ProBlogger: How to Calculate the Value of Your Blog

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How to Calculate the Value of Your Blog Posted: 27 Nov 2014 08:01 AM PST This is a guest contribution from Tom Fanelli. For most businesses, blogs are marketing tools. And while most take the time to measure their ROI from other marketing avenues, I'm surprised by how many don't truly understand how their blog is (or is not) benefiting their bottom line. Understanding your blog's value can help you determine if you want to invest more on its development, adjust your blogging strategy to make it more effective, or simply cut back on your investment entirely. Sound good? Here's a guide on how to figure out your blog's value. Track the cost of content development. This isn't as easy of a task as it may initially seem. If you work with freelancers to create and upload content, their fees are the most obvious direct cost, but it's likely that there's still someone in-house who reviews the content – and their time is a cost to your business. Be sure to account for time spent by all full-time employees who contribute to the blog as part of their responsibilities. Ask them to track how much time they spend working on blog-related tasks for a month. Calculate your cost per visit.  Okay, you know how much it costs to keep your blog going, but you want to consider that in the context of how much traffic your blog generates. If you spend money promoting your blog posts, through PPC, Outbrain, or outreach, factor this in. Don't forget to include any associated labor costs. Now add the cost of content development and promotion, and divide it by the number of visits over the same period. This is your blog's "cost per visit". It can also be valuable to determine the cost per unique visitor. Determine the revenue of each visit.  What direct returns do you get from your blog? You may earn money from advertising or affiliate sales. If that's the case, calculate your total profits on a monthly basis and divide it by the number of visits during the same period. However, many business blogs don't have ads or support affiliate sales. Instead, your goal is likely to convert blog visitors into sales of your products or services. For product sales, you can use analytics to determine how many visitors on your blog ultimately completed a shopping transaction as well as the exact revenue from each transaction. But for most services (and some products), it may still take a phone call before they actually convert into a sale. Accounting for your blog's influence on sales in this way is a little trickier but not impossible: Track how many blog visitors end up on your "Contact" page. Figure out the average value of a new customer, and use this figure to assign a value to these "conversions". For a month, have your sales team ask new clients if they visited your blog. If the answer is yes, include that sale as part of the return you earn on your blog. Use call tracking. Provide a unique phone number for those who visit your blog, so you'll be able to say definitively that the customer was acquired in that manner. There is also another business blogging goal that shouldn't be overlooked, though it is not as easy to quantify: establishing your brand or expertise. The best way to account for this type of value is focus on the cost per visitor. From there, you can better determine if your investment is worth the reach you're achieving. Don't forget the value of the content itself. Many businesses reuse blog content in other ways, such as eBooks, marketing materials, social media updates, and newsletters. It's worth calculating the cost and value of these other uses to get a more complete picture of how your blog fits into your marketing success. If you find that your blog's ROI isn't bad but also isn't where you'd like it, this is also one way that you can improve it without blowing up your entire strategy. Now What? So you've subtracted your cost per visit from your gross revenue per visit, and you now have the value of each visit. Armed with this data, you can evaluate your overall content strategy. Do you need to make adjustments? Should you double-down on your current success? Can you grow your business by driving more blog traffic through PPC ads? This figure is also important if you're calculating the value of your domain name or website for sale. Tom Fanelli is one of the nation's leading experts on website development, SEO, SEM, and social media marketing. For nearly two decades, Tom has built both world-class marketing solutions and leading global marketing teams in corporate and small business environments across many industries. He has shared his insight on online customer acquisition, lead generation, and business optimization in both print and web publications, as a presenter of over 50 webinars, and as a featured speaker for companies like Intuit, Microsoft, Sage Software, and the Small Business Administration. Follow Tom on Twitter at @tfanelli, purchase his ebook Infographics in Action, or learn more on TomFanelli.com. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How to Calculate the Value of Your Blog

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ProBlogger: Man Vs. Machine: Get Better Sales by Keeping Marketing Automation Human

