Who am I to teach you about blogger mistakes? I’m not a big-time blogger. Neither has my blog won any award.
But I do know one thing, that is, how to use my blog as a tool to achieve my goal.
I’m telling you this because this is exactly the TOP mistake that many new bloggers make.
Many new bloggers tend to treat their blog as some kind of online holy grail, thinking that as long as they have a blog, traffic will come and they will make money.
What they should do instead is to think of blog as just another a tool. It should be part of the business, not the business.
I know this is a bit theoretical and ‘dry’, but this is an important fundamental that you must understand, if you want to follow my advice.
As you know, I get most of my writing inspiration from our members’ questions. Today’s topic on blogger mistakes is no different.
Here’s the question I received from a member:
“I respect you as a master marketer with great knowledge and insight. Could you have a quick look at my blog, http://membership-millions.com/blog/, and suggest ways to get it really going… and also to start making REAL money??” – Izzy Joseph
I’m not sure how Izzy’s blog is performing now. But if I were to be critical, here are some advice I can think of:
1) Build A Business, Not A Blog
As I said, I don’t consider myself as a blogger. My approach to blogging is from the perspective of a marketer.
To me, blog is one of my marketing tools for my business. In other words, blogging is not my business, and it should not be your business too.
Frankly, I can’t see a business in your blog. What I can see instead is you are trying to write some articles and get people to buy the Clickbank product you’re affiliated to. That’s not a business.
Your domain name is membership-millions.com. If I were you, I will turn the blog into a resource centre that teaches people how to make money from membership. You may write articles that teach people how to start a membership site, how to promote membership sites, etc. You can engage a freelancer to create a membership script to give away.
If you choose to go the membership way, everything you do should be related to membership. Your opt-in freebie should be an ebook about membership. Your articles should be about membership.
If you are afraid that you may not have enough material to write about membership, your worry is unnecessary. Everything about internet marketing can be twisted to link to membership. For example, your little twitter ebook can be renamed to “how to promote your membership with twitter”.
2) Forget About Making Money
Beggars can’t be choosers. New bloggers can’t be choosers too. For a new blog, you must focus on providing useful content and forget about making money.
At the beginning stage, you MUST establish your blog as a useful resource that people can turn to. Promoting affiliate products should be a by-the-way thing.
For example, while teaching people how to promote their membership websites, there may be some traffic tools that you can recommend.
You are more likely to make sales if you focus on providing useful advice rather than focusing on promoting the product.
3) Be Extremely Proactive In List Building
If you have been reading my blog, you should know that I advocate ‘list’ before ‘blog’.
If you haven’t started building a list, you should do it asap.
When I say building a list, I’m not talking about the opt-in form that is currently in your blog. I’m talking about a separate squeeze page that you actively advertise and promote to get people to opt-in.
You need to build your list fast so that these subscribers can become your blog readers. Else you are forever talking to dust.
Check out our list builder script in your members’ area and see how it can help you in this.
4) Practice Search Engine Optimization
Your blog may be SEO ready, but your articles are not, or at least I can’t see how a new blog can get to the top search result for a highly competitive keyword of “How To Make Money Online Fast” with some 1,390,000,000 competitions.
If you don’t understand SEO, learn it. If you have learnt it, practise it.
Build links to your blog. Research your keywords before every post. This is the minimum you should do.
You won’t see immediate effects. But in 3 to 6 months, you will reap what you sow.
These are the immediate things you as a blogger.
Moving ahead, there are tons of things you can do to keep you very busy. For example, you can sell your own product, start your own affiliate program, create a brand for yourself in your niche and a lot more.
The key message I want to put across to you is a blog is just a tool to achieve your goal. Create a game plan and see how a blog can fit into the picture instead of the other way round.
To drive targeted and quality traffic to your blog, you can add one more real powerful arsenal:Social Networking.
This is one powerful and yet simple concept for online success and has effective application for Social Networking is this:
We can focus on making ourselves a great source of usefulness and of good value
to be associated with us.
