Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing but is still very effective. Social media marketing is a relatively new form of marketing but is also very effective. What happens if the two are combined? According to Kara Trivunovic of StrongMail, email and social media provide many great advantages when they are put together.

When people integrate social into their email marketing programs, they have the opportunity to not only expand the reach of their existing offers, but also to encourage existing customers to evangelize on their behalf. As a result, companies could grow their database through acquisition, which is not usually common in email marketing.

As Trivunovic points out, there are three primary ways that people use to implement social into their email marketing efforts. They are:

1.    Sharing with your network
2.    Leveraging as a medium to incentivize current customer base
3.    Business model: acquiring customers through referrals

Trivunovic told WebProNews that approximately 86 percent of email subscribers share their email via email when they are asked to evangelize on the behalf of a company. Other social sharing methods include Facebook, Twitter, and blogging.

Incidentally, of that 86 percent that share via email, 19 percent of the receivers convert. That said, it seems safe to say that social media and email marketing work pretty well together.

In the last 24 hours we’ve had a lot of new readers to ProBlogger after a couple of links from sites like Yahoo.

If this is your first time (or you’re newish to ProBlogger) to ProBlogger.net then I thought I’d put together a quick tour of my online home.

Firstly, my name’s Darren Rowse (that’s me posing with my computer monitor trying to look like that’s a normal thing to do) and – I’m a full time blogger. I blog both here at ProBlogger but also at Digital Photography School.

ProBlogger is a blog that is devoted to helping bloggers improve their blogging and explore ways to earn an income at the same time by writing about topics that they love.

More and more bloggers are now making at least a part time income blogging – with some even having gone ‘Pro’ with full time incomes.

I write more about the reasons for this blog and my experience as a blogger in my About Page. You might also like to see some of the ways that I make money from my blogs for an introduction into how bloggers make money blogging.

If you’re new to blogging you might find this ‘what is a blog?‘ article and my series on Blogging for Beginners helpful.

If you like what you read here you can follow my future entries (I write 1-2 posts per day) in two ways – either using our RSS News feed or you can get daily updates by adding your email address to the field at the top of my sidebar.

I also send weekly(ish) newsletters out with updates from this site plus extra stuff just for subscribers. You can sign up for that here.

Resources for Bloggers

Most of what you’ll find here on ProBlogger is 100% free – however I’ve also produced 3 resources that you might find useful:

1. ProBlogger the Book – a hard cover book I co-authored two years back that is ideal for beginners wanting to explore how to make money online.
2. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – an e-book for people with blogs that have stalled and in need of a little inspiration and motivation.
3. ProBlogger Community – a community of bloggers who come together to learn and collaborate to improve their blogs.

If you’re looking for a blogging job – also check out the free ProBlogger Blog Job Boards.

Thanks for stopping by – I hope you enjoy your stay at ProBlogger. If you do have any questions feel free to drop me a note in a comment below or via my contact form.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Welcome to ProBlogger – A Quick Tour for New Readers

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Guest post by Mike CJ.

“Treat your blog like a business” is something we’re told all the time. It’s solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business.

But what does it actually mean?

Have a proper accounts system

Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.

Set objectives

The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that’s fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you’re going to earn over the next year.

Set budgets

Once you know what’s coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger? Don’t waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it’s in budget do it, if it isn’t, don’t.

Seek opinions and advice

Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don’t run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.

Produce reports

Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn’t. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it’s even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it’s your partner.

Enter into collaborations

Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.

Use professional tools

It’s too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they’re a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren’t right.

Invest in training

Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you’ll get a far greater return than the initial cost.

Treat your readers like customers

Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that’s fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.

Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike’s Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

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A Guest Post by Johnny B Truant

I saw Gary Coleman on TV last night and thought, “That guy has to be rich. Everyone knows who he is.” But then I realized that Gary’s true paid celebrity ended over 20 years ago, and whether he’s rich or not today is really a matter of luck and investment.

But that’s not how most people are wired to think. We figure that if someone is or ever was in the public eye, they probably have a big fortune. But who knows how well Gary invests? It’s distinctly possible that most of us here have more money then he does.

