Will You Build or Buy Your New Blog?

This guest post is by Andrew Knibbe of Flippa.

When most of us think of blogging, we think about starting from the ground up. Having researched a niche, we search for a good domain, choose a blogging platform, apply a template, and prepare our first post…

But there are other options for the beginning blogger. One of the least talked about, and most often overlooked, is to buy an existing blog.

This post isn’t intended as a prescriptive how-to: what I’d like to do is introduce the idea of buying a blog, and talk about the key considerations that bloggers and would-be bloggers might address before they go down this path.

Why buy a blog?

There are plenty of reasons why you’d consider buying an existing blog:

• it will already have been populated with content
• if it’s a known blog with valuable information, it’ll have attracted backlinks, and should have search engine presence
• it may come with a ready-made audience—hopefully, a loyal one
• it may have a great domain name and/or a strong unique brand
• it may already be generating an income
• it’s all set up: rather than starting from scratch, you can simply tweak or amend the blog’s layout and design to suit your needs.

The thing to realize about buying a blog is that you’re unlikely to find a blog that perfectly suits all your needs from the get-go. The blogs you consider probably won’t offer you all of the benefits listed above, and they may offer these advantages to varying degrees.

In short: buying a blog isn’t an instant solution for those who want to start a blog, but if you choose the blog well, it can offer a number of advantages over starting a new blog from scratch.

Blog-buying pitfalls

Like any market, the blog property market has a range of pitfalls for the beginner, and buying a new blog as a way to get a head-start on a new blogging niche isn’t for everyone.

Obviously the great appeal of building your own blog from the ground-up is that it costs you nothing but time. Buying a blog, on the other hand, costs money.

The paradox here is, of course, that your time is money. If you can afford to buy a blog, you may reduce the time it takes you to reach a point where you’ve attracted a loyal readership—you may be able to monetize your blog much sooner than you would if you were starting your won blog. Basically, if you buy a good blog, you can minimize the leg-work, and fast-track your operation.

You will need some kind of budget to buy a blog. You’ll also need to feel comfortable that the blog you’re buying lives up to the seller’s description of it.

The person who owns the blog may mis-represent any of the information they give you about the blog, from its age and search rank, to its traffic levels and profit potential. You want to be able to trust the person you’re buying the blog from, and that you believe the information they’re giving you—including the reason why they’re selling.

Bloggers may sell a blog that they’ve lost interest in, or a blog that doesn’t align well with their future goals or direction. Perhaps other offline interests—family, work, and so on—have left them with no time to maintain their blog. Or perhaps they underestimated the time it takes to build it up a blog, and now they want to offload what they see as a burden to someone with a real passion for the niche.

Each of these reasons has different implications for you as a buyer, and for the blog you’re buying, so it’s important to get as many facts as you can.

Buying a blog doesn’t just take money: it takes research and care. You’re making an investment in your future by buying a blog, so you want to ensure that the choices you make are well-informed and wise.

Who should buy a blog?

Buying a blog may have greater appeal for those who have some experience in blogging, and know that they have the stamina and dedication to build the blog they buy into something amazing.

If you’ve never blogged before, you may find yourself unable to sustain blogging over a period of time, and that’s ad additional risk you’ll need to take into account if you’re investing money in a blog.

That said, blogs can be purchased for very reasonable prices in online marketplaces, though the less expensive options are unlikely to have established audiences or much unique content. If that’s the kind of thing you want to focus your attention on (rather than choosing blog templates, functionality, and so on), then paying a couple of hundred dollars for a fledgling blog with a good domain mightn’t be a bad idea.

Buying a blog may seem most logical for those who are looking to monetize their site itself, but bloggers who want to establish their credentials and authority in a particular field, engage with a certain audience, or develop their offline earnings potential with the support of good online representation may also consider buying a blog.

What you’re really looking for when you spend money on a blog is an opportunity. More experienced bloggers may be able to spot opportunities more easily, but that doesn’t mean beginning bloggers can’t see, or make the most of, opportunities themselves. Imagine if ProBlogger was up for sale—what would you change to make it better or more profitable? A site that’s underdeveloped has potential to be better.

If you can spot that potential—perhaps the site could do with some keyword optimization, regular well-written posts, and some promotion through social media as well as more niche networks—you might be able to take the good foundations that someone else has put in place and build on them to make something great.

Have you ever bought a blog? Have you considered it? What are your feelings about buying a blog?

Andrew Knibbe is the Marketing Manager at Flippa, the #1 marketplace for buying and selling websites. He blogs at the Flippa blog. Follow him @flippa.

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Influence, Cash, or Hobby: Which Blogging Choice Is Right for You?

This guest post is by Brandon Connell of brandonconnell.com

When I first started a blog that I took seriously, it was to promote an ebook that I had published on Amazon’s Digital Text platform. Initially, I wanted the blog to be my “author’s headquarters,” but soon after, I realized what I really wanted to do with my blog. It was far from my initial goal, and I wish I’d made the right decision from the beginning, rather than reversing course.

The problems

Changing your blogging type after you start the blog causes problems. Those problems include, but are not limited to:

• losing readers and subscribers that had expectations
• confusing the search engines due to content changes
• wasting time marketing your blog on the wrong sites.

Readers walk

When you change your blog style or niche, it’s common sense that your readers will most likely walk. Think about it. They came to your blog because they came across some content that intrigued them. Now that you’ve decided to change your content, what reason do they have to stick around?

It’s important to choose your blog style ahead of time, and think about it carefully. You can literally waste hours of your time approaching the wrong reader audience. You can also end up being bad-mouthed by another blogger who’s angry with your switch.

Search engines get confused

It is a search engine’s job to make sure it indexes and ranks relevant content. Let’s say you start a blog about your golf hobby, but then you switch course, writing a stock tips business blog. Search engines may have already given you good rankings for golf. If you change your content, you’ll lose those rankings. You may even end up being penalized by the search engines.

When you first publish your blog, unless you’re blog hopping and guest posting, search engines are likely to be the first ones to read your content. Make sure they leave as happy customers. How? Be consistent. Your niche and blogging style should never change once you start.

You waste time

Should you have done your research on blog marketing, you’ll know that blog commenting and article marketing are excellent ways to promote your blog and build backlinks to it. If you change your style or niche, you have to consider the fact that you wasted all that time writing irrelevant articles that don’t match your newly chosen niche. The audiences for those article sites, backlinks, and guest posts will no longer be interested in what your blog has to say. When they click through to your site, they’ll be disappointed.

Another wasted effort would be the fact that you now have to delete your mailing list that you may have built up, since your subscribers didn’t sign up for information on your new topic. They subscribed because they had an interest in your previous topic.

Style vs. niche

Your blog style is not your niche: a blog style reflects your reasons for starting the blog in the first place:

• Did you want to make money?
• Did you want to influence a certain type of group?
• Did you just want to blog about your interests?

When choosing a blogging style, you need to think about what you intentions may be in the long term. There are many bloggers who simply want to make money—they heard that blogging can make that happen for them. There are others who don’t believe or care about making money blogging: they simply want to write about what they love. The influential blogger is a writer who wishes to have his or her readers care about what s/he says, and take action because of what s/he said.

A niche, on the other hand, is a topic that you’re writing about. You can fit your blog into any niche using any of the three blogging styles I just mentioned. My niche topic is making money blogging, and I write regularly about this topic. You could say that this niche reflects my target keyword—the topic that I want to be known for.

