This is a guest post by Jason Acidre.

I’ve been working as an SEO for 2 years now. I started working for an Australian-based SEO Agency in early 2010, before I was hired by Affilorama and Traffic Travis to be their in-house consultant.

Working on these websites compelled me to do extensive research on my own, and that’s when I decided to start my own blog “Kaiserthesage” (late June of 2010), to test things that are related to my work, which is mostly on generating traffic and converting them.

When I first started blogging, I didn’t really intend to make profit from it – using any form of online money making tactics, especially through affiliate marketing – since I don’t really find it that challenging, given that I work for one of the world’s biggest affiliate marketing training portal, which I first felt to be unfair. All that really mattered to me back then was to do massive experiments using my personal blog.

So how I did manage to earn without the intention to earn? Well, the reason is quite simple, it’s because I had a plan on how I will drive specifically targeted visitors to my blog. And because there’s a demand for the information that I was willing to share to my readers, monetizing the traffic at some point is inevitable.

I eventually offered consultation services and outsourced work.

The First Step

My initial investment for my blog’s business model was $30 (for the domain name and 3-month worth of web hosting) as well as my time and effort to write and promote the blog.

The first blog post(s) that I’ve published was a 2-part case study, depicting my first hands-on experience working as an SEO, including the methods I used, the problems I’ve encountered for the first website that I have ever optimized (when I was still working for an agency) as well as the results of the campaign.

After that launch, I didn’t really expect those posts to be a hit, but I did receive some awesome feedbacks from a few readers (and emails asking for the other methods I’ve used in the latter part of that particular campaign). I can say that it wasn’t that bad for a start.

It took me 2 months of hard work (not really) writing and building relationships with other bloggers in the field of SEO, social media and blogging before I really got my target audience’s attention.

I remember writing filler content just to have more posts on my blog (which is something that I wouldn’t advice for people to do now).

I spent 2-4 hours every day (even on weekends) in developing my blog (writing posts, commenting on my link targets’ blogs and building relationships through social networks/emails) within the first 2 months – and the time I invested on the project paid off in a short period of time (and I didn’t expect it as well).

How?

The 2-Month Online Marketing Strategy

These are some of the components of my initial content and online marketing strategy that generated me clients on my blog’s 3rd to its 7th month of being live.

Unique Content

Before launching my blog, I already have a content plan in place, where I’ve listed the topics (using excel) that I would want to write. The main focus and principle of my content development/generation strategy was to provide content that I don’t see often discussed on the SEO blogging community, to create unique content and to have the “rarity of information” as the key to hook readers and for them to have high probability of sharing the content.

I tried publishing 2 posts each week, back then, with each post having its own designated keyword to target and rank for in search engines.

List of Link Targets

I created a list of my campaign’s target link prospects, but the list is not intended for SEO purposes. The main objective that I had for this list is to help me identify the people/bloggers that I should be connecting with and to try to absorb their readers back to my blog.

Build Relationships, Not Links

The list that I’ve created served as a guide for my external marketing processes. I chose 20 – 50 blogs to focus on engaging with by regularly reading their updated posts, leaving sensible and useful comments, sharing their works on Twitter (and mentioning them), sending emails (if I had to) and basically everything that I can do to be in their radar.

The best thing about establishing connections with people who have the readers that you want is that it is an ROI-focused link building, wherein you are able to improve your domain’s authority in SEO perspective (which can eventually help your site’s pages/posts rank better on search engines) and you’re also able to absorb readership, as the goal is to entice influencers back to your blog and hope they’ll share your unique content to their networks/followers.

I had the chance to establish great connections along the process and that benefited my campaign very well, especially through the people who are sending referred traffic to my blog, like from Kristi Hines, Sean Si of SEO Hacker, Gail Gardner of Growmap, Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Café, and many more.

Relationship building is one of the most powerful marketing tools of this age, you should use it wisely. But in case you’re looking for more tips on marketing your blog right after launching it, you can check out my list of posts on link building strategies.

Things I Realized I Should’ve Done When I Started

There are two things that I wish I have done earlier, as I think that these would’ve only speed up the process of gaining more readers, traffic and clients to my business if I had these 2 in my initial approach.

Thorough Posts

If I’ve focused on creating comprehensive guides (ebook-like blog posts), like what I’ve been mostly doing this past year, I could’ve easily built attract stronger links back then, as it’s always easier to get links when people will have reasons to link to a certain piece of content.

Social Media Outreach

Given that I’ll be pushing out good and link-worthy content, reaching out to bloggers for a social media boost could have been easy. The more social shares that my content gets, the more followers, readers and possible clients could see my work.

But in the end, I still got everything in place.

The Results – Inbound Client Acquisition

After 2 months of continuously creating decent content and getting into my link targets’ radar, business offers started pouring in.

I didn’t get clients because of search rankings. I got them through my blog posts. It gave the first impression for my business, and the principle of not just bringing traffic, but rather to bring traffic that will be fascinated with what they see and be influenced by what they’ll learn from it made the approach more robust.

On the 3rd month and onwards, I got at least 4 steady clients paying me $500 per month to mostly do their sites’ link building processes. Affilorama also retained me as their consultant, since the act of sustaining my blog enhances my own skills as an online marketing strategist.

Of course, I didn’t do all the tasks for my clients. I hired people to implement the strategies I propose for the campaign. And with those small steps, from starting a blog, building relationships and continuously providing useful information to my target market, I was able to transform my blog into a business and eventually allowed me to establish my own online marketing agency.

Being an authority allows you to sell anything easily, because your audience will trust you.

You're reading How I Built a Blog That Earned $10,000 in 5 Months, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Why Every Blog Should Have a Marketing Plan
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This is a guest post by Robert Regehr.

Are you a full-time blogger earning a living from your WordPress blogs or an aspiring Problogger with your first taste of the freedom that comes from blogging? There’s a ton of really good advice out there on getting up and running from bloggers like Darren Rowse and Yaro Stark. However, there’s shockingly little on protecting your blogging nest egg. If you rely on income from blogging to support your family you need to secure your WordPress installations immediately. Here are five actionable steps you can take today to ensure hackers won’t disrupt the income stream you’ve worked so hard to build from blogging.

What’s All The Fuss About? I’ve Never Been Hacked

The default WordPress install is about as secure as a wet paper bag, especially if you make a habit of blogging from your favorite coffee shop. You’ve put a lot of hard work into enjoying the rewards that come from blogging. The last thing you want is some script kiddie or hacker taking over your site; it’d be like someone breaking into your home and robbing you blind.

I’m sure you’re very careful when shopping or banking on the Internet; would you ever consider logging into online banking or shopping without looking for the “https” in the URL? If you’re like me and blog with a white chocolate mocha on free Wi-Fi, you’re pretty much shouting your username and passwords to anyone within earshot. Public access points in coffee shops and cafes are far from secure and you never know who’s sitting across from you with a packet sniffer watching your every move.

Fortunately there are steps you can take to secure WordPress and protect yourself. I’m not just talking about using stronger passwords but actual bank level security for your site. If you’re serious about earning a living from your blogs you simply cannot ignore security when it comes to protecting your online assets.

Step One: Secure Your WordPress Dashboard

When you log into the WordPress dashboard, your login credentials are transmitted in plain text and are unencrypted. (Remember, default install = secure as a wet paper bag) This means your dashboard session can be intercepted and hijacked, something I’m sure you’d like to avoid.

