In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience.

Check Blogs For Previous Guest Posts

The strategy that worked the best was checking blogs to see if they published guest posts previously. If a blog had published them in the past, then there was a really good chance they would publish my guest post.

You can search for “guest post” if the blog has a search box. If not, you can type in “site:example.com guest post” on Google to search the blog.

This strategy also helps because you can get an idea of the kind of guest posts that are published. You can then use that information to create similar content.

Investigate Forums

Blogging or internet marketing related forums can be a good place to find guest post spots. I had success finding some opportunities on the ProBlogger forum.

My Blog Guest forum is another good option. I like it because it’s caters primarily to guest bloggers. It was recently created by Ann Smarty, a prominent search expert, and she’s attracted a good number of quality sites looking for guest posts. I’ve already gotten a post published on a PageRank7 blog.

In forums, you’ll find many off-topic blogs so you might have to do some digging to find a blog in your niche. To save time, you can create a thread saying you’re interested in guest posting and hope that a relevant blogger finds you.

Also, if your niche is relatively obscure, you may not find a related blog. Still, you can get good off-topic links, which is fine for SEO just as long as you get them from trusted sites and you don’t overdo it.

Over to You

How do find guest post opportunities for your blog?

While many bloggers do their reading online, you can gain an advantage by shutting off the computer and reading a book offline. Here are three reasons to head over to your local bookstore.

1. To Improve Credibility

Books are still perceived as trusted sources of authority. If you become well read that you quote books often, your credibility will increase. I felt that Brian Clark of Copyblogger knew what he was talking about because he quoted the classic advertising and copywriting books. He was someone who had real expertise because he had learned from the giants in the past.

2. To Go Deeper in a Niche

Online content by nature gives you a shallow perspective. The content is short to please the short attention span of the average internet user. On the other hand, reading a book allows you to concentrate more deeply and really learn about a topic. This prolonged exposure to a topic helps you create more in-depth posts than your competitors.

Also, books can give you topic ideas for evergreen content. Online content especially blog posts are many times about current issues or news that will fade away soon. However, books are usually about topics that have more lasting value.

3. To Differentiate Your Content

For many bloggers, their only reading is done online. So if you’re reading books, you’ll be exposed to content many of your peers are not consuming.

This will help you avoid the “echo chamber,” a phenomenon where the bloggers in a niche are all talking about the same thing. You’ll be drawing inspiration from different sources so your content will be different from your peers.

Over to You

How often do you read books?

Have you ever drawn inspiration from a book for your blog?

How does you offline reading time compare to your online reading time?

Performancing offers blog management services.

I believe that content and traffic comes first, but after you generate a healthy content and traffic base, there comes a time when you must focus on optimizing your monetization. Otherwise, you’ll leave a lot of money on the table.

So, at the beginning of a new year, I thought I’d remind you to look at your monetization tactics and see how you can improve on them. How can you get conversion rates and make more money with the same amount of traffic? I’ll share two examples from my sites.

There are various ways to approach the monetization process but basically it boils down to testing. In other words, try different ways to make money. Then, let them run at the same time and after a couple weeks, analyze the results and pick the best method.

Testing AdSense

I’ve been testing the AdSense ads for a dating blog I co-own with my sister. The blog reached a respectable level of traffic a few months ago, so I started optimizing the ads since they were the blog’s primary income source.

In my first test, I created two different ads and placed them above the fold and below the fold. Then, I let them run for a couple of weeks. During the testing period, ad #1 ran half the time and ad #2 ran in the other half. After the test, it was pretty clear what we needed to do to make more money. Above the fold, ad #1 made almost four times as much money as ad #2. Below the fold, both ads made the same amount of money but it was very small amount.

Based on the results, we kept ad #1 above the fold and discarded ad #2. The money from the ads below the fold was so low that we scrapped them to make the site less cluttered.

Giving Up on a Strategy

Sometimes you have to drop a monetization strategy since it’s clearly not working. For example, I’ve tried multiple ways to get AdSense working on my gaming blog. The biggest program was the irrelevancy. AdSense kept showing irrelevant ads even when I tried to tweak my posts. Because of this, the dating blog makes 30 times more than the gaming blog yet it has half the amount of traffic. I understand that dating is probably a more lucrative niche than gaming but not 30 times more!

Therefore, I scrapped AdSense and found a couple related affiliate programs. It’s still early, but the numbers have been better than AdSense.

