How To Sell Effectively Through Your Blog

How To Sell Effectively Through Your Blog

What comes to your mind when you think about leveraging your online opportunities and monetizing them? I bet your thoughts swing to large corporations like Facebook, eBay, Google, Amazon and other online ‘big deals’. Of course you’d love to make a fortune too and build an equally big business brand.
So, what’s the secret? What can you do to join the likes of Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar?
The primary secrets is………wait for it…..START SMALL! Yeah, I know it sounds cliché but that’s the deal. A business doesn’t grow overnight. Building a business brand significantly depends on your respective strategies as you take the first steps.
There are many ways of kick-starting an idea. The approach you take is largely dependent on your idea and the respective business goals. If you are dealing with products for instance, a perfect place to start would be building a marketplace for prospects through a blog.
A blog is not only inexpensive to start and run, but also very effective in engaging with your customers. How you run and operate the business through the blog dictates your subsequent entrepreneurial success.
Of course most people already understand what it takes to run a blog. The problem comes in on the business part. How do you run a business dependent on the blog? How will you be able to sell to your prospects through the blog?
A single sale once a blue moon will not take you anywhere. You need to take charge of your blog and understand how you can trigger an exponential growth in sales. Here are tips on how you can achieve this:

Market Your Blog
Many entrepreneurs and solopreneurs make the mistake of kick-starting their businesses aggressively by going straight into marketing their products. Of course this strategy will help you make some sales, but only a few.
To understand why, you need to first comprehend the lead conversion process. Any person you want to sell to qualifies as a lead. To sell to him, you have to successfully convert him into a paying customer. That’s the hardest part of business.
That’s what sales people and marketers always struggle to achieve. The quicker the conversion process, the faster you’ll make the sale and subsequently the larger the prospective profit margin in your business.
Now let’s go back to determining why beginning by marketing your products won’t be very effective. The prospects you’ll be marketing to will be cold leads. Converting a cold lead straight into a paying customer is much more complicated than dealing with warm prospects. That’s where your blog comes in.
A blog will help you convert your cold prospects into warm leads first before making them customers. A better strategy therefore, is marketing your blog and once your leads step in, you use it to convert them into customers.
For this, you could use SEO and social media to promote your blog posts and drive traffic into them. The more the traffic, the higher you stand making from your blog.

Engage Your Customers
Don’t turn your blog into a jungle of sales pitches, testimonials and money-back guarantees. Only a really desperate customer would have the time of scrolling through the sales pitches before buying your product.
To sell, you need to perfectly establish yourself in your niche by consistently engaging your customers. Use your blog to tell stories that would attract them. For instance, if you are dealing in baby products, you should consider publishing blog posts that discuss things like “How To Detect Ailments on Your Baby Before It’s Too Late”. Such a post would attract parents particularly because they are protective of their babies.
A good way of selling to such an audience is engaging them before mentioning your product as you conclude your advice. Do not direct your visitors to other sales pages within your blog. If you want to sell more, you have to do it straight from the main page they visit. That’s why you should consider leveraging simple ecommerce tools like Selz. It’s embedded in your WordPress or Blogger blog to allow you to conveniently and securely sell your products to your visitors after engaging them.

Use A Purchase Funnel System
Just as we’ve discussed earlier, a visitor to your blog is only a cold prospect. He’s therefore not ready to buy. It’s only after engaging him that you turn him into a warm prospect who’s way easier to convert into a paying customer.
As you engage the visitors, you need to additionally use a purchase funnel to strategically convert the warm prospects into paying customers through stages. For instance, you could ask your visitors to subscribe to your mailing lists after reading your posts for additional engagement. This is a very effective strategy to convert the prospects who still don’t buy after reading the posts.
As you engage with them through their emails, you’ll gradually funnel them and subsequently convert some into paying customers.

Link Your Blog Contextually
Most of your visitors will be internet surfers, most of whom don’t have the time to keep searching through your blog. If your products are scattered on different pages, be sure that your prospects will not take it upon themselves to search and access those pages. It’s up to you to direct them appropriately.
The best way to do this is through linking. But be very careful with this. Linking is not just about posting links anywhere within your blog posts. They have to be contextually linked. For instance, a product should only be linked to the keywords which relate to it. That’s how you’ll direct the traffic accordingly to make good sales from your blog.
If you have successfully used other strategies to boost sales through your blog, feel free to drop in comments and share with us. We’d love to know what’s helping you stay at the top of your game.
Author Byline: Davis Porter is an extensively experienced internet marketing specialist and web writer. For any writing and/or marketing jobs, get in touch with him through davisporter15@gmail.com .

A beginners guide to Understanding OpenStack: introductions, overviews, and architecture

Understanding OpenStack: introductions, overviews, and architecture

A collection of videos that include introductions to OpenStack and deep dives into the architecture and...

