A reminder, if you want to make sure you get the latest from this blog sent right to you automagically, be sure to subscribe to this blog. I don’t send all my blog posts to my main email list (which will make Allison from Blogworld happy – see below for context)… but I do have options if that’s what you would like.

From my side of the ship, we’ve got:

• Why there’s something to be said for deleting email subscribers
• What to do about all those banners on your blog getting hardly any clicks AT ALL
• Why I’m Pissed at GoDaddy

Also, I’ll begin releasing the video recordings from Tuesday’s webinar soon. Gonna get everything transcribed first.

OK, in the rest of the blogosphere, here are a few highlights. And the title of this blog post is a shout-out to my man, Ryan Lee. You’ll see.

14 Tips For Blogging And Personal Success
This one is from John Chow and, while the advice was simple, there’s some great reminders on there. Worth the couple minutes it takes to read it.

The Marketer’s Guide to Pinterest
Pinterest is still a bit of an enigma to me, honestly. I can’t help but look at it as some weird fad. But, at the same time, I realize I might be being very short-sighted. I had the same reaction to Twitter initially and look what happened. If you don’t really “get” Pinterest, then Neil Patel has a great overview here of why we should care. Worth a look, for sure.

41% of Super Bowl Ad Searches Were Mobile
Posting this as a bit of a “heads up”, and a reminder not to ignore mobile when it comes to your blog design. Most of these searches were probably people sitting next to the TV with their iPad or something, searching for various things or posting social media updates. But, still… that’s major. And, to back it up, this was the first year that the NFL actually livestreamed the entire game on the Internet.

How to Choose the Right Mailing List Provider
A simple post, but it offers a simple pros/cons breakdown of the various list companies, like Aweber and Mailchimp.

F*ck the Latte!
My man, Ryan Lee, has been a lot more “in your face” lately. But, I like this post because it goes right to the heart of the scarcity-minded mindset so many people seem to have. And I HATE the scarcity-minded. You’ve got the “glass half empty” types and the “glass half full” types. And – almost without fail – it is the “glass half full” people who end up having more money and more freedom. It is all about mindset.

Creating Kickass Infographics On A Budget
Outspoken Media has some resources which might help you with creating Infographics. More people are using them lately… and that’s because they work.

No, I Don’t Want To Sign Up For Your Mailing List (And Here’s Why)
A great little post from Allison over on the Blogworld blog. A good reminder, too, on the psychology that your readers might be thinking when you try to get them to join your list. You have to keep in mind, though, that you can’t satisfy everybody. No matter what you do, there will be some who dig what you’re doing and some who don’t. That’s life.

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NOTE FROM DAVID: 
This is a great post from Henri that I think every blogger who truly wants to go full-time with blogging needs to understand and apply. These 5 lessons speak right to the core mindset which marks the line between hobby bloggers and pro bloggers. With that, I’ll leave you in Henri’s hands…

If you’ve been into blogging for any amount of time, you know that blogging alone doesn’t guarantee an income stream.

You may have all the comments and community in the world, but it doesn’t automatically translate into a real online business.

It just means you have a blog.

And if you want to make a living online, starting a blog is not enough. In short, you have to avoid the blogger cycle of stupid.

Let’s fill the gaps and look at what blogging doesn’t teach you, but what can help you turn your blog into a solid business.

1. Who Do You Help?

It all starts with who you help. Most blogger’s never determine who they help.

In fact, it’s something most businesses fail to do. They communicate to a mass of people. It’s bland, boring, and unremarkable.

How do you figure out who you help?

You pick a specific target market. But you also pick one specific person within that target market.

And it should be a real person, a client you enjoy working with.

Why one person?

And why real?

Because you can’t interview personas or pen portraits you’ve conjured up in your mind.

You can’t ask them for feedback, but with a real person you can.

With the internet, you reach a global audience. Even when you focus on one person’s problems, you’ll still be able to reach millions of people like that all around the globe.

And they’ll love you for it, because they’ll land on your blog and think, “this is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for.”

But knowing who you help is not enough, you also have to know what you help them with.

2. What Do You Help Them With?

When you have one person, you know exactly how to talk to him, what to offer, and what not to offer.

Now, does this mean that you only cater to this person?

No, you can be in contact with several different people, but the journey starts with ONE person.

When you know who you help, you can figure out what you help them with.

Most blogger’s are all over the place. I was, too, when I started my blog. So it is to be expected.

You have to zoom in on what you do for your people. What problem are you solving? It cannot be a vague statement like, “I help people live more positive lives.” There’s no specificity in that, and it doesn’t grab anyone’s interest.

Figuring this out can be tough, so how do you figure it out?

That’s where the problem comes in.

3. The Art of the Problem

When you’ve picked one person, you interview them.

Yes, you get on the phone with them and you ask questions until you understand what’s going on.