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Man Vs. Machine: Get Better Sales by Keeping Marketing Automation Human Posted: 26 Nov 2014 07:56 AM PST Image via Flickr user Peyri Herrera This is a guest contribution from Veronica Taylor. Marketing automation without a human element is just a robot on autopilot. Before, during and after each automated campaign it is essential for real people to plan, edit and review. When campaigns aren’t working, they need to be tested and updated. Most people think of marketing automation as efficient yet impersonal. When used correctly, however, most automated marketing solutions now provide the possibility for highly targeted messages based on each customer’s personal interests, preferences and history. Here are a few tips for making your automated campaigns efficient and dynamic while also building stronger connections with your customers. Have a Specific Goal For each campaign you create, it is essential to know what you are trying to accomplish. Are you seeking more new signups? Trying to get leads to download your whitepaper? Simply raising awareness about your business or an upcoming event? If you have automated messages going out to customers but you don’t have a clear idea of what results you are trying to measure, you will not know if the campaign was successful. You won’t know which messages were effective and which ones need to be changed. If you are not measuring the response to your messages, you are not listening to your customers. The automated campaign will continue to run robotically, with no edits or improvements. Know what you are trying to achieve. If it’s not working, update it. Survey and Track Customers The best way to give marketing automation a personal touch is to use it to its full potential. Marketing automation now has the capability to track and store each individual customer’s preferences, history, important dates, interests, personal information and much more. With this wealth of data, it is possible to automatically create highly personally targeted campaigns for each customer. This way, the customer receives information that is directly relevant to them, making the experience much more personal. You can send out automated appointment date reminders, bill payment notifications, birthday messages, personalized promotions and so on. This type of personalized messaging builds stronger connections and reduces customer churn. When you want to update your customer information in order to provide even better targeted messages, survey customers to learn more and keep information up to date. Know When to Write a Personal Message Sometimes automation just isn’t appropriate. There are many instances in business where it is essential to take the time to manually write a message or a response to a customer. In these cases, a prompt message sent by a real person has a much greater impact than an automated message ever could. These are just a few examples: when a customer makes a very large purchase and you want to thank them with a special discount or free product/service, when a customer has been with you for years and you want to show your appreciation, when a customer takes the time to write to you with feedback, questions or comments, when you make a mistake with a customer’s bill, purchase or account, when a customer has a complaint, and when you have time to make personal comments on social media (automated social media management saves oodles of time, but you absolutely need real posts or tweets thrown in). Review and Analyze As mentioned before, if you don’t keep track of how customers are responding to your automated messages you are simply letting a robot control your marketing, which is going to show in your sales. Real people are essential to a marketing strategy because they try different things when they see something isn’t working as well as they had hoped. One of the greatest advantages humans have over machines is that they take chances and make mistakes rather than doing the same thing over and over again. The best way to increase revenue, boost customer life span and attract new customers is to listen to what your customers want. Automated marketing solutions provide you with all the data you will ever want. Keep a close eye on your reports, open rates, unsubscribes and other data. Review your campaign data after each campaign you send. Learn what customers respond to, learn what they don’t want and learn how to react positively when you need to make a change. To summarize: Your marketing is ultimately in your hands. Marketing automation makes it possible for businesses to save time and money, reduce the daily effort their staff has to put in and connect more effectively with their customers. Marketing automation is a powerful tool, but like any other tool it needs a skilled operator to make it work. Veronica Taylor, Assistant Marketing Manager at SimplyCast, enjoys writing about small business marketing, improving communication strategies, social media trends and more. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Man Vs. Machine: Get Better Sales by Keeping Marketing Automation Human

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ProBlogger: 5 Sources of Ideas for My Blog Posts

