ProBlogger: The Key to Long-Term Traffic and Profit for Your Blog

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The Key to Long-Term Traffic and Profit for Your Blog Posted: 30 Apr 2020 05:00 AM PDT The post The Key to Long-Term Traffic and Profit for Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger. "How do you create content that goes viral?" I remember getting this question from a new blogger. They wanted a post to go viral on their blog, thinking it would suddenly shoot their blog's traffic and profit into the stratosphere. And who knows? It may have done just that. Unfortunately, without having plenty of content in their archive there's a good chance those numbers would have come crashing down pretty quickly. So I told this particular blogger what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear. And I thought it would be worth sharing what I said with you all this week. Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing content that might be shared hundreds or even thousands of times. I often talk about how important it is to write sharable content. But 'going viral' won't necessarily give you the sustained traffic you need to make it as a full-time blogger. While some bloggers may have achieved overnight success on the back of a single post, in most cases it took months (if not years) for them to become full-time bloggers. I've met thousands of bloggers over the years, and the fastest any of them have reached the full-time level is four months. And that was certainly the exception to the rule. Most people take a longer to reach full-time status. And they achieve it by taking one step at a time. The thrill In the early days of Digital Photography School, I was obsessed with having my posts go viral. And in January 2007 it finally happened. The blog was about seven months old at the time, and I was averaging around 4,000 visitors a day. I certainly wasn't complaining about the traffic I had, which came from a combination of: readers from my previous photography blog lots of evergreen content ranking relatively well in search. But I'd been sitting on that number for a while, and I was no longer satisfied. I wanted more traffic, and I began to look at what other sites were doing. I was particularly drawn to social bookmarking sites such as dig.com, which were huge at the time. I started analyzing the content being shared a lot on these sites. And I discovered certain characteristics they all shared. I started writing similar content to those posts being shared over and over. It was quite different to the content I'd written so far. My posts became quite 'fluffy' – not very deep, and not very helpful either to be honest. They were written more to create controversy than to help anyone. And they all had titles that were practically clickbait. And then I'd pitch them to sites by saying, "Here's a post that might interest you and your readers". One of the sites I pitched my posts to was Lifehacker. And when they took the bait and linked to one of those posts, my traffic doubled overnight. But that was just the beginning. The next day it was picked by digg.com, and I ended up with more than 100,000 visitors in a single day. I can still remember sitting at my computer, watching my stats climb every time I refreshed the page. It was an incredible rush. And with it came the feeling that I'd finally be able to blog full-time. The aftermath But those incredible numbers didn't last long, and the next day I had 4,100 visitors. I was so disappointed. I understand why so many people want their content to go viral. Getting that rush of traffic was amazing, and I doubt I'll ever forget how I felt that morning. But despite trying to get all those new readers to read another post, sign up for my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter, I never got that traffic again. For the next month my traffic was back to around 4,000 visitors a day. It started getting me down – I really wanted another rush of traffic. I wrote more posts like the first one, trying to recreate the scenario. But none of them took off. I pitched almost every post I wrote to Lifehacker, but they didn't link to any of them. I even tried to game Digg and get my post voted up there, without success. I was obsessed with going viral again. I desperately wanted a repeat of my earlier 'success'. But all it did was encourage me to write more fluffy content designed to trigger shares rather than serve my readers. And while I did manage to get a few more posts to go viral, the spike in traffic lasted just as long. The reality My obsession with going viral continued for months. And then one day I realized what my 4,000-visitors-a-day figure really meant. I had 4,000 people coming to my site every day. Out of all the web sites on the internet, they were making a conscious decision to spend some of their time on mine. And while I wasn't getting 100,000 visitors a day, those numbers meant I was getting around 120,000 visitors a month. Which was definitely worth celebrating. But I also realized they were now getting short-changed. Because each time they visited they were getting formulaic headlines and fluffy content written specifically to be shared rather than to solve their problems. And that had to change. I changed not only what I wrote, but how I wrote. My new goal was to serve the readers I already had, and to grow my traffic slowly over time rather than in one big hit. Of course, to serve my readers I had to know what they wanted. So I asked them by sending out surveys with questions such as: "Who are you?" "What problems are you having?" "What questions do you need answered?" From those surveys I learned a lot about my readers, the problems they faced and what they wanted to know about. And I wrote content specifically to answer their question and try to solve their problems rather than to get clicks. And because I wasn't continually refreshing my stats to