This whole thing occurred to me after a few people asked me if I was loaded yet, since I made Problogger’s list of 30 bloggers to watch in 2010. They were asking tongue-in-cheek, but there was a grain of truth behind it. The simple fact is that people equate popularity with riches, and that’s not accurate at all.

I’ve gotten a fair number of new readers and Twitter followers since that list came out… but I had a couple of five-figure months under my belt already. And I did that with subscriber and reader numbers which were hardly stellar.

Do you want fame? Or do you want fortune?

If you say “neither,” then scale it back. A more moderate stopping point on the “fame” spectrum would be getting more readers and more followers. That’s probably the #1 stated goal among bloggers, in my experience. But a close second is along the “fortune” spectrum, and it’s simply to make some money from what you do.

I’m going to make a guess here. It isn’t backed by any scientific research, but I’ll just bet that it’s right.

I think that of the two, people actually want “fortune” goals more. But I think I hear “How do I get more readers/traffic/subscribers?” more often because people think that increased popularity will lead to increased income.

But… nope, sorry. Not always. If you want a “fame” goal, great. But if you want “fortune,” shoot directly for fortune instead of trying to make it happen via fame.

I know several people who are very, very popular online but who don’t really make much at all from their blogging. Large numbers of readers do not equal large amounts of income.

If you’d like to shift your goal to making a living online instead of just entertaining as many people as possible, I have tips. (Or rather, because what follows came out of a discussion I had with fellow Problogger list-mates Naomi Dunford and Charlie Gilkey, it’s more accurate to say that WE have tips.)

1. Your audience has to be willing to buy

I’m not saying they have to be willing to buy from you. I’m saying that they have to be willing to buy period.

I used to write a pure humor blog, and tried to make money via AdSense and selling a hard-copy book. What I discovered is that the humor audience is largely unwilling to buy. They want to read funny stuff and then move along. I made virtually nothing while doing pure humor, despite decent popularity.

Along the same lines, blogs centering on a small-budget hobby are going to have more trouble selling at high prices than those about a more expensive hobby. Charlie G, who I mentioned above, gives the example of a blog about crafting vs. a blog about photography. If both promote a $39 e-book, the photographers are less likely to hesitate at the price because they’re used to paying higher costs for products and services in their niche.

2. You have to be willing to sell

I’m always shocked by how many people seem to think selling is dirty. If you handle selling correctly, all you’re doing is referring something that you think is fantastic. It could be your own product or an affiliate product, but what you’re doing is seeing a need and saying, “I have a fantastic product or service that would really help you out.” It’s not about getting people to spend money on something they don’t want, or out of pity. It’s not like when the local grade school kids come to your door selling fruitcakes, and you buy one just to support them.

Establish early and gradually that when a cool product comes around that your people could honestly benefit from, you’ll let them know about it… with an affiliate link if it’s not your product. Your “true people” will understand such offers in the way they are intended, which is in the spirit of mutual benefit.

3. You have to build a reputation for being trustworthy

I’m able to generate good business off of a relatively small list because those people have grown to trust me. They know I won’t promote something I don’t believe in, and they know that I won’t put out a junky, half-effort product. They also know that I’ll tell them the shortcomings of a product or service before praising it (I think I should trademark my concept of the “anti-guarantee,” discussed a bit more in this Problogger post I wrote about building trust (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/08/30/how-to-boost-your-business-by-developing-bulletproof-trust/)… what do you think?) and that when I don’t know how to do something, I won’t pretend that I do.

When you’re operating online, you’re asking people to give you money in advance for something, usually without talking to you, seeing you in person, hearing your voice, or really knowing anything about you. If they don’t trust you impeccably, they’ll never pay you.

4. You have to generate goodwill

The best way to get great mileage out of even a small list is to have that list work for you. I swear, sometimes I think my readers and past clients are out there beating through the brush to find new people to send my way. And the reason this happens is that I try to provide great service to all of them. I’ve done small add-on jobs for free, answered questions and investigated issues for non-clients, and helped people out of tough jams. This creates happy folks.

