photo credit: Alma Salvaje

Everyone has an opinion, right? What makes one blog more interesting that another? It’s different things. Style. Tone, Knowledge. And Opinion.

Look at the A List Bloggers. They all have opinions. Strong opinions. That’s part of the appeal. You want to hear what they’ve to say. And see the reaction from others.

But here’s the catch.

If you want your blog to move up a notch, you too need to make a stand or take a strong position. This means move away from the comfort zone and committing to what you believe in.

How to Change Your Attitude Towards Negative Comments

John Chow said you need a skin like a rhino to survive as a professional blogger.

I’ve blogger since GeoCities (now defunct) in the late 90s.

That was the first community site with semi-decent blogging tools. I ran a little blog about being… ‘left-handed’.

It was a little gathering place for lefties to come together and bemoan their faith in a right-handed world.

Some comments were terrible. Really harsh.

This was a real wake up call for me. It’s hard to have a site as inoffensive as ‘left-handedness’ but…

Since then I’ve worked on dozen of web projects. Some were more successful than others. One trend we noticed was that sites with a strong identify drew the most viewers.

They also got the most abuse.

When your site has a strong identify, two things happen:

1. You’ll attract followers – some cosmic law ensures that there are leaders and followers. The more you lead, the more others follow. Having a strong opinion is the quickest way to do this.And please try it before you say, ‘No it’s not’! It really does work.
2. You’ll attract abuse – another cosmic law says that there will also be trolls sniping from the sidelines, undermining your efforts and second-guessing your moves. Trolls want attention. Even negative attention works for them.

Lessons Learned

Today I run eleven sites and sell products such as the Instant Business Letter Kit, Sales and Marketing Toolkits and Project Management Methodology Suite

Some get 1000s of visitors every day, with lots of comments coming in though the forums, email newsletters, and of Social Media channels.

Do I still get abuse?

Yes.

Do I like it?

Hardly.

But, here’s the point I want to share.

You can’t please all the people all the time.

There will always be folks who want to cut you down to size, highlight that typo you made, and second guess every move you make.

and that’s fine with me because… that’s the role in life.

I don’t want to be that person and I’m sure neither do you.

So, the next time you get some negative comments, just sit back and think, ‘thank god, I’m not that guy.’

These people won’t change but we can change our reaction to them.

What do you think?

PS – thanks to Yaro for covering this in his recent Blog Blueprints forum.

photo credit: Joelk75

I’m curious. How much would you pay me to write a 500 word article for you?

Ok. I don’t do freelance work at the moment. But, if I did, how would you go about it?One way to scale your internet business is to outsource writing tasks to Virtual Assistants and Freelancers. The upfront cost (payment) is offset by the extra sales you’ll make (returns) on the time you save.

That’s how it works if you do it right. Let’s take a look.

How to outsource your articles

You can use sites like ODesk.com to post your project and get freelancers to bid. Here’s how it works:

• Write out the specifications for the work you want done, say 5 articles on your business niche.
• Be as precise as possible. The more details you can give, the better a response you’ll get.
• Submit the work request.
• Freelancers will contact you and outline their rates, offer samples, and should be able to provide references. Many sites let you see references and recommendations from satisfied customers in the freelancers profile. Yes, it can be rigged, but in general it works very well.
• Look at the reference work and make a decision.
• Don’t choose the cheapest option. Look for the best VA/Freelancer and build a long-term relationship.
• Consider offering bonuses or other incentives if they deliver the material ahead of time. In the long run, it’s more economical to work with 1 or 2 trusted VAs than having to search for new ones all the time.
• Pay as agreed. Usually I pay a percentage upfront if the person has been recommended to me or pay on receipt if it’s a new VA.
• I use PayPal and have a verified business account.

How I Write

The other option is to write the material yourself. I do this is the subject matter is very specialized and I can’t find freelance writers with relevant experience.

Here’s how I do it:

• Choose a topic, for example, Mobile Commerce.
• Identify ten questions around the subject. How do I setup a Mobile Shop? How do I take payments over the phone etc.
• Write skeletons for each of the questions; these are a series of headings that I’ll use to flesh out the articles in more detail.
• Write in batches, for example, for three hours at a time. That lets me build up a head of steam and really get into the subject.
• Turn off everything and just write.
• Stop.
• Leave it for a day.
• Return to the material and complete it.

My aim would be to write 5000 words minimum.

That works out at 500 words per article, usually more. In some cases, you can cut/paste material that applies to different articles.

Typing Skills

One reason I can do this is I type very fast. Very fast.

I learnt to use a typewriter as a teenager and have fairly good touch typing skills.

If your income is based on how many words you can type, learn to touch type.

It’s a no-brainer.

Pay By The Hour

If you do choose to go with the freelancer, you have two options.

