“Discover the Secrets of 9 Productive Bloggers: Blog Wise” plus 2 more

Discover the Secrets of 9 Productive Bloggers: Blog Wise
What Did You Think of Blog Smarter?
Blog Smarter: Invest in Your Own Success

Discover the Secrets of 9 Productive Bloggers: Blog Wise

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 02:25 PM PST

79% of ProBlogger readers identify ‘finding time to blog’ as one of their biggest challenges.

Last year I ran a survey among ProBlogger readers to identify what the biggest challenges that bloggers face are. A number of common themes emerged – one of the strongest can be summed up in these comments from readers:

I just don’t have time to blog like I know I should
I can barely post once a week… how do you guys do it?
After a day of work, kids and keeping a house running my blogging is getting neglected

‘Finding Time to blog’ was a massive emerging theme among ProBlogger readers. Other issues around productivity, effective use of time, questions about out sourcing and more were also common.

As a result I immediately sat down with my team here in Melbourne and we began to plan for a resource to help bloggers become more effective with the limited time that they have available to them.

The Creation of Blog Wise: How to Do More with Less

ProBlogger editor – Georgina Laidlaw – began a series of interviews with successful bloggers. We put together a list of 9. The criteria was that we wanted to find people who had full lives yet who also managed to create great blogs and social media presences.

The result is a fantastic new PDF eBook – Blog Wise.

Featured Bloggers in Blog Wise

We ended up with a fascinating mix of bloggers who not only had great blogs but who also managed family life, other employment, extensive travel, other businesses and more. Here’s who you’ll find contributing to this eBook:

Heather Armstrong: Founder of Dooce, author of numerous books, mother of 2 kids (and 2 dogs)
Brian Clark: Founder of CopyBlogger Media which includes CopyBlogger the blog, StudioPress Themes, Premise, Scribe and more.
Amy Porterfield: author, prolific on Social media, contributor to numerous blogs, speaker, Mom and much more.
Abby Larson: Founder of Style Me Pretty – a network of 12 sites which she manages with her husband Tait.
Matt Kepnes: Founder of Nomadic Matt's Travel Site – constantly on the road travelling
Jeff Goins: blogging at Goins Writer, writing a book, husband and…. he works a full time job
Gretchen Rubin: Founder of the Happiness Project blog, author of 4 books, wife and mother of 2 daughters.
Leo Babauta: Founder of Zen Habits and numerous other projects, author, minimalist and father of 6 kids.
Darren Rowse (me): owner of Digital Photography School and ProBlogger, author, social media addict and husband and dad to 3 boys.

This 18,000+ word eBook is divided into a chapter for each blogger in which Georgina pulls out the nuggets from each interview. She has also pulled together a 10th chapter which wraps it all up.

Bonus Productivity Problem Solver

And as an extra bonus we’e included a ‘Productivity Problem Solver’ PDF which covers 21 common productivity problems for bloggers and quotes from each of the above bloggers on how they overcome those issues. For example:

Can’t Get Motivated? See what Jeff Goins has to say
Having Trouble Focusing? Gretchen Rubin shares a tip
Can’t Keep Track of Post Ideas? Amy Porterfield shares her quick tip
Got Writers Block? Darren Rowse and Heather Armstrong share what they do
Got an Opportunity that you’re not sure what to do with? Abby Larson gives you some questions to ask yourself
Thinking of Building a Team but unsure how to Keep it Productive? Brian Clark shares some thoughts
Feeling Overwhelmed? Leo Babauta will get you on track with his wisdom
Been Putting Stuff Off? Matt Kepnes tells you how he gets things done

I’m really excited by Blog Wise because it not only pulls together some great bloggers into the one resource – it gives you a unique insight into how they go about what they do.

Reading it will give you some great ideas to apply to your own blogging but also some inspiration and motivation through hearing the stories of these bloggers too.

Grab Yours Today

Blog Wise and the Bonus Problem solver are PDFs and easily read on any PDF reading device including an iPad (you’ll just need to download it to your computer first for uploading to your device).

Normally priced at $19.99 for a limited time and to celebrate its launch it is $14.99 USD.

Feeling a little dry? Can’t fit all the blogging tasks in? Learn more about Blog Wise here or grab your copy directly from the button below.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Discover the Secrets of 9 Productive Bloggers: Blog Wise

What Did You Think of Blog Smarter?

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 12:06 PM PST

Today marks the close of our Blog Smarter mini-series of posts, which explain a variety of techniques for scalable blog monetization.

In case you missed them, the posts were:

This little series hints at one of the ways we’re shifting the focus of our content this year here at ProBlogger. We’ve decided to trial a more collaborative approach to posts that aims to present a range of views on a given topic—in this case, getting more value (in this case, monetarily speaking) out of the time you put into blogging. We’re hoping that these will provide food for thought, and solid starting points for your own exploration.

I know that Georgina, our content manager, has some other ideas up her sleeve—but I also know that she’d love to hear your thoughts on this approach. Was the series too short or too long? Did you think there were too many authors? Not enough angles on the topic? Did it address you as a beginning, longer-term, or stalwart blogger?

And of course, if there are any topics you’d especially like us to look at going forward, we’d be very interested to hear those ideas, too…

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

What Did You Think of Blog Smarter?

Blog Smarter: Invest in Your Own Success

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 06:05 AM PST

This guest post is by Jeff Nickles of MySuperChargedLife.com.