At the end of last year, I did a free blog setup promotion. If a customer would simply purchase their hosting (which they’d need no matter who set up their blog) through my affiliate link, I’d set them up gratis. I did this largely because it’s a great win-win — a way for me to profit without the money coming directly from my clients. But what I didn’t see right away was that all of those people who were so grateful that I didn’t charge them anything would start sending their friends to me.

5. You have to have faith in yourself, as a real person

I’m a huge evangelist for what I think of as “personality marketing” over the more common ways to do business online. Personality marketing means using your own voice and own self and own talents to generate value rather than embarking on an anonymous system like niche websites or AdSense.

Now, I don’t want the niche sites or AdSense people getting all up in arms here. I’m not saying those things can’t work, but I am saying that they didn’t work for me and probably won’t work for anyone who’s at all like me. Or at least, they may not be your best use of time if you’re like me. I’ve been using AdSense for over a year now, and just recently got my first check. It was for $111, which I can now make in around a half hour by just “being Johnny.”

(Now, if you can’t make $111 in a half hour or an hour or a day or even a week by employing some personality marketing, could you make it in a month after a bit of practice? If you can, you’re still beating my AdSense earnings by a factor of twelve.)

Remember, it’s not always about numbers. If you want a huge list just so that you can have a huge list, great. If you want a hundred thousand RSS subscribers, great. If you want to be an internet celebrity, great.

But those things don’t automatically translate to income. If you want to pursue the cliche of “becoming rich and famous online,” you’ll need to pay attention to both sides of the equation.

—————
Johnny B. Truant is your source for business and technology coaching, building blogs and websites, and eating nachos. You can find him at his website, and you can find the full discussion between Johnny, Naomi Dunford, and Charlie Gilkey at The Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Blogger’s Guide to Becoming rich (Instead of Just Famous)

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A Guest Post by Warren Davies from GenerallyThinking.com.

It’s pretty clear that if we want to be pro bloggers, we can’t rely purely on producing fantastic content. We have to optimise our pages for search engines, build backlinks from relevant sources, as well as putting our heart and soul into our content to make it as valuable as possible for the reader.

But what if the reader gets what they want from the post and then leaves? Well, that’s nice of us to solve their problem, but it’s not going to help us earn the money and freedom we want!

We need to entice first time visitors further into our blogs, expose them to its different areas and articles, make them feel like a kid in a candy store when they see all the information inside!

One way we can do this is through a landing page analysis – to see which pages people are landing on, checking the metrics for these pages, and then optimising them so that they are better placed to convert first time visitors into regular readers. Here’s a 4 step plan.

Step 1 – Identify Problem Pages

This is easy to do with Google Analytics – just go to Content -> Top Landing Pages, and check the chart at the bottom of the page. These are the pages that visitors are most likely to enter your site through. Now check the column to the far right – Bounce Rate. This is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without looking at another page on your blog. They hit the landing page, get what they want (or not) then leave.

If you have any high bounce rates in this section (80%+), you’re missing out on further page views from these first-time visitors. This is vital; pulling readers further into your site is essential to converting visitors to subscribers and/or sales.

Step 2 – Analysis

Before we start optimising the page, we need to do some more research. Here are the two main things you can do:

• Click on the name of each post, and look at the Time on Page. Is it significantly lower than the time it takes to read the article? If so, it’s likely that the reader is not finding the answer to the question they had when they clicked through.
• Ask them. Set up a Poll on the page, entitled “Help me improve this article: What information were you asking for?” Give a few options, and don’t forget to add ‘something else’ as an option. Alternatively, a simple “Did you find the information you were looking for?” can be useful. Experiment with putting it at the top and bottom of the post, to see if people are reading the whole article before bouncing.
• Check the entrance sources for the post on Google Analytics. Are people mostly finding the article through Google images? This might account for the high bounce rate.

Step 3 – Optimise

You should now have some ideas on how you might optimise the article. Perhaps there’s more information you want to add, maybe you want to shorten it, or then again maybe you want to make it more appealing and add more images. Then again, maybe the site design is unattractive, or there are too many ads or other annoying things on the page. Whatever you do, don’t assume; test.