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5 Sources of Ideas for My Blog Posts Posted: 25 Nov 2014 07:16 AM PST On a recent webinar over at ProBlogger.com I was asked by John: “Where do you get your ideas for blog posts?” It’s a question we get a lot so I thought it might be a good one to write up here on the blog. Discuss: I’m also keen to hear your experience on the question because I’m very aware that my approach is just one of many ways to go about generating blog post ideas. 1. Questions from Readers Perhaps the #1 place I get inspiration for blog posts is the inspiration for this one – a question from a reader. As I look back at the most popular posts here on ProBlogger I can see this pattern over and over again. While I might not always start with the actual question (as I’ve done above) questions often stimulate me writing a post. If one person is asking a question you can bet that it is something that others are wondering about too. Questions come from a variety of sources including: Emails from readers Comments on blog posts Webinar Q&As Real life events (both in conversations and in Q&As) Social Media Conversations My own questions (both present and past ones) Taking note of questions is something that you need to get in the habit of noticing, capturing and responding to – once you get into this mindset you’ll have a never ending supply of ideas. Example: How to Convince Someone to Be Interviewed on Your Blog 2. Reader Surveys One of the most powerful things I’ve ever done to collect reader questions and understand what topics I can write about that will solve readers needs is to set up surveys. Over on Digital Photography School if you sign up for our email newsletter you get an invitation three months after joining to do a short survey. The survey has a handful of demographic questions to help us get a picture of who is reading but also has an optional open ended question that asks readers if they have any questions, problems, challenges that they’d like us to write about. Since setting up this survey we’ve had tens of thousands of people complete that question which gives us invaluable ideas. Here’s a screen shot of the question we ask and some of the most recent responses. This survey gets new responses every day and is ongoing but the other option is to do a one off survey. Here on ProBlogger we tend to do this as an annual ‘census’ where we invite readers to complete a similar survey all at the same time. This gives us a snapshot of the readership. It also enables us to compare where our readers are at today as compared to last year and the year before. Updating Previous Topics Once you’ve been blogging for a few years you’ll potentially have hundreds (if not thousands) of posts in your archives – some of which will become dated or even obsolete. Going back through your archives to examine old posts that are out of date can serve as great inspiration for new posts. Perhaps you’ve changed your opinion on the topic, or maybe there’s fresh information you can share, or maybe there is a new trend, technique or tool that you can write about. In some cases you might want to delete the previous post (if its now completely wrong) or you might also want to update it or link to a new post on the topic. Either way – your old dated posts will quite often give all kinds of inspiration for new ones so go hunting in your archives! Related Reading: How to Repurpose your Content and Why You Should Do it 3. Stories/Experiences/Experiments/Learnings Another source for many of my own most popular posts over the years have simply come from my own experience. This has been especially the case here on ProBlogger where many of my posts have simply been me sharing what I’m learning. Take for example some recent posts here I have shared: How Our eBook Launches Have Evolved (after 235,000 eBook Sales) – reflections on what I’ve learned over the last 5-6 years My Experiment with Starting a 2nd Facebook Page for My Blog – a case study on a little experimenting I was running Tapping into Joy and Disappointment: Lessons from Our Biggest eBook Launch Ever – lessons learned in a recent launch Spend 10 Minutes Doing This Every Day and You Could Transform Your Blogging – sharing an activity that I do that helps me My Top 5 Mistakes as a Blogger – don’t just share the good experiences and successes! 4. Evolution of Previous Posts Pay particular attention to previous posts that you’ve written and how people respond to them because this is often a source of great inspiration for future posts. Let me give you an example. Recently I noticed that an old post that we published on Digital Photography School was getting a surge in traffic from Facebook. The post was titled How a Humble 85mm Lens Became my Favourite and was written by one of our regular paid writers. The post had been popular when we first posted in back in 2012 but after I’d shared it again on our Facebook page (I highlight 1-2 posts in our archives every day) it had been really well received by our Facebook community. It struck me that perhaps we could get some of our other writers to write similar posts about their favourite lenses. We have a private little ‘group’ on Facebook for our dPS writers so I posted the idea there. Our other writers liked the idea and began nominating the lenses that they’d write about and got to work on writing the posts. We’ve already published the first of these favorite lens posts and have got another 7-8 of them being written to be published over the coming months. Want another example? Check out this post I wrote on ProBlogger last year on how I turned a simple guest post into a series of posts that generated over 3 million visitors to dPS. This principle of watching how people react with your previous blog posts can be extended to see how people react to your previous social media updates. A good example of this is a post I published earlier in the year here on ProBlogger titled 10 Quick Tips for Entrepreneurial Bloggers which was actually based upon some of my most popular Tweets. I looked back over the previous years of tweets from my ProBlogger twitter account to find the most retweeted and liked updates – which then became a blog post. 5. Talks/Presentations/Twitter Chats Another source of numerous recent blog posts that I’ve written have been talks and presentations that I’ve given. I invest many hours on preparing to speak at a conference or event so it makes sense to take that work and turn it into a blog post (or series of them) wherever possible. An example of this would be my recent post – How to build a Blog that has Lasting Impact Upon its Readers in which I took a reader question (point #1 above) and shared my answer to it using some ideas from a recent talk I gave. I also included some of the slides (like the one above) from my talk as graphic in the blog post to give it some visual punch. Another example of this is a post I wrote here on ProBlogger recently titled – How to Build a Blog Worth Monetizing – in which I shared a series of tweets from a Twitter Chat that I’d co hosted (the #BlogChat twitter chat). In fact many of those tweets also had slides from a previous talk also! Where Do You Get Ideas for Blog Posts? I’m scratching the surface of this topic here and know there are many more ways to generate ideas – but I’m keen to hear your experience! Where do you get your ideas for blog posts? Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Sources of Ideas for My Blog Posts