A beginners guide to understanding OpenStack

The more I learn about OpenStack, the more I see why there is so much buzz about the technology as well as about the community of developers and users. In a poll hosted on Opensource.com, we discovered that many of our readers are curious and eager to learn more about OpenStack. For those new to this technology, OpenStack can be described as a set of software tools for building and managing cloud computing platforms for public and private clouds.
Opensource.com has started gathering resources to help our readers learn what OpenStack is and what it can do:

1. What is OpenStack?
   
   For an overview, see our What is OpenStack? page or visit openstack.org.
2. OpenStack contributions and community
   
   See Rich Bowen's article: How to contribute to OpenStack.
3. OpenStack technology and more
   
   For a deeper dive into the technology (like, the components that make OpenStack scalable) and more on the OpenStack Foundation, begin your discovery with these videos that we recommend.

Recommended videos

Introduction to OpenStack with Sandy Walsh from Rackspace

This is a 30 minute video that is one the best videos I've come across that can help introduce OpenStack to someone completely new to the project. The talk is not too technical and gives a broad overview of the project and the architecture. Walsh talks about what OpenStack is, what it is not, how the project got started, some of the core projects, and he outlines the architecture and scalability of OpenStack.

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Overview of OpenStack and the OpenStack Foundation with Mark Collier

This is a 35 minute video with Mark Collier, COO of the OpenStack Foundation, where he gives an overview of OpenStack and goes into details about the community and the OpenStack Foundation.

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OpenStack 101 with Joshua McKenty from Piston Cloud Computing

This is a 40 minute video that covers the history of OpenStack, an overview of the project (including debunks), provides a technical overview of each of the component, and covers the project governance. McKenty was part of the original OpenStack release and was the architect and team lead at NASA that build the Nova volume, network, and compute components prior to OpenStack.

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OpenStack Basics with Brian Gracely from Cisco

This is a 10 minute video that is very technical. It compares OpenStack to the existing cloud infrastructure and maps out what many technologist are familiar with to the OpenStack architecture.

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OpenStack Architecture with Russell Bryant from Red Hat

This is a 45 minute video that is a technical deep dive into the OpenStack architecture. Bryant details each of the core projects:

• Identity (Keystone)
• Dashboard (Horizon)
• Orchestration (Heat)
• Metering (Celiometer)
• Object stroage (Swift)
• Image service (Glance)
• Networking (Quantum now Neutron)
• Compute (Nova)

Fortinet Blog | News and Threat Research Myths about DDoS Real Time Network Protection

Fortinet Blog | News and Threat Research Myths about DDoS

Real Time Network Protection

Myths about DDoS

Last month we explored the History of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks and how they have developed over time. DDoS attacks are one of the most fundamental and their use in disrupting services online has been unabated since the early 1970’s. That being said, DDoS attacks are still one of the top threats to networks the world over, constantly adapting to new standards of protection and security.
There are many different flavors of DDoS attack and almost as many misconceptions.

Myth 1: It only happens to the other guy

Most network and security operations engineers usually only hear about DDoS attacks happening to other organizations. They think that they don’t have enemies or have any other reason to be the target of an attack. In reality, their perceptions of risk factors and susceptibility are often misplaced as by simply having a web presence makes them a target, even if by mistake.

Myth 2: Server DDoS protections have me covered

Many engineers think that they can custom compile kernel code, set some options in Apache, install “mod_dosevasive” and use “iptables” and their DDoS attacks problems are taken care of. In reality, most servers do not have the capacity to handle DDoS attacks. Under most average sized DDoS attacks, the server CPUs will be too overloaded to give the Apache modules or Linux commands a chance to mitigate the event.

Myth 3: My ISP takes care of DDoS attacks for me

Many ISPs and hosting companies are happy to null-route an attacked IP domain to solve the problem of DDoS attacks. This works for many basic ones, however smaller layer 7 attacks easily bypass their protections and they pass along these application-level threats to your network. Unless your ISP advertises an advanced DDoS mitigation service, you can assume you’re not completely protected. Some also mistakenly believe their ISP will help them get to the root of the attack. Most ISPs are too busy and they have strict and bureaucratic processes to reach each other. Typical response times from ISPs are in days and weeks if you want to rely on them to help determine the sources of DDoS attacks.

Myth 4: It’s against the law. Call the police!

Yes, DDoS attacks are illegal however most law enforcement agencies will only pursue large attacks (10 Gbps and up) on large companies or institutions like banks, government agencies and major international corporations. Most likely they’ll politely tell you that you’re going to need to work with your ISP or a private investigator.

Myth 5: My routers and switches protect me from DDoS attacks

Even though your networking hardware may have access control lists (ACLs) that can block DDoS threats, the attackers can adapt quickly. The average hacker can easily get around your ACLs within minutes with a little determination.

Myth 6: A dedicated DDoS appliance will just get flooded too

Many wonder if there is any point in buying specialized DDoS appliances. Without DDoS mitigation equipment, your servers will be thoroughly exposed even to ordinary attacks. Newer devices on the market provide capacities of over 20 Gbps of throughput that can be overprovisioned to protect you from larger attacks. Combined with ISP DDoS protections you get a solution for bulk and sophisticated layer 7 attacks.

