“4 Key Areas to Focus Your Time Upon to Grow Profitable Blogs [And How Much of Your Time to Spend On Them]” plus 2 more

4 Key Areas to Focus Your Time Upon to Grow Profitable Blogs [And How Much of Your Time to Spend On Them]
The Power of Infographics on your blog
Is your blog design ready for 2014? Four ways to tell

4 Key Areas to Focus Your Time Upon to Grow Profitable Blogs [And How Much of Your Time to Spend On Them]

Posted: 19 Jan 2014 05:55 PM PST

A regular question I’m asked by bloggers at different stages of their blogging is how much time they should allocate to different aspects of blogging.

Should you spend more time writing blog posts, promoting the posts, networking, responding to readers, working on social media etc?

Answer this question is tricky as there are numerous factors to consider including the topic of your blog, the type of content you’re creating, the type of audience you’re wanting to attract, your own passions and style as a blogger and the stage of your blog (i.e. if it is new or more established).

I’ll share some suggested splits of time that I think are good starting points for how to use your time below but before I do I want to share the four main areas that I have allocated time to over the last 11 and a half years of blogging.

I cannot imagine being able to grow my blogs to the point that they are at today without any one of these areas.

Priority One – Creating Content

Without a doubt this has always been my number-one priority.

In the lead-up to launching a new blog this is something that I would often put almost 100% of my time into (although you do need to put some time and resources into getting the blog designed and hosted). Once the blog is launched I decrease this to include some of the other activities below, but later on it would never dip below 40-50% of my time and effort.

Without great content on your blog (whether it be written, video, audio, imagery or something else) you’ll never really be able to grow your blog. While it takes time to create quality content I see this time as an investment that has a long term impact upon my blogs. For example the posts I wrote when I first launched dPS have continued to generate traffic and income for years to come.

My focus over the years has always been upon producing ‘how-to’ style content but of course there are other styles of blogs too (entertainment, opinion, news, personal, etc).

Learn more about Creating Great Blog Content: How to Write Great Blog Content

Three Other Key Priorities

While creating content for my blogs is #1 in my mind in terms of where I allocate my time and resources, there are three other areas that have been absolute priorities for me over the last decade or so.

All are essential to me but depending upon the life stage of my blogs each have grown and shrunk in terms of where I’d rank them in importance (I’ll explain more on this below). So I’ll share them in no particular order and give them equal weight:

Promoting Content

Having great content on your blog is great but unless you put effort into promoting that content it can often go unread. While later in the life cycle of a blog your readers can share your content for you in the early days it is largely up to you to grow your traffic – and this takes considerable work.

Once a blog is launched, this area becomes a fairly major focus for me.

For example when I launched Digital Photography School, I’d estimate that I spent about 40% of my time in the first few months promoting my content by engaging in forums, guest posting, networking with and pitching other bloggers, leaving comments on other blogs, engaging on social media and looking for mainstream media coverage.

I also spent a bit of time in this early phase thinking about optimising the site for search engines. I did more ‘on-page optimisation’ than building links – although some of the results of guest posting and networking of course did help with off page techniques too.

Learn More about Growing Traffic: How to Find Readers for Your Blog (recording of a 1.20 hour webinar in which I share everything I know on the topic).

Building Community

Once traffic begins to grow on my blog, I begin to switch some of my time away from promoting into building community and engagement.

It is all well and good to drive ‘traffic’, but I find that a blog really begins to come alive when you have a more loyal and engaged readership.

I know some bloggers are less worried about this than others but I personally find that it is much more satisfying to have readers that come back again and again than just people who come once and never return. I also find this makes monetizing easier too (see below).

In the very early days of a blog there may not be too many readers to build community with so you might not dedicate too much time to this, but as readers grow there will be opportunity to build engagement. Responding to comments, emailing readers, creating more discussion-related content, engaging on social media, etc all can help in this area.

Learn More about Building Community on blogs:

Monetization and Business Development

Not all bloggers want to monetize their blogs and so this area may not be a priority for all, but after a year of blogging I realised it was something I had a passion for and needed to be able to monetize in order to be able to sustain.

There are, of course, many ways to monetise a blog (and I won’t go into specifics here), but one thing I have learned over the years is that monetization is not a passive thing when it comes to blogging.

If you want your blog to be profitable, you need to build the foundations mentioned above (content, traffic and community) but you also need to be intentional about building a business model and creating income streams.

You might get lucky and find a lucrative opportunity lands in your lap, but for most full-time bloggers I know, monetization is a long and slow journey that takes work.

When starting a new blog I am generally thinking about monetisation from day one – however, when it comes to where I put my time, it is usually not until I’ve been blogging for a year or two that I put a lot of effort into this area.

So when I started Digital Photography School, I spend the first two years putting 95% of my time into content, traffic and community. While I did have a few low-level ads and did do a few lower-level affiliate promotions in those first two years, it wasn’t my main focus.

Instead, I worked those first two years on building up my archives of content and building up readership and engagement. With that foundation in place I was ready to start monetizing much more effectively firstly by doing some bigger affiliate promotions of other people’s photography eBooks, and then by creating my own.