Also, do ensure that there are links and pathways to other content on your site! This is essential. Maybe your related posts plug-in and category list are not effective – you might have to tell/coax your reader into looking deeper.

If you have several ideas on how to optimise the page, you may want to use Google Web Optimiser to run several new versions of the page. Each visitor will be randomly directed to one of your test pages, and you can compare the metrics against each other at the end of the test.

Step 4 – Check Results

One week should be a good enough time frame to compare the before and after effects. Going back to Google Analytics, bring up the Content Detail page for the entrance article you’ve been playing with. Set the date for the week leading up to the day you edited the page (but not including that day). Copy and paste the stats into a text editor or Excel; the main ones you’re interested in are Time on Page, Bounce Rate, and Exit %. Then set the date for the seven days after you optimsed the article. Again, copy and paste the results, and compare.

How did you do? If you were successful, you may have seen an increase in the Time on Page – although maybe not – but certainly a decrease in the Bounce Rate and Exit %. This would indicate that more readers are looking further into your site – congratulations!

What if there was no difference? Then go back to step 2. Conduct further research on how you might improve the page. Ensure you have links to other content on your blog, and that the wording of your article makes these links seem like essential further reading.

What’s a ‘good’ bounce rate?

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all figure to aim for. It depends on many factors. A bounce could mean the visitor literally only wanted one piece of information, and left because they got it. The ambiguity of the keyword you’re targeting will be important. If you’re getting a high bounce rate from an 8-word keyphrase, it’s probably a worse situation than the same bounce rate for a 2-word keyphrase. Your domain name could play a role too – ‘Problogger’ is pretty clear, but would an article on, say, ‘marketingtips’ be specific to blogging, or to offline marketing? Maybe you’d have to read it to find out.

Having said that, bounce rates over 80% generally mean there’s work to be done.

Landing Page Analysis – A Case Study

I performed a landing page analysis analysis on GenerallyThinking.com, my psychology blog. My top landing page by far was my post on personal strengths and weaknesses. This article proved hugely successful with search engines, and accounts for 25% of the overall traffic of the site! However, the bounce rate and time on page were dismal, as you can see below:

• Time on Page – 00:01:35
• Bounce Rate – 86.67%
• Exit % – 82.98%

I ran a WP-Poll asking what people were looking for at the bottom of the page, and got no results. I put it to the top of the page, and got a few replies, but still not many. Clearly, people weren’t reading to the bottom – there was a need unfulfilled. The data I collected from the poll indicated that people wanted more information on strengths than I was offering – the article was too focused on weaknesses.

So, I ripped out the section on how to manage and work around your weaknesses completely, and posted it as a new article. Then I re-wrote the post as a portal, giving a basic overview of personal strengths and weaknesses, including how and why they could be identified – but not giving too much away. I preferred to point to other articles on my site that cover these topics in depth.

I uploaded the new page, waited, and then tested the results as described above. Here they are:

• Time on Page – 00:02:31
• Bounce Rate – 66.67%
• Exit % – 66.20%

Fantastic! Time on Page increased by a minute, bounce rate reduced by 20% and Exit % reduced by nearly the same amount. A little more tweaking and playing with images might improve things further.

(By the way, if Darren will forgive the flagrant self-promotion that article’s worth a read actually – what successful entrepreneur would say personal development is not an important part of their craft?)

How much could you improve your site by performing an entrance analysis? Remember – don’t make assumptions; test and measure everything!

Warren Davies is a positive psychology student at the University of East London, who runs a psychology blog at GenerallyThinking.com.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Perform a Landing Page Analysis on your Blog

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If you’re a blogger where English is not your first language – I’d love to get your participation in this discussion.

Recently I surveyed subscribers to my newsletter on the challenges that face them going into 2010. Quite a few of the responses to that question came from bloggers for whom English was not a first language.