If you pay by the hour:

• Look at the going rates.
• See what others charge first.
• Get a few quotes.
• Weight up the options.

Some writers prefer this arrangement.

For me it doesn’t work. I don’t charge others by the hour – unless they want to! – as I prefer to be paid/rewarded on performance.

I prefer to pay by output. How long it takes… I don’t care.

Pay By Words

What I do is say, ‘I need 5,000 words on this subject. How much would it cost? Have you any samples of writing similar material.’

I don’t want freelancers cutting and pasting material from the web. I prefer to see if they have written about the subject before and then proceed.

I ask to see samples and get references if necessary.

When they start to write, I ask for a draft to be sent over. Again, I don’t want to wait until the end and find the material is sub-standard.

If the quality is really good, I might commission more work and…

Bonus

I offer bonuses to the really good writers. I want to lock in with them and keep them onside. This is a cost cutting measure if you think about it.

The less time you spend looking for freelancers, the more time you have for more important activities.

Another no-brainer!

How much for 500 words?

I’ve spoken to others who use VAs and Freelancers. And, it depends…

• If the writer knows the subject matter, they should be able to write about 1000 words in an hour. This article took 45 minutes.
• If the writer is new to the subject, it will take more depending on the amount of research.

Most professional writers can touch type. If they can type 60 words per minute, then do the math.

It shouldn’t take long if they know the subject matter.

Therefore…

If the time it takes them to come up to speed takes too long, you may as well write it yourself. I outsource to trusted writers that I know can turn it around super quick.

And I pay above the going rate.

I don’t want to waste time (i.e. money) looking for status updates, answering queries, listening to ‘the dog ate my homework’ stories.

PS – this article is 909 words and took 41 minutes to write.

What do you want people to do after they’ve watched your video? Most beginners forget to ‘close the sale’. Their efforts go into making the video, getting it up on YouTube, but forget its original purpose. It’s easy to do when you’re in a hurry or engrossed in the technology. But you want people to do something, right? Otherwise, the point of the exercise is lost.

Video Blogging – Creating a Call to Action

Here’s how to create a Call to Action with your videos. Use your video blogs to encourage viewers to take some action. One of the mistakes new video bloggers make is that they overlook this step and assume that viewers will take the next step. They won’t!

Remind your viewers to take the next step.

1. Encourage them to sign up to your newsletter
2. Subscribe to your YouTube channel or
3. Leave comments

Also, remind them who you are: ‘’Hi, I’m Ivan Walsh from IvanWalsh.com, visit my website”.

Keep it short, less than three minutes and ALWAYS encourage the viewer to add a comment. That’s the easiest thing for them to do. Don’t make it difficult for them to interact – just remind them.

What did you think of this video, by the way?

Ever wondered how some blogs appear on Google News and others don’t? Ever wanted to get your site on Google News. Google has published guidelines explaining how the process works. Do it right and you might be indexed. If you’d like a site to be included in Google News, you can also send them the URL directly.

How to Get Added to Google News

To be included in Google News, your articles (and their URLs) must be:

1. Unique

Each web page/blog post that display an article’s full text must have a unique URL. Google doesn’t include sites in its News that display multiple articles under one URL or that do not have links to pages dedicated solely to each article.

2. Permanent

Google can’t/won’t crawl pages (e.g. www.yoursite.com/news.html) if it displays a different story every day.  Make each post unique and permanent.
‘To ensure its links to articles function properly, each article on a news site must be associated with one unique URL, and that URL must be permanent (i.e., it can’t be recycled).’

3. Three-digit number

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits.

For example:

Google News can’t crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html

Google News can crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html

Add three unique numbers to each article.

Note: if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as:

http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html

…Google won’t be able to crawl it.

Exception: this rule is waived with News sitemaps

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68323

Google News: How to Recommend a site for inclusion

If you’d like a site to be included in Google News, send them the URL here.

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40249

Recap: Get Added to Google News

Be

1. Unique
2. Permanent
3. Three-digit numbers

That’s it. Over to you.

Have you managed to get your blog indexed by Google for its news section? Was Bing easier? Share any tips you have below.

I need your advice. Someone has left a fairly negative comment on my blog. What should I do? Approve or Delete? The reason I ask is this. I want people to give their opinion and, even if it offends me in some ways—let’s say they made some sarcastic remarks or found a typo—I’d still approve it. Feedback can be a great learning opportunity. But, where do you draw the line?

How do you Manage Extremely Negative Comments on your Blog?

• Avoid Flame wars – If I publish the comments, it may (i.e. will) offend those mentioned in the comments. They may then respond in kind and the whole thing ends in a nasty squabble.
• Legal eagles – There is also the possibility that someone may feel wounded by these remarks and take legal action. I don’t want this. Especially as the comments are not even mine.
• Ignore the comments & the person – I can delete the comment but this undermines (to a certain extent) my wishes for the site, i.e. to be an exchange of opinions.