Proving 80% good Content as solutions and only 20% offerings.
This Value self Branding and establishment of your Online Presence is critical for sowing long term success.
Just Google your name, and the listings are your online presence.
Now Google is defining your image, your perception by others.
With this unique Online Presence, your Visibility and Discoverability would be enhanced.
In social networks, we can have better Visibility, where else you can get it?
You can read the rest of the Forum Post here:
Online Presence,Branding,Social Networking&the sophistication of 95%-5% that matter
http://acme-people-search-forum.com/post/61027/#p61027
To Your Online Success
Giap
.
Most of the hot shot drive home the other view of make money blogging.
Great article Kenneth, thank you!!
HI Izzy Joseph,
I was reviewing blog articles by Kenneth on Leadsleap & saw his mention of your website above along with the recommendation for you to include SEO in your action plan for improving your blog /website.
If you have not learned anything about SEO or if you wish some friendly assistance, please connect with me through my website contact page via Skype.
I’m not an expert, but I do enjoy the challenge of SEO and would not mind helping with some info & offering feedback if you’re interested in making some changes. Just let me know if /when you send a connection request.
Good luck!
Rhonda
I have talk about your post in my blog Twitter Tools for Blogger. This was very informative and the list was just great! Good work!
I thought of starting a blog about my daily morning walk activities. After reading your present article…I’m pondering how to make it as a tool to compliment my website. It’s nice of you bring up those points for discussion….something to study before our blogging expedition. Thanks.
Great post. You are absolutely correct when you say “forget about making money”… to a point. While I think you implied it, you never actually said that once you have established your blog and have traffic coming you can then start to monetize it. cheers
Once again an interesting point of view. Most of the hot shot drive home the other view of make money blogging. Now that I have read your post my approach to my blog needs to change. Thank you,
Robert Sexton
Thanks Ken for reminding us of the need to build a list to support our business.
This is excellent feedback! Ken, your feedback is always informative and useful. Sometimes many of us, particularly those of us with online businesses tend to focus on getting quick results and forget like any other business or field…good results must be cultivated!
Hey Ken,
Thanks for the article, I have just started a blog and still don’t much about it. I’m trying to learn how to put a responder capture form on it.
Ken, thanks for another great post. I am able to see some of my own potholes ;) For example as I work with offline businesses and helping them get online I focus on finding out and sticking to the purpose of each page online.
I recently went to Alexa to check out 2 of my main blogs and realized that my first blog (when I had less experience) is not doing as well as my second which is focused and serves as a tool FOR my business.
Good explanation Mr.Kenneth, as always very insightfull. Thank you for the knowledge.
What you describe as blogging errors is basically what I did. It’s easy to fall under a trap where you expect a fast return on something. I basically have fallen prey to programs that hype up new platforms as businesses. For example hyping up web2.0 and wordpress when it first came out. But I’m beginning to understand that, while money can be made with these new platforms, it’s crucial to have a blueprint in mind.
Well said, bos
Ken- I just started 2 Blogs (Newbie), to see the results useing ClickBank Products. One Blog is useing my 25 years as an Automotive Repair Tech. The other is Just Clickbank Products.(No Jabberng on and on)Just Plain Ole Products at
supernewproducts.blogspot.com/
Which one will do the best in your opinion? Thanks.
Right on the mark Kenneth,
My advice would be to make my very best post sticky. All your posts should be unique, relevant, and full of content. (no duplicate content) As once thought Google really doesn’t punish sites for duplicate content but they will bury you back in thousands of other sites when they index your site or the spiders crawl your site for new content.
For new blogs I don’t not use adsense. I like adsense and use it but not until I find out if my site is profitable or not.
I don’t want vistors leaving my site until I give them a call to action. Unfortunately some niches are only for information and nobody will buy. This is when I plugin adsense and move onto another niche.
Hey Kenneth!