Continual Improvement Through Testing

Fortunately, it doesn’t take much time to set up a monetization campaign. Most of the work is just setting up a test and that can be done in a couple of hours. Once you’ve done that, you don’t have to check it until a couple days or weeks have passed. Then, you spend a couple more hours to analyze the results, make the necessary changes, and setup a new test.

But you do have to remind yourself to continually test every couple weeks or so. Again, it’s easy to forget since you can get lost in all content generation and marketing so put it on the calendar as a reminder.

Performancing offers blog management services.

I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog.

One of the things Seth said that struck me is found at the 38:30 mark. He said, “If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re not talking about you because you’re boring.”

These are harsh words, but the first step to solving a problem is admitting that it’s there.

If you don’t fit Seth’s criteria, if people are talking about your blog, congrats. Keep doing what you’re doing. But I think for most of us, people don’t talk much about our blogs.

So, what’s the remedy? Seth recommends being different.

Stand Out From the Crowd

If you want to be more interesting and less boring, you need to do something that the other blogs in your niche are not doing.

At the 39:34 mark, Seth tells an anecdote about a street in New York City with 18 Indian restaurants. One of the Indian restaurants claimed that they had the spiciest curry in the city. They had a deal that if you could finish a bowl, you got it for free.

Guess which restaurant had the most customers? The one with the spicy curry offer.

Yes, this advice of being different is not new at all. In fact, it’s become a cliche in online marketing circles. But how many of us are actually different from our competitors? If we’re honest, our blogs are very similar to other blogs.

We underestimate how similar we are to our competitors. Consider the following experiment.

Take a post from your blog and a couple posts from other blogs in your niche. Blank out the names and print the posts without the formatting and blog design. With just the printouts, would people be able to tell which post is yours?

Take Risks

To be different, we’ll have to be risk takers. It’s risky to break away from the crowd and do things differently. But like the Indian restaurant, we need to figure out our own unique offer. We need to find something to stand for.

Taking risks will leave us open to criticism since there’s always a group of people that doesn’t like change. Innovators have always had their critics but the critics shouldn’t keep us from taking action. As long as we have enough supporters, we’ll be fine.

My Application

Like I said, I’m boring. After listening to Seth, I realized that most of the content on my gaming blog can be found on other blogs. The main reason I still get a lot of traffic is because my competitors don’t do keyword research.

But that’s hardly a competitive advantage.

There are a couple blogs with much lower traffic that have more influence than me. They have more natural links, Twitter followers, and comments.

I tried to apply Seth’s principles and I came up with these three action items.

1. Narrow my blog’s focus.

I cover too many topics. This is a consequence of just being lazy and not taking the time to figure out the core of my blog.

I realized I’m only really interested in two topics, so I’ll only write about those. This should differentiate my blog since most blogs cover a lot of topics. My niche is pretty big so I should still have a big enough audience to support a business from the blog.

2. Cover a topic that doesn’t get talked about a lot.

One of my topics doesn’t get much airplay, so I was hesitant to write about it. But after some research, I think there’s a market for the topic.

I’ll probably have to sacrifice some short-term traffic. People are not searching for keywords on the topic and I get most of my traffic from the search engines. But by covering the topic, I hope to create my own keywords and make them popular.

For example, a couple years ago seo book was not a popular search term until Aaron Wall saw a market for a book and released his SEO ebook. Once his book was released, the keyword started to pick up and now it’s popular.

3. Sell my future product at a higher price point than the norm.

I’m working on a membership product that I hope to release in the next couple of months. I was going to charge the same price as other membership products in the niche. But I always felt those prices were too low. Also, my product will cover the topic that doesn’t get much coverage, so I should be able to charge more.

Over to You

Are you different from other blogs in your niche? If you are, please give specific examples on how you are different. If you’re not, how can you stand out from the crowd?

Performancing offers blog management services.

I usually get my pictures from Flickr and Stock.XCHNG but I couldn’t find relevant images for many of the pages. The client is in the business-to-business marketing niche, which doesn’t lend itself well to pictures – at least not at first glance. So, I looked for another picture site. After some recommendations, I started exploring iStockphoto.

I soon found the pictures that I needed and I was able to finish my project with the client.

Also, one of my blogging jobs changed their writing guidelines and added a requirement to have pictures on the posts. I write about SEO, which also doesn’t lend itself very well to pictures. I couldn’t find relevant images on Flick and Stock.XCHNG so I went to iStockphoto. I was not disappointed. I easily found relevant pictures for my posts.