The problems that this group of bloggers presented to me were numerous but two recurring challenges were:

• Not knowing which language that they should blog in – should they blog in their own first language and have a smaller potential readership or blog in English where their readership could be larger but where they had challenges in writing as well?
• Feeling isolated from other bloggers – a number reflected that at times they felt that they were not taken as seriously by bloggers in other parts of the world and found networking difficult.

As a blogger who speaks no other language but English I’m probably not the person to bring much wisdom to this topic – however I’d love to get the thoughts, experiences, tips and stories of bloggers who have been in this situation in comments below.

My hope is that this post will not only give bloggers struggling with these and other issues a place to tell of their challenges – but that some might also share how they approach the challenges and give some tips and advice for bloggers from a non English speaking background. I’d also love to hear stories of (and see examples of) your successes (and those of others) as I know that the blogosphere is alive and well in all corners of the globe.

If you’d like to share in your own language and/or English I’m happy for you to do so in any way that you feel comfortable.

I’m looking forward to reading what is shared below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Bloggers from Non English Speaking Backgrounds – Share Your Tips and Stories Here

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“Use it or lose it!”

It’s a statement that can be applied to many aspects of life – not the least of which is building an online business.

I discovered this the hard way recently with one of my email lists – in fact the newsletter associated with this very blog here at ProBlogger.

Over two years ago I was sending out weekly newsletters to readers of this blog. They contained updates from the site, a few extra tips exclusive for subscribers, the odd competition, the occasional promotion and a bit of behind the scenes information on what I was doing.

The emails were converting well in terms of driving traffic and building community with readers and they even drove some affiliate sales from time to time. It was something well worth doing…..

But then I stopped.

I can’t really put my finger on why I stopped (it was a gradual thing and something I intended to get back to ) – perhaps it was because I started doing some of what I’d been doing in newsletters on Twitter, perhaps it was because I was simply getting too busy, or perhaps I was just getting lazy…. for whatever reason – I stopped sending weekly newsletters. In fact they slowed down to a point where I was lucky if I were sending them out every six months.

The problem is – six months is too long to go between newsletters. If you don’t use it – you lose it.

Six months without contact with subscribers is not a great way to build brand, trust, relationship, familiarity – it means that when you do send something it’s less likely to be read.

People forget they subscribed, people are more likely to view you with suspicion, people could feel slighted.

Some might call it letting your list go ‘cold‘ – I call it a big mistake.

It meant that when I recently restarted my newsletter that a large percentage of those who had subscribed were inactive, unresponsive and a few were quite angry about me emailing them because they had little idea why I was sending them emails out of the blue!

The same principle applies in other places too.

• Blogging/RSS Feeds – I recently spoke with a blogger who decided to take 12 months off blogging – he returned expecting traffic and reader engagement to pick up where he left off – he was surprised to find that while Feedburner still reported him as having subscribers that it was like starting again in building traffic.
• Social Media – people often describe using social media as developing a ‘presence’. Problem is – when you’re not actually ‘present’ for any length of time that ‘presence’ is hard to build. Whether it be on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – when you let your account become inactive – in time the relationships that you have with those that you’ve previously connected with can go ‘cold’.

I guess it’s pretty much the same as real life – when you disappear unexpectedly from a circle of friends it can be a little awkward coming back to them – it sometimes takes time for the friendships to ‘warm up’ again.

5 Lessons to Help You Keep ‘Using It’ – Not ‘Losing It’

A few quick tips on keeping thing going – whether it be your blog, newsletter, Twitter account etc.

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

The temptation in this game is to commit to being active in too many places at once. Newsletters, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Forums, LinkedIn…. and when you have more than one blog – multiply the accounts that you might potentially have!

In most cases it is better to do a few things well than to do many things poorly.

2. Regularity is more important than High Frequency

When asked ‘how much should I post on my blog’ I generally answer with ‘regularly’ and with ‘regularity’.

In my experience the actual frequency of posting doesn’t tend to matter as much as the ‘regularity’ of your posts. Bloggers tend to get into trouble when they move from posting at one level and then changing their frequency. Going from 3 posts a week to 5 posts a day is going to aggravate some of your readers. Going from 5 posts a day to once a month is also going to have a detrimental impact.