The Flavors of DDoS:

Scientists Control Tiny Mechanical Probes Inside Human Cells

Scientists Control Tiny Mechanical Probes Inside Human Cells

 

 

Nanotechnology doesn’t get as much attention these days as genetic and stem cell approaches to medicine, but all three aim to target the causes of illness with greater precision and less collateral damage in the rest of the body than conventional approaches. Nanotech breakthroughs have come more slowly than many had hoped, but a recent success shows progress toward the goal of using tiny nanomachines to repair or destroy only specific diseased cells. But before nanomachines can deliver medicine directly to cells’ door, they have to work properly in a biological environment.

Researchers have made an important step in that direction, navigating nanomotors inside living human cells for what they say is the first time.
The motors — made from the biocompatible materials gold and ruthenium  — are propelled by ultrasound waves scattering off both ends of the rod-shaped devices. The ultrasound source can be turned down to pause the motors, and magnetism crudely controls their direction.
“This research is a vivid demonstration that it may be possible to use synthetic nanomotors to study cell biology in new ways. We might be able to use nanomotors to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside. Nanomotors could perform intracellular surgery and deliver drugs noninvasively to living tissues,” said lead author Tom Mallouk, materials science professor at Penn State.

At this early stage, the motors had only basic functions. They could be used as a kind of egg-beater to mix all the contents of the cell together, or they could be used to puncture the cell. But even with such blunt control, scientists can gain insight into processes inside the cell that have remained opaque.
The tiny rods resemble microbes and exhibit similar kinds of collective behavior. But researchers were also able to control the machines individually, which will be necessary before nanomachines can be tasked with delivering precise medical treatments.

“Autonomous motion might help nanomotors selectively destroy the cells that engulf them. If you want these motors to seek out and destroy cancer cells, for example, it’s better to have them move independently,” Mallouk said.

Nanoparticles have been used in medical applications, but their individual movements can’t be controlled. Still, they’ve already been used to seek out sick cells. UCLA researchers recently designed nanoparticles to find cancer tumors and release chemotherapy drugs into them when triggered by a laser. And in a 2013 mouse study, clusters of nanoparticles responded to blood sugar levels by releasing sugar or insulin to keep levels within the healthy range.

 

The nanomachines research comes from a lab that has made several important advances in the field. Mallouk first discovered in the early 2000s that nanomotors could be powered chemically. He later found that ultrasound waves, a much more desirable power source for biological applications, could be used.
While Mallouk’s lab works with materials that have distinct properties on the nanoscale, another subset of nanotech researchers is looking for the ideal materials from which to build durable, microscopic structures. Some posit, piggybacking on nature’s own materials engineering, that DNA is an ideal raw material for nanomachines.
The nanomotors research was published in February in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Photos: Gold nanowires Lacomj via Flickr, gold nanomotors courtesy Tom Mallouk, Penn State
 

MUST READ - COTTON EAR BUDS ARE INFECTED

 
MUST READ - COTTON EAR BUDS ARE INFECTED! -

Please do not show sympathy to people selling cotton ear buds on roadside or at Signals…… Just wanted to warn you people not to buy those packs of ear buds you get at the roadside. It ‘ s made from recycled cotton that has already been used in hospitals. They take all the dirty, blood and pus filled cotton, wash it, bleach it and use it to make ear buds. So, unless you want to become the first person in the world to get Herpes Zoster Oticus (a viral infection of the inner, middle, and external ear) of the ear and that too from a cotton bud, DON ‘ T BUY THEM!

Please forward to all this may be helpful for someone……… —
★ [ DON,T FORGET TO SHARE ] ★