The images from iStockphoto added so much to the content I that I decided to use the site for this blog and the blogs I own. The site has now become a regular part of my blogging workflow.

Here are 4 reasons why iStockphoto has been great for me.

1. High Quality

One of the problems with Flickr and Stock.XCHNG is that you often have to wade through low quality pictures. Flickr allows anyone to upload photos including unskilled photographers. Stock.XCHNG checks each picture for quality but their quality requirements are not as high as iStockphoto.

Every photo I’ve seen on iStockphoto looks like it was shot by a professional.

2. Reasonable Price

Their prices are not too expensive. I paid $1.50 per image and you can get a cheaper price by buying a more expensive bulk package. I still go to Flickr and Stock.XCHNG to save money since they are free. But $1.50 for a relevant image is reasonable considering you’re getting a professionally produced photo.

Unless you post many times every week, you shouldn’t have to pay more than $30 each month. That cost seems worth it because images add a lot to your blog. The add emotion and life and they make your blog look more professional and less boring.

3. Great Selection

They have a ton of pictures to choose from and they have a great search function. It doesn’t take me long to find a good image. I usually find a couple relevant pictures to choose from within a couple of minutes.

4. Fun

This was surprising. It was actually fun to look for pictures to match my content. There are so many interesting images. I was impressed over and over by the creativity of the photographers to create images that fit different niches.

Oftentimes, I don’t really know what kind of image I want. Using the search box and exploring the site becomes an enjoyable treasure hunt – for treasure that I’ve never even seen! The expectation of finding something unique is

Because of iStockphoto, looking for images is now something I look forward to.

Over to You

Do you include images in your posts? If you do, where do you get your images?

Have you ever tried iStockphoto?

Performancing offers blog management services.

I have a couple reasons for doing this.

Search Engines Change

The search engines will change their algorithms, which could cause me to lose my rankings. This has happened to many people including Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger himself. A couple years ago, Google did an update to their algorithm and Darren lost a lot of traffic. Fortunately, the traffic returned but it did teach him a lesson not to rely too much on search engines for traffic.

I want to diversify my traffic to make my site more defensible. The first step is increasing referral traffic.

Competitors Can Improve Their SEO

Many of my competitors have higher PageRank and more backlinks. I have better rankings because I optimized my site whereas the other sites have not done much SEO. If they ever learned SEO or hired an SEO specialist, they could easily overtake my rankings.

To Improve My Credibility

I think you get more credibility from a link on a quality site than a top search engine ranking. Plus, the link helps you improve your rankings, so you kill two birds with one stone.

There are a couple blogs with less traffic than me but they have more authority and influence. They get more comments, links, and mentions on Twitter and the blogosphere. If I focus on getting referral traffic, Iwill improve my reputation within the niche.

Also, referral traffic is usually higher quality than search engine traffic. For example, my visitors from referring sites visit more pages, spend more time on my site, and have a lower bounce rate than my visitors from search engines.

Goal For 2010

Currently, over 85% of my traffic comes from the search engines. For 2010, I want to lower that percentage and increase the referral traffic percentage from 6.5% to around 12%-15%.

I spend most of my time doing keyword research and publishing posts. But to reach my goal, I’ll have to do more networking. Here are 3 ideas I have in mind.

1. Become More Active Again in a Popular Forum

The first thing I did in coming up with a plan was to check the sources of my existing referral traffic. In 2009, I found that much of my referral traffic came from a popular forum. This was a little bit surprising because I was only active on the forum for three months. But then I remembered that the forum has a lot of traffic and they allow you to place links back to your site in the main content instead of just the signature.

I stopped being active on the forum because I felt like I was leaving too many links to my own site. I didn’t want to get penalized or banned. However, I should’ve just slowed down and taken a less spammy approach.

My plan in 2010 is to become a useful forum member by answering questions and participating in forum threads. I’ll still link back to my site but I’ll make sure to only have a couple links per month. I think four is a good number.

I’ll place my links in different sections of the forum to expose my site to different audiences. This will also reduce the perception of spam.

Finally, I’ll only link to my best content.

If I’m active in this way, I shouldn’t have any problems.

2. Start a Guest Posting Campaign

It’s sad but I’ve done much more guest posts for my clients than my own blog. I’ve been satisfied with my overall traffic, so I haven’t felt the need to do many guest posts. But with my new focus on getting referral traffic, guest posting is a great strategy.