see whether I'd managed to go viral again, I had a lot more time to write it. Not only was I writing more useful content, I was also writing more of it. I quickly went from four posts a week to five, seven and eventually ten. The human touch Another bonus was I also had more time to interact with my readers. I started responding to comments more often, and we started a forum to try and build a community there. I also started taking advantage of the traffic I was getting by encouraging those visitors to become subscribers. I focused more on building my email list and creating email content that would engage those readers and bring them back to the site again and again. I still tried to write the occasional piece of shareable content. But rather than try to hit the ball out of the park with every post, I'd try it once in a dozen or so posts. And as it turned out, whenever I did write sharable content my writers happily shared it for me because I was serving them better. Again, they were just spikes rather than a massive growth for my blog. But they certainly helped in terms of social proof. A month after deciding to focus on my readers rather than my traffic, I was getting 4,500 visitors a day. Three months later that figure had grown to 6,000 visitors a day. And a year later my blog was getting 9,000 visitors a day. It still gets the occasional spike in traffic. But those spikes are just a bonus. My goal is to grow my traffic from day to day and have people stick around for the long term. And now, getting 100,000 visitors a day is normal for us. But only because I stopped chasing viral traffic and started creating content to help my readers. The truth I honestly hope you get to experience that moment when one of your posts goes viral and your traffic goes through the roof. But don't let it distract you from your long-term goals. Remember why you started blogging in the first place. And never take the fact people are choosing to visit your blog again and again for granted. Look after them. And in the years to come, they will look after you. Image credit: George Pagan III The post The Key to Long-Term Traffic and Profit for Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: How I Created My Profit Streams and Became a Full-Time Blogger

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How I Created My Profit Streams and Became a Full-Time Blogger Posted: 23 Apr 2020 06:00 AM PDT The post How I Created My Profit Streams and Became a Full-Time Blogger appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 153 of the ProBlogger podcast. Last week I talked about my profit streams – what they were, and what each one earned as a percentage of my total business profits. In case you missed what those percentages were, here's a summary: affiliate commissions – 46% product sales (ebooks, presets, course and printables) – 31% AdSense – 8% sponsorship – 6% ProBlogger job board – 5% ProBlogger events – 3% miscellaneous – 1%. Now I can understand how all of those numbers (and the profits they represent) may seem overwhelming to a lot of you. And that worries me, because the last thing I want is for you to think you'll never achieve numbers and that you should abandon the idea of making money as a blogger. So this week I'm going to add some context by telling you how I created all of those profit streams. Because I didn't create them all overnight, nor did I create them all at once. And knowing the journey I took to create them all over time may help you do the same. Starting from scratch I started blogging in late 2002. And in my first year I earned… nothing. But it wasn't a wasted year. Not at all. For me it was a foundation year where I learned a lot about the tools and the culture of blogging. It also helped me not only improve as a writer but also build up a decent archive of content. That helped me rank in Google, which brought me a small audience. And in that same year I learned how to communicate and engage with that audience. I also learned how to drive traffic to my site. It certainly wasn't as much traffic as I get now, but it was a start. In fact, that first years paved the way for a lot of what followed. My first steps towards monetization In my second year of blogging I began experimenting with ways to earn money from my blogs. They were costing me money, and not just from me buying domain names and hosting. They were taking up a lot of my time (by this stage I'd started a second blog where I reviewed digital cameras). I discovered AdSense (Google's advertising network), and started putting their ads on my blog. Back then they were quite ugly. A lot of them were text-based ads, and about all you could do in terms of customising them was change the colours. But from day one I started earning money from them – not enough to buy a coffee (it was only a few cents a day), but it was still better than nothing. Around the same time I started experimenting with Amazon's Affiliate Program (or the Amazon Associates Program as it's now known). For those of you who don't know how it works, you set up a link to an Amazon product using a special link that's tied to you. If anyone then buys that product after using your link to find it, you get a small commission. And in my case it really was a small commission – a few cents a week. Amazon was just a bookstore back then, and I was earning 4–5% commissions on $10 books. It may not have been a lot of money. But it was a wonderful learning experience. Of course, I wanted to be earning a lot more than a few cents a day. So that year (and the next) I worked really hard on bringing more traffic to my sites. After all, the more people I had visiting my sites the more chance someone would click on one of ads or links. Of course, it was great to see more and more people reading my posts. But having more money coming in was also a great incentive. Another thing I worked on was optimizing my income streams. I learned