As we saw with the golf and stocks example above, it’s important not to change your niche after you start blogging. Most of the time, your niche is connected to your style. When one changes, so does the other in most cases.

Let’s look more closely at these blogging styles.

The influential blogger

The influential type wants more than anything to have control over the actions that people take. We can take medical marijuana as an example niche in which the influential blogger style might be applied. This blogger will either want to oppose medical marijuana laws, or support them. Whichever route they choose, they want to be able to get people on board to support their cause. Their cause may be a call to action: for example, to contact a congressman with a specific message that will generate support for the blogger’s desired law.

Influential bloggers are usually heavyweights because they touch on sensitive topics that gain a lot of attraction. An influential blog doesn’t usually have a lot of advertising, and although the blogger may ask for donations to support their cause, that’s usually the extent of their money0making agenda. This does not make them a cash-seeking blogger.

The hobby blogger

I love the hobby blogger because they don’t care about anything other than sharing their passion with others. They care about what they do for fun, and they want you to have fun reading about it.

Hobby bloggers are quick to gain followers because they’re not concerned about advertising on their blog. They love the idea of publishing their articles and having like-minded people comment on them.

The cash blogger

I would say that I am a mix between a cash blogger and a hobby blogger. My entire niche and style is to teach others and make money doing it. I have done well in my style and niche, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The reason why I consider it a hobby is because I love what I am writing about, and I love sharing it all with others. It just so happens that I make money doing it.

My niche isn’t a necessary one, and it’s flooded with new blogs every day. You can monetize a hobby blog in any niche. I would say that there are a lot of hobby bloggers who have unintentionally turned into cash bloggers too, just because they realized at some point that money can be made with their traffic. If you’re thinking “but that’s changing your blogging style!” you’re right … in part. It’s a sort of merging of the two, rather than a clear switch. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re selling out if you go down this path.

Which choice is right for you?

No matter what style or niche you choose, you need to take the decision seriously. The last thing you want to do is change course once you’ve made your decision. There are too many negative side-effects of changing your style halfway through the mission.

Look at your decision as a life choice. You wouldn’t just pick up and move from Chicago to Iceland, would you? The choice you make today will impact your life years down the road. Make sure it is a decision you can live with, and choose a style and niche that you love without a doubt.

How did you choose your blogging style and your blog niche?

Brandon Connell is a full-time blogger, web designer, and internet marketer in Illinois. Visit http://www.brandonconnell.com, where Brandon teaches you how to make money blogging.

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I Am Not a Blogger, I Am a Human Being!

This guest post is by Katie Tallo of Momentum Gathering.

I’ve developed a tweet. It’s involuntary and annoying. My vision’s distorted. All I’m seeing are the letters S, E and O. Worse, I think I’m losing my mind because I don’t know who some of my friends are—at all—no idea who they are. I play with my widget all day. I’m obsessively turning my plug-ins off and on, off and on. I’m stumbling and tumbling around most of the time and alarmingly, there’s a growth mutating out of the side of my name. An @ has attached itself to me wherever I go. I need help.

I think I’m turning into a blogger!

It all started way, way back, seven months and thousands of links ago. It was a tweetless, friendless, skypeless time in my life—a simpler time when my inbox was empty and my surfing, innocent and drifting. A blog was some kind of weird public diary that weird public people did. Like pole dancing—too revealing. And yet somehow intriguing.

Naively, I peeked into a blogging forum one day and was instantly hooked. Suddenly, I was swinging from the nearest web publishing platform. Before I could stop myself, I’d picked a domain name, created a blog, and then brazenly published my very first post for everyone to see.

I was out there, naked. And I liked it.

I joined a blogging club, hung around the forum, attended webinars, blogging bootcamps, skype sessions and even flew off to a big conference in Vegas. Soon, I was being invited to other blogs. I even had some guests on mine. I chatted, commented, liked, moderated, shared and tweeted like a full-on social media butterfly. I was up all hours of the night, creating post after post, strutting my stuff. I couldn’t stop. While I madly typed and wildly clicked, my avatar just kept on smiling.

But all this linking and lurking was taking me deeper and deeper into the web where I soon found myself being chased by an angry mob of marketing-guru-type-experts who could smell my newbie blood. They threw me scraps of promises and secrets, coaxing me with freedom, riches, subscriber numbers and success! I ate up their feeds. I bookmarked their manifestos, signed up for their courses, bought their e-books and grabbed every freebie I could download.

Blurry-eyed and completely surrounded, my fingers moving rapid-fire across the keyboard, my mouth dry with dehydration from hours glued to my laptop, my soul screamed at me to get up, stand up, to even look up … and that’s when it happened … I did look up. I looked into the monitor and saw my reflection. I was a hideous visage of my former self—unrecognizable. I rolled back in my chair, lifted my hands to my face and screamed in anguish,

“I am not a blogger! I am a human being!

Okay, maybe it didn’t quite happen that way, but you get the point. Being a blogger can feel inhuman at times—an existence that’s indifferent to even the most basic of bodily functions, like walking, sleeping, eating, and peeing.

Blogging can completely change you … if you let it.

I blame no one, but myself. I found my passion and that passion caught me by surprise. I felt like there was so much to learn and so little time. I was trying to catch up, trying to get where everyone else seemed to be, trying to make my mark, trying to be everything, all at once.

It’s impossible and inhuman and I won’t do it anymore.

Maybe some of you feel this way too. Maybe you’re burning out big time from blogging. If you feel like you’re twittering on the edge of the grotesque, then it’s time to pry your clammy fingers from the mouse and lean back for a moment.

It’s time to be a human being again.

This doesn’t mean you stop blogging—far from it. But the human being has to emerge again. I’m going to be a mother, a wife, a filmmaker, a vegan, a runner, a motivator, an organizer, a camper, a volunteer, a writer and then a blogger. I am all of these things. And it’s all of these things that inform my blogging. If all I do is blog, I’ll end up with nothing to write about and my blogging will implode.

You have to live first, then blog.

Seems obvious, but the internet will feed you an endless stream of wants if you want it to. So I will stop wanting so much and remember what it is I really need. I don’t need to be the best, to compare, to win or to succeed at all costs.

I will return to who I really am and get back to what makes sense to me.

I will make my own rules. I will say, “forget it!” to SEO (for now), get to know my friends, sell things worth buying, give away great stuff, make loads of mistakes and focus on having amazing conversations. Most of you will find your own way to be human and make your own rules. The best bloggers already have.

Take Darren Rowse, for example. When I attended that conference in Vegas and sat in the audience at the keynote presentation, there was a tear in his eye when he spoke of his son who peeked over his shoulder, while he was writing “to the world”, and whispered, “Make sure you tell the world something important.” That’s likely Darren’s number one rule.

What’s important is the human stuff.

The stuff we all have in common, our pain, our struggles, our challenges, our worries, our victories, our oneness, and even our blogging. Because that reflection in the monitor is most beautiful when we see both the human being and the blogger looking back at us together. So I guess that makes me both a human being and a blogger after all.

Katie Tallo seeks to inspire simple, joyful life change through her blog, Momentum Gathering. Subscribe to her blog and grab her Life Cleanse Starter Kit if you need a little help feeling human.

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10 Realizations that Will Crush Your Little Heart In Your First Year of Blogging

This guest post is by Moon from Experiments in Passive Income.