• Give them attention & email them – I could do this bit feels like a ‘halfway house.’ I may also provoke the person in stronger (more unpleasant) remarks. They may also start ‘flaming’ on other sites.

Where do you draw the line?

What approach do you take when you get these comments?

Want to be on the very first page of Digg.com? You’d be famous, right? Here’s how to do it.

Link Bait has one specific aim — get me to the top of Digg.com. The idea is that once you get there, others will click through to your site and you can reap the rewards once they arrive. Of  course, it’s not that simple but if understand the mechanics of how Digg works —and what interests Diggers—then you’re one step closer.

So, pull up a chair, grab your coffee and sit back.

1. Study Digg – this is the number 1 mistake people make. They don’t hang out on Digg, get a feel for what’s happening and learn to judge what will work or not. So, sign up, log in and engage.

Why bother?

Well, it’s like writing a travel guide on Italy without ever having pizza on the Step of Rome. Once you’re there, everything makes more sense. Digg, Delicious and the rest are all the same.

Tip — if you want to succeed with link bait, focus on one site. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

Ok, you’ve signed up. Use a real name if possible, not greenpig715.

People relate to real names; they are more likely to dig you if you sound human than use an avatar. But there are exceptions, I know.

2. Create a Swap File.

A what?

This is a file where you will keep links, snippets of text and other link bait that impresses you.

Told you it would take some time!

Now, this isn’t hard. You just need a text file and then copy/paste in whatever stands out.

Why is this so important?

Ans: headlines.

3. Headlines

Look at the DIGG homepage. What do you see?

Headlines. Lots of them.

Copy and paste the top 10 headlines into your swap file. Do this as often as you can.

Notice anything?

Most of them are lists.

• 5 ways to sleep while working
• 7 ways to wash your iPod
• 10 ways to alienate your children

People like lists. And what else do they like?

4. Benefits

Give your heading an extra boost by adding a nice, juicy benefit.

For example,

• 5 beers that get you drunk faster & make you smarter
• 7 ways to break your iPod & get an instant refund
• 10 ways to alienate your children & win an award

You get the idea.

All of these are slightly idiotic but—here’s the thing—you’re tempted to see what’s on the other side of the link.

5. Write to be scanned

No-one reads on the web, they all scan.

So, write to be scanned.

Write your article or blog post so that readers will scan down through the article — like you’re doing now — go, “yeah, I like this” and then, fingers crossed, hit the DIGG IT button and do us all a good deed.

Sounds to easy. It is. You need to also…

6. Add ‘off-beat’ images

Avoid PC junk. Add an image that captures the mood and will appeal to the reader. Something with an edge but not too risky.

Humor also works. Get it wrong and you look lame.

7. Credibility

It takes time but if you join other networks and comment on others post, guess what?

They’ll hang out with you and give you a few digs. This does work but it’s a really slow way to generate link bait. It does work, but, well, it’s not for me.

8 & 9  Test & Re-Test

Here’s something I do and it works.

Write a 300 word article. About anything. Doesn’t matter.

Spend 20 min and come up with 20 variation on the same headline. Have fun. Shuffle the words upside down, inside out and back to front.

It’s yours to play with. Enjoy it.

• Mon – submit the 1^st headline. On Wed, record the Diggs.
• Thurs – change the headline and submit it. Record the Diggs.
• Sat — change again and submit it. Record the Diggs.

And so on…

Then what happens?

Patterns begin to emerge. Some headings bomb.

No-one clicks on them.

Not even your Mom, kids or pet Labrador, Caesar.

Others take off!

Paste these into your swap file (remember him) and use this as a starting point.

Twitter is also another way to test headlines.

Remember – No-one bookmarks tweets.

It you know how to write, people will click thru.

And finally…

10. Practice

Like all things, the more you practice, the better you get.

Focus on writing amazing headlines, develop super-sharp content, and you’ll get the Diggs.

Want to know more?

Top Diggs of the year

7 Days – http://digg.com/all/popular/7days

365 Days – http://digg.com/all/popular/365days

Check these out and you can see what people are interested in. These are the big hitters.

Avoid news of the day type material. The web is saturated before you even get there.

Write, submit, Digg.

What do you think?

What’s the best example you’ve seen of link bait? Was it the words or the images?

Chris Brogan writes: Blogs are not traditional media, and bloggers are not journalists. Unless they are. But it’s not a requirement.

A blog is software. It’s something one puts up on the web to capture information, of whatever type one wants to put on there, and thus, if anyone tells you that you’re doing it wrong, that’s just silly. There aren’t very many wrong ways to do it (legal things like stealing from others might be something you could screw up, but otherwise). And yet.

