“2nd Edition of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Coming Next Week” plus 2 more

2nd Edition of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Coming Next Week
The Rookie Mistake that’s Holding You Back
How I Brought My Blog Back to Life with Tumblr

2nd Edition of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Coming Next Week

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 07:32 PM PST

Tens of thousands of ProBlogger readers have completed the popular 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge, and next week we’re taking it to a new level with the release of the second edition eBook.

31DBBB—the story so far…

Back on 30 July 2005, I had a crazy idea: what if I ran a series of posts over the month of August that year that would give ProBlogger readers a little bit of teaching each day and a homework activity to go away and do, each one focused on helping them build a better blog?
On the spur of the moment I decided to give it a go, and off the top of my head decided to call it
“31 Days to Build a Better Blog.”
That year, several thousand readers joined the challenge.
The experience was so great that I ran it again in 2007, this time with around 5,000 participants.
In 2009 we repeated it again with another series of posts. This time, 13,000 readers signed up and at the end of the month readers asked me if I could compile the teaching and exercises into an ebook.
The 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ebook was released shortly after, and since that time, around 13,000 copies have sold.

31DBBB Second Edition

It’s been two years since the first edition was released, and while I still get daily feedback that its helping bloggers improve their blogs, I’ve been wanting to give it a refresh with some new tasks, a redesign. and some updating of a little information in the ebook that isn’t quite as relevant today in 2011.

I’m really pleased with this new edition. While there are quite a few days that are based upon those found in the first edition, we’ve included some completely new information this time around and added to what owners of the original have already got.

I’ll fill you in with full details of what’s new next week, and will email owners of the first edition with a discounted offer for those wanting to upgrade.

31DBBB First Edition now unavailable

As a result of the impending release of the second edition, today I’ve taken the first edition of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog off the market. Those of you who have your copy already now officially own a collector’s edition!

Again, I’ll release full details of the second edition, its price, upgrade options, and so on in the coming week, but I wanted to let you know what was going on.

Get notified of the release of the second edition

Want to be notified of when the second edition launches? Simply leave your email and name below and you’ll be notified the moment it becomes available.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

2nd Edition of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Coming Next Week

The Rookie Mistake that’s Holding You Back

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 12:08 PM PST

This guest post is by Alexander Heyne of Milk the pigeon.

You're paralyzed. You started reading how to drive more traffic to your blog, write viral content, and make money online…

Three hours later you wake up and realize you haven't actually done anything.

You think you've had a productive day, and can visualize the influence and money in your future, but time passes and it never comes. You repeat many days like that, and wonder if there is something wrong with your strategy.

Meanwhile there are stories of success all around you—some random teenager built an online empire and raked in $5,000 a month easy; another guy built a company to six figures in two years using his blog; someone else landed a book deal via their blog.

Slowly, over time, you begin to lose interest because your success doesn't match that of others. You say you gave the blogging thing "a good run," and you quit.

You probably never realize the rookie mistake we all make blogging.

And you probably never consciously ponder the one oft-forgotten principle that all high achievers regularly make use of.

It is so intuitive and simple that we merely nod our heads and get on with our lives, never seeking to apply it. If it's obvious, I'm probably already doing it, right?

Rookie mistake 101

When I first began projects in college, I would spend days researching a topic before I even started doing any work. I had dozens of web pages saved, links in a word document, and books checked out from the library.

So imagine me starting a blog: hundreds of pages of word documents, dozens of websites saved, potential affiliate programs mapped out to buy, hours upon hours spent researching.

I later realized that this was a massive rookie mistake.

Ultimately, you have to build your project, right? Whether it's an essay, a proposal, a blog, or a house, it requires physical work.

And I realized that I (as well as many others) am prone to excessive information gathering, which hurts you in two main ways:

It falsely makes you believe you are actually getting work done (you aren't).
The amount of information you acquire tends to be inversely related to the work you get done.