The most important thing you can do to secure your blog is install an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate on your site to protect your admin dashboard. What this does is encrypt everything you do in the dashboard to your webhost just like your bank does with online banking.

I’m not going to get into the technical aspects of installing SSL certificates; your webhost can do that for you. Think SSL is overkill? I’m not talking about running your entire site on SSL, just the admin. If you’re not securing the WordPress dashboard everything you do is being sent in the clear for anyone with a packet sniffer to exploit.

If purchasing a certificate is not within your budget, contact your webhost about using their shared certificate. While shared SSL is not as good as buying your own, shared SSL is better than no SSL. If you want to purchase your own certificate there are plenty of affordable options available from companies like Verisign and Comodo. You’ll need a dedicated IP address for your blog which may or may not be included in your web hosting plan.

Once your webhost has installed the certificate and verified that it’s working correctly you need to let WordPress know to start using SSL for the dashboard. In your installation root folder locate the file wp-config.php and simply add this line to enable SSL for your dashboard:


define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);


This will enable SSL for your dashboard; however, you’ll probably see certificate errors for WordPress including unencrypted content. Fortunately, there are plugins available to force WordPress to encrypt everything in your dashboard, eliminating these errors. I use WordPress HTTPS by Mike Ems and find it does a nice job of forcing SSL for all dashboard content.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-https/

You can verify that SSL is working correctly by using the Chrome browser to log into your WordPress Admin and you’ll see the green padlock and https in the address bar.

Step Two: Install WordPress Secret Keys

Hackers can exploit cookies found on your computer to gain access to your dashboard even if you’re using SSL. Fortunately, WordPress allows you to configure secret keys for strong encryption cookie goodness. Why this isn’t done by default is beyond me; however, it’s very easy to enable.

You’ll need to access that wp-config.php file again from the previous step. First, generate your secret keys using with WordPress API located here:

https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt

You’ll get something that looks like this:

Notice that the keys change every time you refresh the page so your keys will be unique; don’t share these keys with anyone and please don’t use the ones I’ve shown here. Simply add your keys to your wp-config.php file, replacing any that might already exist. (I didn’t have any in my wp-config.php) That’s it! You’re now protected from cheeky cookie-exploiting criminals.

Step Three: Deny Access to wp-config.php

Now that we’ve enabled SSL and set up secret keys in our wp-config.php, we need to deny access to this file. This is easy to accomplish by editing the .htaccess file found in the root directory of our WordPress install. If you’re not comfortable editing any of the files discussed today make sure you’re having someone trustworthy make the changes for you.

You should already have the .htaccess file in your WordPress install root directory if you’ve enabled permalinks on the site, so simply add this code to the end of that file:


<Files wp-config.php>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Files>


This will prevent anyone from looking at your wp-config.php file using a web browser. Note that if a hacker gains access to your webhost they will have access to everything… which is of course, very bad.

Step Four: Kill the Admin Account

If you’re still using “admin” as your WordPress login, shame on you! The problem with using the admin account is that hackers know it exits and can exploit the login with brute force. Most WordPress users don’t bother to change the default settings reinforcing our notion of security by wet paper bag. If you’re still blogging under the admin account you’re well on your way to getting hacked. Even if you’re not using the admin account but it still exists you’re vulnerable; make sure this account has been deleted from your user list.

Fortunately it’s very easy to delete the admin account. In your dashboard, create another user account with a custom username and grant it administrative rights. Login to your dashboard using your new account and delete the old admin account. WordPress will prompt you to transfer all the posts you’ve made under the admin account to another user; just make sure you don’t mess this up.

Step Five: Rename The WP Tables Prefix

Another feature of wet paper bag security found in WordPress is that the SQL table prefix is “wp” by default. If a hacker knows your table’s prefix then you’re vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. What you need to do to protect yourself from this exploit is rename the prefix. This used to be tricky because you’d have to login to phpmyadmin and change the prefix manually; however, there are a number of plugins that automate this process for you. One example of a plugin with this functionality is Secure WordPress:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-wordpress/

WordPress Security by Website Defender is free and not only renames that table prefix for you but will perform several security checks on your site, even back up your database and scan for malware. You can’t beat free when it comes to good plugins and this is one is a must for every WordPress installation.

Securing WordPress Doesn’t Have to be Difficult

There you have it; five actionable steps you can complete today to make sure your blog and income are protected. Talk to anyone that’s had their site hacked and you’ll quickly discover the threat is real. Part of succeeding as a blogger is treating your blog as a serious business; this is why you simply cannot afford to ignore your blog’s security any longer.

You're reading Don’t Let Hackers Crash Your Blogging Party, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Mobile Blogging – How to Make Your WordPress Blog Smartphone Ready
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This is a guest post by Christine Brady of Insightful Mommy.

If you have been blogging for any length of time, you have no doubt heard the phrase list building or building a list of subscribers. But what does building a list of subscribers have to do with blogging you may be wondering…

As bloggers, your focus is much like mine – creating great content to share with our readers, staying active on social media, connecting and promoting your blog. But every one of the daily task that we work hard on are all subject to finding your audience.

And unfortunately, your audience may not always follow your blog or follow you on social media. Some may have your blog loaded in their RSS, but what about the readers that don’t?

You need a way to reach them. This is where building a list of subscribers becomes a vital part of your online business strategy.

Let’s face it – list building is all the rage in the Internet Marketing arena. There are Internet Marketers out there who run their businesses solely based on their list on subscribers. Some don’t even have a blog or a Twitter account, but they have a subscriber list that they care for and nurture.

That is an incredible business model – and one that we bloggers are in a great position to pick up on. Bloggers are actually in an even better spot as we have mastered great content and know how to connect with our audience.

The idea of building a subscriber list is not complicated as it may seem.

First, the Basics

List building comes in many forms –

• An email list
• A list of followers
• Feed subscribers
• Direct mail lists
• A buyers list

In every case of list building, there is the idea of building a list of willing subscribers that are interested in what you have to say.

People who subscribe to your offer are letting you know that they found value in what you offered them and they are now giving you permission to send them more information, to talk to them, to help them out.

I Have a New Subscriber – Now What?

When you get a new subscriber, the real fun begins. For someone that has just joined your list, the beginning stages are a true relationship building time.

Don’t let this scare you though – this is something you already do on your blog. With your list, you’re just taking it in another direction.

What I have found in my years of list building is that you actually develop even more of a relationship with your list than with some of your blog readers.

Hard to believe?

Picture it this way – my blog is written on the premise of writing for the masses, even though I know my readers fairly well, I still write for the general public. So that if anyone visits my blog, they know what they will find there and the material will be pretty general.

But with my subscriber list, I can go much deeper in conversation. I can give them tips and advice more targeted to what they want. Much of it, I don’t put in my blog posts.

In other words, it’s a relationship unlike any other.

And it’s a sustainable relationship as well.

Your blog can go away. Your Twitter account can go away. Even your other social media outlets can go away. But a list of email subscribers will be yours as long as you want them.

Just Do It!

So here’s what to do next:

• Head over to Aweber (aff link) and sign up for an account.
• Decide on an incredible offer to offer to people who sign up on your list – easiest way is to browse through some of your old blog posts and compile a short report.
• Generate a web form from AWeber to place on your blog.
• Place the form in a widget area on your blog.
• Write a blog post to let your readers know that you are offering a free report.