Post as regularly as you are able to sustain and try to develop a pattern to it so that readers know what to expect.

3. Under Promise and Over Deliver

If you’re not sure how much of something you’re able to sustain – pull back not he promises you make.

If you’re starting an email newsletter and you ‘hope’ to make it weekly but wonder if you can keep that up – advertise it as being ‘at least every month’ or every second week.

I guess it’s about identifying what the minimum is that you need to do to keep your list/blog/social media presence ‘warm’ and at least sticking to that as a minimum rather than attempting to do more than you can realistically do.

4. Build a Schedule

I used to be very impulsive in my online business. These days I’m much more reliant upon schedules. I set myself deadlines for blog posts, newsletters, forum interaction, social media interactions…. and more.

I still don’t achieve them all but without a schedule areas of what I do would fall dormant very quickly.

5. Have Someone (or Something) Manage You

Extending the schedule strategy is that I like to be ‘managed’ by someone or something.

This means that I have people around me who ‘remind’ (or tell) me when I need to do certain things.

‘Darren you need to get a newsletter out today’ is something I heard last Thursday from one of the people involved in my photography site.

‘Darren here are 3 threads you need to respond to in the forum’ is something that Lara told me earlier today (we use Basecamp to send these type of reminders/to do tasks).

I also set up systems for these type of alerts.

I use iCal on my mac and iPhone to set up alerts at certain intervals to remind/tell me to do certain tasks. These range from monthly alerts to pay affiliates, to weekly alerts to send newsletters, to daily alerts to have certain articles written by.

I do have some internal alerts too – by this I mean that I know before I go to bed each night that I need to have 3 posts set to go off on my blogs while I sleep. I don’t need to set myself an alert for these because its just what I do each day – they’ve become automatic internalized rhythms.

What do You Do?

How do you keep your blogging and other activities regular so that you don’t let things go cold? Looking forward to reading some of how you approach this.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Use it or lose it! 5 Tips on How to Keep Your Blogging Regular

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2010 is here and it is time to kick start your blog into action to ensure that the year ahead it reaches its potential.

19,782 bloggers have participated in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and the reports that I’m getting back from them are that it’s the ideal way to get a blog fired up in the new year.

Extra Inspiration and Instruction for the New Year for All 31DBBB buyers New and Old

Over the next 7 days only if you purchase the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook I’m throwing in 3 great bonuses to help you get your blog going in the new year.

Bonus #1: Free Report: 9 Things to Do to Get Your Blog On Track in The New Year

Written in the style of 31DBBB this report talks you through 9 things that I do at the beginning of every new year. Each step gives you a practical exercise to go away and DO to help get your blog going in the right direction. Effectively it turns the 31 day workbook into a 40 day one!

Bonus #2: Podcast with Leo Babauta from Zen Habits

Regular readers of ProBlogger will know the wisdom and insight of Leo from Zen Habits. He’s grow his blog Zen Habits from nothing to being one of the most read self help blogs in the blogosphere in just a couple of years. He’s released a book (The Power of Less) off the back of his blog and has also since launched a number of other successful blogs, profitable e-books and other products off the back of his blog.

This 55 minute podcast interview with Leo goes through his history of blogging and explores much of his philosophy behind what he does including:

• his recent decisions to turn off comments on his blog
• how he comes up with ideas to write about
• his tips for launching e-books
• his decision to remove all but one ad on his blog
• tips on growing traffic and subscribers

There’s lots of good practical advice in this podcast – I came away from it with loads of ideas and inspiration myself and am sure many will benefit from it.

Bonus #3: Podcast with Neil Patel from QuickSprout

Neil Patel has built an amazing reputation and brand for himself in the last 3-4 years. He’s been a part of building two successful blogs but has also work with some amazing companies on their social media presence (like AOL, HP, Viacom and General Motors). He’s also been a part of helping blogs like TechCrunch rise to the power blogs that they are today.

