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BE A Better Blogger The next steps in your blogging

journey !

By Larry Deane http://sideincomeblogging.com

BE a better blogger - The next steps in your blogging journey

Copyright © 2014 by Larry Deane All rights reserved.

!No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers are allowed to quote brief portions of the book in reviews.

1st Edition

Cover photo by: Lotus Carroll

!Special thanks to:

My friend Charles Keys of Back Roads Living for editing, feedback, and for constantly reminding me of who is really in control.

My family, for supporting me and constantly encouraging me through my blogging journey.

!Disclosures/Disclaimers:

Although I have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

This book is for entertainment purposes only.

Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, including international, federal, state, and local governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising, and all other aspects of doing business in the US, Canada, or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader.

Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of the purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slight of any individual or organization is purely unintentional.

!Introduction 5 ........................................................................

Who is this Larry Deane Character? 6 ........................................................

What is this book? 7 ....................................................................................

The Blogger is Greater than the Blog 8 ................................Be Unique 8 ................................................................................................

Share yourself and your story 9 ..................................................................

Be honest and blog with integrity 10 ...........................................................

Blog with Passion 11 ...................................................................................

Always Put Your Readers First 12 ........................................

Be Social and Approachable 13 ............................................

Build an Email List 14 ...........................................................Begin list building from day 1 14 .................................................................

Give people a reason to sign-up 14 ............................................................

Give people a reason to stay 15 .................................................................

A few more Email Tips: 16 ...........................................................................

Practice Basic SEO Principles 17 .........................................SEO for blogs in a nutshell 17 .....................................................................

Drive Traffic to Your Blog 18 ..................................................

Less is More 19 .....................................................................

Don’t waste your time 20 ......................................................

Wrapping Up 21 ....................................................................

Thank you 22........................................................................

Introduction A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Laozi

That quote is one of my favorites, and one that has accompanied me through my blogging journey since 2006. Regardless of where you are in your blogging journey, there will always be a next step. To get to your destination, or even head in the right direction, you always need to find that next step and take it.

I work with and talk to brand new and less experienced bloggers everyday. The majority of them are struggling. Why? They don’t know what their next steps are. They hesitate, when they should just pick a direction and go. They struggle to find the “right” direction, and out of fear, just stay where they are…or worse, they give up and quit.

In the past 12 months, I’ve helped more than 10 people start new blogs. Just this week, I checked on those blogs to see how they were doing. All them had frequent updates for the first month, then the updates declined. None of them had been updated in over 4 months.

The majority of these bloggers had a great idea and they were very passionate about their topic. They set-up a new blog, published a number of high quality and valuable articles, some of them put up a few ads and affiliate offers and then waited for the rush of traffic to come. I told them it wouldn’t, but they waited anyway. When they only received a trickle of visitors over the next few months, the majority of them spammers, these bloggers gave up.

The problem? Again, they didn’t know the next step to take, and rather just try something, they gave up.

Blogging is more than just writing, blogging is a business and includes all of the facets of a normal business, including large amounts of your time. Failing to realize this early on is a recipe for failure.

Beyond setting up a blog and writing, there are many more steps in the blogging journey, and as you complete those, many new steps appear. The journey never ends.

In BE a Better Blogger: The next steps in your blogging journey, I’ll show you what some of those next steps are. There are many, and it will be up to you to decide which order to do them in, but all of them are critical.

These are the same steps that myself, and many other successful bloggers have used to take their blogs to that “next level”.

For beginning new bloggers, this will be essential information. For those of you that are more experienced, it will most likely be a refresher, but perhaps maybe you missed a

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few of these. Regardless of your place in the blogging journey, I hope you’ll find the information useful.

WHO IS THIS LARRY DEANE CHARACTER? Before I start teaching you about these next steps, let me share a little of my background and tell you who I am.

I run the blog Side Income Blogging. I love helping people, especially when it comes to helping them begin their blogging journey. I cannot tell you how rewarding it is to watch a new blog go “live” and then grow and begin earning income for someone. I know how it feels, starting my first blog changed my life.

