Blogger

Are you one of those bloggers who have a fair bit of technical savvy? Want to explore a potential revenue opportunity? Casual scanning of the blogosphere for nearly three years suggests to me that some people are more likely to be willing to pay for technical support than, say, a WordPress theme or plugin. In fact, you could probably make more money helping newbie bloggers install WordPress, WP themes, or WP plugins (or whatever) than trying to sell themes and plugins you’ve created.

Marketing genius Seth Godin is surprised at the lack of digital coaches and thinks there’s a market for people who can help others over the Internet doing simple technical support. Here’s a very rough outline of how you could set up such a virtual business.

1. Remote assistance software (RAS). Install Teamviewer, Copilot, or some other similar “remote assistance” software on your computer. Most such software is either free for non-commercial use or have “day passes”. I’ve only tried the free Teamviewer and I like it, though it only has monthly plans. Keep in mind that your customers will need to install the same software, as it’s all proprietary. I’m not aware of any remote assistance software standards.
2. Promotion. Promote your services on your website/blog, on business cards, etc. You can also promote yourself on Seth’s Digital Coach lens at Squidoo by either listing yourself or building your own lens. (They’ll remove spam listings.)
3. Initial contact. You’re probably best off using Skype VoIP software to discuss the work to be done. (See the “Billing” item below to understand why.) However, you can also manage using IM software. I prefer AIM, though it tends to be something geeks are more likely to use. There’s also Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger. (I have them all, just in case, but that’s an awful lot of RAM you’ll need to run them simultaneously.)
4. Preparation. Using your preferred means of communication, determine the work to be done, agree to a price. Ask the customer to install the preferred RAS. (If you think they’ll be awhile, you could end the call/ chat session and have them call you back. If they can’t do that, there’s little you can do to help.
5. Billing. Skype VoIP software last year introduced a means for users to send/ request payment via PayPal (they’re both owned by e-Bay). The customer would have to have Skype and a PayPal account as well. They call you on Skype, you make a payment request using the PayPal button. You can either charge a flat support rate, or by the hour.
6. Support session. Now that they’ve paid you and have RAS installed on their computer, support can start. In your call/ chat session, ask them to start the RAS and give you any codes you’ll need to connect. You will have to supply them with your code, to activate the “tunnel” between both computers. Now you can perform the support session, and they can see what you’re doing. If the work takes longer than a predetermined time, you can request further payment.

This is only one of many ways that you can launch and maintain a Digital Coaching business, and it needn’t be only for helping newbie bloggers. This side activity can even supplement an advice column on your blog.

My suggestion is that you stick to one area of expertise until you’re comfortable supporting people remotely. As a former teaching assistant, support person and corporate trainer, I know that support work can be very frustrating even when the other person is sitting beside you. Having patience is key to success, and if your clients seem satisfied, ask them if they’ll give referrals.

Anyone who has had to read Shakespeare in high school knows that the English language is organic. As such, it changes over the decades and centuries. Many words fall into disuse and many new words are added. Back in the late 1980s, researchers suggested that the average adult in North America knew had a vocabulary of at least 100,000 words. Since that time, many thousands of new terms have come into popular use. But fast forward to today and it seems that grammar is rapidly changing too.

A glance at the writing of some bloggers suggests that we might have collectively regressed, or are heading that way. Grammar is rapidly changing online, and not just from bloggers but also journalists writing at the websites of print publications. It goes beyond misspellings and typos, and includes the lack of proper punctuation, resulting sentences that technically say something very different than what was intended. I see more of this in 2008 than I did in 2005, and I read/browse about the same number of articles daily.

At least, that’s my off-the-cuff impression. I’m by no means 100% accurate with my grammar and never will be. My head is filled with the grammars of far too many non-Roman lettered languages, and that perpetual mixes me up when I write in English. But I am only fluent in English, and so I read, write, think and speak mostly in English. The other languages in my head are also-rans, used only infrequently.

As part of my work as a “professional” blogger, I have to consume large quantities of content daily. The music, video, movies and images are easy to consume. But I’m finding it progressively harder to browse online text. Online typography (almost wholly in san serif fonts) is not exactly conducive to speed reading, and persistently poor grammar that makes me stop in my tracks really makes things worse. It doubles my reading time because I have a “what the f**k” reaction, attempt to re-read, then get fed up. Given that I browse/read anywhere from 100-150 blog posts each day, that’s a lot of wasted time that sometimes screws up my schedule for several days.

However, in the vein of “he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone,” I’ve stopped commenting on blogs that repeatedly violate the simplest of grammar rules. I’m not talking about the refusal to follow stale writing style advice, thus creating a quirky voice/writing style that defies a few rules consistently. I’m talking about commas, colons and semicolons that really, really need to be in a sentence but are not, and the repeated lack of such punctuation in the blogs of many otherwise good writers.