I asked for it and boy, did I get it – lol! Seriously, you’ve given me food for thought in the whole process and ideas to get cracking with. Yours is a voice of direction in a land of hype!
one thing still needs clarified: you’re rightfully assuming here that since the domain includes “membership” it IS and SHOULD be about memberships etc. However, my question is: is that an advantageous strategy to pick on a IM sub-niche, like membership sites, and then from there to spread out to more areas in the main niche of IM… or, to just stay focused on ‘membership’ and thats it?
Also, that leaves me with the question, maybe I should be following a more popular niche in the IM arena, like social media, twitter, etc. rather than limit it to membership sites (which may be less in demand topic…), so maybe I should go back to re-establish which sub-niche would be the best to invest my time and effort…?
Thanks Kenneth & keep up the great input!
Izzy Joseph
1) Sub-niche or not is your call. You can have more than 1 website and sub-niches.
2) Also, which sub-niche is better is also your call. What’s important is to focus. If you keep thinking the grass is greener on the other side, your patch of grass will never grow.
… I suppose my first question was more about which is the best way to get to grips with the IM niche…?
…If, as you rightfully said “I can’t see how a new blog can get to the top search result for a highly competitive keyword of “How To Make Money Online Fast” with some 1,390,000,000 competitions”, then it follows that it would be futile to try and tackle the main IM niche itself (or any MAIN minche for that matter)…l but just suffice it with only the sub-niches…
Thanks again!
Izzy
1) The best way is to focus. So long as you focus, you can grab any niche.
2) NO NO NO. You are mixing niche with keywords. “How To Make Money Online Fast” has 1,390,000,000 competitions. But “earn cash make money online” only has 13,700,000 competitions. Still competitive, but not as competitive as the former one. Both keywords are in the IM niche.
Make money online is a huge niche. If you go down to the details, there are thousands of low competition keywords you can target.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention… with so limited time , it would be hard for me to keep up wtih supplying constant content to many sub-niches (which might rule me out of fully pursuing niche marketing) ….? any ideas?
Everyone has limited time and money, including those who make a fortune online and those who manage hundreds of subniches. Limit time is just an excuse, not a factor that can RULE you out of anything. The only thing that RULES you out is your limiting beliefs.
For users of WordPress, that don’t have a lot of time to create new content, and submit it every day, there are plugins that will autopost your content for you.
If you have a bit of cash (remember time is money) you could outsource and have someone create enough articles for as many months as you choose.
Define your topic, what impression you would like to give.
When the articles meet your approval, you can use an auto blog feeder to post the articles at your preferred schedule.
I have used an auto blog poster to buy me a bit of time so I can concentrate on learning other methods to drive traffic, such as defining categories, tags, keywords. My object is to get traffic with as little effort as possible so I can concentrate on helping other people make some money.
It took me 1.5 years to decide on creating a blog using wordpress on my host. It does take some work, unless your extremely talented or have a lot of time on your hands.
Competition is fierce in a lot of topics that I deal with.
For blogging, I do have to recommend wordpress, as it has a whole crapload of plugins developed that can save you a bunch of time.
Good Luck.
Spot on, it is vital to provide good useful content first and get regular traffic before attempting to make money from your blog. When choosing what products to promote why not choose products which are different from your subject of membership web-sites. That way you will have plenty of subject matter to write about because you are not selling membership type products.
You make the point that I see people make again and again about blogging. The point is that you have to build the reputation as a person who produces quality content so that you can become a source that people can trust. People have to trust you first, before they’re ever going to buy anything from you.
Why, if I’m a newbie does not have any business but through my blog can generate passive income, what should I do to what you can convey useful for me
To learn you must keep reading. I’ve been at this for a couple of years, and everything changes so fast.
What does not change, is your ability to recognize when to spend money, and when to not.
If your learning, take all the free resources you can get your hands on. Read, reaad, read.
There will come a time when your ready to fine tune everything you learned and focus it on the one task you are after. But it must be focused.
When you have found a focus that your comfortable with, like a huge puzzle, it will come together.
Depending on which way you would like to promote your product or service, I’ve developed a blog for the past year dedicated to several resources that do work… not all for me, but work if your targeting a specific group.