This post comes from someone who has made a ton of mistakes and is on her way to learn from those mistakes. You and I probably have a lot in common … after all, you’re here to learn about blogging and how to do it well and, well, I’m trying to do the same.

Being the owner and author of a blog that is in its first year of infancy, it’s been an emotional roller coaster ride—kind of like riding a car with a driver who makes you think of your impending death thanks to their inept braking skills and their random urges to switch lanes (without looking).

As a new blogger in a very crowded niche, I’ve found the year tough. It’s been tough finding my voice among so many others, producing content that is rich and teaches others a thing or two, attracting traffic that sticks (subscribers)—all while trying to establish a schedule.

Still, it helps to be prepared. Here are ten things that will crush your little heart in your first year of blogging:

1. You’re still waking up to low subscriber levels.

After eight months, only 100 subscribers are subscribing to your blog feed. Yeah, that will kill you inside. You might smile on the outside and tell yourself all’s well … but you’ll have to swallow your pride and evaluate how you’re hindering your blog’s growth. Are you presenting your readers with boring content? Or do you need to guest blog to bring exposure to your new blog?

2. You realize that attracting visitors is more than just good SEO.

Sooner or later, you’ll realize that attracting visitors to your blog is more than just good SEO (long-term strategy). At that point, it’s time to buckle down and learn how to use Twitter, su.pr, and Facebook properly to garner thousands of views a month.

This type of social media marketing needs to be done, and done well. And it will take you more than a few minutes to promote your content properly and on a daily basis. No one wants to simply hear noise on their media streams—give them that, and they’ll quickly stop paying attention to you.

3. You realize what SEO entails.

Eventually, it dawns on every budding blogger that SEO involves much more than just incorporating your keywords into your content excessively and using keyword rich links. If you want search traffic, you need to spend a few hours a month learning about SEO and actually executing it. It’s amazing how much time I’ve spent catching up on SEO, but I’m still not using it properly. I bet you’re not, either.

4. You fail to monetize your blog.

When you don’t earn even a measly $100 per month from your blog, despite trying hard, it hurts. But earning money through your blog is more than slapping ads on it. Keep trying!

5. You realize there are no easy ways to make money through your blog.

It’s absolutely essential that you write great, unique content and create a list of subscribers who love that content. It’s not 2001 anymore! People have become wary of the Internet, and they want proof of your success before they’ll trust you. Give it to them.

6. You understand that you need to do more for others.

You want subscribers? You need to do more. To get that list going, you should probably create a handy, free ebook or report that deals with a topic related to your blog, and helps your readers. Yes, you do have to help others in order to help yourself.

7. You recognize that good content can take more than an hour to create.

Great content will definitely take more than an hour, especially if you’re a beginner. Anyone can produce good content. You’ll need to write unique and in-depth content to give your readers something to talk about and impress other fellow bloggers—to get the buzz going, so to speak.

8. You realize that people want to read specifics and in-depth case studies.

Your readers can find generic crap anywhere. There are tons of blogs that talk about growing your traffic or making money online … and the majority are boring!

Instead, show readers how you’ve helped someone grow traffic or what strategies you’ve implemented to make money through your blog. This is precisely what I did when I showed my readers how exact domain names can kill the competition! This kind of content takes a bit of time and experience to develop. Keep plugging away!

9. You understand that networking is a necessity, not an option.

This doesn’t mean you re-tweet someone’s post occasionally. You need to converse with your followers, ask questions, and interact with other bloggers—successful ones as well as beginners in your niche and peer bloggers who started around the time you did. Create a group that helps promote each others’ posts. You never know who will get your hype snowball rolling.

10. You realize that you’ve been doing most things wrong!

Just because you knew all this stuff doesn’t mean you executed it at all, or executed it properly. At the time when I started my blog, I thought I knew something about blogs and making money online. But that learning is an ongoing process. Once you realize this, you might feel momentary despair. That’s okay—as long as you continue to take steps and improve your efforts.

Despite all these things that might have you sobbing under the blanket with a pint of scotch, hopefully you’ll realize that you should keep going. In fact, if you love what you’re blogging about, the pure thrill of having your content go viral or making your first few sales will probably have you giggling like a school girl and make you realize that it’s all worth it.

I’ve made all these mistakes and then some and I won’t be quitting any time soon! What mistakes have you made in your blogging experience? Share them with us!

Join Moon as she shares results of her passive income experiments at her website. You can check out her free ebook, To The Moon & Back, in which she details all her experiments in the span of a year

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Personal Blogging in the 2010s

This guest post is by Karen Andrews of Miscellaneous Mum.

Personal blogging has changed a lot in the last two years. Some writers now run blogs or social media campaigns to extend their profiles for current (and future) readers; some bloggers are using their reach to find or be offered writing work.

The line between ‘writing’ and ‘blogging’ is blurring, which is terrific, but can also be confusing. I know this first-hand. So today I’m going to share with you some points I try to keep foremost in mind. Maybe they’ll help you too.

Making money is possible, but prepare for tough decisions

Here’s a description: you’ve built up a pretty healthy traffic flow, or a solid RSS subscriber count. Long before that, you signed up to an ad network, thinking that by this stage the money would be steadily coming in … except it’s not.

You think about selling private ad spaces, but worry that would be a turn-off for your audience. You’re hesitant about doing sponsored or affiliate-related posts for the same reason. And as for all those opportunities out there in waiting, the longer you’re stuck, the harder they seem to be to grab.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Well, I’ve got a message of hope for the personal bloggers out there. You have one thing on your side. You’re making decisions that matter every day. Here are just a few: how much or little do I reveal about myself or my family? What are some ways I can frame or contextualize a story for effect? What is the best response I can give if I’m challenged about an issue?

What’s needed to answer those questions? Integrity. Look into that part of yourself when asking yourself how far you’re willing to go to make money from your blog. The answer is often there waiting.

Making sure ‘I’ am enough

Here’s another description: you’re chatting to a friend who also blogs, but does so in more traffic-heavy niches (such as entertainment and technologies). You compare the time you spend and your blogging tactics, and are roughly doing it the same way. The difference is that your friend’s site’s hits are triple yours. You start to feel discouraged.

Does this sound familiar? My message this time is a little more sobering. Yes, it can be hard, but this is the time when you need to decide if you are enough. Does it really matter if your traffic isn’t like so-and-so’s? Perhaps your ambitions can be channeled differently, or your goals need redefining.

It never hurts to stop, take a step back, and see what personal bloggers have achieved in recent years. People who live with or are affected by mental or medical challenges, for example, have been able to raise their voices to advocate the networks which support them and are, in turn, worth being supported by others.

Personal blogging isn’t easy—you might be surprised how many other people feel the same way. This is why meetups and conferences are so important: they create opportunities for open discussion and learning among like-minded peers. It’s also worth remembering that your blog will go through its ups and downs, just as all lives do.

If you’re struggling, perhaps take a day—or a week—off to clear your mind and refocus. It might make the difference between two or three mediocre posts or one terrific one. It might make the difference between quitting or sticking it out. At these times we need to take care of ourselves. We’re all worth looking after.

Karen Andrews is an author, publisher, speaker and blogger at Miscellaneous Mum.

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13 Tips for Beginning Bloggers (Which I Learned the Hard Way)

This article is by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project.