Skin Cancer with the Use of Laptop on Your Legs

Blogging For Money | How To Find What Your Customers Want ~ Part 1

Blogging For Money | How To Find What Your Customers Want ~ Part 1

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about the factors that come together to create a successful blog. Successful blogs, in this case, are blogs which generate money for their owner.
This week, we’re going to talk more about providing what customers want so we can make our business blog a success.
Discovering Your Perfect Audience
Successful businesses, whether brick and mortar or online, became successful because they were the right business at the right time picked up by the right audience.
There are two main ways to make money with a blog. The first is to create a blog with content that is so useful and interesting that it generates an audience large enough to catch the interest of advertisers.
The second is to sell your own products or affiliate products, through the blog, this is the one I prefer when it comes to generating a blogging income. However, many blogs leverage both revenue streams.
If you are establishing your first blog business, the first thing to do is some market research into your niche. This research will help you pinpoint where your online audience likes to hang out on the internet and learn about them.
This in turn will help you develop products which help your customers, as well as blog posts that will capture their attention.
Provide what customers want.
All successful businesses are customer driven. You have to give them what they want, or else they will go somewhere that gives it to them. Learning about your target demographic and what they want, allows you to be ahead of the game: you know what questions are bugging your target demographic because you are IN your target demographic.
Are you able to complete these sentences?
• Most of my audience feels they’re falling short in this area…
• Most of my audience has no idea how to…
• Most of my audience has the need to…
• Most of my audience would like to change…
• Most of my audience is frustrated about…
How do you find out what your customers want?
Customers usually gather in groups of like-minded people, talking about the products and services which interest them. As long as you’re not pushy about it, you can enter these groups to gather more information.
Here are some areas I’ve found to be effective for research:
Product Reviews
No matter what you’re planning to blog about, honest reviews of related products can help you make crucial decisions. You can find out thing like:
• Are people interested in this type of product?
• What are the shortcomings of my competition?
• What specific things about my competition does my niche like?
• How long should I make my book?
• Who is buying what is being sold?
Many blogging businesses sell information products to generate income. If you are creating an information product like a book or a set of DVDs, search for the books or DVDs which are in your broad subject on Amazon.
The items which show up first are usually the ones which are selling the best. Choose the books, DVDs, or tapes which have the most reviews.
Why?
• The more reviews a product has, the less biased the overall rating will be. Larger numbers of reviews also make it easier to discern the outliers about a product.
• More reviews mean that there is a larger base of people who are interested in this type of product.
Forums
Forums are places where interested users can chat about specific questions that they have surrounding particular niches. If you look hard enough, there are forums for everything under the sun, from the creation of the best home gyms to finding the perfect tools for a DIY plumbing project.
To start out with forums, go to Boardreader or Omgili. These two sites will give you an excellent launching point to find some of the most talked about forums in the world. Find the most popular forums and join them. Start reading, and delve deeper into your potential customers’ lives to understand them.
If you demonstrate that you’re genuinely interested in helping, people will start coming to you to read what you have to say.
This is also a great way to overcome a problem that many business bloggers face: the need to create constant interesting content. Study which questions are asked a lot on forums and you’ll have plenty of blog fodder.
As you learn more about the community, then you can start asking questions of your own to gain further insights which can be turned into future blog posts and even future information products.
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn connects professionals with other professionals. It’s the place to get business advice and to find movers and shakers within your niche.
If you’re selling a B2B solution, most of your marketing can be done through this portal. LinkedIn also has some of the best forums for people who run a business.
Reading the archives of LinkedIn groups provides excellent insight into what your customers want. Most of the available groups are open to the public to read and enjoy. Questions are asked and answered, advice is given, and problems are discussed. Be cautious before starting to ask questions. LinkedIn is one well that you don’t want to poison accidentally! Learn your group’s culture and conform to it.
Another measure that I intentionally left off of this list about discovering your audience is the art of keyword research. I discuss this more fully in the Profit Blogging Blueprint, but I feel that your first step when starting a new blog, product, or service for your business should revolve around figuring out how to get people what they want, and not which words to place within your post.
Part 2 of this article is posted here.
Your Turn
What are some of your strategies on finding out what your audience likes ? Are there any websites that help you target your audience better? Please share your experience, ideas and questions with my readers in the comment section below.

Blogging For Money | How To Find What Your Audience Wants ~ Part 2

Blogging For Money | How To Find What Your Audience Wants ~ Part 2

The first part of this discussion started with how to orient a blog toward gaining an audience to generate income.
The second part will be more focused on how to create blog posts and other pieces of information which will encourage others to trust you and to purchase from you.
We talked in the last post about ways that you could discover your audience to make money with blogging.
This post will be focused more on how to gain the customer’s trust enough so that they will purchase from you.
It’s all about the customer
The most successful bloggers have the customer on their mind all the time. The Business of blogging revolves around the customer. The customer makes the business happen. They have the money, and it is your job to give them something in exchange for it.
In a blogging environment, potential customers also pay in two other currencies, attention and social promotion. These need to build up to a critical mass before money will begin to flow.
The way to get them is to write content that your audience will appreciate. Unfortunately, many blog owners fail to realize that their content is boring or self-centered or “salesy”.
Engage with your customer and they will engage you.
How to engage with your customers
The best blog posts are not only passionate and unique, but they help to drive the business. They help to challenge the status quo, question authority, perhaps provide a little bit of controversy. That little bit of controversy might prove to be helpful in sharpening your audience into one which is more willing to buy.
When you write a piece of content, ask yourself this question. If you were the customer, would that content get you to keep reading or make a purchase?
Try these example content topics on your blog:
• Tell more stories
• Talk about what happens behind the scenes
• Expose the business challenges you have
• Look for quirky things in your niche
• Explain the inner workings of something
• Make people feel like they are part of something
• Develop your own special code language
• Be incredibly specific about a solution to a challenging problem
What can I do for you?
These six words should form the foundation of every business.
The product that you are selling doesn’t matter so much. What brings in money is assisting the customer in fulfilling a desire or removing a problem.
The phrase ‘what can I do for you’ is the path to steady money.
There should always be something in it for the readers, even if they’re only sympathetically nodding their head.
One way to make your blog posts customer-oriented is to let someone else read them. This person should be outside of your field (though doesn’t necessarily have to be a freelancer) and act as if they were a potential customer.
Your blog post should teach them or entertain them. If it doesn’t, go back and create something stronger.
Your products are solutions, and it’s your job to convey that to your readers and your customers. Your blog is definitely your own, but if you’re selling affiliate products, advertising, or something else, each part of the blog you create should serve a purpose which nudges your reader down the sales funnel.
If you want to learn more on how to find and target a relevant audience along with keywords and traffic generating strategies, please check out my ebook called The Profit Blogging Blueprint.
Your Turn
What types of things do you blog about? Could your blogging efforts be more focused toward developing an understanding of your audience? I’d love for you to share some of your good blog posts in the comment section below.