If you’re going to blog seriously, consider the following:

• Consider the goals and value of your posts. Are you adding to a body of work? Are you blogging to educate, inform, deliver some value?
• Facts do matter. If you’re stating opinions, stress that they’re opinions. If you’re claiming a fact, try to cite it. (I tend to state mostly opinions).
• Remember that defamation is still an issue, potentially legal.
• You can always ask questions BEFORE you blog (novel, I know).
• Brevity matters. I know that I blog about this often. I just see several posts where one has to wade through to try and decipher the salient points (often my own).
• Disclosure is key. If you’re doing something to make money, if you have a business relationship with an organization that you’re writing about, if there’s anything that might potential change the way something is perceived were it be to be measured against what you wrote, consider that.
• Link when you’re mentioning other sites or information that has a link. It’s good manners. It’s the way the Web works. It’s more resources. Linking only to yourself says something about you (and it’s not flattering).
• Review the body of your work every 10 or so posts. Are you improving?
• Review the body of your work every 30 or so posts against the most recent. Are you repeating?
• Review the body of your work against 5 other blogs in your space. Are you an echo?
• Ask yourself WHY you’re posting what you’re posting. Pretend you’re the reader. Is this worth their time?
• What else could you be doing with your blog to add value to your core community?

There are lots of reasons to be blogging: capture your thoughts, share moments, build relationships, establish thought leadership, sell electric toothbrushes, whatever. None of them are especially wrong. But if you’re going to blog with the perspective that you are a professional, give it your best. Your audience deserves it.

About Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events.

Article source: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/if-you-intend-to-blog-seriously/

Do you want to update your blog every day?

Chris Brogan provides this framework for writing a blog post (almost) every day. He adds that while it’s not easy, once you develop the right habits, they stick with you. I’m writing quite regularly now, but it took me several years to get my groove down to a science.

Tips on How to Blog Every Day

1. Read something new every day. Try Alltop. (Hint: read something outside your particular circle to get new thoughts).
2. Talk with people every day. I get many of my topic ideas from questions people pose to me, or through conversations.
3. Write down titles and topic ideas in a notepad file. (I’ve given you 100 blog topics and another 20 blog topics just to get started.)
4. Maintain a healthy bookmarking and revisiting habit. Delicious.com
5. Find 20-40 minutes in every day to sit still and type.
6. Follow an easy framework. Here are 27 blogging secrets to start you on what I mean.
7. Get the post up fast, not perfect. You can edit if you have to, later. Perfectionism kills good habits.
8. Dissect other people’s posts to understand what makes them tick. The more you understand HOW they write, the more you can take the best parts of it into how you write. (hint, my 27 blogging secrets post gives you my patterns.)
9. Find useful and interesting pictures. I use Flickr photos licensed under Creative commons for most of my photos.
10. Think about what your customers and prospects need. I write from the perspective of the communities I serve. This focus takes some weight off my worries about what I should write about or not. I write about what my community needs.
11. My best advice about blogging.

How I Blog Every Day

I tend to use the inverted pyramid format when writing longer posts, i.e. as opposed to short snippets.
The “pyramid” is a triangle.

1. The top represents the most substantial, interesting, and important information you want to convey.

1. The middle section discusses the main points of your article, often as bullet points and

1. The tapered lower portion illustrates that other material should follow in order of diminishing importance.

Ken Blake, Ph.D. explains how it works on the Tennessee State University site: “Journalists use many different kinds of frameworks for organizing stories. Journalists may tell some stories chronologically. By far the simplest and most common story structure is one called the “inverted pyramid.”

http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11178/171/pyramid.htm and here on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace

Jakob Nielsen adds that “On the Web, the inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know from several user studies that users don’t scroll, so they will very frequently be left to read only the top part of an article. Very interested readers will scroll, and these few motivated souls will reach the foundation of the pyramid and get the full story in all its gory detail.”

References

Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-blog-almost-every-day/

Chip Scanlan: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38693

Jakob Nielsen http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9606.html

Having this model in mind helps me structure each article. I write a one sentence intro, break out the content in chunks, and then wrap up at the end with conclusion and/or questions.

Asking a question at the end can be a simple but effective way to encourage readers to post a comment.

What you think!

Ivan

Twitter Tools lets you integrates your blog with Twitter, so that every time you publish an article, it is automatically sent to Twitter. Even better, it can setup a daily and weekly blog post listing all the tweets you sent. One small thing is that the default setting for the blog posts is “New Blog Post”. Luckily, you can change this. Here’s how.

What it does

• Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

It’s brilliant except for one small detail. Every post from your site shows up in Twitter with ‘New Blog Post:’ as its prefix. Luckily, it’s easy to change this (once you know how!)