That’s all it takes to get started!

There is no greater blog marketing piece than a list of people who subscribe to your offers and feeds because they perceive you as offering them value.

Done the right way, list building develops trust, offers value and worthwhile information and can create a stream of revenue for you for years to come.

Are you ready to begin building your list of subscribers?

You're reading Why Bloggers Need to Build a Subscriber List, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Per Schmitz.

Nowadays there’s a lot of personal information publicly available on the web. We all have an “online persona” which is directly related to the way people see and judge us as individuals.

Unfortunately managing your online reputation is everything but an easy task.

There are many social media channels where people can spread unbased opinions about others, tag inappropiate photos, and otherwise mess with your reputation. As a blogger, your name stands for the quality and authenticity of your posts, apart from your personal and professional interest in having a “clean and positive” online reputation.

As Google says: “Your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you – whether it is a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update.”

If you want to influence the way people see you online, it’s important to understand that there are two basic techniques for managing your online reputation.

• Constantly monitor what people are saying about you and respond instantly when necessary.
• Actively develop your reputation by creating “positive” content. Create a hub such as a personal landing page where people can easily find everything about you in a simple and compact format.

With those two techniques in mind, here are six simple, yet effective tools that might help you along the way to monitor what people are saying about you as well as actively develop and influence your online reputation.

Me On The Web

Me On The Web is a personalized Google Alert that can be accessed directly from your Google dashboard when logged into your Google account. Get notified whenever your name or email address get mentioned publicly on the web. To use Me On The Web, just log into your Google dashboard and click “Set up search alerts for your data” – it’s as easy as that!

SocialMention

Another brilliant tool to track your name across the web is Social Mention. It’s a social media search engine that searches blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos and micro-blogging services. You can select the sources you want to search and employ email alerts or a personalized RSS feed to stay up-to-date.

But don’t take it from me. Here’s their official description.

“SocialMention allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.”

Twitter Search RSS Feeds

Twitter is one of the most popular tools when it comes to conversation and as such, it deserves some special attention. Monitoring what people are saying about you on Twitter should be a basic task when it comes to managing your online reputation. There’s no need to manually search it regularly when you can create a Twitter-search RSS feed that will update each time your name gets mentioned.

To set up this RSS feed, you can use the following URL – http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=your+name – or use this handy little tool to easily create Twitter search RSS feeds. Then add the RSS feed to your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader.

DooID

Take advantage of a clean and simple app for building awesome personal landing pages in minutes with DooID.

DooID sites are free, customizable, and help you to manage your information all in one place like your bio, social networks links, your blog, and contact details. Once created, you can provide one simple link where people can find out everything about you, ideally using a personal domain name like yourname.com.

WiseStamp

Easily create a HTML email signature and automatically add it to your outgoing email with WiseStamp (aff link). Email signatures are effective tools when it comes to building your personal brand and an ideal starting point for influencing your online reputation with anyone you contact via email. Having a professional email signature is very important – it should at least contain your full name, basic contact info, and a link to your main website or personal landing page. Like DooID, Wisestamp is a free service that’s quick to set up and almost maintenance free.

Knowem

Knowem helps you to secure your personal name or username on over 590 social media services and websites. You’ll hardly use any of the services you sign up to via Knowem, but assuring that your name or pseudonym will not be related to any undesirable content on those websites is worth the effort.

These are just a few of many different services out there. Which ones do you use and how do you use them for online reputation management?

You're reading 6 Tools That Help Bloggers Manage and Monitor Their Online Reputation, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Ricardo Bueno.

We all want more email subscribers. The question is, how do you get them?

Aside from creating high quality, compelling content, you need to promote your email sign-up form so readers know where to go to sign up.

The easier you make it to sign up, the more likely readers are to subscribe. This means, doing the following:

• Displaying your email sign up forms prominently on your site.
• Designing your form so that it stands out (compelling headline & contrasting color scheme).
• Using social proof to persuade readers to subscribe.
• Making it easy to subscribe (the fewer the fields, the better).

A good email sign-up form will possess each of those qualities.

Once you’ve done that, all that’s left to do is promote your email sign-up form so first-time site visitors and readers know where to subscribe. Here’s a list of high-converting places to add your email sign-up form on your website…

1. The Feature Box

Marketer Derek Halpern coined the term: “Feature Box.”

The feature box is a great way to explain what your website is about to new site visitors and build your email list at the same time. It’s essentially an area above your primary blog content, just below the site header, where you can place your email sign-up form and a brief description of what people can expect by subscribing.

Here’s what the “feature box” looks like on Derek’s website:

As you can see, it’s the first thing people will see when they come to your website. It’s also designed to persuade you to subscribe by communicating what the site is all about with a Call To Action to subscribe.

Simple, and effective!

If you don’t have your own widgeted area to insert a “feature box” into your theme, you’ll have to design your own and hook it in above the blog content on the home page. Otherwise, here are a few WordPress themes that have the feature box built in the following child themes from StudioPress.

• Balance Child Theme
• Generate Child Theme
• (in)SPYR Child Theme

2. The Top of Your Blog’s Sidebar

If building your email list is important to you, you should always prominently display your sign-up form on every page of your website. You can do that easily by placing your email sign-up form at the top of your blog’s sidebar at all times.

What’s great about the sign-up form on Copyblogger for example, is that:

1. It’s easy to see. By using a darker color and big text, they ensure that the email sign-up form stands out.
2. It’s simple. It asks for the email only. The more information you ask for, the less likely people are to sign up.
3. Great social proof. The announcement tab just above it displays how many other people subscribe to the blog already which tells other readers, “wow, this content must be good!”

If your sign up form is below the fold, and the color blends in with the rest of the site, I’m less likely to see it and you’re missing an opportunity to get new site visitors to subscribe.

3. The Blog Post Footer

When someone’s done reading your blog post, there’s that “what next?” moment.

They can:

1. Leave a comment.
2. Share your article via a Tweet, a Facebook Share, a +1, et cetera. Or,
3. They can subscribe to get future blog updates by email.

But in order for them to subscribe, you need to give them a quick and easy way to do so!

This sample email sign-up form from Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income has a nice, simple call to action, offers great social proof (“Join over 25,000 people”), and even offers an incentive by way of a free book download. It’s embedded at the end of every blog post so first-time readers can subscribe to the blog quickly and easily.

This sign-up form from Pat Flynn really stands out. If I’ve read his post and I liked it, I’m very likely to sign-up right then and there.

Really, putting a sign-up form at the end of your posts is all about convenience. You’re making it easier for people to subscribe at a moment when they’re wondering what to do next. You have their attention, and you want to keep it, so ask them to sign up!

4. Your About Page

Your About page will often times be one of the most visited pages of your website. It’s where people click to learn more about who you are and what you do.

It makes sense. They’ve read a blog post, now they want to learn more about you.

They’re interested.

Which means it’s also an opportunity to convert them into a reader now that you have their attention.

In this example, writer Jeff Goins places an email sign-up form prominently on his About page. He tells you what his site is about, places his Call To Action to subscribe, and backs it up with testimonials that showcase what other prominent writers have to say about his writing.

The format is simple:

1. This is who I am.
2. This is what this site is about.
3. Here’s what you can expect by subscribing (with a simple capture form to subscribe). And,
4. In case I haven’t convinced you yet, here’s what other people have to say about my writing.