how tweaking things in AdSense (the number of ads, their sizes, their positions, etc.) could affect how much money you earned. Back then you could tweak the colours and even the design to an extent. I also experimented with my Amazon Affiliate Links. I learned how to use calls to action to improve the chances of people buying those products. I also put those calls to action in different places on my blog to see if I could improve my chances even more. And while all that was happening I was still creating lots of content, driving traffic, and building a  community. A more direct approach In years four and five I added a few more income streams to my repertoire, the first being direct ad sales. Advertisers were now starting to target my site, to the point where the same advertisers were on my site all the time. But while they bringing in revenue, I knew Google AdSense was taking a cut. So I reached out to some of them to see if they would rather work with me directly. Again, it wasn't a lot of money. My first direct advertiser (an Australian camera store) paid me $20 a month to advertise on my site. From there I started charging a monthly fee in return for having a specific type of ad in a specific position on my site. I charged more for banner ad in prime positions, and less for sidebar ads in a less-visible position. Like my other income streams the money only trickled in at first. But as my traffic grew, so did my revenue. I also experimented with other affiliate programs. Other bloggers were creating their own ebooks, and I joined some of their affiliate programs to promote their eBooks and other products (and earn a commission for each one). This time Yahoo! had an advertising network, and I started putting their ads on my blog, along with some from Chitika. I thought I'd lose some revenue from my AdSense ads, but all that changed was me having a new income stream. This was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized I could quickly increase my income by adding a second income stream. (It didn't double my income overnight, but it came close.) Product placement Around the same time, Wiley (the US publishing house) asked me to write the ProBlogger book. Of course, that book became another small income stream. But the offer (which came completely out of the blue) only came because I'd been blogging on ProBlogger for a couple of years and had built a profile on that particular topic of blogging. I also created a course with fellow blogger Andy Wibbels, which I ran on the ProBlogger site. The course (which I think was called Six Figure Blogging) no longer exists, but it was my first experience of having my own product to sell. And while I felt a little out of my depth at the time, I'm glad I did it. Selling my expertise In years six and seven I added three more income streams. The first was being paid to speak at events. Again, this came completely out of the blue. I can still remember the first time I was asked to speak at a conference and being asked, "What's your fee?" I thought, What? You're going to pay me to speak at the conference? These days I say “No” more often than not (living in Australia makes it hard to get to conferences in other countries), but I still enjoy doing it. I also tried my hand at consulting, where I would coach people about blogging. I quickly realized it wasn't for me. I knew a lot about blogging, but I didn't think consulting suited my style or personality. I figured I'd have a much bigger impact by creating content that lots of people could benefit from. And that led to me creating some of the products we have on ProBlogger such as the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. And around this time we also created the ProBlogger job board. Again, it didn't generate much income at first (we were only getting two or three jobs a week). But since then it has become what is probably the most passive income stream I have. More product placement In years seven through to ten I focused on building different types of products. At this stage I'd started Digital Photography School, and I started putting 15–20 minutes aside each day to work on my first ebook. A lot of the content came from posts I'd written about portraiture and how to take good photos of people. After bringing all the information together, I got it edited and found someone to design the book for me. All up it took about four months. I was worried no-one would buy it because a lot of the information was already on the site. (I was completely upfront with my readers about this.) But we ended up selling $70,000 worth of copies in 11 days. And again, it only happened because I'd spent all these years building my audience. I now had another income stream. And since then we've launched around 35 other products on a range of topics we cover on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. For a while we also had a membership site on ProBlogger, where people paid a monthly fee to access premium such as webinars, closed private communities, and plugins we'd developed. It was profitable enough, but it wasn't satisfying for me to run because there wasn't much engagement. People signed up, and I didn't quite know why. We closed it down, and shortly afterwards we began the ProBlogger podcast. It doesn't make anywhere near as much money, but I feel it's having a much greater impact. And to me, that's more important than money. An eventful time It was also around this time that I ran the first ProBlogger event. The first three or four events didn't make a profit, which was fine because it was more a labor of love. But running events with 400 or 500 attendees can get quite expensive (and risky) to run, so I started building some income streams around them. We also started creating 'printables' – products specifically designed to be printed. On Digital Photography School we created posing guides with hand drawings of different poses for taking