You can ask them what they are struggling with. Often people will give you a whole list, which will give you amazing insight into their world. But, you want to get this down into the biggest problem.

And how do you get to one problem?

You work with them and you ask questions. You have to be willing to keep asking questions until you know what it’s like to be in their shoes.

When you have a real person to talk to, you get laser-focused feedback that will allow you to create laser-focused products, and services.

And if you want to run an online business, you cannot be up in the clouds with vague solutions, you have to deliver transformations, which means providing solutions to problems.

4. Selling the Transformation

Let’s take a quick example.

If someone wants to sell me on a trip to Australia, they’re not going to do it by selling me on the planet ticket.

They’re going to do it by describing what awaits me in Australia.

I don’t enjoy sitting in an airplane for hours, but I do like having fun, relaxing at the beach, and exploring a country I’ve never been to before.

If you help new moms lose their baby weight, you don’t sell them a fitness solution, you sell them the destination, the transformation, which is what they’ll look like when they get there.

You sell their life without the problem. What will it look like, feel like, and sound like?

And it doesn’t have to be a big problem. It could be as simple as a course on how to create your first ebook without the overwhelm.

Obviously, there’s much more to selling than this, but this is a big part I see people leaving out.

5. The Business Boogie Man (i.e. Your Mind)

Last, but not least, running an online business is scary.

It means you have to put yourself out there, and it means you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone.

You can stay in the comfort zone, which is writing blog post after blog post and never selling anything, but it does not a business make.

I’m not going to lie. This isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. You can create an amazing lifestyle business through blogging if you do it right.

And it all starts with who you help and what you help them with.

Always remember that.

Henri writes over at Wake Up Cloud, where he shows you how to build a lifestyle business around your passion. If you’re interested, check out his free report: 7 Steps to Building a Lifestyle Business Around Your Passion.

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Not only that, but our computer and the gear that goes along with it ends up being a central part of our lives.

Over the years, I’ve gone through a lot of equipment. There may be people that think I buy things which are too expensive (i.e. buying a Mac when a cheaper Windows machine would do), but the way I look at it is like this…

When you make your entire living on a computer, you might as well invest into what you really want and need.

So, anyway, just for shits and giggles, I thought I’d give a quick tour of the gear I use to run my business. I’ll concentrate here mainly on the electronics.

Apple 27″ iMac

This is a recent purchase and is now my main machine in my office. The 27″ screen is gorgeous. Under the hood, I have 12GB of RAM, the i7 3.4 GHz processor, a 1TB hard drive along with a 256GB SSD drive. This thing is a screamer.

I picked up this machine as an upgrade to my first generation Mac Pro. Primary reason = VIDEO. While my Mac Pro is an awesome machine, the fact remains that it is about 5 years old and isn’t the speed demon it once seemed. So, being that I tend to do a fair amount of video, I wanted to be able to speed up the process. And the iMac does that in spades.

I still use the Mac Pro for some things. It is still a real workhorse, and solid as a brick shithouse. Plus, it is very expandable in ways an iMac isn’t.

Learn More About the 27″ iMac

Apple 15″ Macbook Pro

Obviously, this is my laptop. I use this when I want to head out to a coffee shop or somewhere else outside the house, yet need to get real work done which an iPad isn’t suitable for.

I know some people use Macbook Pro’s as their primary computer. They simply attach a monitor to it. I had that option (obviously), but an iMac is faster by quite a bit. Not only that, but I didn’t want my primary computer also being the one that I stuff in laptop bags, run through airport security, and bump around. I’m a believer in redundancy…. if one computer breaks, I’ve got another which is fully ready to take up the slack.

Learn More About the 15″ Macbook Pro

Sennheiser PC-166 USB Headset Mic

These things rock. See, I do a lot of screencasting videos… and one thing that is SUPER important about any video you produce is audio quality. I started out with a cheap headset mic from Logitech, but it picked up a lot more environmental noise as well as gave me “hot” audio if I ever spoke too loud for it. It is a case of “you get what you pay for”.

Sennheiser makes awesome equipment. This headset mic produces professional audio quality and it works over USB. So, whenever I do screencast videos, Skype calls or webinars, I’m wearing the Sennheiser.

Unfortunately, this exact model has been discontinued. The PC 161 looks like it might be their closest active model.

Blue Snowball

The Blue Snowball is a truly funky looking microphone, but a good one. I don’t use this microphone as much as I do the Sennheiser, however it is useful when I want to record a video directly into the iMac’s webcam, but not be seen wearing the headset. This mic can sit right next to the computer and pick up everything with great quality.

Western Digital External Hard Drives

I’m a big believer in redundancy when it comes to storing my files. Whether it be raw video footage, Screenflow files, information products – pretty much anything big – I like to keep it backed up outside of my main computer. All my smaller working files are backed up automatically in Dropbox, but I don’t put the big files (like videos) up there because it’ll eat up my account too fast.