It’s like a sales funnel for building your email list.

How does your About page compare? Are you using it as an opportunity to capture new readers?

5. The Website Footer

I’ve written about website footer designs before. They’ve evolved from a simple place where you host your copyright information to a section where you can host an extended set of navigation items, links, sources of contact information and in this case, a Call To Action to subscribe by email.

Personally, I know that the form on the footer of my website converts fairly well. When someone scrolls down there to look at the site footer, it’s yet another reminder to subscribe to blog updates by email.

6. The Dreaded Pop-Up Form

Last but not least, we have the dreaded pop-up form.

Most people (including myself) find this annoying, but it converts exceedingly well.

Here’s a great example of a well designed pop-up form from Neil Patel, author of Quick Sprout:

This pop-up has all the elements of a great, persuasive design:

1. A captivating headline with a description of what you can expect.
2. Clearly displayed social proof by way of the various corporate logos that are displayed.
3. A simple sign-up form with the Call To Action: “Yes! Send my free report!”

Most pop-up forms are poorly designed, and the site’s content is mediocre at best which is why we hate them. A well designed form on the other hand is going to capture someone’s attention and if the content is relevant, it’s going to persuade them to subscribe.

How many of these strategies are you using to build your email list? Which area is converting best for you?

If you’re not using any of these techniques, which one will you implement?

You're reading 6 High-Converting Areas To Add An Email Sign-Up Form & Build Your List, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• The #1 Secret to a High Converting Sales Page
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This is an interview with Danny Iny from Firepole Marketing. He’s returned to Kikolani to talk to us about how he wrote 80+ guest posts on major blogs in less than a year, earned the nickname “The Freddy Krueger of Blogging”, and skyrocketed Firepole Marketing to success with his Write Like Freddy blog writing training program (aff link).

1. A lot of the readers here at Kikolani would love to get more traffic, subscribers, and sales (as you say), but don’t know where to start. What are they missing?

Well, in my experience, most people are missing one of two things.

The first thing is that Content is King. The truth is that a lot of people make things much more complicated than they have to be; “traffic” becomes this mysterious thing that you try to “drive” to your blog. Every day we stumble onto a new “strategy”, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, SEO, Pinterest, or whatever. We never completely understand how this “strategy” is supposed to “drive” the “traffic”, other than having a vague sense that there’s a lot of traffic on this or that platform, and that somehow you might be able to siphon some of that traffic off to your site.

The truth is a lot simpler than that. Forget about “driving traffic”, and recognize that you’re dealing with people. Real live human beings, just like you. That’s where inbound and content marketing come into the picture. Human beings respond to content, because it’s a way for you to share a glimpse of who you are and what you’re about, while teaching something valuable. That’s how you build a real relationship, and that’s why content creation in general, and good writing in particular, are so critical to succeeding with a blog-based business.

Now, a lot of bloggers actually do get that, but they miss the second thing…

The second thing is that the King can get awfully lonely. See, we’ve all been fed this myth about how things go viral online. I tell three friends, they each tell three friends, and those friends each tell three friends, and pretty soon my server crashes from all the traffic, right? Except that in real life, that’s not how it happens; I tell three friends, and of those friends, one doesn’t listen, the second one isn’t all that impressed, and the third one mentions it to one friend who does nothing.

The network model for things to go viral can still work, but it’s a lot harder than people like to pretend, and it depends on a certain critical mass that most blogs just don’t have. Which means that if you want to build awareness and exposure, you can’t count on the traffic coming to you; you need to put your content where people are already going, and that usually means guest posting on other, bigger blogs.

So in a nutshell, that’s what people are missing: good content, and a guest posting strategy.

2. Why do you recommend writing and guest posting instead of, say, social media, or networking on Twitter, or Pinterest, or something else?

In general, social media is a lot of noise. People follow hundreds of content producers on Twitter, Facebook is a never-ending stream of status updates and shares… you get the picture. Sure, it’s easy to get in front of people, but only for a fraction of a second, and when they aren’t really paying attention, anyway. And even when they do notice you, you’re just another voice in the crowd.

When you go the content and guest posting route, everything changes. For one, you’ve just offered them something useful and valuable, and you offered it in a place where they know that the content is good, so they took the time to pay attention. Which is to say that you’ve got their attention, and you’re credible. That’s huge, and really hard to do in the online world these days! And not only do you get attention for a moment (like you do on Twitter), but you actually get attention on an ongoing basis – a guest post on a major blog can continue to deliver traffic (and credibility!) for weeks, months, and sometimes even years after first being published.

The other great side of content marketing and guest posting is the relationships that come with it. If you write a smash hit post for another blogger, you better believe that’s going to have a positive impact on your relationship with them. Sooner or later, you’re going to need those relationships to really grow your blog to the next level, and writing + guest posting is the cheapest, easiest and most effective way that I know to do it.

3. What would you say is the single biggest obstacle preventing people from doing the writing and guest posting that you describe?

Without a doubt, it’s the writing. This is the train of thought that goes through most bloggers’ heads when they consider the idea of writing and guest posting as a strategy:

“Grow my blog through guest posting? But I’m having trouble keeping up with the posts on my own blog… do I really have time to spend another ten hours writing a post for somebody else? And who would I write for, anyway? What if they don’t like the post? What if they don’t want to publish it? Does that mean I’d spend the ten hours for nothing? And I don’t have ten hours to spare, anyway… Besides, what if they do want to publish it… how many posts could I possibly write? Where will I come up with all the ideas? And the time to get it all done? This just feels like so much hard work, with so much uncertainty…”

A lot of it comes down to fear of writing, and the real reason why people are afraid of writing is that they don’t have a system for doing it well. Here are some truths about writing:

• Writing shouldn’t take a long time.
• Coming up with ideas shouldn’t to take long, and you shouldn’t run out of ideas.
• The vast majority of your guest posts should be accepted.
• Putting together a post shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, at the most.
• Writing is EASY!

The thing is that all these truths are only true if you’ve got a system that allows you to make it all happen.

4. What do you mean by “a system”? I don’t believe in stuff like article spinning or content scraping, and I know that you don’t either – so how can people create all this content, so quickly?

Good question – and maybe system isn’t the best word. Maybe “process” would be better. See, it all comes down to having a process that you can follow, step-by-step, to go through all the stages of the writing process. These are the stages that a good process should take you through:

1. Figure out where you want to post, and why. Are you writing on your own blog, or for someone else (because you need traffic, credibility, relationships, or all of the above)? If it’s for someone else, then where do you find them?
2. Figure out what topic you’re going to write about, by researching the target blog to find the overlap between what their readers want and what you have to offer.
3. Find a winning angle for your post, based on research into what has performed well in the past.
4. Write the headline, based again on what research tells you will work with your chosen audience.
5. Write the hook to grab the attention of readers, and keep them spellbound throughout your post.
6. Outline the post’s key sections: the problem that you’re going to solve in your post, the underlying cause of the problem, the solution, and how to implement the solution.
7. Add an engagement-building question and by-line to get people involved with your post, and back to your site.
8. Apply any necessary tweaks to maximize link-love, relationship-building, and so forth.

A good process takes all of the guesswork out of it, and lets you focus all of your energy on creating real, valuable content. This whole process shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, tops – but only if you know how it really works, and how to apply it.