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ProBlogger: How to Use Google in the Most Unusual Way to Make Your Self-Editing Faster, and Better

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How to Use Google in the Most Unusual Way to Make Your Self-Editing Faster, and Better Posted: 24 Nov 2014 07:43 AM PST This is a guest contribution from Karol K. You can read the first and second post in this mini series here and here.… “[...] then the evening came and she found herself sitting by the drawing board again, trying to [...]“ Um … wait a minute, is it “sitting by the drawing board” or “sitting at the drawing board”? Damn it, I never remember, and both sound okay to me! How do I check this?! … Oh, the struggles of every blogger attempting to edit their own work. There are thousands of expressions just like the one above, causing us problems on a daily basis. Is something in or on, at or by, from or with, of or for, “all of a sudden” or “all of the sudden”? There’s really no end to this craze. And this is especially relevant if English is not your first language. So what to do? What to do if you’re not entirely sure and you don’t want to look silly? Call a friend? Email a friendly blogger? Shout this out on Twitter? Sure, that could work, but you can be sure that if you do this multiple times throughout the day, people will hate you. There’s a quicker and better solution though. Its name is Google. Please, hold on! Don’t leave just yet. I promise the trick I’m about to describe isn’t as obvious as it sounds now. Introducing clever Googling! Here’s what I do when I’m in doubt like that. Step #1. I go to Google and search for part of the phrase that I’m uncertain of. I put†the phrase in quotation marks. Using the example above, like so: “sitting by the drawing board” Now, the individual results Google gives me don’t matter that much. What matters is the number of indexed pages: Not a lot in this case. Step #2. I start checking other known alternatives. Like so: Ah, that’s better, over 130,000 results. In most cases, what this means is that the higher number means proper expression. The end. Quick. Simple. Correct in most cases. (Of course, sometimes a common error is more popular than the correct form. But even if that’s the case, can using this wrong form still be considered a serious mistake?) How to do this properly To be perfectly honest with you, I use this trick all the time. I’ve truly made Google my lightning-fast blog editor, and I encourage you to do the same. Now, just a handful of final guidelines. If you’re completely clueless about what the correct expression you’re looking for might be, try using the magic “*” character. This star lets Google know that you’re looking for any word that fits the gap. Go ahead, try it with†“sitting * the drawing board”. Always put the phrase in quotation marks. This is important. Without them, the method is useless. Enclose the word you’re looking for on both sides. For instance, looking for just “by the drawing board” wouldn’t provide me with sufficient context for the returned number to be an accurate representation. Always put the missing part in the middle. Use replacement verbs and nouns. Not all expressions are popular enough and they might not return any reliable numbers, but you can improve the results by replacing some not common words with more common ones. For example, if “drawing board” is too specific, I can replace it with “desk” and the meaning remains more or less the same (“by the desk”). Mind the context. In some cases, two versions of a phrase can be equally as popular, but that can be due to the fact that they mean two separate things. In such a case, look into the individual results and take a look at the excerpts Google gives you. Here’s an example result for “sitting on the drawing board”: Is this method fail-proof? Of course not. But it’s not meant to be fail-proof. This is just a trick to speed up your editing when you’re stuck and can’t find the right way to express a thought. What do you think? Will you make Google your personal editor too? … Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a freelance writer, published author, founder of NewInternetOrder.com and a blogger at Bidsketch.com (delivering some cool freelance blogging and writing tools, advice and resources just like what youíre reading now). Whenever heís not working, Karol likes to spend time training Capoeira and enjoying life. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How to Use Google in the Most Unusual Way to Make Your Self-Editing Faster, and Better