2014 The Year Of The Blogger !

2014 The Year Of The Blogger !

Happy New Year!
Congratulations on making it to 2014, the year of the blogger.
I wish everyone out there peace and prosperity over the next year. Now, I’m betting that about half of you have New Year’s Resolutions that you’re planning on achieving over the coming year.
Chances are, you want to get fit, eat better, and make more money.
I can help you out with the last one.
The top 10 New Year’s Resolutions Are (According to Time Magazine):
• Lose Weight and Get Fit
• Quit Smoking
• Learn Something New
• Eat Healthier and Diet
• Get Out of Debt and Save Money
• Spend More Time with Family
• Travel to New Places
• Volunteer
• Drink Less
• Be Less Stressed
You can accomplish five or six of these goals, just like I did, by creating and developing your own Internet blogging business. When the money starts flowing into your account, you will be less stressed, you’ll get out of debt, and be able to save money.
You’ll have the opportunity to travel to new places and spend time with your friends and family.
Heck, you might even quit smoking!
Developing your own Internet blogging business might be the key to the better world that you’ve been dreaming about.
You’ve most likely got the three most important things you’ll need to set up your own blogging empire: a computer, a good Internet connection, and the desire and dedication to follow through.
You don’t have to have sackfuls of money to create a blog and an online affiliate marketing business.
In fact, once you’ve got your tools in place, all you’ll need is a blogging blueprint to get you started.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
The dedication to your business success is your master key to accomplishing all of your goals. When I started, I had no idea where this road would lead, but I found out that it’s a lot easier to make money than I thought.
I put a few rules in place that have helped me.
• Learn something every day
• Do something every day
• Teach something every day
Once the commitment to the blog was made, I started seeing profits. It was a cycle: the more money I made, the more debt I was able to satisfy, the more debt gone, the less stress I had.
And, with less stress, I was able to accomplish more and make more money.
Over the next several posts, I’m going to talk a lot about how you can set up your own personal Internet blogging business. Your focus doesn’t have to be on how to make money blogging: you can blog about any niche that you enjoy, whether it’s weightlifting or dog training.
Are you ready to achieve your 2014 resolutions?
Your Turn
What are your new year’s resolutions? What are the financial goals you would like to meet ? Drop me a line in the comment section below and let’s see if we can make your blogging resolution a reality.

Building A Blogging Business ? You’ll Need This …

Building A Blogging Business ? You’ll Need This …

In the last post, we talked about some of the best tools that you can aid your quest to make a profitable blogging business.
Each one of them helped with a different facet of the process, from content creation to analytics to social media marketing and more. However, tools are just part of the equation.
Just having the tools isn’t enough. You have to know how, when, and why to use them as well. There is a serious learning curve with making an internet business. Some people find it enjoyable. Others give up part way.
Why is this?
The people who stick it out are curious. Curiosity is the most underrated trait in internet blogging. Without curiosity about everything in your business, your road to success will be a lot more burdensome.
Have you ever wondered how the professionals take a blog from nothing and create something that brings in money for them every single day?
They were relentlessly curious enough to try lots of different things on their sites. They also were curious about people who have made successful internet businesses. What did they do to get so successful?
I have a free video secrets series that just launched. In it, I share some of my best secrets for making successful blog-based businesses. Does the thought of watching a video series make you curious or make you bored? If it’s the latter, are you sure you’re in the right business?
Curiosity and Content
Curiosity is the beginning of research, research is the beginning of resources, and resources are the beginning of a solid, authoritative website. Google values authoritative websites that are filled with dynamite research and astounding content. Your potential customers also value it.
To some, research is a dirty word. It can conjure images of reading books for hours and toiling endlessly for professors who didn’t care. These formal papers were written with so little entertainment value that even the titles put you to sleep.
It’s no wonder that when money-making bloggers say ‘research is a good thing’ that new bloggers will roll their eyes and say ‘yeah, yeah, yeah.’
The only way that people are going to come to your blog again and again is by delivering content that sparks their curiosity. You must have a curiosity about your niche beyond its profitability so that you can draw people in regularly.
Curiosity will drive the engine of research so you can bring the best content.
Curiosity and Customers
There are two major parts to running an Internet blogging business: content and marketing. The simplest definition of content for this discussion is, ‘the stuff that you have on the site.’ The marketing side is, ‘the stuff that you do to get people to read your content.’
While you are most likely an expert at what you’re putting on your site, you might not start out being an expert on how to get people to read what you’re offering.
In my arena, there are countless sources of research to answer these questions:
• What am I selling?
• Who am I selling to?
• How am I selling to these people?
• What are the best blogging practices?
• Can you REALLY make money from blogging?
• HOW do I make money from blogging?
It requires research to fully answer the question, ‘who am I selling to?’ There’s no such thing as too much information when it comes to your chosen ‘people,’ as your content will be razor focused on helping these people and satisfying their content needs.
When you put yourself into their shoes, your blogging business grows because you can offer products and services that fit their needs.
Your Turn
How do you remain curious about your niche? What fascinates you about blog businesses? Tell us more in the comments below.