That’s how I wrote 80+ guest posts in a year (posts averaging 1,200-1,400 words… you do the math), got on the radar of people like Brian Clark and Guy Kawasaki, wrote a book, grew our blog, etc. – it was all by writing, using the process that I developed and teach in my Write Like Freddy training program.

5. I know that your training is great, but I also know that my readers are wondering about this, so I might as well ask: how can a blogger justify paid training when their blog isn’t making any money?

That’s a great question, and it really depends on the situation of each blogger, and their priorities.

Imagine you’re trying to fix a car that isn’t working (and we’ll assume you aren’t a mechanic, because then the question becomes moot). Do you monkey around with it and try to fix it yourself, or do you take it to a garage to get it done?

Well, it really depends on the situation, right? If you’re fixing up the car as a hobby, then you probably want to do it yourself, and figure things out as you go. There’s no rush to get anywhere, and you can take your time and do it yourself.

But if it’s the car that takes you to work every day, then you need to get it fixed quickly, and you can’t afford to risk that you’ll mess it up even further. So you take it to the garage.

I think bloggers really have to ask themselves: is my blog a hobby, or is it a business? What do I want it to be? What is the cost of not fixing my problem, and what is the benefit of getting it fixed? If I was able to get dramatically more traffic and subscribers, for example, what would that give me? Would it just be an ego boost, or would it matter to my business, and to my financial life?

Depending on the answers to those questions, you can decide whether to pay for the help you need, or keep browsing around for free information, and tinkering with your blog. If it’s the latter, then more power to you. But if it’s the former, I’d love to see you inside my Write Like Freddy training program.

You're reading Blogging Your Way to Traffic, Subscribers, and Sales with Danny Iny, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Jeevan Jacob John of Blog Networking 101.

Do you watch TV commercials? I know that most of us do.

And we tend to hate them. But there are some TV commercials that really “suck” us in (I mean, impress us), right?

How about certain ads that come on during the Super Bowl?

I mean, who wouldn’t love to watch the E-trade Baby commercials.

And there are many advertisements like those. Those that motivate us to take action, check the product website online, or even buy the product.

And these businesses take advantage of one secret to make it all possible. The not-so-secret art of psychology.

Psychology is an interesting topic that you can study for a lifetime. It is about how our human mind and body works. In this blog post, we will talk about using some psychology and on our own blogs so that we can increase our conversion rate. Let’s just start, can we?

And by the way guys, forgive me if there are any mistakes in my description of the techniques. It has been 2-3 years since I took my psychology class.

Convince Your Readers to Subscribe & Comment

When it comes to convincing someone directly about something, the first technique often used is asking. In psychology, asking to get something can be divided into three techniques: The Foot in the Door Technique, The Door in the Face Technique, and The Ben Franklin Effect.

Note: All of the techniques that are mentioned below can be used effectively by tweaking according to the scenario you are working with. Let’s take a brief look at these three techniques.

The Foot in the Door Technique

All of us have used this technique. And we are still using it in our daily lives. The Foot in the Door technique of persuasion is when you ask someone to do a small favor, and if you get a good answer (a yes to your request), you ask them to do something bigger. Let me give you an example.

Let’s imagine that you want to take a vacation from your job. But you are just not sure whether you should ask your boss. So, you decide to go through the psychological means of persuasion. In the Foot in the Door technique, you ask your boss for something small like a half day leave today. If you get a yes, you later ask him whether you can take a vacation for a week.

The Foot in the Door technique works most effectively when you get a person to agree to many small requests and then ask him to do something bigger. The principle is that if you can get him/her to do many small favors, then why not one big favor?

So, here is how you can incorporate it to blogging. You convince your reader to subscribe to your blog. Then later, you ask him to buy your product.

In blogging, this might not necessarily work out so well, so we need to make some variations.

You should prove to your subscriber that you are an expert in your niche. When it comes to newsletters, you can do this by writing great newsletters so that it helps your readers. Then try to sell something useful to them. Just be sure to only recommend products that you think will be useful to your readers.

You can also convince your readers to buy your product first and then subscribe to your list by including subscription links in your product. For instance, if your product is an eBook, you could include subscription link in the header/footer or in some main pages.

The Door in the Face Technique

The Door in the Face Technique is the exact opposite of the Foot in the Door technique. In the Door in the Face technique, instead of asking something small at first, you ask something big. Let me give you a similar example.

Imagine that this time, you only need a one day leave and you want to use this technique to make your boss agree to your request. Well, at first, you will ask him if you can have a one week leave. When he says no, ask him to give you just one day leave instead. Notice that I emphasized just. Try to provoke your bosses’ emotions. Make him think this way: “Oh, this guy asked for a week’s leave and I objected, let’s just give him one day leave – this will make him happy or this will make him stop bothering me.”

As you can guess, it really depends upon your boss. Now, let’s take this technique and incorporate it into blogging.

You ask your reader to buy the product at first, and if they don’t, ask them to simply subscribe (which doesn’t cost any money).

Now, here comes the extra bit. Also ask them to buy the product if they think the newsletter is informative and interesting. If your newsletter is really informative and interesting, the reader will then think about your question and may decide to buy your book.

You can apply this technique by putting up call-to-actions in your posts, pages, and the homepage itself. First, you ask them to buy your product, and then in the same page tell them to only buy your product after subscribing. That way they can get a taste of the tips that are in the product. This way, you can get more people to subscribe to your list and hopefully buy your product while keeping them all happy at the same time. After a few days of sending your newsletter, you can also remind the reader about the product.

The Ben Franklin Effect

This finding/technique was most observed and noted down by Benjamin Franklin, hence the name. According to this, a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do another favor for.

Put in simple terms, you scratch by back and I will be more likely to scratch yours if you return my first favor by scratching my back.

Let’s just take the example of your vacation once more. Your boss gives you one week vacation leave because you finished your assigned work two-three weeks before the deadline. You have done your boss a favor and the boss returns it. And you try to get more vacations by working more efficiently, hence your boss is more likely to return the favor by accepting your vacation requests.

I know that this is a terrible example because most of you guys have probably had a terrible boss who doesn’t care about what you do. Forgive me for using it, but I hope it helps you understand the principle.

To apply this to blogging, you will ask your readers to sign up for the newsletter. You will then do them a favor in return by offering good tips and access to your eBook. In return, your subscriber will be more likely to do another favor for you like buying your product.

Now that we are done with basics, let’s take a look at Conditioning and AIDA.

Attention, Interest, Desire and Action (AIDA)

Attention: Attract the attention of your prospective clients/subscribers through call-to-actions, graphics, pop-ups etc. Answer the reader’s question: Why should I listen to you?

Interest: Increase your reader’s attention and interest in your product/list by telling them what they really get. Answer the reader’s question: What’s in it for me?

Desire: Here comes the persuasion part. Convince your prospective client that they need the product. Use different techniques to grow your clients’ desire for your product. Like all Internet marketing gurus do, make them feel that you product will help them to achieve their goal.

Action: As you see that your customers’ desire for the product is increasing, convince them to take action and buy the product.

The AIDA technique is usual for all business. What you need to do different is take steps to facilitate desire in your client’s mind.

Condition Your Readers – Operant Conditioning

In list building and product sales, the most effective type of conditioning is Operant Conditioning. Operant Conditioning involves two basic types: Reinforcement and Punishment. In the case of blogging, punishment really doesn’t work out. What we want to do is use reinforcement effectively.