My blogging side career began in 2007 when I created my first blog, called Gather Little by Little (GLBL). The story of how that blog came to be is pretty incredible.

In 2006, my wife and I faced a financial and life crisis. My job situation was getting bad quick, we were barely living paycheck to paycheck and we were way over our heads in debt. Couple this with some significant personal issues going on, and it equated to one of the most difficult times of our lives.

Thinking back on those times now, I almost shudder. There were times I was so stressed, I literally couldn’t breath. But we held on, and made it through. How? Gather Little by Little.

I started learning everything I could about personal finance, and in doing so ran across these cool websites called “blogs” written by everyday people like me. I wanted to journal what I was learning, so I started Gather Little by Little, having no clue at the time that anyone other than myself would ever read it.

People did read it. In fact, when I sold GLBL in 2009 for more than $25,000, I had over 3000 readers, and the site was getting over 3000 visits per day and earning about $1,500 per month. At that time, Gather Little by Little was also listed as one of the top 10 personal finance blogs on the internet.

Selling GLBL was a tough decision. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have sold it. Instead I would have looked at other options. Regardless, I was looking to start something new, and I took a step, and moved forward.

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But GLBL literally changed my life. Here’s how:

• Writing about what I was doing held me accountable to GLBL readers

• Introduced me to the world of blogging, which I love

• Selling GLBL helped us on our journey to get out of debt

Since then I’ve started a number of new blogs and websites. But as I mentioned, my main blog is Side Income Blogging where I teach people how to start a blog and earn income from it. I also currently run a number of niche sites, which I also enjoy doing. But that’s for another book I’ll have out later this year.

Personally, I’m married to the love of my life, and have 6 absolutely wonderful children. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western NC, one of the most beautiful places on earth. If you’re interested, you can read about our life in the Blue Ridge on our website, Blue Ridge Mountain Life.

WHAT IS THIS BOOK? This book started out as a presentation I created for clients. I then modified it some and used it in a few local sessions I did on blogging. I decided I would expand out the content and make a free book.

!You’re most likely reading this book as a result of subscribing to my email list, where you decided to join other full time and side income bloggers to receive my latest tips, strategies and income reports.

Make sure you stay subscribed, as the internet is a constantly changing place, and staying on top of those changes, and making

adjustments will be critical to your blogging success.

The whole purpose of this book is to help you. I want to see you be successful in your blogging journey. I want to see you create your blog, publish great content on it, and watch it grow. I want you to know and understand how to take the same basic steps that myself and many other bloggers have taken to grow our blogs.

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The Blogger is Greater than the Blog To understand this, you really have to think about why people read blogs over mass media, online magazines and other commercial websites. Here are a few reasons:

• People want to read about the experiences of other people similar to them.

• They want to read articles and stories from “real people” who are doing the same kinds of things they are.

• They want to read about the trials and errors of people learning how to do something so they can learn.

• Most importantly, they want to feel normal and want to be able to relate to the writer’s struggles, experiences, and achievements.

What makes people like a blog, isn’t just the site or its content, but the person behind the blog, the blogger.

The Blogger is the person visitors will develop a relationship with, come to know, and if you follow my advice, come to trust as well.

Take intentional steps on your blog to allow people to get to know you. Take intentional steps to make yourself stand out.

Below are some steps that will help your readers get to know you, and help you make yourself and your blog successful.

BE UNIQUE There are more than 152 million blogs on the internet, and a new one is created every 1/2 second. With that many blogs, you have to distinguish yourself. One critical way to do that is to be unique.

Ask yourself, what does my blog provide, that those 152 million other blogs do not?

How can you be unique when there are 152 million blogs out there? Easy, the majority of those blogs aren’t unique. They are regurgitating the same old stuff.

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Here’s how you can be unique:

• Find your voice - Perhaps it’s humor, or telling stories, or just straight up no BS writing. Maybe it’s a mixture of all of the above. Decide how you want your voice to be heard, and begin using that voice.

