action and it end up bringing results I could never imagine. There is nothing much better than taking action, no matter what decision you take!

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Don’t Be Paralyzed By Media Consumption in 2011

“I will be a producer, not a consumer.”

Late last year a friend shared this resolution on Facebook. It caught my attention as being a great resolution that I think every entrepreneurial blogger could do well to have.

Have you ever been paralyzed by consumption?

As I write this post, it’s 11.49 a.m. on Monday morning.

This morning, I returned to my computer after a weekend off with the intention of jumping into some solid blogging. My plan was to start early (8.00 a.m.) and whip out at least five posts this morning and to start work on a report that I’ve been planning to write in the afternoon.

That was the plan, anyway…

The reality is that I’ve been quite distracted. It started on Twitter (I should never switch on Tweet Deck that early in the day!) with a link that a friend sent me to read. That link led me to another, and another.

This morning I must have read 20 articles and blog posts, scanned 100 or so feeds in my feed reader, watched ten videos, spent a good hour scanning my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook feeds, spent another 30 or so minutes in forums, tested out a new plugin, and … well, you get the picture.

Everything I did was related to blogging and my business. It was all interesting. Some of it was even helpful, and gave me ideas I may not have otherwise had.

However, until right now, I’ve not actually produced anything at all today. This morning has been about consumption rather than production.

Is consumption evil?

Don’t get me wrong—there are times when you need to consume.

We all know that our bodies don’t function properly if we don’t eat well. Cars don’t run well without consuming petrol. Consumption is necessary.

We all need to consume to survive in a physical sense. In the same way, as bloggers we need times when we take in the ideas of others, and are informed by what others are saying—time when we soak in the latest trends and information in our industry.

There are also times where we just need to switch off from work, and consuming something fun and mindless can be good for us, too (anyone for Angry Birds?).

However, many people live in consumption mode to the point where they don’t produce anything.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve chatted with bloggers who have the following problems:

• not enough time to post, but plenty of time to aimlessly surf the web for fun
• too many distractions, whether they be Angry Birds, Farmville, Twitter, Youtube, or something else
• feeling the need to read every other blog in their niche for fear of missing an important development.

I suspect a “consumption” mentality is one of the reasons that many of us get to the end of a year and wonder why we didn’t achieve any of the grand plans that we had.

Consume to produce

Let’s return to the example of our bodies. The main reason we consume food is to gain energy—to take action. We eat so that we’re fueled to do.

The danger with food arises when all we do is eat and eat, and we don’t actually burn off the energy the food gives us. Consumption without some kind of action to burn off what we consume leads to obesity. And my experience is that the same advice applies to running an online business.

There’s nothing wrong with consuming what the Web has to offer, but take the approach of consuming to energize your own action and production and you’ll be in a much healthier space than if you’re simply consuming for the sake of it.

I resolve to be a producer, not a consumer, in 2011

As we enter into a new year, I wonder if perhaps we need to do something concrete together to get us on a path to production in 2011.

I don’t want to get to the end of this year and look back on the year as being one where I read a lot of articles, played a lot of games, and read and made a lot of Tweets…

I want to get to the end of 2011 and be proud of the fact that I’ve:

• created things that mattered to myself and others
• inspired others to better themselves
• added to conversations instead of watching others talk
• made the world a better place in one way or another.

I resolve to be a producer, not a consumer, in 2011. How about you?

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