How do I change the ‘New Blog Post:’ prefix when my new posts get tweeted?

You have to change one line in the plug-in file.

1. Click Plugins.

2. Select Twitter-tools.

3. Look for the file – twitter-tools.php.

This is located in Plugins/twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php.

4. Scroll down to $this->tweet_prefix=”New Blog Post”

5. Change ‘New Blog Post:’ to whatever you want, for example, ‘Tips‘.

6. Click Update File.

Congrats. Your file has been updated successfully.

Alex King, the developer explains that “The reason this is done this way, and not as an easily changeable option from the admin screen, is so that the plugin correctly identifies the tweets that originated from previous blog posts when creating the digest posts, displaying the latest tweet, displaying sidebar tweets, and creating blog posts from tweets (you don’t want tweets that are blog post notifications being treated like tweets that originated on Twitter).”

Read more at http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=twitter-tools

Now that our little site is doing well, freelance writers are approaching us and offering their services. I thought I’d offer this to give you all an idea of the rates per post and per article we’re being quoted.

By the way, the writer who sent this was very professional, had a great portfolio and recommendations from satisfied clients.
[ad]
‘I offer a fixed $500 monthly and deliver 20 posts/articles a month (5 new posts each week) if the requirement is purely for content writing.”

Another approach was:
“for $500 a month I can write 16 posts/articles a month + bookmarking these on Digg, Stumbleupon, Mixx etc.”

The advantage of this is that it’s a combination of content and a basic amount of promoting the content through social bookmarking and posting them to some other sites you may like these posts promoted on.

How much do you charge for writing posts?

[ad#5links]

Unobtrusive Sidenotes combines Javascript and CSS so that you can incorporate sidenotes into your web pages or blogs. It even includes a handy set of colors (all set in CSS and tweak-able) to create that oh-so-subtle correlation between the sidenote and the relevant text.
[ad#5links]
The developers –Arc90Lab – believe that footnotes, at least the ones worth reading, are usually far away from the line-of-sight we’re focused on when we read.

It would be nice to be able to optionally just glance over and take that brief little detour if we so choose. It’s footnotes on steroids: sidenotes. The Atlantic Monthly dipped its toe into sidenotes about a year ago in their April 2005 issue.

Sidenotes are completely styled up through CSS. You can set the border and background color of sidenotes as well as positioning with CSS. The colors for side notes and highlighting will alternate between four set color schemes. You can easily change the default colors by editing the CSS that is referenced by the script. The specific CSS styles are included in the HTML file as well as the example link below.

You can also control where the sidenotes end up relative to the paragraph through the CSS. In our example code, the sidenotes alternate between left and right floating within the passage.

You can easily set the sidenotes to only float left or right by tweaking the CSS (left requires no float attribute at all, right simply requires “float: right”).

Currently, the unobtrusive sidenotes script has been tested and confirmed on the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6.0+
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5+
• Apple Safari 2.0
• Opera Version 8.51

Licensing: This arc90 tool is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

Visit: http://lab.arc90.com/2006/05/unobtrusive_sidenotes.php#more

Demo: http://lab.arc90.com/tools/sidenote/

Is there anything worse than people telling you how they got to #1 on Google? And, if you pay them $33.99, they’ll send you an eBooks that tells all. Well, our sister site (www.klariti.com) is now at #1 in four different categories on Google. But rather than tell you how great we all are, I’d like to tell you the mistakes we made on the way. Hopefully, you’ll learn something and spare the pain we had to go through.

Mistake #1 – Build for scale

This may be the biggest mistake I made. We originally built the site in
Microsoft FrontPage and every page was hard-coded.

What that means is that if I wanted to update the footer, for example, I had to manually update every page. I had no idea about using ‘file includes’ or databases. If I had spend a month learning how to program, it would have saved me so much times over the years. So, build you site to scale and/or learn a little bit about code/databases.

To be honest, I still can’t code, so I moved everything to WordPress. This has made huge difference as regards productivity. I now get about 30 posts online in 2 hours. I could never have done that before.

Mistake #2 – avoid time-wasting activities

Don’t get hung up on looking at the stats, tweaking minor details or sweating over the small stuff.

Keep looking at the bigger picture. 

Am I creating content that people are reading?

Are people reading the site? I know this is to do with stats, but the thing is look at the stats on a Friday night and then plan for the week. Don’t be checking it every day.

• How many products have I sold?
• Keep an eye on your goals. If you’re not selling your products, then ask yourself the hard questions?
• Do you need to improve the product?
• Is it the right price? This leads us to the next point.

Mistake #3 – avoid killer products

We sell over 50 products on the site. 10 products account for 75% of the sales. But here is the most important thing.