I started The Happiness Project blog as a way to test the argument that novelty and challenge bring happiness (turns out they do!), but I knew nothing about blogging when I began.

Here are some strategies that I learned the hard way, through experience. As Benjamin Franklin once remarked, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

1. Start simple. Add bells and whistles over time. Many people get paralyzed at the outset, because they’re overwhelmed by the desire to figure everything out before launching. Don’t get it perfect, get it going.
2. Post every day. It’s counter-intuitive, yes, but strangely it’s easier to post every day than to post three or four times a week. You don’t procrastinate, you loosen up, you stay engaged with your subject, and you’ll be taken more seriously by readers. But if you stop writing for a while…
3. Don’t point out that you’ve been lax about posting! It’s boring, it shows a lack of commitment, and maybe readers won’t notice if you don’t say anything.
4. Include the text of the post as well as the URL if you want to bring a post to someone’s attention by email. Often, people won’t bother to click through, even though they might like your post if they did!
5. If you feel squeamish about posting something—don’t. Wait a day or two, and think it over.
6. Join the community. Link to other bloggers who write about your subject, shine a spotlight on their work, get to know them. Blogland is a friendly, helpful place—and the truth about human nature is that people become interested in you when you show an interest in them.
7. Read about blogging. My favorite resource is ProBlogger, of course.
8. Use lists when possible. People love reading lists, especially tips lists. I know, tips lists seem like a simplistic way to present information. But people love them. I post a tips list every Wednesday.
9. State the purpose of your blog very prominently. A new reader shouldn’t have to ask, “What’s this blog about, anyway?”
10. Maintain quality. I have checklist to try to keep my posts interesting and my voice true:
    • Am I being funny?
    • Am I giving interesting information from science, history, literature, etc.?
    • Am I revealing my character?
    • Am I telling stories?
    • Am I showing what it’s like to live in New York City?
    • Am I linking to other bloggers?
    • Am I comfortable with my parents reading this? (I never work blue.)
    • Am I criticizing anyone except myself?
11. Keep a separate document containing your blog entries. I have an 800-page document containing every post I’ve ever made. That way, I can easily search, copy, and paste the material on my blog when I need it for other purposes.
12. Keep a running list of ideas. Invaluable.
13. Most important? Have something to say with every post, and with your entire blog. This sounds obvious, but it’s a lot easier to write when you’re trying to tell a story, explain an idea, give a review, link to an article, or whatever. If you’re having trouble with your blog, forget about the blog and focus on what you want to communicate instead.

More experienced bloggers, what are your top tips to help those just starting out?

This article is by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. Follow her on Twitter @gretchenrubin, and buy the book THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, the #1 New York Times bestseller.

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Seven Tips to Start Your Travel Blogging Journey

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

So you want to be a travel writer? So do a lot of people. In fact, I can’t think of one person who wouldn’t love to get paid to travel. To try, lots of people start travel blogs. Some just do it for fun; others do it seriously. Some would like to get paid but can’t be bothered to really put in the time, so the few hundred they make off advertising is enough for them.

In 2008, when I started my travel blog, I could count the number of travel blogs on one hand. Now, there are hundreds upon hundreds: it’s a cluttered field. So how can you create a successful travel blog that moves beyond the clutter, gets you noticed, and helps fund your travels? Here are my top seven tips.

1. Be an expert.

The best travels blogs are written by people who have traveled, or are traveling. No one wants to take travel advice from someone who doesn’t travel. Many travel bloggers start blogging months before they actually start traveling. But the casual readers you want to attract want tried and tested travel advice. They want an expert—someone with experience. It’s simple advice, but it’s so often overlooked. People who start a blog six months before their trip and realize they don’t have content either stray off their subject, or commit the next sin…

2. Skip the generic advice.

One of the mistakes most beginner travel bloggers make is that they write generic articles. They make lists of what to pack, lists of how to pack, posts on how to find a cheap flight, or other topics every traveler should know. Google any of these terms and you’ll find millions of results.

When I first started out, I did this too, but in order to be successful, you need to differentiate yourself. Yes, these tips are important and I have a special section on my site for beginner tips (after all, beginners need them). But they don’t retain readers over the long term. You need to be different.

What advice can you offer that no one else can? What experience can you impart? For example, I talk about money a lot. I talk about how to use frequent flier programs for free flights and find unadvertised deals. I break it down. I show you, rather than telling you. I don’t tell you what to pack. I tell you where to go and how to save when you’re there. Forget about an article called, “10 Things to See in London.” Instead, write a piece titled, “A Historical Walk Through London’s WW2.” Tell people information that can’t easily find—take them off the beaten track.

3. Be a good writer.

Travel is about a telling a story. You want to bring someone else on the journey. Travel isn’t about you: it’s about your reader. In telling a travel story, you are putting the reader in the picture, connecting them to that place and time. You don’t need to be Ernest Hemmingway or Bill Bryson, but you can’t just blog about what you did on Sunday.

A good travel blog tells a story that brings people to the place. Most people won’t end up going to that location, but what keep readers coming back to your blog is telling a story that your reader can relate to. For example, my post on making friends in Ios is about Ios but it’s really about connecting with people. That’s something everyone can relate to. My post on Budapest describes good things to see in Budapest, but also talks about the joy of enjoying understanding local culture. Write a story that connects with your reader.

4. Be a personality.

When you think of ProBlogger, you think of Darren Rowse. The Four Hour Week? Tim Ferris. SEOmoz? Rand Fish. When we think of big sites, we think of the personalities behind them—their creators. They are the personality, and we identify the brand with them.

If you’re going to be a successful travel blogger, you need to be a personality. You need to be out there dominating a certain travel niche. Be the best backpacker blogger, be the best boomer blogger, or the best family travel blogger out there. This means having a voice on Twitter, having personality in your posts, and relating to people. You are the voice. And people are going to follow you because they have a vested interest in your life and your travels.

5. Or don’t.

If you don’t want to be a personality or deal with social media, and you just want to relax, another way to make a successful travel site is to create destination-specific blog. Destination-specific websites rely on SEO. These sites are a bit less work and can bring in a lot of money, but you’ll never be a “name.”

Sites like Travel Fish and Boots N’ All are very good, have a lot of traffic, and make a lot money—but could you name the person behind them? Most can’t. Probably most people in the travel industry can’t either. But creating a destination website is your best alternative to creating a travel blog, where you need to be a personality. All you need to do is focus on some juicy keywords, and yours can be the number one site on Mexico.

6. Use photos.

Most people don’t travel all the time. However, we all love seeing beautiful places we’ll never visit. That’s we all had tropical island posters back in college, and calendars in our cubiclew. It’s why we love The Big Picture from Boston.com. How many of you have really read National Geographic? Mostly we just look at the pretty pictures.

People simply love good photos. So have big photos that attract the eyes. You can write a great story, but without images, you won’t get a lot of return visitors. I would love to hear about your safari. But you know what I would love more? Huge pictures of the Serengeti, lions, elephants, and gazelles. Travel is as much about photography as it is about writing.

7. Stay focused.

Pick a niche and stick to it. Remember: you want to be an expert. No one wants to hear about backpacking from someone who takes cruises or women’s travel tips from a guy. When you’re an expert in your niche, you attract traffic naturally because people always go to the best for information. You don’t buy books on physics from college students—you buy them from Stephen Hawking.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone. That’s the worst thing you can do in the travel niche. The world is a big place and there are simply too many ways to travel—you could never be good at covering them all with authority. Just because you have a travel site doesn’t mean you should talk about all the forms of travel. Stick to what you know.