Neil also is the co-founder of CrazyEgg and KissMetrics and has some great advice in this podcast in a number of areas including:

• Personal Branding
• SEO
• Productivity
• Building Traffic to Blogs

The podcast goes for 42 minutes and is not available anywhere else but to 31DBBB buyers.

7 Days to Get Your New Year Bonuses

These 3 free bonuses are exclusively for buyers of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (both past and present) and they’re only available until midday on Tuesday 19 January – Melbourne time (that’s 8pm Eastern in the US on Monday 18th and 1am London time on Tuesday 19th).

The cost of the 31DBBB workbook is $19.95 – it contains 31 days of teaching and daily activities to help you create a dynamic blog. Make your purchase and get it and the 3 bonuses here.

If you have already purchased the workbook you should have received an email from me in the last 12 hours (sent to the PayPal email address you paid with) that contains details of where to get the bonuses. If you purchased it through SitePoint I’m working on getting you the bonuses too.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Get These 3 Free Bonuses by Buying 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – 7 Days Only

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In the last two months I’ve started using Surveys to get in touch with readers more and more.

Those of you who subscribe to the ProBlogger newsletter will know this first hand because late last year you were invited to participate in one – but I’ve also run a couple on my photography blog that have been incredibly useful.

I’ve been running the surveys using SurveyMonkey (it is a little clunky but it is free for smaller surveys and not the most expensive option for larger ones).

I have found running surveys beneficial in a number of ways:

1. Getting in touch with reader needs – this is the most obvious reason to run a survey, they give you real insight into the needs, problems and challenges of your readers. The information I’ve gleaned from surveys in the last two months have provided me with a massive source of post ideas for the coming months!
2. Understanding who your reader is – some of the surveys I’ve been running have asked questions that help me not only identify the needs of readers but also have helped me understand what type of readers I have. I’ve asked questions about experience levels, demographics and other things that help me get a picture of what type of person is reading – again this helps shape not only content but many other aspects of a site.
3. Warm up Your List – up until recently I’d not been sending emails to the ProBlogger newsletter list. Due to time constraints I’d let my email list go cold. Sending out a survey to this ‘cool’ list was one of the best things I’ve ever done – it not only helped me in the above ways – it helped me re-engage with old subscribers in a way that was not about promoting myself or any product but which was all about them, their needs, their challenges and their situation.
4. Build Anticipation – later this month I’m launching another E-book on DPS. As part of the process of creating anticipation of this E-book among my community I’ve been running a simple survey to get readers engaging with me around some of the topics of the E-book. The survey will not only help me make the E-book better, but in the introduction to the survey we’re letting readers know about the upcoming launch – something that plays an important part in building some good buzz and anticipation of the launch.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Running Surveys with Your Readers Rocks

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One of my new years resolutions in 2010 is to interview one blogger per week as a podcast. I’ll post most of these for members of the community at ProBlogger.com but from time to time will share some of them here on ProBlogger.net for all to hear.

Yesterday morning I had the privileged of speaking with Richard MacManus – Founder and Editor of the successful ReadWriteWeb blog.

Richard started ReadWriteWeb back in 2003 and has since grown it into one of the world’s largest blogs in terms of traffic, subscribers and most importantly influence. Richard has also taken RWW from a single author blog into one with at least 13 writers.

In this 45 minute audio podcast Richard shares the story of RWW and its beginnings, talks about the transition to a multi-author blog, shares some tips for new bloggers, talks openly about how RWW is monetized (including through advertising, publishing premium reports and running events) and looks forward at the future of publishing.

The interview also briefly features my 18 month old son who decided that Richard was someone he really wanted to speak with

Richard’s one of the most thoughtful and insightful bloggers I’ve interacted with and has built a blog that reflects this. He majors on being constructive, insightful and useful and this podcast reflects that.

You can listen to this 45 minute podcast here or right click and save it to listen to it at your leisure.

While you listen be sure to surf over to ReadWriteWeb and follow Richard on Twitter and Facebook.

PS: apologies if there is an initial slowness in downloading but as you’d expect, there will be a bit of action on this podcast in the first little while after this post goes live.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Lesson from ReadWriteWeb: An Interview with Richard MacManus

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