Aha! The Secrets To Making Money Blogging

Aha! The Secrets To Making Money Blogging

Every inventor, mad scientist, and magician can recognize that magic moment. Every successful entrepreneur has one, too. I’m talking about that grand ‘aha!’ moment that happens after hours (weeks, or months) of toiling with no result.
It is the switch that tells you that your work just might pay off.
It’s a glorious feeling. There’s a huge difference between hearing that it’s possible and doing it yourself. Nothing can compare to the feeling of doing it yourself, because up until that point it’s only theory.
My first blogging aha moment happened when I made my first affiliate sale. It happened in the very beginning of my blogging career. I had set up a blog with every money maker in the book on it – including affiliate advertising, AdSense, and banners.
There were so many keywords in it that it read like a grocery list, back in the days keyword stuffing was a big strategy, not anymore of course. I waited for people to come. I waited for that money to roll in. I checked my balance every day, hoping for a result.
In the second month, I made 37 cents through AdSense. That may have proven that my AdSense campaign was getting some attention, but I was looking for that first affiliate sale. That’s where the big money was.
Happily, it only took a few more days to get that first delicious email saying that my product had sold.
After the celebration, I had another aha moment. I spent just as much effort on my AdSense work as I did for my affiliate marketing, but got more money for the affiliate. I realized that I could make more money with just as much effort through affiliate programs (this was before I had my own to sell).
Once I knew that it could work, I became a research fiend. I did a lot more research. I asked the question “Why does nobody like my blog?” which I wrote an article about here, I knew that my product was saleable. Now it was just a matter of getting the marketing right. I was determined to make the next affiliate sale not take so long.
I read LOTS of articles, wrote LOTS of articles, and kept learning from one aha moment to the next. The money began to increase. With each blog post I learned; I was one step closer to the keys that would unlock all of the blogging secrets that the pros just knew.
I became addicted to getting aha moments!
I studied big blogs, medium blogs, and tiny but promising blogs. I talked with teachers, peers, and students. And, it came to me. Only one out of ten blogs were compelling enough to hold my attention for longer than a brief glance. When I found a compelling blog, I compared it with the others. Finally it all came together in my head: there was a system that, when consistently followed, produced successful results.
Here I am today, and now I want to share this funnel system with you.
The system that I reveal in my free 3 part video secrets series is what I use for all my online business ventures to make money.
Reading Between The Lines
Ever since making that first realization, I wondered if others had made it already. I began to investigate, all the while testing the theory.
Was it really a secret? I had seen hints, but I discovered that nobody had put all the keys in one place. I stopped looking at the subjects of these popular blogs and started looking at the structures of money making blogs.
I kept testing and my profits kept growing. I knew that I was onto something.
I saw that 90% of the bloggers I ran across didn’t follow a major key that guarantees interest. That was a major win right there. But then I recognized that most of the 10% remaining had another secret as well.
That aha moment hit me like an anvil when I realized it.
When I started to implement the changes that learning the second secret needed, I saw an immediate jump in my profits. How could I have been so blind as to have missed this?
I comforted myself in the knowledge that most people missed this.
Want to know what those secrets are? I can guarantee you that if you are not following these secrets then your blog will not generate revenue.
They are that crucial, and I’m giving them away for free because I’m tired of seeing bloggers all over the web failing to make a profit.
Watch my FREE blogging series and gain access to the keys to blog business success.
Discover the blogging changes that you need in 2014 to unlock your cash, and make you a part of something special. Won’t you start this year of the blogger off right?
In the next post, we’ll go more into the third key I learned, which ties everything together.
Your Turn
What was your most influential aha moment? What changed the business game for you? Did you watch the video series? Tell me more in the comments.