portraits. The idea was for people to take them to a shoot so they could point to a drawing and tell their subjects, "Hey, pose like this." And in years 12 and 13 we created more products such courses on different aspects of photography, and Adobe Lightroom presets that people can use to process their images with one click. Over to you I hope this puts your mind at ease about making money from blogging. As I said, looking at all those numbers can be overwhelming. But now you know the full story of how those income streams were created, and that it happened over a dozen years or so. You may start making money more quickly, or it may take you longer. The most important thing is to not give up. You will get there. So where has your monetization journey taken you? What income streams are you using now, and what will you be focusing on next? Let us know in the comments. Image credit: Plush Design Studio The post How I Created My Profit Streams and Became a Full-Time Blogger appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: How I Earn a Living as a Blogger from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School

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How I Earn a Living as a Blogger from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School Posted: 16 Apr 2020 05:00 AM PDT The post How I Earn a Living as a Blogger from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 150 of the ProBlogger podcast. One of our main aims here at ProBlogger is to help people make money (if not a living) from their blogs. And we've certainly talked about it a lot over the years. We even have a portal dedicated to this very topic. But this week I'd like to give you some concrete examples by telling you how I earn a living from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. Now before I get into the details, I need to tell you a few things. Firstly, this information is based on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School (dPS) combined. Of course, seeing as dPS is about eight times the size of ProBlogger that's where the bulk of the profit comes from. But these figures (or rather percentages) are for the entire business. Secondly, I'll be talking about profit, not revenue. They are two very different things, and talking about revenue without mentioning expenses isn't very useful. Spending a thousand dollars to make a thousand dollars won't get you very far. Finally, I'll be talking about percentages rather than actual amounts because talking about what I earn makes me feel a little uncomfortable. And depending on what stage you're at on your blogging journey, the percentages will be far easier to relate to. So, with that out of the way let me tell you how I earn a living as a blogger. 1.   Affiliate commissions Nearly half of my income (46%) comes from affiliate commissions. Around 10% of those commissions are from Amazon, with the rest distributed among eBooks, courses, software and online services. The great thing about commissions is there are no expenses (other than the time it takes to set them up), and so you can keep whatever you earn. 2. Product sales My second-largest income earner is product sales at 31%. Remember how I said it was important to look at profits rather than revenue? I earn pretty much the same revenue from product sales as I do from affiliate commissions. But the eBooks, Lightroom presets, courses and printables I sell don't just appear out of thin air. People put time and effort into creating them. And we pay them for their time and effort, which reduces our profits. 3. AdSense revenue My third-highest income stream (8%) comes via Google's AdSense program. This was the first income stream I ever tried (somewhere around 2003–2004), and it still works for me. I don't have to split the money with anyone, and because AdSense has already taken its cut there aren't too many direct expenses. Of course, that doesn't mean it will work for every blogger and every type of blog. Digital Photography School gets four to five million visitors a month, which really helps with banner ads. AdSense seems to like our site as well. And I should also point out that our AdSense income isn't what it used to be. Some of that has to do with the direct sponsorship we've managed to secure. But even if we ignore that fact for a moment, AdSense's earnings have been slowly declining over the past few years. And it's not just us. Most people who use AdSense or other ad networks have seen similar declines in income. And a lot of the ad networks are now developing different products because their revenue is slipping. AdSense makes up about 8% of our total income. That sounds small but it's fairly significant. It's certainly a nice direct deposit to get in my bank account every month. It doesn't go up and down a lot. It just really depends on traffic. As I said, slowly declining as well. 4. Sponsorships Next at 6% is sponsorships (i.e. working directly with brands). I started doing this around 2004–2005. I can still remember ringing a camera store for the first time and saying, "Hey, would you like to reach people looking to buy cameras? Because I've got a photography blog". Of course, I then had to explain what a blog actually was. But I eventually convinced a camera store to pay me $20 a month to advertise on my blog. And as my traffic increased I'd would raise the monthly amount accordingly. On Digital Photography School we offer sponsorship options to advertisers, and replace AdSense with their ads. But we'll only do it if we'd earn more from the sponsorship deal than we would from AdSense. (We know how much an AdSense slot will earn us, and so we try to at least double the amount from a direct sponsorship ad campaign. So far we've had sponsorship from: Canon and Tamron other photography education sites centers such as the New York Institute of Photography. We also offer: placements in our newsletter (which goes out to about 700,000 readers every month) opportunities to run competitions on the site social media advertising (which we always disclose). We haven't used banner advertising or AdSense much on ProBlogger. But we have done a few sponsorships campaigns on the podcast and at events. In fact, the profit we make at events comes mostly from the sponsors. (I've put the money we make from events in a separate category that I'll get to shortly.) 