Reinforcement is basically when you train someone to perform the same action by doing a favor to him. In the case of blogging, this could to signing up for multiple lists, buying multiple products, or even commenting consistently.

Positive reinforcement is when you do a positive favor. For instance, you give your comment authors an ad space for being a great commentators.

Negative reinforcement is basically when you do a favor by removing a negative thing. For instance, if you have something that your reader doesn’t really like (like an ad), you take that away for them.

In blogging, positive reinforcements are our friend. We could use them to condition our readers/clients to comment, subscribe, and buy more of our products.

But all of this will depend upon the scenario, and the timing. Many of these techniques are simple, so most bloggers don’t spend that much time on them. Even though they are simple, it doesn’t mean that you can get the most by just doing something small once. You need to test these techniques to see what works for you and your audience. Experiment, learn, and analyze. Put a little more effort into it.

How about Some Favors?

Now, it’s time to return the favor of me writing this article. If you think my article will be useful for you to build your list (increase your opt-in rate) and get more customers for your products, then do help me out by getting the word out by sharing this and commenting! Thanks!

You're reading 5 Psychological Techniques To Get Readers to Subscribe & Buy Your Product, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Eric Siu.

There’s one constant in life that is common to all of us: decreasing time. Some of the most popular entrepreneurs have stated that one of their biggest daily struggles is not having enough time to finish projects. There isn’t ever enough time to go around so the only thing we can do about it is optimize our time to the best of our ability. After all, you want to make the most of your time here on Earth, right?

Here are 5 tips on managing your time more effectively. Try playing around with a few different methods to see what works best for you!

1. Prioritize

If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.” -Jim Collins.

Prioritizing helps you focus on the most important items to get done – the big impact items. Instead of using overwhelming to-do lists to stock all of your items, think about trimming it down to 3 items per day. Here’s what Doc Stoc’s CEO Jason Nazar thinks about excessive to-do lists:

Key Takeaway: For one week, try working on 3 priorities each day and see how it works out for you. It might not be for everyone, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

This leads us to our next point…

2. Trim The Fat

Cutting away the unimportant outputs helps with prioritization. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, can assist with weeding out the less important tasks. The basic premise of the Pareto Principle is that 20 percent of inputs make up 80 percent of outputs. For example, 20 percent of your clients make up 80% of your income. Another example would be Italy in 1906 – where 80 percent of the land was owned by 20 percent of the population.

Key Takeaway: What tasks are bringing in the most positive output? Focus on those. What tasks are have a little to marginal benefit? Eliminate those. Try to do a self-audit each month so you are continually optimizing.

3. Focus

Cutting away less important tasks and honing in on important tasks are just two pieces of the pie. Truly locking down and focusing on the task at hand is tough to maintain on a consistent basis. From e-mail to instant messages to watching funny cat videos online, there are so many land mines of distraction surrounding us. One way to shut out this noise temporarily is to leave everything off when you turn your computer on in the morning. Focus on the most important task you want to get done for 90 minutes – some have stated that this method has been particularly effective in helping them get things done.

Hear more about it here:

Bonus Resource: Ian Lurie from Portent Interactive talks about doing 45 minute sprints where he focuses on one task for 45 minutes and then disengages for 15 minutes to check e-mails and social media. He tries to fit in at least 5 sprints a day. Neat method

Key Takeaway: Focusing means saying no to all the distractions. Try using the two methods above to see how it fits into your workflow. No matter what, it’s difficult to do great work when you are distracted.

4. Track

The only way to truly know if you’re improving is to track everything. Tracking allows you to hone in on what you need to eliminate from your day to day. As you continue to eliminate the unnecessary, you free up more time to do the more important things. One way to keep track of your activities is to use RescueTime. RescueTime tells you what programs or browser tabs you are logged into most – think of it as your own personal Analytics tool.

Key Takeaway: Find out exactly where your time is being spent. Then analyze the data to see which activities you can eliminate or cut down on. Rinse and repeat.

5. Organize

Organizing is one of the most effective ways to cut down on wasted time because you understand where you need to go without having to wade through daunting road blocks to get to your goals. Ever forget where you put a certain file or folder? Have trouble locating an important e-mail? Can’t find your wallet because you have too much crap cluttered around your desk? Organizing every once in awhile not only helps make your day to day easier – it unclutters your mind from the uneasiness of being unorganized.

Key Takeaway: Take some time to organize your work space and your work machine – you’ll find yourself more at peace. For the things that you don’t use often, eliminate them without mercy.

Tools

Here are some tools that will make time management easier for you:

• Fantastical (Mac) – Fantastical is an intuitive calendar that makes it simple to track your schedule – it’s what your calendar should have been out of the box.
• OmniFocus (Mac) – OmniFocus allows you to quickly and easily add your thoughts into actionable to-dos.
• RescueTime – RescueTime is the tool mentioned in the ‘Tracking’ section above – it gives you a detailed look at your weekly activity.
• Evernote – Evernote is a handy note taking tool that allows you to jot down whatever is on your mind. You can create different notebooks for different subjects. My favorite use is finding helpful articles and clipping them using the Evernote Chrome extension. I can then refer to Evernote if I ever want to check out these articles again.

Conclusion

Lost time is something that you’ll never see again so make the most of it when you’re working on something important. Imagine if you were able to save 7 hours a week (1 hour a day) by optimizing your time, that would equate to:

• 28 hours a month
• 336 hours a year (14 days)
• 1680 hours in 5 years (70 days)

What could you do with that extra time? Spend more time with your friends and family? Learn a new hobby? Do something active? Whatever it is, the extra time you’ll get is priceless. Don’t squander it!

What are some other time management strategies that you use?

You're reading Time Management: 5 Tips You Need To Know, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti of Sparring Mind.

“It can’t be!”

Ah, but it’s true!

Not only that, this new blog isn’t about marketing, blogging, or making money online!

Refreshing, isn’t it?

Only a few months ago, I started my recent project, an electronic music blog by the name of Sophistefunk.

Before I get into the details, let’s get with the goods:

Above is my most recent screenshot from Google Analytics, and as you can see, I’ve hit over 40000 unique visitors after only being live for a few short months.

And I did it without a single guest post about this blog!

But how?

Well, that’s what I’m here today to tell you!

If you are looking for some sort of secret sauce, look elsewhere, but if you want to see some smart implementation of direct-to-success techniques that you can use in any niche, read on, this post is for you.

But first, let me address why I didn’t use guest posting for this new blog…

Seriously, Why No Guest Posts?

When it comes to guest blogging, I will give myself a pat on the back and say that I’m fairly experienced in the process: I’ve used it to grow almost every blog I’ve ever started/worked with.

Almost.

What they don’t tell you in the blogging world very often is that sometimes, guest posting is not always a viable option depending on the niche that you are in.

Sure, there are always ways to post about your blog (no matter the topic) on “blogging about blogging” sites (only a small fraction of which contain any useful info, luckily Kikolani is part of that small fraction).

The thing is, these types of visitors aren’t always ideal: their main interest is in blogging, not necessarily the topic that your blog is about.

I really encountered this problem with my electronic music blog: music blogs almost NEVER accept guest posts, why should they?

Most posts on a music site are going to be media focused (videos & audio) and are relatively short, there’s no need to bring in another author.