As noted above, I’ve stopped saying anything because I’m not 100% in my own grammar. And because most bloggers who’ve been corrected will understandly be upset, offended, or even belligerent about it. Some of them act like they have the right to not be intelligible. Okay, they do, but I also have the right to expect intelligible writing. But since I can’t waste time trying to understand what they’re saying, I’ll simply stop reading such bloggers. These social changes might mean that the English language will change rapidly and for the worse, as a generation of bloggers violate the rules of grammar but somehow manage to still understand each other. Me, I get a headache, and it slows down my necessarily voracious daily browsing.

The real problem, I’m guessing, is that as bloggers, we’re forced to work fast. There’s no time for obsessing over “silly” grammar rules. Unfortunately for me, I do obsess, having come from many years of writing for print.

What about you? How do you feel about the changing “rules” of language, catalyzed by the writing in the blogosphere?

Once you’ve picked out the top blogs in your niche, you can join the conversation. (The next post in this series will cover monitoring a niche.) To stand out, you want to offer either fresh ideas to further a blogosphere conversation or start a new one. Idea-generating can be a lot easier than some of you might think.

What to Do

For those of you that only have time for the condensed version, here is the gist of the article below.

1. Read fiction, read non-fiction. Read newspapers, books, magazines, posters, ads and product labels.
2. Listen to music of as many types and origins as you can manage.
3. Watch movies, short films, documentaries, videos, and informative TV programs.
4. Listen to the conversation of people out in public.
5. Listen to the sound of other languages – just the sound – and then
   approximate those sounds with English sounds. (Don’t ask why; just try
   it.)
6. Learn about anthropology, history, the arts, architecture, science and technology, and whatever else you can manage.
7. Write every day, even when you don’t feel like it.
8. Don’t overwhelm yourself; ease in.
9. Utilize the crossroads of the Internet: the Blogosphere.

When you have time, come back and read the full article, and also read the superb article by Brian Clark/ Copyblogger, that I’ve linked to below. It’s coincidence that I wrote most of this article around the same time, but once I read Brian’s, I tied in my article with his – to join the conversation.

The Details

Way back in my Toronto “salad days”, I was probably at my most creative ever, though I didn’t harness the creativity as much as I should have. This was long before the Internet was available, so free time for reading voraciously was plentiful. But I was too busy partying it up when not working or reading to do anything significant or important. Work hard, party harder was my motto, and I lived it hardcore, much to my later detriment.

However, I did carve out time every week to meditate, and to read fiction in various genres and non-fiction across a number of unrelated topics. By doing so, I found that on many mornings, an endless stream of ideas was in my head as I awoke. They could be product ideas, article or fiction ideas, movie concepts, the seeds of a future invention, and so on. Sometimes I saw actual words in my head (and still do from time to time, at my most creative). Putting pen to paper, I could capture a lot of the ideas. But as soon as I stopped for any reason, the idea stream was gone until the next morning.

During one period of just under a month, I generated and recorded sixty ideas – mostly for new businesses but also for software or products. When I followed up a year later with a bit of research, all sixty ideas had been pursued by various someones somewhere in the world, and each idea had produced at least a million dollars of gross revenue (based on what I found during research). These people had come up with ideas essentially the same as mine, but they actually did something. I did not.

These ideas were borne of the intersection of different disciplines – the subconscious comparison of different frames of reference. This is what I believe Brian Clark is talking about in his superb Content Crossroads article, which starts off with a nod to Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson and ends with excellent advice about “finding the intersection of ideas”. It’s a must-read article, so find some time for it if you haven’t already.

Now unlike Johnson, you don’t need to sell your soul to you know who. You can generate a steady stream of ideas on your own simply by at least browsing various niches that interest you, and then doing it regularly. The deeper you read the better, but browsing will get you started. And watch lots of movies as well as informative TV programs covering anthropology and social issues, architecture, history, economics – whatever catches your interest.

While many bloggers complain that after they started blogging, their attention span for reading printed matter declined, you can still manage it if you separate reading and working environments. You work on your computer, sitting in some sort of “work” chair. So for reading, you should move to a more comfortable environment, such as a couch or easy chair. If you need to, use a different computer – preferably a laptop. (Just don’t put a laptop in your lap; use a piece of plywood in between.) Or better yet, pick up newspapers, books and magazines. (Tactility in learning is underrated these days.) And make sure that you feed your eyes with images, not just text; feed your ears with a variety of music.

Now I should point out that I meditated a great deal in my salad days, and this activity is in fact what helped me capture my ideas so regularly. I don’t think you need to meditate, but as Brian says, “free your mind.” Meditation allowed me to do that. For you, it could be a accomplished with a change of perspective, traveling, listening – points which Brian discusses in his article.

If you follow Brian’s tips and whatever else I’ve added above to the conversation, and then find yourself suddenly brimming with ideas for writing (whether by blogging or something else), make sure you do something with your ideas. Ideas are just ideas otherwise, flitting about waiting to be discovered. Bring them to life by “activating” them.

And now that I’ve said all this, you’re probably wondering why, since I haven’t really talked about blogging above. Well, I’ve previously discussed using blogging as a means to an end, not as an end unto itself. Don’t just blog to blog and hopefully make money. Use your writing to promote your real talents – the ones you’ve been denying yourself, or even the ones you haven’t.