5. The ProBlogger job board Following closely at 5% is the ProBlogger job board, which we started back in 2006. People pay US$50 to have their ad put on the job board for 30 days, which we then tell our audience about on Twitter. The jobs barely trickled in at first, and weeks would go by with only one ad on the board. But it's been growing ever since, and while I probably spent several thousand dollars getting it up and running, it now provides us with 5% of our income. 6. ProBlogger events Around 3% of my income comes from the ProBlogger events we run. For the first three or four years we just broke even. But then the event grew to around 300–400 bloggers, and the expenses also grew. (I once received a hotel bill for more than $100,000.) I started thinking, If this doesn't work, people don't show up, or something goes wrong it's going to hurt a lot of people. And so I started building in a profit margin to cover those potential risks. But we still try to keep it as affordable as possible. And we must be doing a pretty good job because we always get comments from our attendees saying, "This is just so cheap". We charge our attendees around 80% of what it costs to put the event on. The profit comes from our sponsors, and varies from year to year as different sponsors come and go. We've had some amazing sponsors over the last few years. Olympus is an ongoing sponsor for us, Olympus Australia, the camera maker. We've had a variety of different sponsors over the years. 7. Miscellaneous The final 1% comes from things such as: speaking fees book royalties copyright fees (when Australian schools use Digital Photography School material). Over to you And there you have it: my income stream broken up into the various categories it comes from. If you're earning money from your blog, how do you earn it? Are you using affiliate links or AdSense? Are you selling products or services? Or are you doing something else? Let us know in the comments. Image credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko The post How I Earn a Living as a Blogger from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: How ‘Warming up Your Readers’ Helped One Blogger Earn More than $28,000

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How ‘Warming up Your Readers’ Helped One Blogger Earn More than $28,000 Posted: 09 Apr 2020 04:00 PM PDT The post How ‘Warming up Your Readers’ Helped One Blogger Earn More than $28,000 appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 117 of the ProBlogger podcast. Over the past four weeks I've talked about the four stages of warming up your readers and turning them into raving fans: 1.           Getting the word out about your blog 2.           Getting first-time visitors interested in your blog 3.           Getting more subscribers, followers and connections 4.           Getting people to engage with you and your blog. This week I'm wrapping things by sharing how one blogger with relatively few reads used these principles to earn more than $28,000. And she did it all with a single blog post, a SlideShare presentation, a lead magnet, an email sequence, and a webinar. Donna Moritz runs Socially Sorted – a site that teaches non-designers how to create pro-quality visual content for more leads, sales and impact. And over the years she wrote a couple of big blog posts that did really well, including 36 Visual Content Creation Tools the Pros Can't Live Without. She also created a SlideShare for the post (a way to repurpose your content that I talked about in something I talked about in How to Get the Word out about Your New Blog) that, according to Donna, "went nuts". She started writing blog posts for other people to promote their webinars and other events, and found she could drive a lot of traffic to whatever she was promoting. So when she was asked to be an affiliate for Amy Porterfield, she wanted to write a "firecracker" blog post (as she calls them) that would get the most attendees for Amy's webinar. The blog post After spending a couple of weeks collecting information from influencers, she sat down and write 21 Pro Tips for a Packed House at Your Webinar or Live Event Using Visual Marketing. It was a list post with a great title (don't you agree?), lots of visuals and lots of quotes. And it included both a banner ad for signups and a lead magnet Being such a targeted blog post, it received less than a thousand shares. (Her two previous 'big' posts received 3,000 and 6,000 shares.) But Donna was just getting started. The SlideShare She created a 32-slide SlideShare presentation featuring quotes from influencers she featured in her blog post. It not only linked back to the blog post, but also included a link to free cheat sheet. When her slides went out, she had 700 people subscribe to get that cheat sheet. (That number has since grown to 1,000.) And those slides (which have now been viewed more than 21,000 times) are still bringing in traffic. The lead magnet Donna's next move was to create a lead magnet by offering new subscribers a free cheat sheet that related to the blog post. Using a Canva template, she created a nine-page PDF and gave subscribers the link as a way of saying thank you. (Her current lead magnet is a 14-page PDF titled, "99 Video Ideas".) And so subscribers get two emails as soon as they sign up: the 'welcome' email, and a link to their free cheat sheet. Donna believes the key to offering freebies as lead magnets is to follow up on them. "My mistake over a couple of years