• Provide a unique spin or a unique idea. Don’t share the same old “how to start a blog” content. Add something different. Add your own unique ideas, your own unique tips and strategies. Provide new and unique content for people to read, and they will come to your blog.

• Read your primary competitors. One of the first things you should do as a blogger looking to grow, is identify your main competition. Pay attention to what they are doing right and wrong. Also pay attention to what they are writing about, and make sure you don’t write about those same topics. Or at least if you do, write something very different with a different angle. Seek out topics that your competition isn’t addressing, and fill that need.

SHARE YOURSELF AND YOUR STORY The days of successful anonymous blogging are gone. Today, you have to be out there. You have to let people get to know you and you have to share yourself with your readers. Your readers want to get to know you personally. They want to know more about you than just your knowledge.

When you allow your readers to get to know you, they see you as a real person. They begin to develop a relationship with you because of that. That relationship can last for a long time.

That relationship will also build trust, and trust will help you earn money when you recommend affiliate products or services.

BUT … do not abuse this relationship.

We’ll discuss blogging with integrity in later chapters.

I didn’t fully get this whole concept until I sold my first blog. When I made the announcement, I received a lot of comments and emails from readers that were hurt and mad. They felt like I had betrayed and mislead them. They felt like I was leaving them alone, and abandoning them. By that time it was too late, but had I known how critical and deep that relationship went, I probably wouldn’t have sold the blog, but instead looked at other options.

Those emails and comments hurt some, but they taught me a valuable lesson: Relationships are important in blogging.

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Here are a few things you can do to help your readers get to know you better:

• Share personal stories in your blog articles. Use personal stories to help “teach” what you are writing about. The story will also help your readers remember the lesson.

• Have a complete About page on your blog that shares information about you and always include a picture of yourself. Having a picture on your about page allows your visitors to make a visual connection with you, which is critically important. Not having a photo on your About page, will cause people to distrust you. I would recommend having a professional photo made. Remember, your photo will set people’s first impressions of you.

• Don’t be afraid to “toot your own horn” on your about page. If you had successes related to your blogging topic, shout them out. This will help your readers feel more confident in you and will allow them to see you as an expert.

• Share your failures. More than successes, people love to read about your failures and struggles, so share them. Doing so helps you build that relationship, and allows your readers to see you as a person, like them, who makes mistakes. Failure articles are often some of the most successful and popular articles.

If you need some help with your about page, feel free to take a look at mine and even copy the format. I also wrote up an article that will help you develop an awesome about page.

BE HONEST AND BLOG WITH INTEGRITY When I first started blogging, one of the standards I put in place for myself was to always be honest and to strive to blog with integrity. How have I done that?

• I only recommend products that I personally use myself

• I not only share my successes, but share my failures as well

• I share my monthly income and expenses regardless of whether it’s a good month or a bad month. I am 100% honest with those, and will show detailed reports if people ask.

Why is being honest and blogging with integrity so important to your blogging success?

Blogging with integrity is the right thing to do. I like to sleep well at night, and I don’t ever want to go to bed wondering if I took advantage of someone or knowing that I have money in my account because I mislead or cheated someone. Sooner or later, that comes around to bite you, it’s just a matter of time.

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This leads to my second reason - Trust is a critical factor in earning income. How?

When people trust you, they will buy from you. This applies to your own products and to products that you promote using affiliate offers. That’s why I only promote products I use. I put my money where my mouth is, if you will.

I run across “shady” bloggers and internet marketers almost everyday, where they promote a product just because it pays a high affiliate commission. I have also seen bloggers that lied about their monthly income. Sooner or later these types of people get caught.

Tyrone Shum is one of the most famous. Tyrone positioned himself as an A-List blogger and even competed with Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income in Niche Site Duel 2.0. Well, Tyrone was caught and confessed to lying about his income. He had a blog post about it, and a video on YouTube, but both have been removed.

Can you fudge the truth, lie and earn income online? Absolutely, thousands of people do it every single day. But it’s a short term business plan. Sooner or later you’re going to get caught and/or called out.