It’s the slow sellers that have done very well. They may only sell 1 or 2 copies a week but over the course of a year, this really adds up. I really want to emphasize this.

Develop ‘slow burn’ products. Each and every sale soon adds up. If you have 8 products selling 5 times a week, you’ll do very well in the long run.

Also, by developing a range of low cost products, you insure yourself in case a competitor develops a better product. No one pays attention to the long tail.

IMHO this is where the real money is.

And if you read one book, then please beg, steal or borrow this.

Or ask the library to get it for you. It explains (among other things) how low-cost, niche products generate revenues that are greater than the big hitters.
 
Mistake #4 – don’t fall in love with your web site design

Everyone makes this mistake. It’s not your baby. Change the site as/when it needs to grow. Don’t fawn over it because you lovingly built it by hand and designed the logo and everything.

I know it’s hard but try to keep some distance from your site. See it as a business (and I know you love it!) and update it when it needs to be refreshed or scaled up.

Tip: don’t update a few webpages and then tell everyone you’ve launched a new site.

No-one cares!

All they want to know is: does this website solve my problem. Yes or No?

Some of the most successful websites are very plain with no bells and
whistles. But the writing is great. And that’s what makes the difference.

Mistake #5 – don’t look for advertising for 1 year

Your first year is all about learning the ropes. Finding out what works.
Developing products. Trial and error. Have no expectations for year 1 as regards revenue. If you make something, it’s a bonus. But don’t spend your hanging out on forums learning about ‘how to make 10k a month with Adsense.’

These are all time wasters. Move on.

• Write articles, develop products
• Promote them
• Write more articles, test your products
• Promote them
• And so on.

There is no shortcut. Just be patient and stick to the plan. Don’t panic. See the long picture. As long as your site is growing, you’re heading in the right direction.

Mistake #6 – learn to fail

We setup a newsletter a few years back. It took 3 hours a week to write, usually late at night after a full day. We got 200 subscribes over 3 months or so. But it wasn’t worth the effort, so I ditched it and focused on developing content. It was painful to throw away all the effort I’d put in, but there was a greater return in other areas.

Don’t be afraid to test new areas. No one will punish you if you’re RSS feed goes down or your website crashes.

Enjoy testing things out and don’t worry too much if/when things break. Because they will break. Your site will go down, probably when you’re on holidays. Customers will complain. But, it’s not you, this happens to all website owners.

Mistake #7 – remember you have friends, family that need attention

I know you love running your web business but remember that humans need attention! It’s very easy to get engrossed and forgot about others, so remember to surface for air occasionally and give them the attention they need.

If you don’t do this, things will get unbalanced and you’ll end up having squabbles with people. Try to develop a schedule and stick to it.

For example, I try not to blog on Saturday. Keep this as family time and it gives my head a rest. Keep some distance or you’re going to burn out.

Tip: some signs that you’re working too hard – bringing your laptop to bed/bathroom, talking about WordPress plug-ins to the 4 year old, dreaming about twittering.

Mistake #8 – learn a little about coding

Just buy 1 book about programming and learn the basics. This is very, very useful when/if you want more control of your website and blogs.

You don’t have to learn how to be a programmer, but knowing how to read a bit of code helps when you want to add a plug-in, widget, banners ads or whatever to your site.

It’s not that hard. You just have to decide to do it.

And if I were to choose one, I’d suggest PHP as this works very well with WordPress. There are many others but focus on one. That’s enough to get you started.

Mistake #9 – stop shopping around

This is another time waster. Instead of shopping around looking for the
cheapest web hosting company, newsletter software or whatever, just pick one of the best and get it. It might cost more in the short term (only a little for the web hosting) but will save many hours surfing for the best deal.

So, who do I recommend?

1. Web hosting – godaddy.com. never crashed. Ever!

2. FeedBuzz for newsletters

3. Snagit and Camtasia. Must haves for screenshots and videos.

4. FileZilla for ftp stuff.

5. CutePDF for creating PDFs. It’s free.

6. Audacity for creating podcasts. Again it’s free. This is for voice recording. Stupidly simple to use.

7. Twhirl for twitter stuff. A breeze to use and free.

8. Textpad and Notepad++ for text editing. Why two editors? I have 3 PCs and am too lazy to uninstall and reinstall all the apps.

9. Microsoft Office 2007. Had no choice here but it’s proving a good buy. Bit expensive but some of the new features are worth the investment.

10. FireFox for power browsing if there’s such a thing. Well, all the plugins that you can use on it as fantastic. That’s the real value, tbh.

11. Windows Live Writer for writing and posting blogs. I have tried the rest and this is the best by far.

But, I can’t for the life of me get it to work with Blogger.com. Microsoft own Windows Live Writer. Google own Blogger.com. You can guess the rest!