was not actually following up. They would download it and then that was it." And so she began creating her email sequence. The email sequence Donna admits she was terrible at doing them at first. "I didn't even know what that was.") But she persevered, and now has an email sequence that includes: ·         the traditional 'welcome' email ·         a question (which I'll talk about in a bit) ·         an email explaining what to expect in later emails ·         a few emails with tips. And after that they start receiving her newsletter. Donna believes in giving her readers value from the word go. "I don't want them to feel as if I'm saying, 'Oh, I've got a webinar on' out of the blue." So when you subscribe you're taken to a page on her blog that has links to articles and interviews that provide plenty of useful information. The second email in the sequence asks a simple question: "Tell me your biggest challenge". And more importantly, she reads everyone's responses. "That question has been great," she says. "I struggle keeping up with the replies, but I do try and get to them all eventually. It's like an ongoing survey. We're going to get better at analyzing it because the responses are amazing." And she gets pretty good open rates with those emails. The first has a 70% open rate, the second 60% and the third 48%. The webinars In last week's post I talked about engaging your readers (and getting them engaged in your blog) by using live video. But while Donna loves teaching and interactive with people, she doesn't feel comfortable being on camera. And so she started running webinars instead. Webinars gave her the opportunity to not only interact with her readers but also provide them with great content. And while they usually end with her promoting a program or event ("I'm getting better at the sales part of the end"), she's totally upfront about it. And to give you an idea of how good her content is, here's a story she shared with me on the ProBlogger podcast: Recently, I had a webinar where our internet went down in the middle of it. They could still see my slides but they couldn't see me. I thought, Here we go. I'm just going to watch them all leave. But they all stayed. I had more than 100 people stay for the entire webinar saying, "We like the slides". The result One blog post. A SlideShare slideshow. A lead magnet. An email sequence. A webinar. The result? More than $28,000 in revenue. That's the power or warming up your readers by giving them great content, getting them to subscribe, and engaging with them. Do you know of any other bloggers who do a great job of warming up their readers? Let us know about them in the comments.   Photo by Denys Argyriou on Unsplash The post How ‘Warming up Your Readers’ Helped One Blogger Earn More than $28,000 appeared first on ProBlogger.

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ProBlogger: How to Get People to Engage With You and Your Blog

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How to Get People to Engage With You and Your Blog Posted: 02 Apr 2020 04:00 AM PDT The post How to Get People to Engage With You and Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger. This post is based on episode 116 of the ProBlogger podcast. Over the past few weeks I've talked about the first three stages of warming up your readers and turning them into raving fans: getting the word out about your blog getting first-time visitors interested in your blog getting more subscribers, followers and connections. And today I'm to tell you all about the final step: getting engagement. Yes, it's nice to have people subscribing to your blog, following you on social media, and sharing what you've said with others. But what you really want is for them to talk back to you, join your conversations, and even start new ones. So how to get people to stop lurking and start participating? Be the community you want to create If you want people to be engaging with you then you need to be engaging to them. For some of you, this will be easy. My wife's pretty good at this, especially on Instagram. Whenever someone makes a comment she'll comment back and then head off to like their page. She loves this kind of engagement. But some of you might struggle a little. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's like any other skill: some people pick it up easily, while others need to work a little harder to get there. Unfortunately, you really do need to engage with your readers before you can expect them to engage with you. Looking back at my own blogs, there were times where I was great at this. But there were also times when I wasn't so great at it, and my blogs suffered as a result. It's a big commitment. But if you're willing to make that commitment then the strategies I'm about to share with you will make a real difference. Set up an autoresponder Last week I talked about getting people to subscribe to your mailing list. But what happens when they do subscribe? In a lot of cases they'll receive a "Thanks for subscribing" email that tells them what they'll get, how often they'll get it, and how to unsubscribe. And that's it. But if you set up an autoresponder you can also start engaging with them. When you sign up at Caz and Craig Makepeace's yTravel blog, you start receiving a series of emails they’ve set up with an autoresponder. The first email thanks you for subscribing, talks about what the email will be used for, and explains when they will be sent: "Every Wednesday you'll receive an email with a personal inspiring message". It also tells you how to get the free audio download they offer as part of their opt-in, and what will be coming in future emails. (Yes, they send more than just that 'welcome' email.) But what I really love about that first email they invite their readers to reply to it: "Reply now and introduce yourself. Tell us what is your travel dream, why travel a priority for you and what