In 2009 – three years after launching dPS – I launched our first eBook and wrote about how it generated $72,000 in sales in a week. While some people read that post and then wrote about how I made a stack of money overnight, it is important to realise that it only happened based upon the three years of foundations already built.

Learn More about Monetizing Blogs: Recording of ‘Monetizing Blogs’ Webinar (1.2 hours of everything I know on the topic).

A Word About Maintenance/Tech

The area that I’ve not addressed in the above four foundations of profitable blogs is anything about the tech side of things.

Of course blogs need to be hosted, designed, and have their blog platforms maintained. For me, this has always been something that I have outsourced in different ways (with friends initially, later on through contracting the services of others and more recently through developing a team).

So for me this has not been something I’ve allocated a great deal of ‘time’ to – but rather have allocated resources/money to.

Having said that – it is still really important and not to be ignored!

Life Stages of a Blog and How to Spend Your Time

You can already see above how the life stage of your blog helps to determine how much time to spend upon different activities.

While there are other factors at play also in general, here’s what I’d recommend as a starting point (and I’ll talk in percentages rather than hours as I know not everyone is full time and many have limited time to blog):

Pre Launch of a New Blog

90% of your time on creating content
10% of your time on design, SEO and other technical aspects of getting the blog ready to launch

Of course you’ll probably want to have thought about how you might like to monetize and be thinking about how to build engagement on your blog – but in terms of implementing these there’s not a lot to do in the prelaunch phase.

Launch of a New Blog – 0-3 Months

Depending how much content you have ready to publish from your pre-launch work, you’ll need to keep creating content in the launch phase. It is really important that you have regular and high-quality content going up on your blog.

But at the same time you should be putting considerable time into promoting your posts and blog.

50% of your time on creating content
40-45% of your time on promoting your blog
5-10% of your time on building engagement with the few new readers that might come

Building Foundations

This phase will vary a little depending upon how fast your blog grows and the opportunities that arise but in general I would think you’d be allocating more time to engaging with readers as you get more traffic.

You’ll also want to start being more intentional about monetizing (or at least getting ready to monetize) your blog. This might mean starting to reach out to and network with advertisers, or starting to create a product to sell.

50% of your time on creating content
25-30% of your time on promoting your blog
15-20% of your time on building community
5-10% of your time on monetization

Maturity/Profit/Sustainability

It is hard to describe this stage, as blogs can look very different from one another in how they become profitable. Also at this point many bloggers begin to build teams or outsource different aspects of their blogging.

For example I now have a team of 5-6 people all working part time on my blogs, and also engage the services of 20 or so writers each month for dPS, so my own time is spent more on management and business development rather than upon the above activities.

Having said that, each of the people that work with me put their focus upon one or more of the above four areas and each is a key priority.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

4 Key Areas to Focus Your Time Upon to Grow Profitable Blogs [And How Much of Your Time to Spend On Them]

The Power of Infographics on your blog

Posted: 19 Jan 2014 08:54 AM PST

This is a guest contribution from Chelsea Varney, a Community manager at Brandwatch.

Infographics are extremely useful for numerous reasons when it comes to content marketing and blogging.

Although many writers may not have considered using an infographic for a blog post this can be an excellent way to present interesting information while linking to a topic that is of significance to yourself and your readers.

What an infographic offers is easily digestible data which is presented in a pleasing form to an audience. The genius of an infographic is that it can communicate multiple facts or stats in a quick format.

A reader may not have time to peruse a whole blog on the rise of digital technologies or stats on WordPress users but a quick synopsis of a useful infographic may be of interest to them.

Unsurprisingly, using an infographic for a post can draw attention to a blogging site due to its shareability.

Unlike some images used within blog posts, an infographic can give an overall summary of a blog which will entice readers into looking at their article in more depth.

It has been proven that visuality is an essential element in the sharing of posts on social media.

Take Twitter as an example, tweets with images received 150% more retweets than those who did not have them, 18% more click throughs and 89% more favourites by fellow users. These are substantial figures when you are trying to get people to share your hard work with others.

Find an Interesting Infographic

When you find an interesting and informative infographic that grabs your attention while teaching you some new facts, you know that you are on to a winner! However, there are some points that you must consider when choosing an image to use on your site.

Although a blog which uses an infographic may be a success, it could also isolate an established audience if it is not relevant to their topic of interest. Do not use an infographic on cooking if your other articles are on digital technologies.

2. When choosing an infographic, take a look at the date that it was released. Old facts and stats are not going to interest your readers as much as those that were created this year.

Also, competing blogs may have already used this as a topic for a previous post. Being up to date on this will put you ahead of other bloggers.

3. Make sure that you read the whole infographic before dedicating your time writing a post on it. The infographic may only possess a few pieces of information that are relevant to you.

This will not be enough to support an entire blog post dedicated to the infographic. Instead you could use it as a supporting piece for another topic.

4. Some people may wonder how you measure the quality of the infographic? Unfortunately, there are some poorly executed graphics that are circulating the internet which demonstrate what you do not want to place in your blog.

Poor research, over generalisation and ineffective imagery leads to a picture which does not capture the imagination of the audience.