I use a Western Digital Elements 2TB as a redundancy drive and a Western Digital 1TB My Book as my Time Machine backup drive.

Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet

A lot of people use tablets mainly for drawing things in Photoshop. As a blogger, I only use the Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet for that purpose a little bit. Mainly, I picked this up so that I could draw on my screen or do digital whiteboard videos. I can actually draw on screen and record it, kind of like I did in this video.

I do this using a cheap program called Flysketch (Mac only). This is a great program that makes it easy to draw on a plain-white background, or even make it transparent so I can draw over anything else on screen. This is great for blog evaluations where I can literally draw on the person’s blog to show them what I’m talking about. I’m not aware of a Windows equivalent for what Flysketch does, however I also know a lot of people use Photoshop to do whiteboard-style videos.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300

This small little scanner is able to scan things directly to searchable PDF. I use it specifically to scan things directly into Evernote. I have gone almost exclusively paperless with my filing system. Bills, contracts, bank statements… it all goes into Evernote. And, when I get it in the mail, I use this scanner to put it into Evernote.

If you want to go paperless and make your entire filing cabinet truly searchable, this scanner is a great way to go (in conjunction with Evernote).

Learn More About the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300

Video Cameras

I use several different video cameras off and on. Obviously, the most convenient one is the one built into the iMac. But, in addition to this, I also use:

• Kodak zi8 – A great little portable camera with an external mic input. Yay.
• Panasonic PV–GS80. This is an older camcorder. Not even HD. And it records to MiniDV tapes. Tapes! But, not to worry… I have never ONCE used that functionality. I have this camera for one purpose – webcam. With built-in Firewire, this camera has the ability to stream live over Firewire, turning in into a webcam which has a heck of a lens on it compared to most. 32X zoom, too.
• Apple iPhone 4S. Yeah, it is a smartphone. But, it happens to have a pretty awesome camera on it. And it is pretty convenient for quick live action videos. And there are accessories available for it which help with things like stabilization and even external microphones.

Bose Companion 3

OK, I can’t end off this article with out this vital piece of equipment for any blogger – kick ass speakers! And I’m using the Bose Companion 3 Series 2.

I consider these things a productivity tool. After all, music is a big part of how I keep my game on while I’m working. They sound absolutely AWESOME. The sub sits under the desk and the satellites are small and take barely any room on the desk.

Whether I’m listening to CDs (which I’ve digitized into iTunes), Pandora or iTunes Radio, these speakers see a lot of action.

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No comments, no retweets, no shares. Its like being in the woods in the dark of night – crickets.

Yet… somebody’s shitty blog with hardly any real useful content seems to get all the activity.

Are they just lucky? What’s the missing X-factor?

Often, it is the STORY.

There’s a reason we fall in love with movies. Even more to the point, there’s a reason why traditional story-based movies almost always get more fanfare than a documentary.

There’s a reason a lady from England writes a story about wizards and it ends up being an international sensation. Actually, her characters become the sensation and she feels obligated to continue the story.

There’s a reason Barack Obama got elected to the presidency despite have zero experience for the job.

That reason is… the STORY.

Have you ever noticed that the best speakers are the ones who weave their major points into a storyline? Those are the ones you remember.

See, people might arrive on your website for the information, but they’ll stick around for the STORY.

The ones who feel a connection with you, who resonate with your story – those are the ones who stick around and become raving fans. Those are the people who will buy from you.

Story-telling is an art. It is one you get better at over time. You don’t want to tell one of those “just the facts, maam” kind of stories. There’s no heart in those. No emotion. They’re flat.

But, when you can tell a story from the heart, one with emotional highs and lows…. and use that story to relay your point…. you’ve done something that many bloggers fail to do.

This is why content-light personal blogs sometimes take off. Even if the content isn’t really helpful at all, the audience feels a kind of comradery with the blogger. They want to know what’s going to happen next. They’ve turned that blogger into a character.

So, think about this…

Instead of lecturing your reader, can you tell them a story? Can you work your own backstory into your content?

I bet you can.

The root word of “authority” is “author”. Think about it. (tweet this)

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I’ve said it about 2 billion times by now (I’ve lost count), but a blog is not a business. It never will be.

Yet, I see a lot of bloggers that, when they sit down and work, all they focus on is writing that next blog post. Really? How’s THAT going to make a business for you?

So, I thought I’d sit down and create a simple list of problogging TRUTHS. Understand these – APPLY it – and you’ll be further ahead.

#1 – A Blog is Nothing But A Marketing Platform

That’s all it is. It is a communications platform with the sole purpose of attracting and communicating to people en mass. Where you SEND that attention after you’ve gained it is the important factor when it comes to the effectiveness of the platform.

If you look at all the departments which would make up a real business (accounting, personnel, production, quality control, etc.)… marketing is only one of them. It is an important department, but it is only one of many. And, along that same vein, you should think of your blog as only one cog in a much larger machine.