Read, and if you do not understand, read some more until you do. What you do need while your learning, regardless, is a splash page, an autoresponder, and an ad tracker.
Without those, while your learning how to fine tune your niche, you are letting a lot of people walk on by, and you won’t know why. http://lgkan.com/Blog
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Another thing I would add is, if a new blogger want to rank, they should start with easy keywords. If they can rank for that keyword, that would boost their confidence and motivated them to go for difficult keywords.
Thank you all. So much great information. I really enjoy the process of evolving with the industry and realize staying up to date is important.
I now see that it is important to group busniess separately with family and friends. Then blog differently with each category with some overlap.
Have a great day.
Agree with your recommend Ken.
Hi Kenneth – great post! Thanks for sharing. Very insightful, as always… In terms of SEO, page titles (along with text content and inbound links) seem to play a very important role.
Very insightful post. I completely agree with you. Blogging cannot be a business. Sharing knowledge in blogs is the best thing. That works. Thanks for sharing this post with us. I have book marked this post, will come back for a re-read.
Thanks for your useful suggestion. It ‘s very useful for me and many bloggers. Now I ‘m practicing about SEO.
Thanks for your great suggestion. Blogging is free and easy to getting start for any newbie. There are many methods to drive traffic to our blogs such as E-mail Marketing , Search Engine Marketing , etc.
Thanks for sharing. I agree with you that Blog is only tools for business it ‘s not a business and articles in blog is very important if you want readers continue read your next articles.
we can use social networking sites , Video on youtube , seo to drive traffics to our website or blogs.
True “establish your blog as a useful resource”. Even google appreciates this and rewards it with results (results you cannot buy).
Looking for the in-demand keywords but low competition and writing good article from it will not bring good benefits like traffic if the post is not well-promoted to get backlinks.
Fantastic. I agree wholeheartedly! Blogging is one aspect of a total business concept and if you do not understand the entirety of the concept do not blog. Recruit and educate prior to doing something with little knowledge or understanding. There a three or four different aspects to optimization and blogging is actually a minor aspect to gaining traffic and therefore visitors to your site. You business marketing strategy must also capture the clients, not just visit your site. Recruit an SEO if you are uncertain of how to achieve your goals!
Its been a fun experience in learning about blogging, trackbacks, pingbacks.
What I have learned here, and applied on my site has made a real difference. Although I’m dealing with a difficult niche subject, broad as it may be, I’ve managed to increase traffic to my website, and also managed to route traffic to certain parts more efficiently. Some pages actually get hits without any effort whatsoever.. Thanks Leadsleap.
Very instructive and great anatomical structure of content material , now that’s user genial (:.blue film
Its really good tips from you Giap , i do fallow you regularly no wonder i find this page in google immediatly i recognise you. Thanks for the info you share for free. i am really learning a lot of seo technics from you.
Thanks for the really good tips. I will keep no. 2 in mind.
To build a business, not a blog, nice said, but things are usually easier said than done.
In order to build the business with the help of your blog, you better forget about making money, a sort of. When you forget that, you will actually make money as a result of your action/work.
The hardest thing I found, and it was that way and it will be that way in the future, is the learning process. The SEO is only one aspect of the blog maintenance, promotion etc.
The more you learn, the more successful you will become.
thank you for this article. *
It will help me … I have a problem, my English is not rich enough … I’ll try to improve my blog … I invite you to visit it..
.http://trackr.leadsleap.com/0gfj90y1
I have started blogging about Australian recipes to bring people to my website
I know that most of the rookies or newbies on blogging will make the same mistakes, I know that I did and many even people here did them right?
Making posts like this that tell people to avoid them are the most I like.
Thanks for the info
Great site! Good article. pls keep sharing such good articles.
Thanks for this info. Keep up the neat work. I’ll be returning often thanks for sharing …
Wow this is a vital and great information specially for new blogger who mainly focus on getting money rather then creating a goal and using blog and key plan.
Thank you very much! It’s very helpful for me.
Thanks Ken for the article and shedding some light in areas people need help in.