Link Clout # 1

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We’ve started a new segment on the Blog Clout blog - called the “Link Clout”. Every so often, I’ll share with you 3 links that are noteworthy. This won’t be a link dump. Or a link exchange with others. It’ll be links to stuff I wish I’d written.

Why only 3 links?

Because more than that is just overwhelming for you readers.

Why no fixed schedule for Link Clout?

Because I don’t want to be pressurized in mentioning mediocre links just to meet some schedule deadline. Whenever I find 3 links, a post will be made.

Onwards… to the first issue of Link Clout:

1. Landing Page Confusion - 3 case studies on how 3 landing pages were optimized. Really good stuff that teaches you how people navigate web pages.

2. 27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers - 27 things John Wesley learns in almost 6 months of blogging.

3. How An Online Entrepreneur Went From Eating Ramen Noodles To Becoming A Millionaire (thread) - Read all the posts by “michaeljohn” on the first page.

Is Your Blog Making Enough Money?

• Google Adsense pays an average of $0.70 to $1 per CPM. Which means for every 1000 page views your blog receives, you’ll be paid $1. If you manage to attract 10,000 hits to your website, you’ll earn a whoopin $10!

• If you promote affiliate programs through your blog, here are the average statistics. For every 10,000 people that visit your blog, you’ll manage to send 100 people to the affiliate link through banner and text ads. Out of the 100, 1-2 people will end up buying. If you get paid $20 per sale, your earnings will be $40 on every 10,000 hits!

Not exactly numbers you can retire on - is it?

This is the reason 90% of the bloggers don’t make it big. They only focus on ad and affiliate revenue. Blog ads are good only to fill your blog up and earn some chump change. But if you really want to convert your blog into a full time income, you’ve got to:

1. Make your blog just the front-end. The entrance. The gate through which people can enter and come to know you.
2. Then develop your own products and sell them through your blog to earn the real money.

Two Types of Products You Can Create With Ease If You Can Blog

1. Reports. If you can blog, you can write a report too. Write a super article or a report - 10-12 pages long on one sub-topic. And sell it for $10. On average, 1 out of every 100 visitors will buy it. If you attract 10,000 visitors, your earnings will be $1000.

2. E-Courses. Teach people through email. If you can blog, you can write for email courses too. People will pay $100 to $500 for 4-6 week e-courses. Attract a 10,000 people and you may well earn $5,000 with your e-course (if 10 people enroll).

(If you use WordPress to blog, you can install the “Buy Me a Beer” plugin. When people buy you a beer via PayPal, you will know which post they liked. You can then create a report or an e-course on that sub-topic. If people will donate $3 after reading a blog post, they will pay $10 for a more detailed report too.)

Action Summary:

• Don’t rely on ads to make you a full time income from your blog.
• Instead, focus on creating back end products that you can sell on your own for a lot more money.

10,211 Unique Visitors in 19 Days

We’ve hit 10,211 unique visitors in just 19 days for this blog!

(Statistical Picture from Google Analytics. Info in Red for clarification by yours truly. Downward arrows show the days I spent time on promoting this blog. Obvious Conclusion: Traffic Peaks Follow Promotional Sprees!)

The unique visitors to page view ratio is still pathetic. And most of the visitors are visiting the old blog post pages directly because those were the ones I spent time promoting (hence the lack of comments on newer posts). So the next thing to do is:

• Get visitors to visit the main blog page
• Guide visitors to move from one page to another easily and spend more time on this blog

Have been very busy with a few things and so haven’t set up the navigation and theme for this blog properly yet. Will get to it soon and you can see the changes and improvements first hand.

The Power of Specific Phrasing

1.

Hog Island was a piece of land that no one visited, until Huntington Hartford renamed it to Paradise Island. Today, it is one of the top most vacation spots in the world valued at $5 billion!
2.

A non-profit company I consulted with a couple of years ago almost doubled their donations by using one simple technique. Instead of asking people to simply give their money, they gave the people specifics. In the letter they mailed out, they wrote how exactly they will use the funds that they would receive (to start a new kitchen program, to renovate one location etc). Specifics doubled the response.

3.

BlogClout.com came out with a WordPress plugin that allows blog owners to accept donations via PayPal from their readers. But instead of asking people to simply “donate money” - the plugin asks people to “Buy Me a Beer!” (For non-drinkers, there is a setting that substitutes Coffee in place of Beer.)

If you use WordPress, then click here to Download the Buy Me a Beer Plugin that allows your blog readers to donate money via PayPal

Listen To Your Core Audience

“Build small community and thousands will want to join.” - Confucius

Successful cult leaders know the secret to growth. Serve a core audience. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. It is ok if some people don’t like you. In fact, it is essential for a few people to hate you if you ever want to become super famous.

(Eg: Would Howard Stern ever become the king of radio if everyone had liked him?)

As your blog grows and you start having more conversations with all sorts of people, it’ll be very tempting to cater to everyone’s needs and wishes. But if you start listening to everyone, you will lose your edge. You’ll go from exciting to dull.