Travel is such a personal experience that you will turn people off quickly if they don’t think you actually know the location and type of travel you are talking about. The good news? Travel is a big industry: you’re sure to find readers if you blog in this space.

Do you have a travel blog? What tips can you add?

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

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Boost Traffic and Trust by Giving Back

This is a guest post by Joshua Noerr of JoshuaNoerr.com.

It’s clear that social media, specifically blogging, is about so much more than making money. Sure, we all want to be compensated for our time and our talents, but if the only goal was to make money, blogging would certainly not be our first choice.

If you’ve been reading ProBlogger for any length of time, the message will be clear to you: blogging is not a get-rich-quick kind of deal. There are certainly a few stars that rose to prominence quickly, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

The truth is, blogging for dollars is a slow process that requires many different factors to click into place before it produces a dependable income. One of those key factors is trust. The bottom line here is that your readers absolutely must trust you in order to buy from you, or to subscribe to your feed or newsletter.

I remember reading a book on sales a few years ago that said, essentially, “The prospect does not have to like you, he or she just has to trust you.” I don’t know about you, but I can’t recall any time I’ve said, “Wow, I don’t like that guy, but I sure do trust him.” Likability and trustworthiness have a tendency to go hand in hand.

Give back to build trust

Giving selflessly is a very powerful way to build the trust that you need to boost your repeat visitor levels, and your traffic overall. I’m going to share with you a way to do exactly that, but first I want you to consider something.

Have you ever noticed that most large corporations have either a foundation established in their name, or a department that handles charitable giving on behalf of the company? Think about that. I could name ten corporations that do just that off the top of my head. Consider why they do it. If you answered “to build trust,” you’re right!

What I’m proposing is that you donate a small portion of your online real estate to a good cause.

I know that the thought of giving even a small portion of your sidebar to charity may seem painful at first. For many, that means less space for direct advertising or AdSense promotion. It might even mean removing a featured affiliate product.

What I promise you is that the trust you get in return, while impossible to place a dollar value on, will be worth it. The good that you do in the world will become a part of your legacy.

Get started giving

Head over to FirstGiving.com. This website sets up free donation pages for thousands of charities and non-profits. After you set up your giving page, you’ll be able to create a widget that displays the amount of money you’re trying to raise, the organization you’re supporting, and how far you’ve progressed in your fundraising.

Place this widget somewhere on your blog. Now, you’re almost done, but there’s still one more step.

I suggest that you announce what you’re doing, which charity or cause you’re supporting, and why you’re supporting them (if you would like to see an example, take a look at my post asking for help to cure multiple sclerosis).

Writing this post is key, because it’s highly likely that it will be Stumbled, Dugg, and Tweeted, drawing attention to the cause, as well as your blog.

I also recommend that you choose a charity that’s near and dear to your heart. I decided to support the MS Fund because I have a wonderful friend who struggles with the disease. I can’t wait for the day when this disease no longer affects so many people. I’m sure you have a similar story, and I encourage you to share it with your readers.

Can blogging change the world?

Blogging has already changed the world in so many ways. It has changed the way news is reported, the speed at which information travels, and the way we get that information.

But I believe it can do much more than that. I truly believe that with so many wonderful, giving people out there in the blogosphere, blogging will change the world for the better in the years to come.

Please share your thoughts in the comments. What other ways can we give back and make the world a better place through blogging? Is there an organization that fits perfectly into your niche that you would like to support?

Joshua Noerr is a former competitive fighter turned blogger. He owns, or is partnered in, several blogs in different niches including personal development and fly fishing. He has one simple mission that drives all of his blogs: to change the world.

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7 Self-doubts New Bloggers Can Beat

This guest post is by Scott McIntyre of Vivid Ways.

You’ve just launched a shiny new blog and you’re buzzing with excitement about sharing content and building an audience. At first, it requires a lot of time and effort to get things off the ground, but your confidence is sky-high that this blogging thing will take off and push you straight up to the A List.

Image by R'eyes

Then, slowly but surely, you begin to doubt what you’re doing. Success doesn’t come quite as quickly as you’d hoped, despite your hard work. Disappointment sets in. You lose motivation. After a while, this lack of self-belief causes you to ask yourself if it’s even worth publishing another post.

Did you ever feel this way?

Perhaps you’re a more experienced blogger who still remembers when you questioned what on Earth you were doing and whether you were any good. Or, maybe you’re facing this crisis of confidence right now.

If that’s the case, you need to tackle these self-doubts before they sabotage your blogging dreams!

Self-doubt and the New Blogger

I recently started my first blog, and one of my initial articles looked at how to conquer self-doubt in general. This got me thinking about the specific doubts new bloggers come up against, and the ways in which a lack of self-belief can negatively affect our blogging activities.

Feelings of self-doubt have little to do with how good a blogger you really are—they’re about how not-so-good you perceive yourself to be. There’s a crucial difference.

So, there’s no shame or weakness in admitting that you experience self-doubt (I’m sure even top bloggers suffer from the occasional wobble in confidence). In fact, the opposite is true: you have to be willing to recognize and shine a light on your doubts so you can deal with them head-on.

Here are seven of the biggest self-doubts you can face as a new blogger, and useful tips on how to beat them before they crack your confidence.

1. Have I chosen the best topic to blog about?

At some stage early on, you nervously wonder if you’ve chosen the right topic to blog about. Of course, you’ve done your research and opted for a subject that’s a good match for your knowledge, experience, and passion. But, until you start seeing results, how can you be sure it’s the best niche for you?

The fact that you decided upon a topic based on your interests is a reasonable indication that you’re on the right track. As you’ll be producing content for a long time (hopefully), you need to maintain an enthusiasm for the subject matter from the outset. That way, you’ll want to learn more so that you can pass on new insights to your readers in the future.

If, however, after only a few months of blogging you find yourself struggling to come up with ideas for posts, or you haven’t the heart to publish regularly, this is usually an early warning sign that you have to rethink your first choice of blog topic. Do a reassessment of your current interests against a range of different niches.

Don’t panic too much if you decide to change to another topic. Your blog is still in its infancy, and it’s better to alter your course sooner rather than later.

2. What if no one wants to read what I’ve got to say?

When you start off blogging, you could very well find that there’s a readership of only one: yourself! It’s all too easy to become disheartened when you see your carefully crafted content languishing with no comments and very few visitors.

Don’t be tempted to throw in the towel quite yet. Rather than it being the case that no one is interested in what you’re publishing, it’s more likely that you’ve yet to reach your target audience. It’s your job to get out there and help those ideal readers come across your blog.

People always want to discover fresh, useful, and thought-provoking content online and that’s a huge opportunity for you to tap into. No one, however, says that attracting readers is easy—it’s not.

There are, fortunately, many tips and techniques you can use to help increase your readership. Experiment with these proven methods, or be brave and go do something unique that draws in your special crowd. It’s far too early to give up until you’ve done everything you possibly can to entice those ideal readers back to your blog.

3. Am I just saying the same old stuff in the same old way?

You’re concerned that when you follow the trail of links to other blogs within your niche, everyone seems to be talking about exactly the same things you are. With so many blogs creating so much content, it can be very difficult to come up with original ideas that haven’t been explored a million times before.