How To Make Money Blogging – Blogging To The Power Of Three

How To Make Money Blogging – Blogging To The Power Of Three

Last time, I talked about my new video series about how to make money online with your blog.
There were three major secrets in that video series. Today I want to talk more about the third one, marketing automation.
I found that as the traffic to my site increased, the amount of work that I needed to do for the site increased. There were emails to send out, new products to look at, people asking me for one on one consultation.
Business was booming.
But!
No matter what I tried to make myself more productive, I realized that I was hitting a limit to how much I could handle on my own. I was getting very good at my profession, but I still hadn’t learned the art of creating more time (if you have that, I’ll happily send you some money).
As I became more popular, my time was dwindling and I didn’t have enough to spend with my family and loved ones.
I had to go back and re-evaluate my formula. I was bringing in money with the first two secrets, but surely this had to be easier than a 60+ hour per week job.
I went back and studied what other professionals were doing from my new standpoint, and I learned something important.
They were relying on software tools to automate much of their blogs. They only had to put the ball in motion and then let the tools handle the subscriptions and the sales funnel.
With those tools, they could have an email list that was 1 person or 20,000 people and they wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep worrying that their marketing messages wouldn’t go out.
The whole concept of ‘work smarter, not harder’ was suddenly laid out before me.
When I took the first two secrets and put it with the last one, I realized that I had created a money making machine.
Since these realizations were made, I have made thousands of dollars.
Part of that profit was reinvested into teaching the principles that I have learned. When you take the information contained in my free video series and use it to its fullest advantage, you have all of the keys in place to make money.
The process may not be easy, but once you align yourself with the three insider tips I talk about in my video series, you’ll find that more money will come.
If you do the work, you’ll be one step closer to treating your blog like a business, and one step closer to achieving all of those resolutions that you set out at the beginning of the year.
The best part is that it’s not complicated at all. Each of the videos and the concepts will take less than 10 minutes of your time.
Blogging is like a legal drug. Once I started making money with my blog, I wanted to make more and more of it. I saw that there were few limits to the amount of money I could make.
I was able to study and learn from some of the best in the business like James Martell, the master in affiliate marketing. I have learned other keys through time to make the process even more efficient and profitable, but I know that without these three the others are useless.
Take the time to watch my free video series. It won’t take that long, and it may just provide you with the revelation that you need.
Your Turn
After watching the series, what are you going to do right now to put the keys into practice? Do you have any questions about the principles? Tell me in the comments.

How To Write Blogging Headlines And Make Money

How To Write Blogging Headlines And Make Money

Headline Writing: First Key to Success
One skill rises above all the others if you want to make money blogging.
It’s a skill that’s much like the game Connect Four: easy to understand, hard to master. Many earn thousands for using this skill over the course of an afternoon, and their patrons gladly pay those fees. What am I talking about? … Headline writing.
What’s the skill that makes the difference between a thriving blogging community and tumbleweeds.
When I wrote about how to write compelling articles last week, I feel that I didn’t emphasize the need for drop dead gorgeous headlines. When you want to make money blogging, this is absolutely crucial.
8 out of every 10 people read the headlines to your blog posts to make the decision on whether they want to read your work. Only 20% of people actually make a time investment and read your article beyond the first few paragraphs.
Of those, there’s an even smaller percentage of people who will make it to the end of the page where you’d traditionally put a call to action. Thus, headlines are crucial in grabbing the attention of a reader immediately.
Three Never Miss Headline Styles
The process of headline writing straddles the boundaries between art and science. Headline formulae exist, but the real proof about whether it works is determined by how many people click on the article that you’ve created. The simple measure is: the better the headline, the more views you get.
The more people who look at your blog posts, the more chances that you get to make money blogging. It’s that simple. Learning how to write headlines = MORE $$ in your pocket. There are no hard and fast rules about headline creation, but different audiences will respond to different varieties.
The Curiosity Based Headline
For instance, I love writing curiosity-driven celebrity headlines. The formula is simple: take two or three seemingly unrelated things and posit a link between them. Here are some examples from this blog:
How I made money from Angelina Jolie’s Breasts
What do Google, Sesame Street, and Lucille Ball Have in Common?
Justin Bieber’s Email Marketing Tips
The key to curiosity-based headlines is to make the titles of the articles so outlandish that your readers can’t help but click on them to see what you’ve come up with. Don’t you just wonder how you can make money blogging about Angelina’s breasts?
Other headlines might be:
Elliot Ness’ Guide to Dirty Money
A Secret Look at Marilyn Manson’s Prayer Book
Getting Filthy Stinking Rich with Saints
The List Style Headline
List headlines are still used because they are incredibly effective. Recently, there has been more emphasis on the longer-style list headline. When you go longer, you have more of a chance to really get your reader’s attention.
Here are some examples of list style articles that we’ve used here:
6 Ways to Create Content when Your Mind has a Brain Freeze
10 Essential Strategies for Blogging Success
5 Steps to Making Money with Your Idea Online
30 Savvy Tricks that Professionals Use
When you’re creating long list-style headlines, think about throwing the kitchen sink into the mix. What can you do in your headline which will not only make a promise to the reader but get them curious enough to click?
53 Proven Methods to Make Money Online. Is #35 even LEGAL?
19 Ways You Lose Money with Your Blog
38 Ways to Boost Your Bottom Line with Email Marketing
These may sound gimmicky, but they don’t have to be. Just say what you’re offering your reader with the headline and then deliver the promise with your content.
The last three article titles say that they will go out of their way to give you something more than just the average 5-10 item list.
1. With list headlines, people know what they’re getting in to
2. More items means more possibility of discovering something new
3. List-articles are easily skimmable, and readers know that
The How To Headline
I’m very fond of the how-to article headlines. The usual way of devising a how-to headline is to offer an exchange of the reader’s time for information. Your mission is to learn how to create the most compelling material possible.
How to articles say at the outset that they will demonstrate something to the readers. A few of the how-to articles on this blog are:
How to read, use, and take advantage of Google Trends

How to Generate a Huge Email List the NPR Way
How to Easily Repurpose your Content to a Video and Podcast
This style of headline writing fills the gap with the rest of the headline styles. There are blogs out there which use a simple, yet potent combination of all three of these headlines, never having to go to other headline styles. Your ultimate goal is to get people clicking on your content, staying on your page, and interacting with your vision.
Your readers, if they’re anything like mine, want diversity when you do headline writing. Just like you can’t eat the same thing every day for a month, your readers are going to get headline fatigue if you give them the same style of headline every time. In other words, you have to mix it up.
Your Turn
What are some of your favorite article headlines? What got your attention about them?

