susan livingstone 2009 February

Archive for February, 2009

17
Feb

Blogging For Bucks – Back To Basics

Written by Susan on February 17th, 2009

computerbucks You know that blogging is a great way to make money. It isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight, but you really can make an income from your blog, if you take the trouble to go about it the right way, stay focused, and remain persistent. But the best laid plans gang aft agley when you neglect to pay attention to the details. I’ve lost count of how many blogs I’ve visited, only to make a beeline for the exit moments after arriving because of the terrible things it was doing to my head.

Your blog is your Online Presence. Think about what that means, exactly. It’s not just your place of business, your virtual home to which you are inviting everyone in the world. Just like the décor (or lack of it) that you have in your home, your blog will tell your visitors volumes about your character and personality. If the first thing they encounter is clutter, pointless rambling, and nothing good to eat, they will close their purses and wallets and leave, never to return.

Following are some tips to help you make your blog worth a return visit.

Tip #1: Choose a Niche. This follows on what I was saying in my last post. You can’t be all things to all people. Find a group who needs a leader and make your blog THE go-to spot that addresses their needs and wants. Stick to that plan and the money will follow.

Tip #2: Create a Posting Schedule. Alright, before you say it, I know I’ve been remiss! But I’m getting better. Having a regularly scheduled post makes it easier for your readers to follow you. They will even come to look forward to it! Erratic, infrequent posting loses your visitor’s interest and building a loyal following will take much longer – if you ever manage it at all. How often should you post? At least once a week – more often if you can.

Tip #3: Write from Personal Experience. Share your experience with your readers by writing in the first person. Don’t be afraid to let your personality out for a public viewing. You’ll be creating a personal bond with your reader, and they will soon come to feel they know you – and trust, loyalty, and a willingness to buy will follow apace. If you sound like a credible (and likeable) authority on your topic, they will believe that you are.

Tip #4: Interact with Other, Similar Blogs. Get out there and visit other popular blogs that discuss the topic you’re writing about. Leave comments, join the forums. But don’t just toss out remarks for the sake of linkbacks – everybody hates the Mindless Bloghopper – make your comments useful, relevant and helpful. People know the difference between feedback and fishing.

Tip #5: Grammar and Spelling. I don’t care what you’ve been told about not worrying about perfection; the fact remains that if you cannot compose a decent, thoughtful, and grammatically correct sentence in your own native language, then you sound like an idjit. Others who are equally language impaired may not notice – but why alienate those to whom a well articulated point goes a long way toward convincing them to buy from you? It’s ok to write like you speak – end a sentence with “from” if you want – but if you speak like a 4th grade dropout who learned the use of adjectives from longshoremen, you might want to consider hiring a copy polisher. It just makes sense to run your post under the eyes of someone you know will be able to spot the mistakes and smarten it up a bit. It’s an image thing – and in the end, that’s what counts in the anonymous medium of the ‘net.

Tip #6: De-clutter. Your blog should be about the information you’re trying to get out. I’ve visited blogs and websites where, the moment I passed their portals, I was nearly done to death by a barrage of sales artillery. Animated affiliate banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-arounds, pop-between the eyes, screeching mp3′s and videos with no visible off switch, mystery meat navigation, and floating ads that follow me after I’ve beaten a hasty retreat, begging me to reconsider leaving. And then the dreaded back button that loops me right back into the hell I thought I’d just saved myself from. NOBODY LIKES THAT GUY. Don’t be him.

Tip #7: Useful Plugins. At a minimum, you should have the kind of plugins that show off your most popular, recent, and relevant posts. This encourages your visitor to hang around a little longer, exploring the topics of interest to them, which your thoughtfully arranged design makes a breeze for them to find. The longer they stay, the more likely they’ll end up purchasing something.

Tip #8: Marketing Your Blog. Social marketing is the hot trend these days, but bear in mind that it’s a very time consuming method of marketing. Just be prepared to spend a lot of hours here, as you must become known as someone other people will want to interact with and get to know. But when budget is a consideration, there’s no cheaper price than free to market yourself, and places like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, etc. are certainly ways to get your name out there. You can get your latest blog post to show up on Twitter automatically using the TweetMyBlog plugin, a very popular method for getting noticed.

Tip #9: Tech Troubles. Your blog can be a great springboard for your business, but things don’t always go as smoothly as you’d like. Sometimes it can be a frustrating arena for grappling with glitches. So be realistic about your limits when it comes to troubleshooting your blog. Weigh the cost in terms of the time it will take to fix it yourself by scouring the web for advice, versus biting the bullet and getting an expert to solve the problem for you. If you’re looking for some WordPress consulting, this link will take you to Tom Johnson, my recommended go-to guy for the stuff I just don’t have the know-how to tackle myself. His response time is faster than a speeding bullet, he knows his stuff, he doesn’t charge an arm and a leg, and he over-the-top delivers.