It helps me reach new audiences and it builds authority since I would be associated with the online influencers in my niche.

3. Create a Facebook Page

I’ve gotten some traffic from Facebook. This was unexpected because I haven’t promoted my blog on Facebook at all. I did some quick research and found that my niche is pretty active on Facebook.Therefore, I’ll setup a Facebook page for my blog and add friends that are interested in my niche.

The Facebook page should also motivate me to keep my Twitter account updated since I’ll put my tweets on the page.

Over to You

What strategies have worked for you to increase your referral traffic?

Performancing offers blog management services to improve your blog for 2010.

In this podcast interview, he gives a couple productivity tips that have really helped me in my blogging.

The Writer Life is a Battle

At 1:41 of the podcast, Pressfield talks about the writing process as a war. To succeed, you have to have similar qualities of a good warrior; qualities like courage, patience, and long-suffering. He brings up the image of an infantryman that’s gaining ground on the enemy slowly but surely. In the day to day struggle, writing is like that.

This principle has helped me realize that blogging is hard work. Sure, there are days when the words come easily and I knock out a quality post in a couple of minutes. But those days are few and far between. Usually, it takes me awhile to get going. My first few sentences are pretty bad and I have to struggle to stay focused on finishing the post. By the time the post is done, I’m satisfied but I’m mentally tired.

Resistance is the Enemy

At 14:25, the interviewer quotes Pressfield’s book The War of Art:

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Pressfield goes on to talk about Resistance as the negative force that rises up whenever we want to start a creative task. Resistance shows up in many forms: procrastination, self-sabotage, excuses we make up, reasons we give ourselves that we’re not good enough, self doubt, etc. The most important thing for a writer to do is overcome Resistance.

Pressfield says that Resistance comes to us in negative voices. Our task is to ignore the voices and realize that they are bulls**t. They are keeping us from making progress.

I found this principle very helpful because it showed me that I’m not alone in the creative struggle. If a bestselling author has to deal with Resistance, then I will have to deal with it too.

Also, by identifying the enemy, Pressfield helped me not to be surprised by Resistance. I am prepared to deal with it because I know it’s there.

Turn Pro and Stop Being an Amateur

At 25:00, Pressfield gives a great metaphor for overcoming Resistance. He says we have to “turn pro.” When we see ourselves as amateurs, we will yield to Resistance when our circumstances become tough or distractions come up.

But if we think of ourselves as pros, we’ll have the mindset to carve out daily time to pursue our creative endeavors. As pros, we won’t give in to external influences.

Pressfield brings up Kobe Bryant. During the season, his knees may hurt and his back may be sore, but he still suits up and plays in the game. Pros like him don’t make excuses. They see their task as a job instead of a hobby.

Pressfield says a mysterious thing begins to happen when we turn pro. Inspiration starts to flow regularly as we persevere and make it a habit to work on our craft daily.

Further Information

Make sure to listen to the whole interview where Pressfield has more advice for writers. Check out his book The War of Art for an in-depth treatment about productivity and overcoming procrastination in the creative process. Also, he started a new blog, which includes writing tips.

Performancing offers blog management services.

He suggests that inspiration is perishable. He contrasts the lifespan between the actual idea and the inspiration for the idea. The idea lasts forever but the inspiration can go away.

He likens inspiration to a perishable good like milk or fruit. Like these goods, inspiration has an expiration date and it doesn’t stay fresh very long.

He advises that if you’re inspired about something, if you motivated to do something, you need to take action as soon as possible. If you wait to do it later, you won’t be as motivated. Every day you don’t take action, your inspiration starts to rot and go away.

Also, you’ll have the most creative energy during that initial spark of inspiration.

Blogging and Inspiration

In blogging, I’ve found Jason’s theory to be true. I have many ideas for blog posts that I came up with in the past. At the time of idea conception, I was excited about the ideas. However, a couple weeks went by and I still hadn’t turned those ideas into blog posts. Now when I think of the ideas, I’m not excited about them and I wonder what ever happened to my inspiration.

On the other hand, if I come up with a good idea and then work on the post right away, writing is much easier and I have a good amount of creative energy and motivation to complete the post. This is why it’s a good idea to read only when you have time to act on it.

You’ll be more productive and your content will be better quality if you’re inspired and motivated rather than trying to “force out” a post after the inspiration has gone away.

Over to You

How do you sustain inspiration? Have you ever experienced “rotting inspiration”?

Performancing offers blog management services.