This pattern is exactly the one most bloggers, business owners, and Internet users find themselves in—collecting, hoarding, and storing information without any application or usage.

The cause of this rookie mistake is simple—we are at a very specific disadvantage while working today. It’s Google. I suspect our conundrum is a 21st century one: 100 years ago people didn't have the option of researching themselves to death. There was just working, and learning from experience.

And if we get to the bottom line here, I bet you're probably trying to build influence and make a living in the process, right? So let me help you point out a big mistake I made for most of my life, and how I helped fix it.

After I realized I was wasting a ton of time on the Internet without actually setting my foundation set at all, I came up with a personal rule.

I would record the amount of time I spent researching, reading, and collecting information. And I would record the time I spent doing work. The amount of doing to researching had to be a 2:1 ratio. I had to be doing twice as much as researching.

If, for example, I did some research on making a niche website, and it took me four hours to accumulate the information, I would then have a "due" of eight hours of work to do. And in that time I would no longer permit myself to do research of any kind. It was purely work.

Maybe that involved thoroughly doing some keyword research to find a niche that has high traffic and low competition. Or maybe I spent time outsourcing and getting the initial, bare-bones website up. Or perhaps I decided to send emails to five people running niche websites to ask for help in avoiding beginner mistakes.

But the underlying principle remained the same, and that was the most important part: Get work done immediately.

Having rules or principles that guide and govern your work will largely determine your success, and make it many times easier and more efficient. Make or find a system, and stick with it.

Rookie Mistake: Collecting information excessively in place of actually getting work done.
Fix: Utilize the 2:1 ratio. Spend twice as much time working as you do researching and reading.

Killing the overwhelming stress of choosing

I went on to apply this strategy when I started my blog and wasn't having a lot of success getting traffic. I was spending hours upon hours reading every blogging strategy, printing off notes, making lists, reading success stories—but never getting anywhere.

So I applied the 2:1 ratio in combination with Strategy #2: Having a master plan and minion plans.

This is one of the single most effective ways to mitigate the stress of having so many options and so much information to deal with.

Here's what I did when I first started my blog: I spent three days Googling "traffic strategies" or "getting more traffic" and made one huge word document. There was a list of about 100 tactics, including:

posting in related forums
other blog commenting
guest posting
SEO
submission to blog directories
social media

Next, I made two business plans for my blog: 1. A main plan (master plan) and 2. a set of monthly mini business plans (minion plans). I then took one strategy from my list to apply for the entire month to that month's minion plan.

Just one. That ensures you'll actually do it and won't be overwhelmed.

And finally, I got to work. As an example, check out my first four months of minion plans:

Month 1: Establishing a Twitter account and adding ten related users a day. Also, being active for two ten-minute periods at different parts of the day to re-tweet content from others.
Month 2: I focused on browsing my Twitter stream for people who wrote related content, or content I just liked. And then I read them every time they wrote a new post, wrote a well-thought out response and began establishing relationships with them.
Month 3: I spent time researching SEO and compiling my own list of rules to remember when writing a blog post.
Month 4: I created a definitive document of points to consider before I click the Publish button on any new post, such as emotional appeal, novelty, relation to theme, other posts I want to link it to, "feeling" of coherence, etc.

See where I'm going with this? The system makes your life a million times easier, keeps you focused, and helps you stay on track without needing Xanex for the option and information overload.

Best of all, it ensures you are getting actual work done. Because after all, everyone “knows” how to make money from their blog, right? Everyone "knows" SEO, right? And everyone "knows" affiliate marketing.

But if you ask the readers of some of the biggest blogs in the world how many of them are making (any) money, I bet 90% don't have an answer.

Make your master plan and minion plans tangible on paper, and you'll become serious. Once you're serious you'll see serious results.

Remember the oft-forgotten knowledge: only action breeds results. Do something, anything! Focus on one thing at a time only via a minion plan, and keep general direction with a master plan.