Instead, do the right thing, think long term for your blog, and make the right decisions for your blogging business. I guarantee this approach will reward you in the end.

BLOG WITH PASSION Are you passionate about your blog and its topic?

If you answered No, just stop reading. There isn’t anything I can do to help make your blog successful. Go find a topic and start a blog on a topic you’re passionate about, then come back here and finish reading.

If you aren’t passionate about your blog or blogging niche:

• You’ll struggle to find topics to write on

• You’ll struggle to create meaningful and helpful articles for people

• Your readers will know you aren’t passionate through your writing

• Your income will suffer

If you don’t love what you are doing, you’ll find excuses to do something else and your blog and income will suffer.

Dan Miller has a book called 48 Days to the Work You Love, where he basically advocates doing what you love. When you do what you love, the money follows.

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Always Put Your Readers First This is something that I learned early on. Lets pretend for a minute that you’re a famous rockstar…

What would you be without your fans?

You wouldn’t be a famous rock star without fans and even if you could, your concerts would be empty, your music sales zero, and nobody in the world would have ever heard of you, except maybe your parents.

A blog without readers, is like a rockstar without fans. Fans make rockstars famous, and wealthy. Your readers do the same for you.

This is called a win/win, Habit #4 from The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

!Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one.

Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements or

solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty darn good! - Stephen Covey

I always strive for win/win scenarios in all facets of my life, and successful blogging is a win/win. You work your tail end off to provide valuable and helpful content for your readers. They in turn, visit your blog to read that content and buy affiliate products you recommend and click on your ads. A perfect win/win scenario.

Here’s how to cherish your readers, and always put them first:

• Always ask yourself: Will this benefit my readers? When you make decisions about your blog, this should always be the first question you ask yourself.

• Always write for your readers first, and not for social media or search engines. My rule? Write for your readers first, then tweak for search engines and social media.

• Always strive to provide your readers with value, and make sure you are helping them. Solve their problems and they will reward you.

• Give generously to your readers. Sure, we bloggers have to earn an income, but reward your readers by giving them discounts, great content, and even free products (like this one). Let them know you appreciate them. The income will follow.

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Be Social and Approachable Many new bloggers have the wrong impression. They think that if they just write and publish content, people will find them. While that can happen, it seldom ever really does, at least not the levels where your blog will be successful.

Just like any other business, you’ll have to market yourself and your blog. This is even more important today, where social media is now critical to the success of almost any business.

If you really think about it though, being social has always been a key principle of running a successful business.

How often have you gone back to a local brick and mortar store or business where you didn’t feel welcome or appreciated? Isn’t it nice when you visit your favorite local restaurant and the owner walks up, greets you by your first name and shakes your hand?

That small gesture makes you feel valued. That hand shake from the owner makes you feel appreciated and valued, and makes you want to come back.

Social media is your opportunity to meet your readers and “shake their hands”.

Social media allows your readers to get to know you, and you them. Social media allows you to let your readers know how much you appreciate them.

Here are a few rules I follow, and recommend you do as well, that will help you to be social and approachable:

• Always respond to comments on your blog, even when you get big. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income still does this, and he has more than 75,000 readers.

• Always respond to emails from your readers. On my Side Income Blogging mailing list, I even ask my readers questions in my emails so I can interact with them.

• Befriend your readers on social media, respond to their posts, promote their posts, answer their questions and get to know them. Do whatever you can to help them be successful.

So many bloggers get caught up in traffic numbers, search results, and income, and after they begin to get successful, forgot about their readers. Don’t do that. Don’t ever forget your blogging roots.

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Build an Email List This is huge mistake I made early on. I didn’t build an email list, and even when I did I didn’t focus on it like I should have. I seriously didn’t even start working on an email list with any effort until this past year.

But Larry, email is slowly dying…

Email use is slowly declining, but it’s still the most effective way to directly reach your readers. Social Media is slowly replacing email, but it hasn’t yet and probably won’t for some time to come.