(picture inspired by Kathy Sierra)

How to resist the temptation?

The Secret of Successful Writers

Many successful writers have a secret. They write to an audience of one. They start by writing “Dear Mary” (where Mary is the name of the person they started writing for) and then continue their article or book.

This is a great technique. Because

1. It’ll help in not listening to everyone.

2. It’ll help you keep your writing crisp.

Action Summary:

• Start writing for an audience of one. Start every blog post with “Dear _____” and then edit it out.

Cool Tool: Writing without Distraction

I just came across this cool online tool that allows you to write without distraction. The tool is excellent and if you’re going to be persistent in writing one-post-a-day - it is essential that you remove all excuses and distractions from your schedule. The tool has no bells and whistles. Its just plain green text on black background.

Begin your day by writing a post.

• To get rid of your distractions, set the Writer tool as your home page.
• Let it be the first page you see when you open your browser in the morning.
• Click F11 so that the browser screen becomes full screen.
• Write.
• (Click F11 again to go back to the normal window.)

Link to the online “no-distraction” writing tool: Writer

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In Other News…

Btw, you may have noticed the “Buy Me A Beer” PayPal Donation buttons on this blog. If you have a blog that runs on wordpress, stay tuned. You’ll soon be able to download the plugin that adds those buttons to wordpress blogs automatically. Am just working on taking care of a few kinks right now and writing the documentation for the plugin.

Traffic via Blog Directories

Disclosure: I’ve never tried submitting any of my blogs to blog directories before (because it’s a time consuming task). But that is one of the first thing many bloggers do to improve their search engine rankings and increase their traffic.

If you do try submitting your blog to blog directories, please remember:

• Blog submission won’t lead to a direct increase in traffic from those directory websites
• But if your blog is placed on a good blog directory which has a high page rank, it will help you improve your search engine rankings and lead to some indirect traffic

The problem that many bloggers face is knowing which blog directory is worth submitting your blog to. Most of them are not updated properly. Many of them don’t link to your blog at all. And a few link to you for the first couple of months and then ask you to pay a small fee if you want to remain in their listings.

But Nicolas Jeison has finally solved that problem. He has come up with a blog where all he does is reviews different blog directories. And lets us know which ones are worth submitting to and which ones are a waste of time.

If you are interested in blog directory submissions, check his blog out:

• Blog Directories Reviews

Creating Killer Flagship Content by Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett is a prolific blogger who runs a cool blog for bloggers. His is one blog you should read. Its a good mix of blogging theory and practical ideas.

(Disclosure: I first met Chris in a paid membership forum that we both are part of. And always found his posts and answers on that forum well thought out.)

Anyways, yesterday, I finally got down to reading Chris’s free report “Killer Flagship Content.” Its a short 14 page report that Chris gives away to his blog subscribers. And its a good read. The main theme of his report is:

Why You Should Have a Good
Content Creation Strategy In Place

While most of the report was good stuff, there are two pages on it that are exceptional. And you should download his report for those 2 pages:

1. On page 9, Chris gives us 10 ideas for quick content creation.

2. On page 12, he gives us 10 ideas for promoting a blog’s content.

Both of these pages are gold and make a terrific checklist that you can use if you’re stuck.

Action Summary:

• Visit Chris’s blog and subscribe to his newsletter to receive his free report “Killer Flagship Content“
• Focus on creating flagship content for your blog
• Promote your flagship content

Mini Celebrations

Woohooo!

We hit 10,000 pageviews yesterday - for the month of May.

On May 3rd, I decided to start blogging regularly, even though the (secret) BlogClout application is not yet ready. Its been less than half a month of consistent blogging. So receiving 10,000+ page views in 13 days is kinda cool!

My goal before I started blogging consistently over here was 10,000 unique visitors in 60 days. I have achieved that before on other blogs - so it wasn’t a far fetched goal. But on this blog, I think we’ll beat that goal by more than a month! We’re already over

6,000 unique visitors in 13 days!

(Yes - the Unique visitors to Page views ratio is not so good right now. But its only been a little while and there is not much content over here. The blog design is not even complete yet! Things should improve. And I’ll document all the steps that I implement to improve the metrics… so stay tuned to this blog!)

Statistics provided by Google Analytics

To use a cliche…

If I can do it - so can you!

Action Summary:

• Start using these 5 free ideas to increase your blog traffic
• Keep on reading this blog to learn more traffic generation tricks

Cool Tool: BlogSigs Signs Every Email With Your Latest Blog Post

I came across this cool software that automatically signs all your outgoing emails with your latest blog post.

The software won’t generate loads of traffic to your website. But its free to use and doesn’t take a lot of resources. You download it, set it up, and you’re good to go.

It works with all the major email softwares and websites:

• Outlook
• Mail.app
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• Yahoo

The only bad thing about the software is its adware. They add the following text to all your outgoing emails too:

–Blogsigs.com, Link your own blog posts.
http://www.blogsigs.com

(You can always delete that though…)