The blogosphere loves original thinkers with fresh perspectives. Any blogger can gain popularity when they stand out from the crowd by both a) what they say and b) how they say it. When you deal with a subject, remember that it’s never been addressed from your viewpoint before. That’s why telling your own personal story and sharing your opinions breathes energetic life into what could simply be run-of-the-mill content we’ve all seen before.

There’s always going to be a unique angle on whatever topic you look at, because the knowledge and experience you bring are different to those of the next blogger. With practice, you’ll learn how to build your blog’s voice in a way that sets it apart from all the other sites out there.

4. Is my writing all right or all wrong?

You’re eager to get your thoughts out there, but you’re afraid that people will criticize the amateur writing style and rip apart the spelling and grammar.

It’s reassuring that writing content for blogs is very different from anything you’ve ever written before. Every new blogger can learn how to adapt these tried-and-tested techniques for themselves.

Sure, some folk will point out your mistakes—there will always be critics lining up to take a shot. Correct spelling shows you care about attention to detail, while good grammar helps the reader more easily grasp the points you want to get across. Bear in mind, though, that what you write is just as important as the way it is written.

Put it this way: wrongly spelled words and awkward grammar can hinder the reader’s understanding and enjoyment of your post, so try your best to get it right. But don’t allow this concern to stifle your creativity or limit what it is you desperately want to say. The more you write, the more confident you’ll become in expressing yourself through the medium of a blog post.

5. Am I getting too personal?

Sharing your experiences in life is a critical part of connecting with an audience on a deeper level. Readers respond well to a blogger who can show first-hand that he or she understands the challenges they face. Yet, how can you be certain that you don’t reveal  “too much information?”

Personal story telling works best when it brings home a learning point that the reader needs to know. The lesson has to be relevant and appropriate to help someone solve a specific problem or deal with a particular issue. In other words, the personal information you share has to be of benefit to the reader in some way. Otherwise, it could be seen as irrelevant and self-indulgent.

Ultimately, it’s down to your individual judgment: you choose exactly what you tell your readers about your life in a blog post. Before hitting the Publish button, ask yourself this: “Do I really want the whole world (literally) overhearing that fact about me, or my family and friends?” The old saying holds true: If in doubt, leave it out.

6. I’m nervous about networking

You realize that it’s essential to build relationships with other bloggers to get ahead in blogging nowadays. However, this is easier said than done: you feel awkward about getting in touch with them. What could a newbie like you possibly have to offer a big-name blogger?

Well, if you feel like this, instead of contacting A-list bloggers straight away, reach out to others who are at the same stage of their blogging journey as you. You’re bound to have a lot in common, giving plenty of opportunities to assist each other as you grow your blogs together.

The main priority of a blogging-based relationship is to provide mutual value and benefit to each of you. That’s why linking up with bloggers in a similar position can work so well—each can appreciate the other’s situation and provide the same kind of support.

Forming strong bonds with other bloggers online is basically no different to the way you’d get to know someone in the real world. Courtesy, genuine interest in what they’re doing, and offers of help go a long way! Don’t be shy to make the first move, as it could very well be the start of a very productive partnership.

7. Will I ever be a success?

This is probably the biggest single doubt that keeps popping into your head as you try hard to kick-start your blog. After all, it’s the reason you’re doing all this work, isn’t it? Constant worrying over whether you’re ever going to make it gradually eats away at your self-confidence. How you define “success,” and how long you’re prepared to wait for it, will help you cope with this doubt—one that’s felt by nearly every new blogger.

What success means to you will be different from the criteria set by another blogger. Getting subscribers, attracting thoughtful comments, reaching a target of earnings, and establishing a reputation as an industry expert are only a few examples of possible performance benchmarks that you might use. Pinpoint your own measures of blogging success. This exercise provides concrete facts on which to assess how well you’re doing, rather than having to rely on your own opinion and impatience.

Successful blogging also requires a considerable investment of your time. While we’d all love quick wins, overnight success is rare. It’s much more realistic to assess your blogging activities over a period of at least six to 18 months, rather than a few weeks. Adopting a longer-term view relieves the pressure on you to meet an overambitious deadline, and lessens the likelihood that you’ll become depressed when you fail to meet it.

Beating self-doubt as a new blogger

We’re most vulnerable to self-doubt at the beginning of our blogging journey. When you feel a lack of belief in yourself, take time to identify the knowledge and skills you need, as well as the practical steps you can take to overcome that doubt. Have a browse through the archives here on ProBlogger to get ideas and encouragement.

Your loyal readers of tomorrow will appreciate that you stuck around and persevered…

Have you faced any self doubts as a new blogger? How did you beat those doubts to keep on blogging? Please share your experiences in the comments section. Let’s encourage each other!

Scott McIntyre aims to encourage ordinary people to do great things every day. You can learn how to live a colorful life—right now—at Vivid Ways. You can also add color in your life by following Scott on Twitter.

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Review: Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps

For the beginning blogger who has limited experience, but lots of enthusiasm, Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps makes an ideal primer.

Written by Annabel Candy, from Get In the Hot Spot, this twelve-chapter ebook (lucky thirteen, if you count the bonus chapter) touches on all the basics, from choosing a blog topic to using social media to support your blog.

I found the structure of the chapters very clear: each chapter starts with a goal — this explains in a single sentence what you’ll learn from the chapter. It’s followed by a discussion of the relevant information, and a series of action points — practical tasks for readers to complete. The checklist that ends each chapter ties together the goal, learnings and actions so you can easily identify what you’ve learned, and anything you need to research further.

Annabel’s skills in web design and copywriting give this ebook a richness that others lack. She discusses issues like branding, website design and layout, and the basics of WordPresss. She also offers three chapters on writing: writing your blog’s static content, writing blog posts (which pays special attention to the all-important headline), and writing for the web.

The author covers all the key blog-promotion techniques in chapters on social media, online networking, search engine optimization and guest posting. Importantly, she stresses the value of understanding your blog’s statistics, and using these to help direct your blogging and promotion efforts.

This isn’t a detailed how-to guide for those with some blogging experience under their belts: Annabel keeps things fairly general and approachable. Her writing is, of course, great, and the ebook has a friendly tone that makes her advice seem eminently doable. If you’re squaring up to the challenge of running your own blog — for fun or financial gain — this ebook is a sound place to start. For more information, visit Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps.

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The Goal Post: Why Goals Matter More than Ever

Image by Iguana Jo.

Overheard in Vegas at BlogWorld Expo:

“I just started a blog and I’m excited to see where it will lead me.”

Have you ever said something like that? When I started out, it was certainly something I remember telling a friend. Nobody really knew where the medium of blogging would lead—we were all quite happy to let thing evolve and see where we ended up.

There was actually some sense in this approach: blogging was still evolving, and because the space wasn’t overly crowded or competitive, many bloggers were swept almost accidentally into amazing opportunities.

The problem that today’s beginning bloggers face is that the see-where-it-will-lead approach doesn’t always work. There are many millions of blogs, mainstream media is investing serious cash into the space, and some of the everybody-wins style of collaboration that used to go on in the blogosphere has disappeared.

While good things still come when you let your blog evolve, and luck still plays a part, many of the more successful bloggers that I meet today are strategic about what they’re doing.

One of the themes I taught at BlogWorld Expo this year focused on goals.

Knowing what you want to achieve and where you want to end up will make you more likely to end up achieving those things.