Mistake #10 – automate as much as you can

Tell customers how/where they can contact you.

Include your skype, mobile (cell) number, alternative email address and links to FAQs. Links of real value to the customer. Don’t waste their time with useless, ‘thanks for contacting us’ guff.

Setup autoresponders. Answer the type of questions they are likely to ask. Put yourself in their shoes.

• Why do they contact you?
• What problems do they usually have?
• What is the most likely answer?

Include a link to a FAQ page where, hopefully, they can solve the problem before you get back to them. Always include an alternative email address in case your main email is down.

Other areas you can automate are:

• Selling products: try Payloadz.com or ejunkie
• Newsletters: aweber (expensive) or feedbuzz (free)
• Forums: give trusted users admin rights so they can moderate the forum. Some people, for example, power users, will be glad to oblige, especially if you offer to share some of the Adsense revenue with them.

Mistake #11 – buy timesaving tools, even 1 of them

This is similar to the above but what I’d emphasize here is that if you buy just one product that saves you time, then you have more time to focus on running your business.

The biggest time saver I found was hiring a book-keeper to do my VAT and tax returns. It’s a weight off my mind and I can now focus on the site and leave this to someone else. Just do the maths. If it cost 50 USD per month for the bookkeeper, but you can make 250, then why do it yourself.

Mistake #12 – forget Amazon

Every week we send 100s of visitors to Amazon. The conversion rate is terrible. Less than 1%. Of all the affiliate programs we’ve used, this has been the biggest disappointment.

For example, we were #1 on Google with Information Architecture. Not any more as we’ve moved.

So, I assumed that people who were interested in this field, found us on Google, visited our site to read about this. Then, they click over to Amazon to read more about Information Architecture. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

Do they buy any books?

Almost, never.

Others will have a different story but I’ve given up on using Amazon. They commission on only 4-8%, so I now put my energy into developing my own products.

Mistake #13 – don’t use free articles

You can get free articles from many places to beef up your website.

Don’t do it. Write your own material instead.

I know if may take a bit longer but it will give your site more identity and strengthen your brand.

Free articles dilute your site’s offering. Believe in your own abilities.
Write what you have to say. It’s always more interesting both to you and the reader.

Mistake #14 – don’t follow the crowd

If you’re new to blogging you probably read tons of stuff. Lots of it from marketing types showing you photos of their 100k per month checks from Google. I know, it sounds great, doesn’t it. Do they make it?

I don’t know and I don’t care. They have Photoshop and a printer – guess the rest! The point here is to focus on YOUR site. That’s all that matters. What others are making is irrelevant.

WARNING – don’t get distracted by every new fad. Last year is was RSS, not its Twitter.

Keep to the bread and butter.

Read about these things, of course, but don’t get side tracked. Look at your goals for the month and see where you are now. Will this new technology really help you get there?

Mistake #15 – read the best and only the best

There is so much on the web. So, where do you start? Read these three and if you follow half of what they suggest, you’ll do very well. We’re all in a race against time, so go here and follow what these guys say.

Darren Rowse – how to make money blogging (http://www.problogger.net/)

Amit – how to use new technologies to develop your blog. Absolute gold dust.  (http://www.labnol.org/)

Jakob Nielsen – how to write content, design pages etc. (http://www.useit.com/)

All of these are A1. Do yourself a huge favor and read these guys once a week. The others can all wait. Honest, they’re that good.

Mistake #16 – there’s no hurry. The turtle beats the hare

Don’t expect to make money for the first 6 months.

Answer this.

How long would it take to make money if you took singing lessons in the morning? For the first few months, you’d be doing scales, then some easy songs, maybe a year later going public. Maybe?

As long as your traffic is going up, you’re on the right track. We started with 5 visitors a week over 10 years ago. Slowly it grew to 100 per week, then into the 1000s and now we’re in the 100k per month.

It took time. It’s like learning a new language. You learn the grammar,
words, and phrases but for months nothing makes sense. Then one day, it starts to click.

So, you’re not going to set the web on fire in the first few months. Be
realistic. You can make money but you need a plan, a product, a schedule and dedication. All of these take time. Which leads us to…

Mistake #17 – develop a schedule and stick to it

Ok, now this is where we get serious. If you want this to work, prepare a schedule. As I write this, I hear myself say “Yes, Ivan YOU should follow your schedule.” The point is this gives your week structure. If you don’t have a schedule you’re like a leaf blowing in the wind.

You do bits and pieces here and there but there is no real end product. Worse still, you feel crushed because you’ve worked so hard. It’s like pushing mud up a hill.

Create a schedule and stick to it.