If you use Facebook, you can’t even reach all of your page fans without paying. In fact, recent numbers from my most successful Facebook page show that less than 10% of page fans actually see my posts in their news feeds.

The reality of all of this is that email is still the most effective way to directly interact with your readers. Email is the only way for you to have complete control over what your readers see.

Email is a direct line to your readers, and you should absolutely be using it.

BEGIN LIST BUILDING FROM DAY 1 After getting your WordPress blog set-up and a Genesis Child Theme installed, head over to MailChimp and sign-up, create a list, and install the Genesis eNews Extended WordPress plugin. This will allow you to easily get an email sign-up form in your sidebar, and begin building a list.

Place this sign-up form around your blog, in prime locations, including:

• In the top of your sidebar

• On your about page

• At the bottom of each post

Also, create a a newsletter or “email list” page that contains a sign-up form. Add that page to your main menu. This will allow you to share that page on social media, and link to it from other areas of your blog and even from books, like this one.

GIVE PEOPLE A REASON TO SIGN-UP In general, people tend to want something in order to give something. You know, the whole “what’s in it for me?” thing.

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Many people are also pretty protective with their emails, which I completely get.

In general just asking for an email won’t get you very far. You have to encourage your readers to provide it.

Instead of just asking, offer visitors a free “gift” or reward in exchange for signing up to your email list. This “free” gift could be a:

• Report

• Tool

• Checklist

• Case Study

• Tutorial

The possibilities here are endless. Be creative, and make the content exclusive, meaning you can’t find it anywhere else on your blog or the internet.

On Side Income Blogging, this book is the reward for signing up. This book contains unique content only found in this book.

GIVE PEOPLE A REASON TO STAY Once you have readers on your list, it’s your job to keep them there. How do you do that? The same way you keep people coming back to your blog, you provide value.

Below are a few tips I’ve found to be very successful, but to be honest, I’m still learning about email lists. I’ll keep you posted on my blog and share any tips I come up, but here’s what I know so far:

• Be personal - Reach out in your emails and talk to your subscribers. Let them get to know you (hmmm, does this sound familiar?)

• Keep it simple - Simple HTML text emails work the best. Complex newsletters and emails tend to just look spammy and get flagged as such.

• Provide unique value - Give people a reason to stay on your list. If you just share the same content that you have on your blog, there is really no reason for subscribers to stay on your list. Always offer your email subscribers a little something extra.

Email lists are also very effective sales tools and tend to convert well. But be careful, don’t ever abuse this, or you’ll have people unsubscribe and mark your emails as spam. I’ve found that providing lots of value, and selling just a little is a highly effective strategy.

Oh, and don’t forget, always be honest and blog with integrity. This applies to your emails as well.

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A FEW MORE EMAIL TIPS: A few more final tips:

• Pay attention to your email titles, they are critical to getting people to open your emails.

• Brand your emails, so people recognize, who the email is from. I always put my site logo at the very top and make the sender name: Larry [Side Income Blogging]

• Subscribe to various blogger and internet marketer’s email lists so you learn from the best. You can always unsubscribe later, but I’ve found I actually enjoy getting most of the emails.

• Read some books on email list building. I recommend picking up a copy of Steve Scott’s: Email Marketing Blueprint - The Ultimate Guide to Building an Email List Asset. The kindle book is a great read, that covers all of the basics of building an effective email list. I also recommend The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing, by DJ Waldow. As a subscriber to DJs weekly emails, I can attest - he knows how to do email right.

Remember, I only recommend products I use. I personally own both of these books and refer to them frequently. As a matter of fact, I was looking through DJ’s book last night on my iPhone trying to get some ideas to tweak my email titles.

Most authors recommend AWeber, which is a great service, but has a monthly fee and no free option. I generally recommend MailChimp, because it’s free for less than 2000 subscribers. MailChimp is a great way to get started with no out of pocket expense and I’m all about no out of pocket expenses!