#2 – Your Product Isn’t A Blog Post.

When you sit down to work on your online business, if the first thing you think of is that you need to write some blog posts – then this rule is for you.

All businesses – in order to exist at all – must create a product which is exchangeable for money with the public. If you produce nothing which is exchangeable for money, you don’t have a business. You have a time-sucking hobby.

So, what do you MAKE?

In my business, I produce products designed to help my customers achieve certain things. THAT is my product, and my goal is to create as many customers as possible who are happy and have achieved the result they signed up for. My product isn’t traffic to this blog. It isn’t blog posts. It isn’t followers on social media. It isn’t comments.

If you don’t have a product yet, get started on that right now. Even if it is just a cheap ebook, you need something to sell. Even if your goal is to make money with ads, then THAT’S a product. Your product is eyeballs on an advertisers’s website, in that case. So, go PRODUCE it.

#3 – Action is Everything.

Reading blog posts all day doesn’t get anything done. Socializing on Facebook and Twitter isn’t the same as working. The only thing that gets things done is… GETTING THINGS DONE.

Real, concrete action that is directly aimed at at making the things that need to be made to further your business.

And, again, it should be repeated…. marketing is only one facet of a functional business. And, your blog is part of marketing. If you’re not taking action on other things, you’re not really moving forward.

#4 – Listening is More Important Than Talking

As bloggers, we tend to get into this mode of constantly talking and having other people listen. We all want an audience and, to some, fame seems to be important.

However, listening is actually more important. When you really LISTEN, then there will be no guesswork when it comes to what to write about, what kinds of products to create, what niche to go into, etc. You only struggle with those things if you’re not really LISTENING.

As I’ve said before, this is about two-way communication. It is about listening, acknowledging, and helping. When you do that, this business gets a lot easier.

#5 – Help People Achieve Happiness

All people are simply trying to achieve more happiness and better levels of living for themselves, while simultaneously working to avoid sources of pain. That basic human endeavor is the core of all successful products. When you really understand this and use your platform to further this basic drive, you’re going in the right direction.

If your blogging is just talking about yourself, you’re not necessarily helping anybody (but yourself) achieve happiness. You’re not necessarily helping them.

So, whatever you blog about, how can you help people? How can you go over and above and really help? You’ll attract them to your blog because of their interest in some topic. From there, they’ll only stick around if you connect with them and help. You need to have a value proposition in their lives.

..

There’s obviously a lot more specifics that go into six-figure blogging – and I’ve been talking about those specifics on this blog for the last 3 years, and in the many training products I’ve created.

But, in the end, these rules are pretty important if you’re gonna make it, don’t you think?

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you’ve no doubt heard the phrase “the money is in the list” over and over again. And yet if you’re reading this post right now it’s also likely that you’re struggling to build your list either because you haven’t yet got started or, almost as bad, because you followed all the advice of the “gurus” and you’re still barely seeing a single subscriber joining your list each day.

Wrong “List Type”

Typically, when we think of a mailing list, we think of a big database of names and email addresses that we can use to contact people at will. That’s mostly true. However, that’s not the only type of list you can build.

Building up the number of subscribers that your blog has, increasing the number of people who have “liked” your Facebook Fan Page or who follow you on Twitter – all of these can be sources of instant contact with interested readers and prospects.

Furthermore traffic can often be “recycled” through these different media to improve your results. For example, scripts now exist so that when someone “likes” your Facebook page, their email address is added to your autoresponder. Or when someone signs up to your email list you can use your “thank you” page to promote your Facebook page, blog or Twitter feed.

Try experimenting with different “list types” to see what gets you the best results. It may be, for example, that getting people initially to subscribe to your blog may be the first step. Thereafter you can use one of the freely-available WordPress plugins to add a short message to the bottom of your RSS feed offering a free gift to your blog subscribers if they also join your email list.

Test out different approaches to see what grows your “list” as quickly as possible.

Wrong Freebie

Many of us use a free gift of some kind – such as an ebook, video or small piece of software – to tempt people to sign up for our mailing list. But it might be that the people you’re attracting simply aren’t interested in your freebie or would prefer it in a different format.

Try polling your existing list members and website subscribers to see what sort of information they are really hungry for and then create a freebie that perfectly answers the most common question your visitors have.

Personally, I have added a contact form to my “thank you” page so that as soon as someone signs up to my list they can send me a personal message about the sort of content they’d like to see. Over time, this ensures that not only do my subscribers get exactly what they want but I can learn what type of freebies will be tempting to my visitors and which will be of little interest.

Bad Salesmanship

Maybe your freebie is right on the money, but if you don’t use the right wording to promote it you may be significantly harming your results. Try using different headlines, different product images and different bullet points to see which combinations draw the most people possible into your sales funnel.

Fortunately, using one of the popular autoresponders like Aweber, it can be easy to split test your mailing list signup form and track which one gets the highest response possible.