Keep your eye on the prize, never stop learning, and don’t give up. Hard work and persistence will get you where you want to be, riding a well organized, well written, intelligently monetized blog all the way to the bank!

Filed under: General Goodness, Writing Tips

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12
Feb

Step 1 – Finding A Profitable Niche Market

Written by Susan on February 12th, 2009

darts There’s an almost infinite number of ways to make money online, and each one of them requires a different set of tools, knowledge and strategies to make them successful. But there is one fundamental thing that must be done before you take another step into the Internet wilderness – you must find a niche market to which to apply your time, effort and advertising dollars.

Believe me, I know how easy it is to get distracted and confused. There is so much information and so many enticing promises crowding the virtual airwaves, most of it uploaded by people whose primary interest is in separating you from your money. They want you to hurry up and get that website up (just purchase their easy template program!), launch that blog (just a “pittance” a month for their consultation services!), sign up for their affiliate wares, buy their “get-it-for-a-steal” product that will automate everything for you, and once it’s all set up, which they assure you will take but a single enjoyable afternoon of your time, the money will start pouring in like a financial tsunami!

Well, dealing with information overload and hype is a topic for another post (or ten). Right now I want to share with you a vital truth that gets lost in all the hoopla – until you have a product to market, a targeted group of people to market it to, and the knowledge of how to get these things – you will spin your wheels furiously and not move forward a single inch.

When you’re first starting out, it’s probably best to steer clear of the tough markets to break into, like IM. There’s money to be made there, no question, but the competition is cutthroat, and you might want to get your feet wet by concentrating on a niche that’s less saturated – specialty items, hobby stuff – doesn’t really matter what it is, you’ll probably find somebody somewhere wants to buy it. For all you know there’s a dedicated group of one-eyed, hermaphroditic underwater pole vaulters with shingles who get together once a month in Kissimmee to swap handmade dolls made from used dog beds. Bet they could use a good source of flea shampoo. Sell it to them! Find a starving niche, feed them, make a good income.

But I would further recommend that you stick to those niches you have an interest in personally. It takes some dedicated forum hopping to get to know your target niche well enough to sell them what they really need and want; you have to get thoroughly inside their heads. If you couldn’t care less about the relative depths of the dimples on golf balls, you’re going to be bored witless trolling the forums that talk about nothing else. Why burn the little candle of your life illuminating some corner wherein you have no interest?

So how do you go about finding a “hot” niche that you can actually get excited about? It takes some research to be sure that, just because you’re passionate about something, there’s enough other people out there dying to spend money on it too. Or even that they have any money to spend.

Start with Clickbank. They have a huge selection of products that you can be promoting, and you know there’s already a demand for them. But you want to find the right products for you. Stay away from the products that have high gravities (“high gravity” means there’s already a ton of affiliates out there selling the stuff). The numbers you should look for vary among the experts, but a good range seems to be minimum 30, maximum 200. This means that it’s probably a niche with a demand but not too much competition.

Once you’ve found one you’d like to pursue, you’ll want to check how many people are actually searching for this niche on a monthly basis. Go to the sales page and make a list of the keywords that are being used for this niche. There are a number of keyword tracking tools available online – I use Wordtracker. They have a great free trial version you can use until you’re ready to go pro. Alternatively, you can use Google’s keyword tool. Then, put the keywords in quotes and plug them into Google’s search engine – you’ll be able to see how many competing sites are already out there.

So here’s a little formula: (monthly searches/competing sites) X monthly searches = KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator). If your KEI is 100 or greater, than that’s a niche you can hope to make some money in.

Finally, you’re ready to dive into those forums dedicated to the niche you’re after and get into the heads of your future customers. Do a search on Google: niche + forum. If you can’t find a forum, drop that niche and move on. If you do, get inside and start looking around. If the forum seems to be comprised of people who have no money to spend – kids, college students, people on unemployment – on to the next!

Keep an eye peeled for hot button words, like “problem”, “solution”, “how do I…?”, “where do I go…?”, “issue with…”, “I wish I had…” and so on. Read the sticky posts, read the posts that have the most replies. Find out what the people talk about the most, what they need, want, and wish they knew where to go to get. Maybe it’s just information – see what kinds of questions they’re asking, go research the answers, and put them in a little ebook you can sell them for $7. Participate in the forum if you can be at all helpful – it’s ok to have a link to your site in your signature, but don’t point it out. Get to be known as a source of help and information first – win their trust. The business will follow.

That’s basically it. Find the niche, check if it’s viable, find out what they’re looking for, and either build a site around an existing product or create your own. Then market the living daylights out of it.

And that’s a post for another time.