My blog grew by leaps and bounds in 2011. It was exciting! But it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made a few smart investments in my blog—investments, you could say, in my success.

I'm a regular guy and a part-time blogger just like many of you. I've learned how to grow my site through trial and error. Over the last four years, I have probably made more mistakes than the average joe. I've done a lot of the wrong things, but occasionally I get it right. I've benefited tremendously from the experience of others since I started, so I want to share with you the tactics behind my success, hoping they will help you.

The results I achieved

First, let’s look at the results I achieved. My blog’s experienced what I’d call explosive growth in the last year:

353% increase in number of email subscribers.
103% growth in number of pageviews (doubled in one year!).
141% increase in AdSense earnings.

I want to assure you that these numbers are a reflection of consistent increases over the course of many months. I'm not just comparing a freakishly bad month from a year ago to a freakishly good month now.

The investments I made

As you can see, I saw big boosts in the number of subscribers, pageviews, and earnings on my site. These are the key measures of success that I'm always looking to improve. I attribute the growth of my blog to some important investments that I made about a year ago.

1. I changed my WordPress theme

Not all themes are created equal. This is especially true when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). I'll admit that I don't understand all the minutiae behind this art, but I don't have to, and neither do you—assuming you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog.

You can significantly increase your site's ranking with search engines by using a theme that optimizes this for you.

A little knowledge of SEO will certainly help, but the more you get out of the box with your theme, the better. Just over a year ago, I invested in a premium WordPress theme that had a strong commitment to search engine optimization. Yes, I had to pay a little money for my theme, but boy has it been worth it.

Before I made this purchase, I ran a different premium theme and used a popular WordPress plugin to supposedly optimize my SEO. I'm sure the plugin helped, but I can tell you that changing to a different theme—one that was already optimized—helped a lot more.

My traffic has doubled in the past year, and all of the extra traffic has come from search engines. On top of that, my AdSense earnings have gone up almost 1.5 times on what they were just one short year ago, all because of this increase in traffic. That’s a nice return on investment—and a clear justification for investing in a good theme.

Investment #1: Catalyst Theme
Cost: US$77.00.

2. I moved to a better email subscription management service

Previously, I used Feedburner to manage my email subscribers. The thing I liked best about Feedburner was that it was free, but it lacked some key features. As I learned more about blogging, I discovered what Darren and others say about the importance of building an email list. Therefore, after three years of puny email subscriber growth, I decided it was time to get serious about how I handled this aspect of my blog.

I want all the new search engine visitors coming to my site to become email subscribers. One powerful way to encourage this is to offer a first-time visitor an incentive to subscribe. In my case, I put together a free ebook called The Super-Charged Guide to Smart Living.

The new email subscriber service gives me the ability to use autoresponders. When someone subscribes, the service automatically sends them a specific Welcome email that I have set up. I can include links in these emails. Therefore, I can offer all these new search engine visitors a free copy of my ebook as an incentive to subscribe. This definitely works.

Furthermore, once they become subscribers, I can send them a series of auto-responder emails walking them through a complete sequence of strategic interactions with my blog. By the way, I got this idea from Darren in What Process Do You Want to Lead Repeat Readers Through? Excellent advice!

Again, I have to invest a little each month to get these features, but after just one year, I certainly see the advantages. This new service allows me to engage strategically and proactively with my email subscribers. It also gives me the ability to brand the emails so I look more professional, credible and consistent. I believe all of this has contributed to my site's growth.

Investment #2: FeedBlitz
Cost: US$13.95/month (when I signed up).

3. I implemented a pop-up lightbox

In my first three years of blogging, I had only accumulated about 800 email subscribers. This is very puny, I know. I now have over 3,600 valid email addresses on my opt-in list. Here's a chart that shows the phenomenal growth I've experienced.

Isn't this amazing?!? It is to me!

How did I achieve this kind of growth? Well, I implemented a pop-up lightbox that offers visitors my free ebook in exchange for their subscription. That lightbox looks like this:

I configured this pop-up to appear to first-time visitors. This really seems to work. I've been averaging around 250 new email subscribers per month since I turned it on about a year ago; before I used this, I averaged around 20 per month.

Originally, I was hesitant to put something like this in place because I knew it could be a minor irritant to some. However, the results speak for themselves. I'm definitely glad that I did it.

I had to make a small investment in a premium plugin for WordPress to get the professional look I wanted, but this has more than paid off. I've recouped this expense many times over already.

Investment #3: Popup Domination
Cost: US$77.00.

Make an investment to grow your blog

The growth I've seen in the last year has been awesome, although I haven’t had to work a whole lot harder to achieve these explosive results.

It just goes to show you that by investing in the right aspects of your blog, you can really make a big difference. My total investment for my new theme and for Popup Domination was just a little over $150. I would spend that money again in a heartbeat.

I started out only paying $13.95 per month for my FeedBlitz subscription, but now, because of my phenomenal email subscriber growth, I pay $49.95 per month. I don't mind it a bit—I can assure you that it has been well worth it.

Here's my advice if you want to grow your blog: educate yourself on what works, and then don't be afraid to make a few investments. Not all of them will turn out exactly as you desire, but you've got to be willing to take the risk if you want the big payoff. It worked for me.

Jeff Nickles is a regular guy on a quest to live life to its fullest. He began MySuperChargedLife.com in December of 2007 as a way to share his experiences and to learn more about life. You can reach him by visiting his blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Blog Smarter: Invest in Your Own Success