So, for all of the support that guest blogging gets (and rightfully so), when it comes to a niche where you can’t realistically use it as a traffic generating method in a consistent manner, what is a blogger to do? Totally give up on the niche?

NO!

Where there is a will, or more specifically, a will to do some legwork, there is a way.

What Guest Blogging is Really About…

As great as guest blogging can be for direct traffic, building awareness, and indirect traffic in terms of backlinking & SEO, the real benefit behind guest blogging is that is allows you to build relationships with people influential in your niche.

In reality, providing a ton of value with a great guest post can go a lot farther than a handful of new visitors to your site: by providing value to an author of a popular blog, you plant the seeds to build a relationship which can result in this author doing a lot more for you than just accepting your post.

In my interview with Leo of the BufferApp, Leo stated that he believes one of the most powerful aspects of guest blogging is that it typically leads to reciprocation between the guest post submitter and the blog’s author.

That is, if you provide a ton of value to another blogger with a guest post, they will often reciprocate by checking out your content, and if they like what they see, they’ll share it with their followers not because they feel indebted, but because they want to share awesome content.

These types of relationships are absolutely essential if you want to build a popular blog in a target niche, and guest blogging is really only a means to that end, rather than the actual end itself.

So I knew I could succeed in the end goal of building relationships, the only thing I was really lacking was the use of guest blogging to serve as the “ice-breaker” to the influential people in my niche.

Then it hit me.

What if, this time around, other bloggers were NOT the most influential people in my topic?

How To Build Relationships

I began to realize that in my niche, it was actually the musicians who were the most influential in terms of having large followings and receptive audiences: music blogs are a dime a dozen, so building relationships with artists was a surefire way for me to stand out.

I began to realize that I didn’t need guest blogging in this circumstance, and my findings lead me to 3 main points which I’m going to discuss with you today:

• Why email is the greatest “social network” of all
• Sometimes it’s best to network with those around you, rather than those “above” you
• Social media, when used correctly, helps small ideas blossom into bigger projects

All 3 of these techniques played a vital role in creating the consistent traffic that I see today, and below I’m going to show you exactly how I went about it.

1. Email Is King: Bow Down to the Greatest “Social Network”

I’ve always had a saying when it comes to blogging that shocks many people when they first hear it, but I stand by it to this day…

You should be spending almost as much time in your email client as you do writing posts in order to build your blog!

It might sound crazy, but as many experienced bloggers know, email is where all of the magic happens!

Sure, social media is a great traffic generation source, and keeping in touch with people on social networks is a great place to build relationships (will get into that in a bit), but the fact remains is that the “meat” of your business dealings will take place behind the scenes, using email.

You should be as fluent with proper email writing techniques are you are writing blog posts.

Think about it: do you know the best way to approach someone for a guest blogging submission?

How about for bigger requests, like interviews, collaborations, or asking them to support your content because you think they’d be interested in it?

It might sound scary, but you are going to need to know how to talk to influencers via email and know how to capture their attention.

I used email as the absolute backbone for grabbing attention for my blog.

Generally speaking, my two most popular post types (keeping in mind that this is a music blog) are:

• Interviews with artists
• Premieres of brand new tracks

Neither of these things could be accomplished without the use of email, so no matter how many tweets I sent out, I can safely attribute to my blog breaking the “initial hump” solely by my consistent quality of content and my effective use of email.

There are a few key points that I want you to know about when it comes to email (and I’m a guy to both sends and receives a ton of email…)

• Always keep your messages short, unless you’ve come to agreement with the recipient to talk about a topic at length
• Keep your subject line as straightforward as possible, and use numbers so people can gauge time commitment
• Try to reference a past experience with the person in question, even if it’s just something like “enjoyed your latest video/project/blog post”

Here’s a sample email that I’ve used to land interviews with popular musicians:

Subject Line: 3 quick interview questions

[Notice how I address what the interview is about, use a number and the word "quick" to signify a small workload, and get right to the point]

Hey (Artist Name),

Just wanted to shoot you a quick email, I’ve had your latest album on repeat lately and I’ve been featuring you a ton on my blog Sophistefunk.com, big fan of your music.

I was wondering if you had the time to answer 3 quick interview questions for me and my readers, I know they are always raving about your work and it would be my pleasure to feature some of your thoughts on my blog.

I’ve done past interviews before with [Example] and they turned out really well: http://LinkToAPastInterview

Here are the questions below, thanks again for your time and keep making great music, and I’ll keep supporting it =)

You’ll notice I advocate a 3-5 paragraph max, with no more than two sentences per paragraph.

Really, the shorter the better, this one was actually a bit longer of an example because I wanted to fit a few strategies in.

You’ll also notice that I start off with “I’m a fan”, signifying some loyalty to the person I’m reaching out to.

I also state the benefits in a direct manner: “My audience would enjoy…”, telling the person that I have an audience that they could get more exposure to.

Lastly, I post a the best example I have, one of mine is an interview with Michal Menert, which got over 180 shares in 24 hours.

2. Networking With Those Around You

When it comes to creating real connections and doing smart networking, most people have the right idea, but far too often I see people attempting to network only with people “above them”, and they often miss out on the great connections that are in plain sight around them.

The thing about networking with the “little guy” is that they are much more likely to reciprocate, and by showcasing their content, you are putting the spotlight on an up-and-comer, which is much more intersesting than posting about the “big guys” that everybody already know about.

This kind of networking can be really rewarding, just look at how Tom Ewer’s post on 5 Non A-List Bloggers You Should Be Following got mentioned on one of the biggest Problogger posts of the year, and how I’m mentioning it right now!

So, how was I able to utilize “helping the little guy” to build my blog up to 40,000 visitors, and more importantly, how can you do the same?

When it comes to running a music blog, the artists are king, since they are really the content providers for your site (although I published my thoughts and the occasional electronic music podcast, artists still rule the roost).

I began realizing that my featuring of much smaller artists had a larger relative impact, in that by featuring their music or by linking to them, I was sending them a respectable amount of traffic, but a mere blip on the radar to huge, popular artists.

By featuring a larger artist’s music, I wouldn’t even get a friendly tweet (that’s not to disrespect them, with more popularity comes less time for networking with small to medium sites like mine).

Yet, when I would feature an indepedendent or “just getting started” artist, they would almost always share the post on social networks, send me a thank you email, and much more (such as providing unreleased music, just for my site!)

Think that this strategy is exclusive to my niche?

Try replacing the word “blogger” with “artist” in the paragraphs above.

You can pursue the same strategy, reaching out to “up and comers”, by connecting with and featuring soon to be superstars in your niche.

My personal take on this strategy?

I started a weekly feature called “Follow Friday” where I would feature 7 independent artists who had submitted their tracks to me.

By pairing up these talented but not yet established artists, I would 7 separate personalities (and their growing following) sharing the same post all at once.

This not only provided a unique feature for my site, but it instantly got me more links and social shares.

Funny how that works: people with a lot to gain from you mentioning them will be grateful in return.

How to apply this to your blog: Outside of just doing a featured post or linking to other bloggers, engage with them directly!

As an example: I did an interview with Rafal Tomal (lead Copyblogger designer) & Alex Mangini (owner of Kolakube) for my marketing blog Sparring Mind.