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Practice Basic SEO Principles Using basic on-page and off-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices has been the basic tenant of blogging success, since the early days of blogging around the time Google began to surface as the top search engine of choice, in the early 2000s.

SEO is the practice of optimizing your articles so that Google and other search engines can determine what your content is about, and rank it on search engine result pages (SERPs) correctly.

Search traffic, and large amounts of it, are critical to your blogs success and growth. Ranking well for a popular Google search phrase (often called a keyword) can drive large amounts of traffic to your blog and search engine visitors tend to convert very well, meaning they click on ads, click on affiliate links and buy products.

SEO itself is big enough for a whole other book, so I’m not going to delve into much detail here, but I will hit on a few high level basics. For a far more thorough tutorial on SEO basics, read my article: SEO basics for blogs. I wrote this article to be an “ultimate guide” to SEO for blogs.

SEO FOR BLOGS IN A NUTSHELL Here are 5 basic SEO practices you should be using on your blog:

1. Write your article for your readers first, then tweak the article for Search engines. Never ever write for search engines first, it’s a recipe for failure.

2. Use a keyword research tool like Long Trail Pro or Market Samurai to research keywords that Google users are searching for. Find keywords with good search volume and with low competition. My article, SEO basics for blogs, goes into more detail on this.

3. Run the Yoast WordPress for SEO plugin. The plugin is free, and is the top SEO plugin right now.

4. Run a premium and SEO optimized theme. I use and highly recommend any of the Genesis Child themes. I’ve also recently started using Jarida on my latest sites, and like it very much.

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Drive Traffic to Your Blog Traffic generation is another topic that could very easily be a dedicated book, and in fact there are many available. Traffic is important to your blog, not only because of the sense of personal accomplishment you get when you know that thousands of people are reading your blog each day, but more importantly because:

Traffic = Income

When lots of people visit your blog, those visitors click on your affiliate links and ads, generating revenue for you. Of course, the more people, the more income. Traffic and income are directly proportional.

This is where many bloggers get discouraged. They expect to have income soon, but the reality is that it takes a while to build up enough traffic to your blog to see any level of income.

Traffic requires effort and patience.

Even though traffic building is a broad topic, there are some basic strategies that you should be using on a daily basis to drive traffic to your blog.

If you aren’t doing these, start doing them now:

• Be active on social media. This includes Facebook, Google+, and Twitter at the very least. Share your content, but use a 10:1 ratio. For every 10 posts you share from other people, share one of yours. Also actively comment on other people’s posts, and be active in communities and groups related to your niche.

• Create pages for your blog on Facebook and Google+ to give your readers another place to follow you. Share your posts on these pages, and share articles and information from other sites and Facebook pages as well. Here are mine as examples: Facebook and Google+

• SEO optimize your posts and blogs for SEO traffic.

• Implement Google Authorship.

Finally, keep up to date with the latest blogging trends using social media. There are constantly new and very viable ways to drive traffic to your blog. Learn them, try them out, and if effective, use them.

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Less is More I know, you’ve heard this old saying before, but it’s true, even for blogging. I see so many new and experienced bloggers trying to do the right thing, but they are just doing too much.

Keep these in mind, and it will help you and your blog be more successful:

• Great content posted less often, is better than mediocre content posted often. If your content isn’t great, don’t publish it. Many “experts” will tell you that publishing often is critical to your success. Simply not true. Publishing more often does help, but only if the content is great. Low quality content in this day and age can do far more harm than good.

• People don’t unsubscribe because you don’t send enough emails. Fewer emails, containing more value content is far better.

• Fewer ads can often pay better than more ads. Too many ads can make your site look untrustworthy, causing visitors to leave. Always test your ad placement and strive for less ads, more income.

• Blogs are made to be read. Don’t distract your readers with lots of buttons, widgets, gizmos, pop-ups, fly downs … well you know what I mean. Take a hard look at everything on your blog, and if it doesn’t provide value to your reader, remove it. I’d recommend reading my article: How to format a blog post to help your readability.