Borrow Terms From Other Niches

You don’t necessarily have to create something completely new. You can take jargon from other niches and apply them to your niche.

For example, Bill Simmons is a sports writer that’s famous for an NFL playoffs gambling guide. I think one of the reasons his guide became popular is because he gave it a unique name. Instead of just using a generic name like “A Guide to the NFL Playoffs”, he called it “NFL Playoff Manifesto”.

The word “manifesto” is typically used in politics, arts, and technology, but Simmons creatively used it for American football. The unique name of his guide differentiates it from other guides, which gives him an edge in perception and branding. Plus, “manifesto” sounds more authoritative than “guide”.

Help Your Readers Understand Abstract Concepts

Not only does new jargon brand your blog, but it can help your readers understand abstract concepts. For instance, consider Seth Godin’s term purple cow. He invented that term to help online businesses understand the classic marketing concept, unique selling proposition, or USP. USP can be a difficult concept to understand but the metaphor of a purple cow standing out in a field of regular cows makes the concept easier to understand. Also, the concept sticks better since it’s hard to forget a mental image of a purple cow.

Keep Important Ideas Fresh in Your Readers’ Minds

Sometimes a term gets overused and becomes cliche. You can give it a fresh, new name to keep your audience’s attention. For example, some of the basic advice for bloggers is to “write quality content”. We get told over and over that “content is king”. Yaro created a new buzzword, pillar article, to remind us the importance of quality content. Also, his term helps us think about quality content in a more concrete way. Chris Garrett and Brian Clark have similar words, flagship content and cornerstone content, respectively.

Make Your New Concept More Memorable

If you come up with a totally new philosophy or idea, you’ll definitely want a short, catchy buzzword to quickly describe it. A short phrase is much more likely to spread virally than a long-winded explanation. Consider Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. He uses the term lifestyle design to refer to his philosophy of escaping the 9-5 job and living your dream life. And he calls the people who are successfully implementing the philosophy the new rich.

Give an Unnamed Concept a Name

Finally, you don’t even have to actually develop the concept. You can take an existing but nameless concept and give it a memorable name. (Of course, give credit to the original source.) For instance, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term 10,000 hours rule, which states that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise in a skill. But he got the concept from chess. Studies have shown that it takes at least 10,000 hours of chess practice before you can become a grandmaster. Gladwell took this concept and applied it to many different fields in his best-selling book, Outliers.

Over to You

Have you ever created a new buzzword?

What are some ideas for new jargon that could work in your niche?

Performancing offers blog management services.

I was surprised though at one of his recommendations. He advised aspiring entrepreneurs to be self-centered.

He pointed to 37signals, a popular software company that’s become very successful by only creating products that they themselves would find useful. On page 14, he quoted the CEO, Jason Fried:

We just build stuff we want to use. If we need it, they need it.

It was surprising to see this principle from Brian because one of his main tenets is focusing on the needs of your audience. I was a little confused but as I read on, Brian demonstrated that self-centeredness and focusing on your audience doesn’t necessarily contradict each other.

If you’re like many bloggers, you’re in a niche that you’re passionate about. Therefore, you are part of the audience you aim to serve. If you can create something that will help you, it will probably help your audience too.

Consider one of Brian’s products, the popular Thesis theme for Wordpress. As a writer that’s not skilled in tech or design, he could sympathize with the barriers writers face when publishing online. Therefore, he partnered with a designer to create an easy-to-use, attractive theme.

Here’s another example. Pat Flynn setup a blog as a reference tool to record his notes for an upcoming architecture test. He was not looking to make money. But because of his notes, his blog attracted traffic and multiple readers told him he should write an ebook. He wrote an ebook based on his notes, did some research about online marketing, and then started selling his book. Soon, his blog was earning him a full-time income. You can listen to his story here.

I read somewhere in an interview that Perez Hilton, the popular celeb gossip blogger, blogs for himself and doesn’t really focus on traffic. He said he would blog even if no one was reading his site. That’s how much he enjoys writing and following celebrities. And there must be many other celeb gossip fans since his blog is one of the most trafficked sites on the planet.

I looked back at my best posts on various blogs and found that I wrote many of them as warnings to myself. For example, I reread this post when I’m tempted to overextend myself and manage too many blogs. And I wrote this post to increase my patience and to remind myself that successful blogging is a long-term project.

It can often be hard to figure out what your audience wants. But if you consider your own needs, you might just find that they are similar to your audience’s needs.

What do you think about the self-centered principle?

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