Untargeted Traffic

If you’re giving away a free ebook about dog training but you are promoting it from your general pet website it follows that a lot of your visitors won’t be interested in joining your list. After all, I love animals but I don’t have a dog so you’d never tempt me to join.

Test different traffic sources to get the most targeted traffic possible to your site and even consider segmenting a large list (e.g. pets) into a number of smaller lists (e.g. dogs, cats, fish etc.). Instead of giving away a single freebie for joining a single list, set up a range of smaller, more targeted lists and give away a very specific freebie to people who join each one.

Low Traffic Levels

No matter how great your freebie is and how targeted your traffic is, if you’re only getting a handful of visitors each day you’re going to struggle to build your list quickly. After all, even if you manage to sign up 50% or more of the people who visit your squeeze page, if that page only gets two or three visitors a day it’s going to take you forever to built a significant list.

So, put the effort into article marketing, guest blogging, SEO and social networking to grow the traffic to your website as quickly as possible. Because once you’ve got the traffic, turning it into subscribers is typically the easy bit.

Low Visibility

The more people who learn about your mailing list (and freebie), the more will sign up. On too many occasions I have found a blog or static website where the mailing list signup form is hidden away somewhere on the site and is almost impossible to find.

To get the most subscribers possible, you should aim to make your freebie and signup form as highly-visible as possible. Experiment with layouts but consider placing a signup form at the top of your navigation menu, at the bottom of every article on your site or even using popups or sliders to ensure every visitor sees your message.

Wrong Niche

I built my first website 11 years ago and in that time I have created literally hundreds of sites. Sites in all sorts of different niches and used them to build targeted mailing lists.

But here’s a little secret that I haven’t heard anyone else mention. Quite simply, some niches are more likely to sign up for a mailing list than others. Sure, there are things you can do to affect the signup rate to your list. But there are several niches I have gotten into in the past where no matter what I tried my visitors simply weren’t interested in joining a list.

Some people in some niches simply shy away from giving out their email address and there’s not a whole lot you can do to influence that. Assuming you’ve tested and tweaked all the other elements listed above and you’re still not getting the results you’d like, then it’s entirely possible that this is your problem and you may be better off trying to build your list in another niche altogether.

Richard Adams writes about lifestyle design and passive income creation. Visit him to find out how he generates 232,000 free visitors per year to his blogs.

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When I first started working online, I didn’t have much faith in SEO. I was misled, misinformed, and misguided. Nothing I tried seemed to work – the highest I ever got in the search results was on the 6 or 7th page.

After a LOT of studying, and some fortunate connections (mainly, my business partner Tom), that is no longer an issue. We are frequently able to rank sites within 2-4 weeks in competitive niches – and SEO now comes easy to us.

In our time working with clients and customers, we find people having the same struggles that I used to have when I was starting. From working with these people we’ve found that there’s really 4 main reasons why people can’t rank their sites – indexing issues, quality and quantity of backlinks, low quality content, and poor on-page optimization.

Let’s go through these 4 issues, and hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll have a better feel as to what you need to do to get your site ranked in the search engines.

1. Indexing Issues

First and foremost, one of the simplest issues that people have are indexing issues. This is when Google can’t crawl your site and can’t find your pages. It’s easy to check if your pages are indexed, just go into google and search “Site:yoururl.com” for example, if David was checking to see if his site was indexed, he would type in “site:DavidRisley.com” into Google. If the search query doesn’t return any pages, then you’re in trouble!

The way we make sure that there are no indexing errors is by using a tool called Google Webmaster Tools. It shows you if there are any pages that have crawl errors, and gives suggestions as to how to fix them. It’s a great way to work WITH Google, instead of against them, and setup your site the way they want you to (so that it ranks better).

**Sidenote: In WordPress, sometimes there’s a security setting checked off that prevents your site from being indexed, make sure that it’s not improperly checked, as this has been the downfall of many sites!

2. Quality & Quantity of Backlinks

Without backlinks, you’re fighting an uphill battle to rank in Google’s search results. You might be able to rank for a few keywords without backlinks and just strong on-site SEO, but when you’re trying to rank for high volume, high competition keywords, you need to build backlinks. The key to linkbuilding is consistency, and high quality.

**TIP: Use Yahoo Site Explorer (while you still can, they are closing it down soon) to look at your competitors backlink profiles, and try to get links from the same places where they have gotten theirs.

3. Low Quality Content

This is becoming more and more important as Google continues to make algorithm changes. If you aren’t aware, Google recently rolled out an algorithm update called “Panda” which focuses on removing low quality “content farm” based sites from the top of the search engine results. Google is focusing more and more on high quality content (as when people find high quality content using Google, they are more likely to use Google again for searching, generating more ad revenue for Google), so it’s important to take that extra time to write higher quality stuff. Your blog should not be filled with spun content or articles that have the reading level of a 5th grader.