• You need more white space than you think. In years past “above the fold” was like ocean front property. But that phase is slowly going away. Today’s web users, especially due to smart phones, know how to scroll. Don’t feel like you have to place everything above the fold.

• Say more using fewer words. The fact is, people’s attention spans these days are short, and most people won’t read your entire article. You need to say more with fewer words. I revise my copy 2-3 times, looking for ways to remove excess text. The more wordy an article is, the higher the chance the person will leave your site. Also, no more than 2-3 sentences per paragraph, and separate paragraphs with white space.

Two extreme examples that come to mind, and you want to avoid being like these:

• The Disco Website - This is the website that you arrive on, with bright colors, and tons of animated and flashing/scrolling widgets. You know, that website that has so many moving parts you can’t tell where to focus.

• The Wall of Text Website- This is the website that you arrive on, and all you see is this big huge wall of text. No white space, just page and page of text.

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Don’t waste your time This is the one I personally struggle with the most. I catch myself making this mistake and fixing it, only to catch myself doing it again. Wasting time is something I have to constantly focus on to avoid.

Wasting time for me includes things like:

• Too much social media. Social media is great and can help you blog. But if you spend too much time on social media, you don’t get things done. Social media is my biggest vice.

• Learning and reading a little too much. Far too easy to spend too much time reading about something instead of actually doing it. Make sure you balance learning with getting things done. People tend to learn far more through the experience of doing something than reading about it.

• Web Design. I love graphics and HTML, and love to make my sites look really slick, but honestly most of my visitors really don’t care and a simple/basic site would do just fine. I have to really catch myself when I start doing all these fancy graphics and layouts.

Perfect example of me wasting time: I wake up at 5am every morning and work on my internet business. I tend to check email, then glance at social media, then get to work. I actually set myself a time limit for this so I don’t waste time. I caught myself this morning out on Facebook doing stuff that didn’t need to be done, or at least didn’t need to happen right then. I closed the browser, pulled up Apple Pages, and continued writing this eBook instead of wasting time.

Everyone’s time wasters are different. What are yours? Write them down.

By writing down your “time wasters”, you become keenly aware of them, and you’ll actually find that you police yourself.

My rule of thumb: If it isn’t having a positive impact to your bottom line, it’s wasting time.

A few examples:

• If you are on some social media platform and it’s not driving traffic or converting for you. Cut it. StumbleUpon was the one I cut about 2 years ago.

• If you have a blog or website that isn’t earning you income, and that’s a priority for you, sell it. I’ve sold about 5 sites over the past 8 years.

• If you have so many sites that you can’t keep them updated or help them grow, you’re wasting time. Outsource some of the work, or cut back on the number of sites so you can focus on the ones earning income.

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Wrapping Up Building a better blog isn’t rocket science, nor does it involve expensive tools or any slick internet wizardry. Building a better blog involves all the tenants of running any other business:

• Time

• Offering products that people want (your content)

• Marketing

• Customer service

• Relationships

All of these are tenants that apply to any type of business, including your blog.

One of the key factors required to BE a Better Blogger is watching for new trends. The internet changes constantly, as do the trends that work and those that don’t. Some of the tips I’ve share with you are “evergreen” tips, meaning they’ll apply for a very long time, others may only last a few months until something new replaces them.

I would really encourage you to take these 8 “steps” I’ve shared with you, and use them to progress a little further down your blogging journey.

By doing so, I guarantee you’ll see an improvement to your blog in only a few weeks.

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Thank you Last, but certainly not least I would like to say “Thank You!” for subscribing to my email list and for reading this guide. I sincerely hope it helps you and takes your blog to that next level and well on its way to being 100% successful for you.

If you found it helpful, please feel free to pass this ebook along to others that might benefit, or send them to my blog so they can subscribe and get their own copy.

I would also welcome your feedback on this book and on my newsletter in general. Feel free to reply to any of the newsletters with your open and honest feedback. I want to strive to continuously improve the newsletters and my blog in general.

Finally, if you ever feel like you are standing on a step, and not sure where to take your next step, contact me. I would love to help you out.

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