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ProBlogger: 5 Quick Questions with Robert Scoble: What Makes a Great Tech Blog?

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5 Quick Questions with Robert Scoble: What Makes a Great Tech Blog? Posted: 23 Nov 2014 07:08 AM PST Robert Scoble is the brains behind the blog Scobleizer (which he’s just abandoned in favour of solely microblogging on Facebook), and a well-respected authority on social media, tech, and blogging. He has worked for Microsoft, and is currently with Rackspace. We were super-fortunate to grab a few minutes of his time to answer five questions about how to make your tech blog a success. What do you think are the essentials a tech blog should have in order to be successful? Define success! For some, it might be just getting an industry discussion going. Others might want to build a media business to the place where they can quit their day job and do this full time. In each, it really is simple: make content other people want to read, discuss, and share. Of course, if that was so easy everyone would have a famous blog. If I were starting out today I'd pick a niche that I could own that will get bigger over time. Today that might be Wearable Computers. Tomorrow? Brain interfaces or robots. These topics don't yet have a blog that is dominant. It's a lot easier to get going in a smaller niche that doesn't yet have strong blogs. What are the topics you've found really resonates with the readers? What seems to get the most engagement? Drones. But, seriously, if you try writing about drones it's too late. The trick is to find something that will be big tomorrow. If you had an exclusive insight into the Apple Watch, for instance (something that hasn't yet been reported) that will do very well. For newer bloggers, or those wanting to turn their tech blog into a business, what would you suggest focusing on first? I would pick a small niche. Cover it to death. There's no way you can really blow away Techcrunch, Verge, Re/code, in overall tech space unless you have millions of dollars. But, you can become the world's leading drone (or brain interface, or robot, or wearable computer) expert and use that to edge your way into a business. It really comes down to content. Do you have something that no one else has? Marques Brownlee, for instance, has a unique take on gadget reviews. Others focus on tech out of just a single country like China or Israel. Yet others, like Julien Blin, or Redg Snodgrass are trying to own the wearable space. What is the hardest thing about being a tech blogger, and how have you worked to overcome that? Sitting through all the pitches is the hardest thing. To find the next big thing you've probably got to see 150 so so companies. Maybe even more. I've been pitched in bathrooms (no no) and on the street at 2 a.m. at SXSW (also a no no). How do I overcome that? Always be nice, sit through a few minutes, and if you aren't interested, say so and why. That said, most of the time now I only see things if referred by someone I trust. What’s the best advice you’ve been given about blogging (or business in general?) Be real. Don't be corrupt, or better said, disclose conflicts. Dave Winer showed me the power of that more than a decade ago and it still serves me well today. It's why I share so much of my private life. All you really have is your reputation. It's why I work so hard on personal relationships with people across the industry. What do you think? Have you experienced something that Robert has mentioned? I’d love to hear about it! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger 5 Quick Questions with Robert Scoble: What Makes a Great Tech Blog?