This post got a tremendously positive response, and it was because I took two talented WordPress designers who were established, but not so known as to make them “over-discussed”, and I got them to dish out their real opinions on what kind of blog designs convert well.

I took a topic people wanted to read, found under-appreciated talents that knew what they were talking about, and put them together for one dynamite post.

What kind of interviews & collaborations could you be forming with up-and-coming bloggers in your niche?

I had to ask myself that very question for both of these projects, but for my music blog I decided to go with musicians over fellow bloggers, but the general concept remains the same: collaborating with unique talent is a great way to build rapport with talented people and also provide useful content along with it.

3. Using Social Media Correctly (Saving Time & Sanity)

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with social media.

On one hand, it’s great as an “icebreaker”, and creating connections that have long term positive effects for your brand, as well as being a good traffic source.

On the other hand, unless you are actively pursuing these end goals, social media can be a complete waste of time, even worse, it makes you feel like you are “working on your business” when in fact you are doing a whole lot of nothing.

The thing with a “cold” email is, without recognizing you, some people might simply ignore your initial contact or be hesitant to respond back to you.

I’ve found that for my blogs, social media (especially Twitter), is fantastic for laying the groundwork for future email discussions, which are usually where the real work gets done (I’m telling you, email really is top dog).

It’s often as simple as “tagging”, by utilizing mentions on either Facebook or Twitter to let a blogger (or in my case, a musician) know that you’ve mentioned them in some way.

I’d often do this for new music premiere’s, and many artists would gladly retweet me to their large following, just as a way to say thanks.

Noted Psychology Professor Robert Cialdini (author of the popular Influence book) would describe this process as reciprocity, one of the 6 key ways to being more influential.

Giving to others often leads to them giving back, and scale is important in determining whether they will reciprocate and in what fashion.

What I mean by “scale” is how much your initial act effects them, that’s why connecting with those “around you” works so well: your impact on them is much greater.

Social media is your way of alerting them that you are doing do, and a great way to “pursue” traffic and increase the influence of your network, rather than just sitting around and waiting for these things to happen.

I use social media for two very specific purposes for my blog, one that is something general that any blog can do, and another that is very niche specific but brings me in a lot of traffic. (Hopefully they will serve as inspiration to you).

The first I briefly touched on above: I use social media as an icebreaker for larger projects.

I typically do this by starting a conversation with the a specific person’s latest tweets, and later I let them know I’d like to chat with them via email.

When people see you are interested in discussing something via email, they are generally receptive if you’ve shown yourself to be a coherent human being with good social media etiquette: that means it’s likely your email will most likely be interesting for them.

The second is simple notification, it’s something I use to practice effective guest blogging and it’s also something I use for my music blog.

On a guest post, alerting people via social media (or if you’ve established a relationship, via email) is a great way to notify them that you’ve featured something they’ve on a big blog.

They will likely reciprocate by sharing the post with their followers, since it features them and they want repay you for the mention.

With my music blog, I would instead notify all of the independent artists who I feature using Twitter mentions and Facebook tagging.

The thing is, 95% of people would then share the post, grateful that I had taken the time to feature their music.

Bloggers are likely to do the same, especially if you are connecting around you like I mentioned above (big bloggers don’t always have the time to reciprocate).

So, don’t just use social media to share links and post about your thoughts, use it to be social, notifying people and breaking the ice, which will hopefully lead to more productive discussions via email.

Over To You…

Have you ever run into a problem where guest posting wasn’t really effective for your blog?

Have you found email to be way more fundamental to your blog’s growth than social media?

Let me know in the comments below, and thank you for reading!

You're reading How to Get 40,000 Readers Without Guest Blogging, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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This is a guest post by Srinivas Rao of BlogcastFM.

In the first year of running my blog I wrote close to 100 guest posts. I was consistent and committed to growing my blog by writing 2 guests posts a week on blogs ranging in size from 1,000 to 50,000 subscribers. After 3 quarters of aggressive guest posting I was still struggling to break the thousand subscriber mark. A few months back I interviewed Jon Morrow. After that interview, I realized I had made some critical mistakes that had costs me 1,000′s of potential subscribers, fans and followers.

1. A Focus on RSS Numbers

Like many early stage bloggers, for months I obsessed about seeing the chiclet count on my Feedburner badge hit 1,000, only to find that it wouldn’t do much for me other than inflate my ego. Top add to that Feedburner became completely unreliable and the subscriber count fluctuated dramatically on a weekly basis. The number of people who subscribe to your blog via RSS is one of the most meaningless metrics because it’s not an accurate representation of who is really reading your blog. I’ve found blogs with 1,000′s of RSS subscribers and virtual no comments. So, don’t focus too much of your effort on this.

2. A Lack of Landing Pages

If there’s one thing that cost me and many other bloggers 1,000′s of subscribers, it is not having landing pages in their guest post bylines. In the past if I wrote a guest post, I would just include a link to my blog. Now I make it a point to include a link to my pages on the 7 most important things you should have learned in school. The result is about 50-60 new subscribers for every single guest post I write.

3. No Email List

There is probably not a single successful blogger who won’t tell you that “the money is in the list.” My friend Dan Andrews refers to this as your silent majority. The people who comment on blogs are often other bloggers, but your readers that you should paying the most attention to are the ones on your list.

Your list gives you an opportunity to have a much more private, intimate conversation with your readers because, by singing up for your list, they’ve given your permission to do exactly that. With a list, you can send a very specific message on a particular day/time of the week. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the early days of my blog was neglecting to build up a list with my content on my blog. Below I’ve shared a few tips to get things going with your list.

• Repurpose content. One simple way to improve your list is to repurpose your archives for use in your newsletter (credit to Nathalie Lussier). If you’ve been writing for 3-6 months you should have more than enough content to do this. If you’ve got an e-book you can use sections of it for for newsletter content.
• Write one article each day. If you are writing one blog post each day, all you have to do is repurpose one of those articles for your newsletter. If you do this for 5 days in a row, you will have an autoresponder sequence
• Record audio/video content. As a podcaster, I’m a huge fan of anything multimedia. It gives your readers a really in-depth view into who you are as a person since they get to hear your voice or see your face. It is also often faster than writing.

4. No Immediate Call to Action

When a new reader first signs up for your email list, engagement is at a high point. That is why it is important to strike while the iron is hot and incorporate calls to action at the right moment. Below, I’ve include the calls to action have driven my engagement with my readers through the roof

1) Create a custom confirmation page. I have give credit to David Risley for this idea. Rather than just have people confirm their email address, I send my readers to a custom confirmation page where they see a welcome video with some calls to action. The result has been a dramatic increase in the number of Facebook fans.

2) Send emails for 7 Days in a row. Some people might debate on this one. But I found that when somebody receives an email from you everyday for 7 straight days after they sign up for your newsletter, the open rates go up. It is because you are fresh on their mind. When they get an email from you once a week, they might not even remember how they ended up on your blog.

3) Request replies. In the very last newsletter people receive from me in the auto responder, I ask them to reply to me with what they would like me to write about and what their current challenges are. I get an email at least once a week with people sharing their thoughts with me. I have to credit Derek Halpern for this advice.

Everything on this list is about creating a deeper connection with your readers. The increase in numbers is just icing on the cake.

What do you do to ensure better engagement with your readers and subscribers? Please share in the comments!

You're reading 4 Critical Mistakes that Cost me 1000′s of Subscribers, Fans and Followers, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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