How To Sell Effectively Through Your Blog

How To Sell Effectively Through Your Blog

What comes to your mind when you think about leveraging your online opportunities and monetizing them? I bet your thoughts swing to large corporations like Facebook, eBay, Google, Amazon and other online ‘big deals’. Of course you’d love to make a fortune too and build an equally big business brand.
So, what’s the secret? What can you do to join the likes of Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar?
The primary secrets is………wait for it…..START SMALL! Yeah, I know it sounds cliché but that’s the deal. A business doesn’t grow overnight. Building a business brand significantly depends on your respective strategies as you take the first steps.
There are many ways of kick-starting an idea. The approach you take is largely dependent on your idea and the respective business goals. If you are dealing with products for instance, a perfect place to start would be building a marketplace for prospects through a blog.
A blog is not only inexpensive to start and run, but also very effective in engaging with your customers. How you run and operate the business through the blog dictates your subsequent entrepreneurial success.
Of course most people already understand what it takes to run a blog. The problem comes in on the business part. How do you run a business dependent on the blog? How will you be able to sell to your prospects through the blog?
A single sale once a blue moon will not take you anywhere. You need to take charge of your blog and understand how you can trigger an exponential growth in sales. Here are tips on how you can achieve this:
Market Your Blog
Many entrepreneurs and solopreneurs make the mistake of kick-starting their businesses aggressively by going straight into marketing their products. Of course this strategy will help you make some sales, but only a few.
To understand why, you need to first comprehend the lead conversion process. Any person you want to sell to qualifies as a lead. To sell to him, you have to successfully convert him into a paying customer. That’s the hardest part of business.
That’s what sales people and marketers always struggle to achieve. The quicker the conversion process, the faster you’ll make the sale and subsequently the larger the prospective profit margin in your business.
Now let’s go back to determining why beginning by marketing your products won’t be very effective. The prospects you’ll be marketing to will be cold leads. Converting a cold lead straight into a paying customer is much more complicated than dealing with warm prospects. That’s where your blog comes in.
A blog will help you convert your cold prospects into warm leads first before making them customers. A better strategy therefore, is marketing your blog and once your leads step in, you use it to convert them into customers.
For this, you could use SEO and social media to promote your blog posts and drive traffic into them. The more the traffic, the higher you stand making from your blog.
Engage Your Customers
Don’t turn your blog into a jungle of sales pitches, testimonials and money-back guarantees. Only a really desperate customer would have the time of scrolling through the sales pitches before buying your product.
To sell, you need to perfectly establish yourself in your niche by consistently engaging your customers. Use your blog to tell stories that would attract them. For instance, if you are dealing in baby products, you should consider publishing blog posts that discuss things like “How To Detect Ailments on Your Baby Before It’s Too Late”. Such a post would attract parents particularly because they are protective of their babies.
A good way of selling to such an audience is engaging them before mentioning your product as you conclude your advice. Do not direct your visitors to other sales pages within your blog. If you want to sell more, you have to do it straight from the main page they visit. That’s why you should consider leveraging simple ecommerce tools like Selz. It’s embedded in your WordPress or Blogger blog to allow you to conveniently and securely sell your products to your visitors after engaging them.
Use A Purchase Funnel System
Just as we’ve discussed earlier, a visitor to your blog is only a cold prospect. He’s therefore not ready to buy. It’s only after engaging him that you turn him into a warm prospect who’s way easier to convert into a paying customer.
As you engage the visitors, you need to additionally use a purchase funnel to strategically convert the warm prospects into paying customers through stages. For instance, you could ask your visitors to subscribe to your mailing lists after reading your posts for additional engagement. This is a very effective strategy to convert the prospects who still don’t buy after reading the posts.
As you engage with them through their emails, you’ll gradually funnel them and subsequently convert some into paying customers.
Link Your Blog Contextually
Most of your visitors will be internet surfers, most of whom don’t have the time to keep searching through your blog. If your products are scattered on different pages, be sure that your prospects will not take it upon themselves to search and access those pages. It’s up to you to direct them appropriately.
The best way to do this is through linking. But be very careful with this. Linking is not just about posting links anywhere within your blog posts. They have to be contextually linked. For instance, a product should only be linked to the keywords which relate to it. That’s how you’ll direct the traffic accordingly to make good sales from your blog.
If you have successfully used other strategies to boost sales through your blog, feel free to drop in comments and share with us. We’d love to know what’s helping you stay at the top of your game.
Author Byline: Davis Porter is an extensively experienced internet marketing specialist and web writer. For any writing and/or marketing jobs, get in touch with him through davisporter15@gmail.com .