• Monday – write one 500 word article. 30-45 min. Keep it focused. No guff. Don’t publish it yet.
• Tuesday – write one 100 word article, for example, a quick tip. Include a screen-shot. These add up over time and put some meat on the bones of the site.
• Wednesday – review the two articles. Edit where necessary. Then publish. Check for typos and grammar. No excuse for typos. Don’t worry about keywords or metatags. Just write useful, original material and people will start visiting your site – and recommending it to others.
• Thursday – marketing activities. Submit articles to blogs, websites; be active in forums/bbs; always include link back to your site; explore new affiliate programs that suit your site
• Friday – check the stats, do some graphic design work or videos.
• Sat – start drafting articles for next week. Just rough sketches. Nothing fancy. You can build on these in the weeks to come.
• Sun – respond to emails. Try to provide value-add where possible. Thank everyone. Remember, they’ve made the effort to write to you.

Tip: Under-estimate how much you can do. If you feel you can do 2 hours a night, put down 1 hour in your schedule. What you ‘feel’ you can do and what you can actually do are very different. The eyes are bigger than the belly syndrome.

Having a schedule will stand to you in time.

Adjust this to suit your own web business but try to stick to the principles where possible.

Run your web site like you run your business. Don’t do things in a reactive manner. Plan ahead.

Mistake #18 – lower your expectations

Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you can make 10 USD per month from Adsense, we’ll at least you’ve paid for the web hosting. You’re not making a loss.

Be realistic about your goals. Some of my friends started web businesses years ago. They thought they’d strike gold in no time.

Didn’t happen.

Then left as it ‘became too much like a job’. Well, what did they expect?

I want it to be like a business. I hope you do too. You can grow a business – otherwise it’s just a hobby.

Start small. Define your:

• Audience – who you’re going to sell to? Where are they from? How much will they spend? How will you deliver it to them?
• Product – what you’re going to sell? Is it content, expertise, subscriptions, physical goods, services? Stick to one and focus relentlessly on this.
• Markets – where you’ll sell it, for example, through newsletters, affiliates?
• Price – how much will you sell it for? One of the mistakes we made was not up-selling other products after they bought the initial product.

FWIW: I avoided this as I thought it was too hard sell and would offend customers. I was wrong! 25% of all sales now come from up-selling. We offer discounts on volume purchases and offer 2 for 1 deals.

Mistake #19 – there are no shortcuts!

Because there are no shortcuts you can succeed. If it was the other way around, you’d have to learn all the tricks and others would get ahead of you.

So, in a way, it’s a blessing. Study what you need to know and then follow through on that.

Mistake #20 – focus, focus, focus

Don’t get distracted by new technologies, new fads, publishing tools, or
whatever. Unless you can really save time and/or boost productivity, stay away from it. You only have so much time. Use it well.

Print out your sales/traffic figures every month. Examine trends, such as keywords used to find your site. Fine tune your site or blog to compliment these keywords searches. This is what people are most interested in.

• Why continue to develop parts of your site that no-one has visited?
• Why continue to build products that no-one buys?
• Why continue to use affiliate programs that give low returns?

Your goal is to develop a web business that generates a profit. Stick to the 80/20 rule. Discontinue products that have no target market. These clog up your site. Worse, they distract visitors from finding the real gold on your site.

Don’t be sentimental. If it’s not working, remove it and decide what to put in its place.

So, that’s it for now.

Other mistakes related to using affiliate products that didn’t match our site (but at the time, I was taken in by the potential returns – of course, it didn’t work) and the usual trial and errors that’s involved in setting up readership and building a brand.

I’m sure I’ve made more mistakes. When I remember them, I’ll add them to this page.

In the meantime, best of luck.

PS: Of all the things I’ve learnt, this is the most important – write your
own material in clear, simple English and make it useful. Then, you’ll get
traffic. Everything else falls far behind this.

Lab. Arc90.com have come up with another great tool. Think of blogging with an interactive whiteboard attached for you to show people what you’re talking about.

“If you track sites like basement.org you’ll see that most of the write-ups are pretty long. It takes quite a bit to gather your thoughts, organize, write a draft, review and revise what you’re trying to get across. Wouldn’t it be cool to somehow recreate the immediacy and efficiency of gathering a few people around a whiteboard and talking for a few minutes?”

[ad]

The result of all this is Sketch.basement.org.

This tools merges the power of blogging with the “high-bandwidth” experience of talking and scribbling at the same time.

Sketchcasting is effectively a podcast with a whiteboard.

Under the hood, they’re just Youtube videos that record the talking-and-drawing experience. They’re recorded, uploaded then shown in typical blog fashion.

You can watch them and share them, subscribe to the RSS feed or even grab the iTunes video podcast feed to watch the sketchcasts on your iPod or iPhone.

Visit: http://lab.arc90.com/2007/07/introducing_sketchcasting.php