Conversely, setting out on a path with no idea of what you want to achieve leaves your destination purely up to chance. It could end up being good—or it could end up quite the opposite.

“If you don’t know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?” – Basil S Walsh

The blogger who didn’t set goals

I told this story at BWE last week.

A number of years ago, a young blogger burst onto the scene in one of the niches I wrote in. They got noticed faster than almost any blogger I’d seen before: within weeks, their blog was getting hundreds of comments and being talked about on many other blogs.

The reason they were noticed so quickly was that almost every post they wrote took a pot-shot at another blogger in their niche. Posts on the blog were critiques, rants, and personal attacks on other key people in the niche (including me). And as a result, the blogger got noticed very, very quickly.

The blog grew over the coming months, largely based upon this snarky philosophy. Other bloggers saw the strategy working and new snarky blogs sprung up. The niche wasn’t a particularly pleasant one to be a part of for a while there.

I always thought it was a pity—the blogger was actually a smart person and when they wanted to, they had good things to say. But the blog always seemed to be seasoned with a toxic edge which detracted from what I thought could have been achieved.

One day, the blog that started it all stopped publishing. The blog went silent.

A few months later, the blog disappeared altogether. All traces of it vanished (although I’m sure it still lives in those Internet archiving sites).

I always wondered what happened to the blogger, until a few months ago, I found myself in a chat room listening to a webinar and recognized their name as one of the other participants.

I managed to get the blogger to jump on Skype with me and asked what had happened. Why had they stopped blogging?

The story the person told me was that they’d started blogging with one very vague goal: to get noticed. Beyond getting noticed, they didn’t really know what they wanted to achieve. It was only after they’d gotten noticed that they realized their ultimate goal was to be an authoritative voice in the niche. The blogger wanted to be someone that people looked to with respect. They wanted to be someone who’d be asked to speak and write books on the topic.

The problem was that the way they’d initially gone about their blogging had actually taken them away from their belatedly identified goals. They’d burned bridges and become known as the snarky blogger, rather than the authority blogger.

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” – Fitzhugh Dodson

I don’t have goals!?

I’m very aware that many bloggers start blogs without hard and fast goals. They take the I’ll-see-where-it-leads approach. This was my approach, too—and good things did come from it.

However, the reality is that as vague as they were, I did have goals even back when I started eight years back.

They certainly weren’t long-term or far-reaching grand goals about where I’d be today. Rather, they were goals about the next steps—where I’d be in the coming days and weeks.

Over time, I achieved some of what I set out to do. I abandoned other goals and set new ones—some of them for the longer term. The key was to identify a direction to head in, and start moving.

You don’t always need the ultimate destination in mind, but if you can identify some next steps to work towards, at least you’ll be heading somewhere with intention.

“Progress has little to do with speed, but much to do with direction” – Unknown

Do you have goals for your blogging or are you seeing where blogging will lead you?

Further reading

• 9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers
• How to Achieve Your Goals – Hint #1
• Strategic Blogging – Vision and Goals

Thanks to @pushingsocial and @kennyhyder for help on Twitter with the title of this post.

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10 Ways to Reduce Friction in Your Purchase Process

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

The harder you make people work to order your products, the less people will buy. This basic knowledge has been proven both on and offline. Unfortunately, we’re all not blessed with same level of brand loyalty and scary desire for our customers to line up for our latest ithingy like Apple is, so we need to take a serious look at how much friction we’re causing our customers—and find ways to eliminate it.

There are lots of different ways to go about fixing friction. Here are some easy wins to get you started.

1. Capturing information that’s only necessary for the sale

You might want to know everything you can about your customer so you can help service their needs. But the checkout is not the place to ask for that information. Until the money has cleared, don’t ask them for anything more than you need to make the sale. After the sale has been made, quiz them all you like. The same goes for setting up accounts and passwords: think very carefully before you ask someone to create an account and password—even if your intentions are good.

2. Including direct order links from your emails or blog posts

This might not work for all products, but it’s worth a try. When you’re promoting a product or offer in a communication (such as an email or blog post), don’t send readers to a sales page—send them directly to your checkout page, with the product already in the cart. You don’t need to re-sell to them in a sales page if you’ve done a good job in your communication piece.

3. Recalling the information you know about the customer

If you’re running your own checkout process and you’re (securely) storing customer information, when it comes time for a customer to purchase their second product, fill out as many details as you can for them. You need to allow for them to update the information if required, but many will just sail straight through.

4. Minimizing cross-sell and up-sell messages

In the past, I’ve been guilty of creating friction by attempting to increase my average order value with up-sells or cross-sells. There’s a very fine line to tread when it comes to balancing these two needs. Personally, I limit myself to one up-sell message of one product in an entire checkout process. Any more, and you might risk reaching the friction tipping point.

5. Avoiding bouncing customers to unknown third parties

For some, this might be something you can’t avoid, as you don’t have an internal checkout process. But if possible, keeping the checkout process consistent in terms domain, aesthetics, and style will reduce the shock associated with bouncing to a third party. If you do need to ship your customer somewhere else, make sure the customer knows what’s about to happen. My only exception to this rule is PayPal. It’s such a recognizable brand, the effect can actually be positive rather than negative.

6. Making your process usable, accessible, and cross-browser compatible

For me, this one’s a bit of a given: the lower the number of people who can access your checkout process, the fewer sales you’ll make. It’s a pretty easy calculation, yet so many people fail to make their checkout processes consistent for everyone. Google Analytics, when configured properly, will make it easy to identify whether people with specific browsers are converting a lower rate than everyone else. This will help you quickly identify any problem areas.

7. Using smart and intuitive data validation

Even after you’ve reduced the number of fields you’re asking your customers to complete, people will still make mistakes. If you’re not giving people a clear message about what they’ve done wrong—and what they need to do to resolve it—the sale is going to very quickly be thrown in the too-hard basket. Make sure your error handling is smart and intuitive.

8. Doing what the big guys do

The reality is that the big guys, with the big budgets, are going to be better informed in terms of what constitutes the ideal checkout process. If you want to see a seamless checkout processes in action, be sure to buy something from the likes of Amazon so you know where the benchmark is.

9. Tracking checkout drop-offs

This is all about being as informed as you can about what’s actually happening though your checkout process. My favorite piece of free web software, Google Analytics, is the best place to start. You can thoroughly integrate your ecommerce pages with Analytics—some of the insights you’ll gain might even scare you a little. How you do that is another post in itself, so if you want me to step you through the process, be sure to let me know.

10. Asking people why they’re leaving

Another obvious but seldom-used method to gain insight into why people don’t order your products is to ask them. On-exit pop-ups and light boxes are a great method to quickly ask your customers why they’re leaving. This detailed information will show you very quickly where your friction points are.

When you think about it, if someone abandons your checkout process without completing it, you’ve only got yourself to blame. You’ve done all the hard work to convince the customer that they want to buy your product, then managed to talk them out of it with a poor checkout experience. Reducing the friction in your checkout process is one of the easiest ways to maximize your revenue.

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

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Are these Mindsets Holding You Back from Achieving Blogging Success?

“What’s the biggest mistake you see aspiring bloggers making?”

This is a question I’m asked a fair bit on panels or in interviews, and it’s one that I suspect the people asking the question would like a technical answer to.

The reality is that the biggest mistakes I see bloggers making are usually things that are going on in their minds, rather than on their blogs.