**TIP: Having images and videos in your articles shows Google that you’re putting effort into your content, and is a quality signal. Also, having the “like”, Google “+1”, and StumbleUpon buttons on your site (and getting people to click on them) helps content quality as well.

4. Poor On-Site SEO

Here’s where I think the most opportunity lies and where people mess up the most. First off – on-site SEO is basically setting up your sites structure so that Google knows exactly what your site is about. If your site is about dog training, it’s setting up the components of your site so that Google clearly knows that it’s about dog training, and that they should be ranking it for dog training keywords.

If you don’t set up your on-site SEO properly, then Google won’t really know what you’re trying to rank for, and therefore not rank you. It will also diminish the effect of your linkbuilding efforts, in that they will be less effective because it’s still kind of unclear what your pages are about. You’ll find that the only search traffic you get is for your domain name or the keyword of your domain name – which is unfortunate, because you’re missing out on thousands of visitors that Google WANTS to give you. As I said before – Google wants to send its visitors to high quality content so that they have a good search experience and use Google again – think of it as doing your potential customers a disservice by making it harder to find you in Google!

Fortunately, on-site SEO fixes are quick and not time consuming in the slightest, can be quickly implemented on older content (It took us less than 2 hours to fix 75 blog posts), and their benefits last for as long as your site is online.

And even more fortunately, we’ve got a whole guide that tells you how to do it! My business partner Tom and I recently created a guide called The WordPress SEO Blueprint that will show you everything you need to know about getting your WordPress site optimized, and crushing your blogging competition. You can find it over at TheWPSEOBlueprint.com.

So check it out – and let us know if you have any questions in the comments section!

David Sinick is an online entrepreneur living out of San Diego, California. He runs multiple online businesses – his main one being his SEO company Beast Media, LLC.

Little Comment From Dave (the other one):

Doing my due diligence for you guys, I had David send me a copy of the WordPress SEO Blueprint. This is a REALLY great reference – especially for bloggers using WordPress. It contains tons of actionable stuff to improve your SEO, with step-by-step lists on how to apply it to your site (with screenshots). Quite cool. I’m going to be going through it myself to see what I’m missing here at DavidRisley.com. Highly recommended to you as well.

David Sinick is a cool dude, too. We met at Continuity Summit recently and we did dinner. He knows his stuff, and he’ll take good care of you.

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So, you rack your brain. You come up with a few ideas, but perhaps you stall because you’ve kinda written about it before, or you’re not sure anybody but you will even care.

You might look at other bloggers and wonder, “How the hell do they keep getting all those great ideas for posts?”

Well, I don’t know. But, I’ll tell you how I go about it…

First, A Few Assumptions Revisited

It is easy to fall into the blogger hamster wheel. You know, the one where you are constantly pressured to keep writing, writing and writing some more… but it feels like nothing is happening.

Usually, the solution is to revisit some of your basic assumptions.

One assumption is that you have to write every day. The truth is… you don’t. I used to write for this very blog 5 days per week, Monday through Friday. A few months back, I decided that was unnecessary and that I could use more of my time doing something to grow my business. So, I reduced it to 2-3 times per week.

Guess what? There was NO negative impact on my traffic.

The key is… when you do write something, make it awesome.

Now, in a news driven niche, maybe this isn’t possible. And, quite frankly, if you’re in a news driven niche, you should have thought about what you’re getting into beforehand. You can always consider hiring some writers to ease the load. But, in most niches, there is no need to post every day.

So, reducing post frequency is one way to ease up the pressure. Quality over quantity.

The other assumption to re-visit would be that you can’t repeat something you’ve already written about. See, YOU know you wrote about it before. But, there’s a REALLY good chance that your reader is completely unaware of that fact. In fact, blogs are traditionally very poorly set up when it comes to featuring archived content. They’re really good at featuring your latest stuff, but once your post cycles into the archives, it is lost except for SEO traffic and related post listings.

So, you have a couple options here:

1. Go ahead and write about it again, perhaps with a new twist.
2. Find ways to re-feature old content on your site and stop depending on the forced chronology of the typical blog.

There are posts on this site which repeat themselves. Not word-for-word, but in idea. I doubt even my long-time readers notice.

Getting New Topic Ideas

OK, now that we’ve eased up the pressure, let’s talk about developing new ideas. Where do you get the ideas for blog posts?