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ProBlogger: Google Introducing ‘Mobile Friendly’ Tags in Search Results and Signal It Will Start Impacting Search Rankings

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Google Introducing ‘Mobile Friendly’ Tags in Search Results and Signal It Will Start Impacting Search Rankings Posted: 21 Nov 2014 07:06 AM PST Over the last couple of years any blogger who has paid attention to their analytics will know that how people are reading blogs is changing. No longer are people simply arriving on your blog on their desktop computer or laptop but on tablets, mobile phones and more. Today I took a look at the change in how people arrive on my blog (Digital Photography School) over last 3 years. I doubt the results will surprise anyone. The growth in mobile/tablet traffic has been remarkable. When I look at the last period in the chart in more detail and look at just this month (November) the trend continues Another month or two and we’ll be hitting a 50/50 split of those on desktops and those on mobile devices. Every blogger I speak with tells me a similar story. While the breakdown might vary a little the day is coming (if it hasn’t already) where most bloggers will have more readers consuming content on mobile devices than desktop. Google Launch Mobile Friendly Tags and Testing Tool Google have been encouraging those with websites to make them mobile friendly for a year or more now but in the last week Google made an interesting announcement that is aimed at twisting the arm of those with sites even more. They announced that they’ll be rolling out ‘tags’ in search results that mark sites as ‘mobile-friendly’. In the coming weeks when you search Google you’ll start seeing this next to those sites Googlebot considers to be fit for mobile consumption. What makes a mobile friendly site in Googlebot’s eyes? What it is looking for is sites that: Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash Uses text that is readable without zooming Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped Google also made available an easy to use ‘test’ that enables us to add our URL and test if our blog fits the criteria. Simply plug in your URL and it’ll analyse your site and give you a tick of approval or a cross with suggestions on how to fix any problems Google to Start using Mobile-Friendly Criteria in Ranking Sites Also of interest in Google’s announcement this week is this line: We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal. Take note: Google are officially letting us know that if your site isn’t mobile friendly that it could hurt how your site is ranked in Google. Note: last year we completely redesigned Digital Photography School with a mobile friendly responsive design. We’ve also gradually been rolling out responsive designs on ProBlogger.com, ProBloggerEvents.com and in the coming month hope to finish overhauling the ProBlogger suite of sites by making ProBlogger.net and our Job boards similarly design. It’s a big job but well worth the effort! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Google Introducing ‘Mobile Friendly’ Tags in Search Results and Signal It Will Start Impacting Search Rankings

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ProBlogger: Making The Impossible Possible: How I Created A Full Time Blogging Income With No Qualifications