is the biggest obstacle in your way right now? How can we help?" Remember me saying a few weeks ago that you should think about what your readers dream about and want to achieve? Caz and Craig are asking for that information straight away. They even ask the reader about their priorities and pain points. But most importantly, it's an invitation to start a relationship and engage with them. In their next autoresponder email they talk about how they'll help the reader make travel part of their life. In other words, they make a bold promise. They also provide links to three articles that closely relate to the reader's pain and what they want to achieve, which gets people back to their site. (That's important. It reinforces your brand and gets them used to coming back to your site.) And they finish their second email with another invitation to reply: "P.S. Don't forget to reply to our emails at any time to tell us any content you feel is missing on our site that you like us to write about". The third email taps into the reader's pain: "We've discovered that there are five reasons why you won't travel. We wrote a series of posts to help you to discover ways to overcome these barriers" (which they probably found out about from that first email). This not only gets the reader back to their site, but also gives them a quick win. What to create an engaging relationship with your readers? Then let them know in those first few emails by getting them used to coming back to your site. Create engaging content Another way to engage with your readers is to create engaging content. You can make every post engaging to a point simply by asking a question at the end ("What is your best tip for finding new readers?") and encouraging your readers for their answers. But you can also create content specifically to engage your readers. One option is to create a discussion post based on a particular question. In these posts you don't provide the answers. Instead, you ask your readers for their answers. In the early days of Digital Photography School, a reader asked: "How do I photograph a funeral?" (They'd been asked to photograph a funeral by family members who couldn't attend in person.) And I simply couldn't answer it. But rather than reply saying, "Sorry, I can't help you as I've never photographed a funeral", I raised the question in a post and asked my readers if they could provide an answer. It was an amazing discussion, with many readers offering suggestions (some from personal experience). And it showed me the power of starting a discussion. My readers could see I was interested in helping them, and hearing what they had to say. Is also led to other readers sending me their questions, and it started what became an ongoing series of discussions. Something else we do on Digital Photography School is give our readers a weekly challenge. We announce a theme for the week, and then ask everyone to take a photo based on that particular theme. We did a similar thing on ProBlogger with writing challenges. I'd ask everyone to write a particular type of post (list post, opinion post, etc.) and then I'd share a link to their post. Another thing you can do is to run polls and surveys. But don't just collect the information – share it with your readers. We often present the results in another blog post, which shows we not only got the information but are also willing to share and interpret the results. Start live streaming One of the most effective ways to engage with your readers (and have them engage with you) is by using live video. Whether you use Facebook live, Zoom, Twitch or something else, it creates an incredibly engaging experience. They're not just typing out a comment and posting it. They're also on the screen with you. In some of my Facebook live sessions I've had 30–40 people ask questions or leave comments. And experience has taught me that those same people will probably leave a comment on my blog. It also gives your readers a chance to meet each other, which is a vital part of engagement. And live streaming is a great way to introduce your readers to each other. Create content events My final tip for building engagement is to create what I call content events. Back in 2005 I ran a series of blog posts called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog –the first time I'd ever done a series that went for more than a week. When I announced the series at the beginning of the month, my subscriber numbers jumped quite a bit. But during that month the engagement on ProBlogger went through the roof. Why? Because every one of those 31 blog posts invited people to do something and share something. (For those not familiar with the series, each day I gave everyone an activity to do on their blog and invited them back to share the results.) And as the participating saw what everyone else had done, they started engaging with each other. Yes, it generated a lot of traffic. But it also created a lot of 'stickiness', bringing people back to ProBlogger day after day. And getting them to show up regularly, engage with you regularly and notice the other people on your site is a great way to build engagement Turning content into an event with a specific timeframe is a powerful thing. Some people will stay for the duration because of the fear of missing out. But others will join because they know it will only be running for a month (or perhaps a specific number of weeks), and so they can fit it into their schedule.   So there you have it. How to get your readers to engage with you and your blog, which is the final stage of turning your readers into raving fans. Do you have any other tips for engaging with your readers, and having them engage with you? Feel free to share them in the comments. Image credit: Maxime Bhm The post How to Get People to Engage With You and Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

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