1. Your Own Experience. Obviously. Sometimes you just think up ideas.
2. Blog Comments. Watch the comments on your site. What questions are they asking?
3. New Email Subscribers. I recommend that you set up an autoresponder message on your list so that they are surveyed shortly after they subscribe to your list. You can either point them to an actual survey or simply ask them to reply to the email. What you want to ask them is how you can help them, what they want to learn from you, and what are their frustrations. When you set this up in your autoresponder sequence, then you’ll have an ongoing source of new content ideas, right from the very people who landed on your blog.
4. Social Media. Directly ASK people on Facebook and Twitter what they want to know about related to your niche. Record each idea – and WHO said it – then you can write up a post and feature the person who asked the question. Great way to get post ideas as well as involve your followers. Another idea is to monitor the big keywords of your niche on Twitter search. You can both chime in with answers as well as use the input for post ideas. Little hint: Pay attention to HOW they ask the question, because that’s probably close to what they’d type into Google. SEO, baby.
5. Forums. Forums are whole websites based on nothing but conversation, in their own words, and people getting help. In terms of getting blog post ideas for a related niche, it really doesn’t get any better than that.
6. Social Bookmarking. If you check out the top stories in your niche on the major social bookmarking sites, it gives you an idea what is getting attention. You can twist that into a post idea for your site.
7. Wordtracker Questions. I picked this one up from Shane inside our Inner Circle program (some cool things happening in there). Go to Wordtracker Keyword Questions. Type in a niche keyword and see what kinds of questions people are asking. Just beautiful. You can use the tool a few times publicly, but after that, they’ll hit you up for a free account to keep using it.

Now, when you’re doing this, I encourage you to plan ahead by collecting many post ideas at once. Put them into your idea file. You shouldn’t have to resort to research like this every time you want to write something.

I hope this helps. And, if you’ve already found ways to deal with this that perhaps I forgot to post above, please share in the comments below. This way, we all learn.

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And a “thank you” goes to…

Dona Collins is an infographic artist, blogger and financial writer at CreditLoan.com. When she is free you can find her on twitter and other times you can find her writing articles for creditloan blog.

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It can be pretty time intensive creating all your own content. So, depending on your business model and your intentions, there are times when hiring other writers is the best way to go. It is what I do over on PCMech and, were it not for them, PCMech wouldn’t exist. I simply don’t have time to keep up with that site and this one all by myself.

As part of a long-term marketing effort I’m working on for PCMech, I recently took to finding some new writers. We’re still in the very early stages of getting them going, but I thought I would spell out the process.

When To Find Other Writers (And When Not To)

There are two things you have to take into consideration here:

1. Your niche.
2. Your business model.

Some niches don’t require as much content flow as others so it might be just fine to write it all yourself (especially if you enjoy it). In my case, PCMech is in the technology niche and that niche usually sees a LOT of content flow. If PCMech was updated only as often as this blog, it would die off. So, since a higher volume is needed, I need more fingers on the keyboards.

Secondly, writers cost money so your business model needs to be considered. Will you be making enough money to pay them? Can you set things up so that the ROI of each writer makes them profitable for you?

If you’re in a high-volume niche, you might need to consider hiring other writers.

One case where you cannot really make the switch is when your blog is closely tied to yourself. If your blog is part of your personal brand, then the only person really suitable to post there is YOU. In that case, you really shouldn’t hire writers. There are exceptions (like guest posts), but there is a line there that can be tougher to cross.

How To Find Them

There are many places you can go to find potential new writers:

• Your own blog and mailing list. If you have an established audience, you can turn to your own crowd for writers. After all, they’re familiar with your niche (in theory). You do need to pay attention to their writing skills, however. A good blog reader doesn’t make a good blog writer.
• Industry Forums. If the forum rules allow it, you can post an invitation to apply. Another way to go (which would work with any forum) is to simply participate in the forum like any normal member. As you identify the best posters, you can private message them about your opportunity.
• Niche blogs. If you identify some smaller niche blogs in your market who are good writers but don’t have the audience, you can directly contact them about writing for you.
• Problogger Job Boards. This is where I went and it worked out quite well. It costs a little bit to post the ad, but I got close to 70 responses from it and it worked out nicely.
• BloggingPro Job Boards.

When you post an ad somewhere for it, you need to pay attention to the way you post the ad. Think of it like a blog post. Make it interesting, have a call to action, and be sure to provide all relevant details. Look at it from THEIR viewpoint. What would attract a good writer to respond to your ad? Take into account the following:

• Solid headline. The actual headline for the ad should be specific about the niche you’re looking for.
• Be as specific as possible. Specify the kinds of topics you would want covered by them. Who is your ideal writer? Describe that person as best you can.
• Be human. People won’t respond to stuffy corporate-sounding crap. Your opening should sound like a fun opportunity. You should be looking for a relationship with a like-minded writer, not some top-down approach where they feel like you’re being their boss.
• Tell them what to do. What you don’t want is a resume. They suck and they’re all written to make stupid things sound impressive. So, tell them exactly HOW to respond to your opening. What email address should they send to? Do you want sample posts? Links to stuff they’ve written before?
• Use negative qualifiers. You want to do your best to weed out wastes of time and you can do that with qualifiers. For example, you can tell them to respond with a certain email subject line. If they don’t do that, then it shows they didn’t read the ad and they’re probably just mass applying. Saves you time. Also, you can think of things which might not be a good reason to apply and specifically tell them not to. For example, with PCMech, some out there in tech writing would only apply so they can get free hardware. So, I tell them straight-up that this isn’t a review thing and you won’t be getting free hardware.