For instance, take a look at this infographic which is on gender division in the workplace. It does not deliver on its promise of explaining the difference of gender in the workplace instead it simply states some opinions with no objective evidence. To be honest, it's pretty pointless.

An infographic which is clear in its objectives and delivers them in a fun and informative way will certainly grab the attention. However, some of you may be wondering how you will create an entire blog post around one image.

Here are some tips to writing about infographics:

Take this infographic on the trends of budget travellers in 2012-2013:

It is a relatively modern image that is simple yet offers some interesting figures on global cities, traveling needs and wants. Using information from their website they have calculated emerging cities and those which have fallen in popularity since their previous survey.

Firstly, to write a blog about this infographic you would need to outline the topic area that is being addressed. You need to introduce your audience to what the blog will be about and why they should be interested. How could this affect them?

For instance, you could discuss why travel is important for both the cultural and economic development of society. You will need to conduct some more research into the area and to not simply rely on the infographic alone.

Discuss the key findings of the infographic and its implications. Tokyo is emerging as a new tourist area for 2013 according to the hostelbookers survey. Could this mean that people are traveling further afield for holidays.

Go through each stat on the infographic and pick out which fact is most useful to you. The whole image does not need to be discussed in a blog only the key points.

Including a conclusion to what the infographic has taught you will also provide a strong ending to a blog and could encourage comments from others who agree with you (or even those who have a different view).

In the travellers image we can see that Europe is where all the most popular cities are for budget travellers according to Hostel Bookers an interesting fact that a reader may not have been aware of.

An infographic can also be used purely to support a topic that you have a knowledge of. Simply by using an image that is easy to share, you can increase the amount of people heading over to view your blog.

Another added benefit of using an infographic as the basis of your blog is that quite a bit of the content is already prepackaged for you. The infographic is providing you with a lot of data that you can use without much need for researching.

There is a whole host of reasons for using infographics but, as always, the most important is the increase of followers to your blog through presenting interesting content. Why not give it a try?

Chelsea Varney is a Community manager at Brandwatch , a social media monitoring company. You can connect with Chelsea onTwitter or Linkedin.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Power of Infographics on your blog

Is your blog design ready for 2014? Four ways to tell

Posted: 17 Jan 2014 08:42 AM PST

This is a guest contribution from Laura Windisch of 99Designs.

It's that time of year again. Time to take a good long look at your blog and reflect on what's worked well, learn from what hasn't, and set goals for what will. After you've had a chance to sort through the numbers—total visits, average length of stay and the like—give your eyes a minute to focus on what your design is doing to showcase your content.

Whether you install one of your platform's pre-made templates or find someone to create a custom design, your blog's appearance is what visitors will notice first. A good design will communicate your message with personality and passion.

Here are four questions you can ask yourself to assess whether your design is ready for 2014.

1. Is your design as simple as it ought to be?

When it comes to blogging, the written word rules. Keep readers focused on your content with a clean design. Here's how.

Ditch the clutter. Delete any distracting background images and dead links.
Embrace white space. Give your text room to breathe.
Limit your fonts. Choose no more than three fonts (for example, one each for your titles, body text and navigation) to keep the page from looking overloaded. Whatever font you choose, make sure it's legible.
Use colour carefully. Is your background light and your text dark? That's a good start. An explosion of colour can be overwhelming, but splashes of vibrant shades will help you draw attention to important areas like call to action. A subtle background will also help the photos and images within your post pop.

2. Is your content easy to scan?

Most readers will be scanning your posts rather than reading them word-for-word. Make your design easy to scour.

Break it up. Headlines, subheads, lists, images and bold text are your formatting friends. They'll make your content easier to consume.
Be generous with images. Treat your readers to big photos, illustrations and charts that supplement a point you're making in your post. Visual content attracts eyeballs.

3. Can people find what they are looking for?

If you started your blog with a passion—but without a clear idea of all the topics you'd be covering—it may be time to take a step back and give your design a solid structural backbone.

First, get organised. Establish a clear hierarchy and put everything in its place.

Create noticeable navigation. Visitors will land on your blog from Twitter, search engines, links and who knows where else. Show off what else you have to offer with clear links to categories, recent posts and popular posts.
Include strong CTAs. Be sure your design clearly tells your audience what to do (e.g. "Subscribe to our newsletter"). Don't assume they'll hunt for anything.

4. Is your design memorable?

New blogs are popping up daily. As of this posting, for example, there are 72,628,476 WordPress sites in the world. Find a way to stand out.

Brand your header. This is the area new visitors will likely notice first, so don't miss the opportunity to create a strong first impression of your personal brand. Play off your logo to show your personality.
Create a custom design. Stand out from the plethora of popular free themes with a custom blog design. A unique look will inspire your readers and keep them coming back for more.

Did you answer no to any questions? Now's the perfect time to step up your blog design and let your content shine. Here's to a beautiful 2014!

Laura Windisch writes for 99designs — the world's leading online graphic design marketplace. If you're looking for a custom blog design, try launching a contest on their website. You'll get dozens of creative options and pick the one you love most.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Is your blog design ready for 2014? Four ways to tell

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