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Making The Impossible Possible: How I Created A Full Time Blogging Income With No Qualifications Posted: 20 Nov 2014 07:33 AM PST Image via Flickr user Susy Morris This is a guest contribution from freelance writer Stacey Corrin. It was a dark day in November 2012 when I first began to blog. Rain lashed the windows of the home we'd just moved into. Removal boxes lay strewn across the floor and the cries of my newborn twins rang shrill in my ears. I felt trapped, with no escape plan. Being a new parent can do that to you. It can make you feel like the only person in the room. It can sap your energy, your personality, your identity. Yet it can also put you on a path you might never consider possible. Today I want to share how I got from that wretched point to my life now. Three years later, I’m now a successful ghostwriter, blogger and full time freelancer.   It Began As A Cry For Help My foray into blogging began like most peoples does. It was expression, even a cry for help. Most importantly it was an outlet for the turmoil and confusion of young parenthood. I set myself up with a free WordPress blog and proceeded to spend any spare time, jotting down my thoughts. Off they would go into the ether and I'd feel a little lighter, a little more relieved for having let it all out. Little did I know that there were people reading my musings. They introduced themselves, faceless entities going through similar situations. They provided support, insight and friendship I'd never found offline. These people introduced me to a whole community I never knew existed. People from all walks of life were doing just what I was doing. They were baring their souls to the internet and finding comfort in the practice. What's more, they were making a living from it too!   I Immersed Myself In All Things Blogging That realisation was a revelation to me. Immediately I set about learning all that I could about blogging, SEO, and how to build an audience. It wasn't an easy process. I learned some terrible blogging habits along the way but I also found that there was so much help out there if you knew where to look. I discovered sites like this one. I haunted the big names on Twitter and Facebook yet also took stock of the little ones who were making waves. Sites like Blogging Wizard who at that point was still fresh and new. What was it that made them so successful? What were their secrets? What made them stand out? And then it dawned on me. These people stood out because they didn't follow the crowd. Well, I knew a thing or two about that. Always the oddball at school, I spent the majority of my teenage years sticking out like a sore thumb. So how could I do that with my own blog? How could I stand out and make a living at the same time? By this point I'd spent two and a half years figuring this blogging thing out. My twins had grown to the point that afforded me more freedom, so one evening I sat down with a notepad and wrote out the things I was good at. Three things stood out at me: Writing Blogging WordPress A thought began to blossom. What if I did something drastic? What if I started all over again and built a new blog from scratch? This time I'd do so with the aim of sharing everything I'd learned over the last few years. At the same time I’d market my skills to those who needed them – my blog a testament to them.   How I Turned My Passion Into Profit I realised that through helping others with their own blogs, I could show off what I'd learned along the way. Let's face it, not everyone has time to write blog post after blog post, on a daily basis. Unless of course like me, you love to write. Thus blogging about blogging and offering my services as a ghostwriter seemed like a smart move. Through the power of Selz, a simple and free eCommerce platform, I was able to create product listings for my services. People could buy these from my new blog. With a few clicks of a button they could get a ghostwritten blog post and within a matter of days, have it land in their inbox. All attribution would go to them, no strings attached. The services I offered included: Ghostwriting WordPress content management Virtual help Social media management These were things that people needed. I knew I could provide them as I did those things every day and over time the word spread. Recommendations came in, people gave great testimonials and I built a small client base. That was over three months ago. In that time I've written over 80 blog posts of 900 words and over (excluding my own). My blog has grown from zero traffic and shares to posts with over 800 shares alone. I'm now in a place where people want to read what I'm writing. Not because they sympathise, but because they can learn something valuable from my words. Needless to say the clients have poured in too, coinciding with an income that's sustaining five people. How did I do it? I listened to what people wanted. Then I promoted the pants off what I created. Jump into Facebook groups and Quora discussions related to your niche and listen to what people are talking about. Talk to people on Social Media instead of just link dropping Offer up solutions through your blog posts, which answer people's most pressing questions Forget word counts when you're writing. A post should be as long as it needs to be, to get your message across. When promoting your content: Join places like Triberr and follow tribes with similar interests. Here you can connect with influencers who will help your posts reach a wider audience. Use the power of imagery with networks like Pinterest. This can be a massive source of traffic if you create excellent visuals to go with your posts. Don't forget your email list! Provide incentives like content upgrades for subscribers only. Follow up with personal emails that provide value to your list. The best way of exposing my blog to new readers, was to guest post for other blogs. This has been my biggest source of repeat clients and traffic. By keeping some of your best work for other people's blogs, you're making a bold statement. You're telling people that you care about quality, that you're not just about self-promotion.   It's Been A Humbling Experience Looking back to that November day, I don't recognise the person I was. Blogging lifted me from a hopeless situation into a life that's rich, vibrant and full of opportunity. If I can offer any advice to anybody, it would be this: Always believe in the impossible. No matter how hard it might seem, there is always a way if you're willing to dream big and work for it. Stacey is a Ghostwriter and Blogger who creates content for influencers in the digital marketing and WordPress community. When she’s not blogging elsewhere, she hangs out on her own blog, sharing visual content and blogging tips. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Making The Impossible Possible: How I Created A Full Time Blogging Income With No Qualifications

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