A blogger’s mindset and attitude is as important more important than which blog platform they choose, their blog’s design, or how many posts they make a day.

There are two very common mindsets that I see in many bloggers (and prebloggers), and which I think hold them back.

1. I’m gonna…

One of the things that frustrates me about blogging conferences is that many of the conversations I hear in the hallways and networking meetups involve bloggers talking about the amazing dreams that they’ve concocted … but never seem to act on.

Dreams and grand plans are great — but unless they move beyond the dreaming stage, they’re pretty much worthless.

The “I’m gonna…” statements that I hear range from those at the beginning of their blogging careers (I’m gonna start a blog), through to more established bloggers (I’m gonna write a book/develop my own product/start a new project).

While there’s nothing wrong with brainstorming and dreaming and then later rejecting the idea because it isn’t feasible, some bloggers are serial “ideapreneurs” who never put anything into action.

For some, the ideas never leave their minds; others are so addicted to the creative process of dreaming up new things that they start lots of projects but never see them through. These types are always looking for the adrenaline hit of the new idea, but can’t bring themselves to face the hard work of seeing the ideas through to reality.

2. I’m not … enough

• I’m not creative enough.
• I don’t have the technical ability.
• I’m too late to have an impact.
• I’m not old enough.
• I’m not young enough.
• I live in the wrong part of the world.
• My writing isn’t good enough.
• I don’t have the budget.
• I’m just not smart enough.

The list of excuses for not taking action on some aspect of blogging — whether it be starting out, or developing an established blog — is endless.

Sometimes they come as we compare ourselves to the great things that others are doing; sometimes they’re related to our own feelings of inadequacy and self doubt.

Either way, the end result is usually inaction. Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we’ll take action “one day” — after we get better, smarter, older, or improve whatever it is that we’re not good enough at — but the reality is that we’re never going to do it.

The secret of many bloggers’ success

So what is it that sets some bloggers apart?

It’s simple really: they get things done. They don’t allow what’s going on in their minds to distract them from actually blogging and completing the things they set out to do.

• They still have ideas and dreams, but they put action items around them that take them to reality.
• They still have doubts and insecurities, but they don’t allow that to hold them back.

I look at my own experience of blogging over the last eight years, and I see times where I’ve suffered from both these mindsets.

I have notebooks full of ideas that never amounted to anything. But I realized a few years back that unless I actioned some of them, my business would never reach its potential.

I also had periods, particularly when I started out, where I had so much self doubt about the things I was writing, and my lack of ability in some aspects of blogging, that I was almost paralyzed by fear. However, I managed to put that aside and blog on, only to discover that the more I did it, the better I got.

All of this reminds me of a great video I saw last week from Seth Godin. It runs for 18 minutes and I think much of what Godin says applies to bloggers. Many of us are paralyzed by our “Lizard Brains”, which often stop us from taking action, and actively sabotage us.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you overcome these mindsets. I know so many of us do struggle with them. How do you snap yourself out of the “I’m gonna…” or the “I’m not … enough” ways of thinking?

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The Power of Not Giving Up – One Blogger’s Story

A guest post by Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz who emailed last week to remind me (Darren) that today is ProBlogger’s 6th Birthday and asked if she could write a birthday post. Here it is!.

I’ve sat where you sit.

I’ve devoured the articles and the blog posts and the link roundups. I’ve agonized over whether I could afford that video camera or that conference or that membership program. I’ve felt like a fool for even hoping this blogging thing could ever work.

I’ve sat right there and I know how scary it is.

Maybe I should introduce myself. My name is Naomi Dunford, and I was just like you.

I was desperate, scared and pregnant. My doctor had put me on bed-rest. I had to leave work because I was fainting all the time. Even before he was born, we knew our baby boy would have health problems.

We had intermittent web access because I could only intermittently afford to pay the bill. My husband was making very little money in a job working nights and it was going nowhere. Things did not look good.

Then I found Problogger.

I read all the archives. (All the archives.) Read some Copyblogger. Read some Chris Brogan. Slept. Drank a lot of tea. Had some panic attacks and spent a lot of time thinking about how cool it would be to be a problogger one day.

You’re waiting for the bit where I say it got better, right? Where I say I dove right in and created a blog and hustled my way to fame and fortune? Sadly, no.

I did nothing. Nothing. For a year.

I had my son. Went back to my job. Left work in the middle of my shift on my fourth day back. Went down to one (sub-poverty line) income. Flirted with the idea of starting a business. Got one half-hearted client. Put our son to bed by myself. Ate a lot of rice.

But I kept reading Problogger.

One day, Darren mentioned he needed businesses to sponsor his third birthday giveaway. Sitting there, nursing my son in the middle of the night, I had a crazy idea. I could be a sponsor. I had no idea what I was going to give, but the deadline of Problogger’s birthday was enough to get me going and get my blog launched.

I decided to give some marketing coaching. I had to fill out a form to say who I was and what I was offering, and I wrote that IttyBiz was the “offshoot blog of IttyBitty Marketing”. IttyBitty Marketing? Please. We’d had the sum total of one client and to this day, they haven’t paid me. But I had to put something in there. I sent it off, and then all I could do was wait.

(The actual story of how I went from not even having a domain name to launching my site on a Technorati Top 100 blog in four days is pretty uninteresting, although there are some juicy behind the scenes highlights and an adorable picture of Xavier here.)

I launched the blog. I wanted to email the people who commented to enter the contest and invite them to IttyBiz, but I didn’t have their email addresses. (I ended up clicking on all their links and personally emailing them via their contact pages, a process that took two full days. We worked straight through the night.) I did the same with the other sponsors.

I got some readers. Not a lot, but some. I got a little bit of traffic. A few other bloggers said some nice things about what I wrote. My goal was to get a thousand subscribers before Christmas. I didn’t make it.

But I kept reading Problogger.

Let’s flash forward three years.

My blog now employs six people. We have over 20,000 readers. We’ve helped more than 1000 people quit their job. As an affiliate, we sold enough copies of Teaching Sells to fund a school in Cambodia.

My husband quit his job. We’re unschooling our son. We moved to England for a while. We bought a little house. We finally got a car. We went to Cuba and Ireland and SXSW and Blogworld a few times. I threw a party in Austin and Darren came.

We’ve had ups and downs. I got pregnant again and lost the baby. Burned out. Missed some deadlines. Had a few site crashes. Got hacked a couple times. Did some stuff I’m not proud of. Did some stuff I’m very proud of.

And we’re home. My husband kisses my little boy goodnight seven days a week.

But here’s the really crazy part.

Nothing special happened.

I didn’t just happen to get a column in the New York Times. Nobody invited me to be on Oprah. I didn’t conveniently score a book deal. Despite my repeated attempts, I’m still not married to Brian Clark. I didn’t do anything special. The gods did not smile on me.

I just kept reading Problogger.

The point of all of this?

Please don’t give up. I know it’s terrifying. I know you are under indescribable pressure to do something serious with your life and grow up and forget your crazy blogging dreams. I know that some days, this is the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

I know your family thinks you’re crazy. I know you feel completely alone. I know you feel like it’s never, ever going to work.

But what you’re reading here? It works. I promise. Please don’t lose heart.

Happy birthday, Problogger. And thank you, Darren. I am blessed to have you as my mentor and honoured to have you as my friend.

Naomi Dunford writes at IttyBiz.

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