How To Evaluate Them

Most likely, you’re going to find people of ALL skill levels applying – especially if you post to an open platform. The thing about blogging, too, is that it is a specific skill. An interest in the topic doesn’t mean you can write about it. And blogging is a form of writing which is a little different than other writing. A good blogger should be able to write in such a way as to get, keep and HOLD attention throughout a piece. He/she should know how to craft a good headline, a solid opening, compelling sub-headlines, etc. He should know to make posts which are easy to scan and not read like big, long term papers with big-ass justified paragraphs.

So, you’re looking for not just writing skills, but BLOGGING skills.

Writing samples are paramount. Preferably, you’d see prior blog posts they’ve written and are currently online, not simply samples they’ve written just for you. But, whatever works.

Also, pay attention to how they apply. Are they personable? Did they take the time to respond the way you asked them to?

I had some people who just sent me a resume and a shortie email. That doesn’t work for me and I simply deleted them. Others told me they could write about anything and everything…. and I don’t buy that. Generic for-hire writers are not nearly as good as somebody who is actually NATURALLY in that niche and writes about it because they LOVE it. So, I recommend steering clear of these generic writers or people who submit samples from completely unrelated niches.

I also got a few companies responding to me, where they have a team of writers and could generate content on whatever I asked them. My recommend: steer clear of that, too.

As you evaluate them, I recommend that you try to respond to everybody who replies – even if you think they’re no good. Be polite, and part of that is replying. If you need more information from them, ask for it. The ones that stand out, flag the message so you can pay special attention to it.

What To Pay Them

This is always a touchy subject and a hard one to decide on. Generally, I think a pay-per-post model works best. In other words, every post of their’s that you publish, you pay them an agreed rate.

When I got responses back from the Problogger job board, the range for pay was varied. The lowest I got was $4/post, and it went up from there with the highest being a couple hundred dollars per post. On the average, it was coming in with $7-$20 per post. It varies based on experience, as you might expect.

Simply put, the better writers will cost more. The person who came in at well over $100/post was an outlier and not statistically representative, but that person clearly had the most experience and wrote for a few reputable tech magazines in the past. He was good, but I couldn’t afford that.

The cost-per-post will also depend often on the length of the post. So, consider that. Do you need big, long tutorials or will quickie 250-word posts work for your blog? With some authors, you may need to work out a graduated scale.

As the blog owner, your job is to consider the ROI. Let’s say you pay a writer $15 for a post. Your job is to ensure that the lifetime value of that post comes in at more than $15 so that it is profitable. So, you need to consider the ads that can show on that post, any affiliate products that can be mentioned in that post, the SEO-targeting (and thus potential traffic draw) of that post. Much of this will come to the management process of your writers, but these are things that need to be considered.

So, before you make decisions on pay, you should know your metrics. You should know the “hot topics” of your market, where the money is flowing, and how you can get it. Then, your job as the owner is to steer your writers into authoring posts that aren’t simply filler, but actually strategically placed to ensure the ROI and make a profitable online publication.

You’re thinking like a PUBLISHER here and not just a blogger. There is a distinct difference.

Legal Considerations On Hiring Bloggers

On any writer who you decide to hire, I recommend you have a signed agreement between you and them. The key elements of that agreement should include:

• They are an independent contractor and not an employee.
• The agreed per-post rate.
• That payment is contingent on you actually publishing the post, not simply that they wrote it. You’re the one paying them, so you need to be the gate keeper to posts going live on your blog so that you can control ROI. If they write a post which you cannot use, you don’t owe them a dime for it if you don’t actually publish it.
• Who OWNS the content. You want to avoid copyright disputes later down the road if/when this writer moves on. So specify clearly who owns the copyright. You can either specify that you own all rights or you could consider a split model. With the split model, the agreement would state that you have exclusive rights for a certain time frame (6-12 months), after which they are free to re-publish the piece elsewhere but you maintain non-exclusive rights for life. Lastly, you want to be sure the agreement specifies that you can use the content in any way you please, including commercial for-sale products you may create in the future.
• How they should invoice you. Do you want them to invoice you one per month? How will you pay them? Paypal? Specify that in the agreement.

Right For You?

Hiring writers for blogging isn’t right for everybody. It really depends on the kind of publication you’re creating and how big you want to be with it.

The next phase of this process is how to manage your writers. As I perfect this process, I’ll share the details here. Management is a key part of the process. These writers don’t share your vision of your site. Also, without clear guidance, your for-hire writers won’t know what to do. They’ll either go off on their own and write whatever comes to mind, or they’ll simply leave. Good management and topic control is crucial to making the ROI of hiring outside writers in your favor.

So, we’ll talk about that one a little later. Once I have it worked out.

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