I can directly attribute my initial failures in university, business, and blogging to a lack of knowing Rookie Mistake #1 and lack of remembering the Oft-Forgotten Knowledge. And the closer I looked, the more I realized they are common among others too.

So the next time you realize you've spent several hours reading, researching, or pondering your blog or business, remember this statement: only action breeds results. And then get to work—sow your seeds, grow your army, and create your legacy.

Milk the pigeon is about killing that lost feeling, standing out in the crowd, and living a life of greatness.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Rookie Mistake that’s Holding You Back

How I Brought My Blog Back to Life with Tumblr

Posted: 08 Nov 2011 06:05 AM PST

This guest post is by David Edwards of www.asittingduck.com.

Over the past few years I’ve had success with guest posting and uploading videos on YouTube, but the one thing I’ve struggled with was my blog. There were two reasons:

Illustrations are very time consuming to make.
Thinking what to write used to stress me out!

I’m not sure about you but I totally failed at blogging, I set a plan to produce a fresh post every Friday and before I knew it the next Friday was here already and I had nothing to publish! There are many minefields online when you’re using images and text content, and when I was blogging, I started to drift away from the main theme.

A lot of new bloggers could probably relate to this. When you start a blog, you end up trying to find out how to rank on Google, gain traffic, and so on. That leads you to websites like problogger.net, and you read them so much that you start to talk about their subjects on your blog. Why would a designer want to know about pay per click on my blog? He can come here for that!

A few months back I looked at my blog and I didn’t like what I had published. I made a quick decision to convert it into a squeeze page and build an email list. Then, instead of blogging, I’d send the occasional newsletter.

It worked, but the traffic and community around the website lost its buzz. Back when I was publishing every Friday I did start to see that day was popular in terms of traffic stats, so I was getting that weekly return traffic. I knew that I had to get some more momentum on the website if I were to launch a series of products. The solution was Tumblr.

Why Tumblr works for lazy people

On joining Tumblr, you instantly become a member of a vast community of very creative people. You can select your favorite topics and hunt through fresh, quality posts. Within minutes I managed to follow 100 top bloggers and the five topics that I wanted to keep “A Sitting Duck” based around:

art
comics
design
gaming
illustration

Once you have logged in, set your tags, and started following some relevant people, the dashboard shows you posts on your subject, and basically helps you become a curator for your niche! Through the re-blog feature, you can publish other people’s hard work straight to your blog instantly. They get exposure from their work being shared, and you have something for your regular visitors to look at. It’s a win/win situation.

I’ll continue to publish drawings and ideas, but the main benefit of Tumblr is that I always have the backup of the reblog feature, which makes blogging fun again, and a stress-free experience.

I’ve already started to see my traffic climb again and people are keen to see fresh blog posts, which is a huge boost!

Why reblog?

Tumblr has a one-touch button that lets all members instantly reblog a post from another publisher on the platform. I’ve seen posts that have been reblogged over 50,000 times in a day! Reblog is kind of like Twitter’s retweet function, only that it seems more permanent, as the post is actually published on the domains of bloggers who have reblogged it.

As a character designer myself, many people ask me if I’m afraid of letting my ideas getting stolen. As far as I’m concerned, you’re better off having people see your work and share it than hide it in a sketchbook. It’s always best to get copyright advice first, but I think you need to get your stuff out there to build an audience!

Tumblr: a good choice for relaunch

The best part about my relaunch is that I’ve owned my domain for over three years now, and I’ve built up stacks of great links. Relaunching the blog has given all my metrics a kick, and I’ve joined a community which has over 30 million members, so the opportunity to grow my audience is huge.

Is your blog going off track or dead? Would you rather become a curator for your site and keep the momentum going than leave it to stagnate? As always I look forward to your comments.

David Edwards is the founder of www.asittingduck.com and today has released a brand new video on YouTube called “Milkshake Cat”.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Brought My Blog Back to Life with Tumblr