Use the intersection of ideas to make your writing stand out. Use the intersection to join the conversation in your niche. Using the intersection is probably why, just when you think you’ve read one of Brian Clark’s best articles, he comes up with another one. And you can too. The Blogosphere is a crossroads unto itself.

You’ve probably heard of SEO. You’ve heard about getting in the top 10 on Google. You’ve heard about PageRank, meta tags, and anchor text. And for many of you, it just seems too technical. You say, “I’m a blogger not a search marketer.” You would rather write blog entries and comment on your favorite blogs than learn the intricacies of keyword research. But you also realize most online traffic comes from search engines. And you want a big chunk of that traffic.

Well, I have good news, my blogger friend. SEO has changed significantly. And the changes are to your advantage. SEO has become more about social skills than technical skills. And if you’ve been reading the articles on Performancing, you know that good blogging involves being social and networking.

The Social Web

As I’ve kept track of the SEO industry in the last 12 months, I’ve noticed the shift. SEO experts like Aaron Wall say that SEO is becoming more like traditional marketing, which is about creativity and networking. SEOMoz blog, a widely popular SEO blog, regularly has articles about using social media to rank well in the search engines. Andy Hagans, a successful search marketer, says social media marketing (he calls it “linkbaiting”) is the SEO activity that the provides the highest ROI.

There have been two huge changes that contributed to the increased social nature of SEO.

1. The Rise of Social Media

This article talks about how social media may become the new mainstream media as it grows in popularity and challenges mainstream media. Social media sites are among the fastest growing sites on the whole internet.

About two months ago, I started freelance blogging for Net Business Blog. This blog was started on January 7, 2007. In about five months, this blog sold for $13,000 and was earning $1,000 a month. What was the main reason for the high profits? Multiple Digg front pages. The previous owner used his social skills to build contacts in Digg. These contacts helped him hit the Digg front page multiple times. He got a ton of traffic, PageRank 5, and great search engine rankings.

The rise of social media will only continue. Where do you think the under 25 crowd will consume their news when they turn 30? Digg or CNN? I’m betting on Digg because it’s community-oriented. The under 25 crowd is used to the social web. It’s what they like. They spend a lot of time on social sites like Myspace and Facebook.

And here’s what’s exciting. The popular social media stories are determined by normal internet users instead of paid editors. This is means you can make the Digg front page. You’ve seen how Performancing has been hitting the front page in recent times. It simply takes writing content that appeals to the Digg audience and then making Digg friends that will vote up your content.

By the way, it’s not just about Digg. There are other social media sites like StumbleUpon and Netscape. There are even niche social media sites that send traffic.

2. The Increased Difficulty of Link Building

SEO is 90% getting quality links. However, it’s harder than ever to get those links.

You can pay for links, but Google is doing a better job a finding and discounting paid links.

It’s hard to get links from competitors, or webmasters in the same niche. More webmasters now understand SEO and the importance of links. They know that linking to your site could have hurt their rankings, because both of you are going after the same keywords. However, if you’re a blogger, the rules change. Why? For the most part, bloggers are social creatures that like to link out. By building a relationships with bloggers in your niche, you’ll can get high quality links. Bloggers are more likely to link to their friends even if they’re in the same niche. Lesson here: turn your competitors into friends.

Also, going back to social media, it can get you many links. SEOMoz did an experiment. One of their clients had a site with about 90 inbound links and an average of 50 visitors per day (after about a year online). In three months, they gained over 19,000 links and increased traffic to 5,500 unique visitors a day. They did not do any link building except promoting the site to social media sites.

Conclusion

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll write more about the issues in this post. I’ll give more practical tips.

But until then, reevaluate the quality of your content, because quality content helps build your reputation in the social web. Also, start networking with other bloggers and social media users. These are the main internet users that can help you leverage the social web for search traffic and links.

Many people believe that confidence is something you either have or have not. Perhaps it is something you are born with, or something that magically appears after a certain age. Thankfully this is not the case.

Confidence is a learned behavior and anyone can acquire it. By the same logic, anyone can lose confidence or have it knocked out of them.

Why is confidence important in blogging?

A great deal of blogging happens on the surface. When we happen across a new blog we do not give it much time before making assumptions. It is like non-verbal communication, we look for cues and skim impressions rather than investing time to dig deep.

If you, and therefore your blog, lacks confidence, then your reader will not have confidence in you or your blog.

The danger with giving this advice is people tend to swing like a pendulum from confidence-lack to aggressive arrogance. We all know that dialing down to zero or up to 11 is not the right approach but getting the balance right can be tricky.

Happily the middle-ground is something you can cultivate with practice. This middle ground is what I describe as blogging assertively. You do not have to come across as an ass to be confident, it is not even about having all the answers, telling people they are wrong or winning awards.

What are the traits of assertive bloggers?

• Accept feedback – Being confident does not mean being an island
• Are generous – Think about it. What does generosity demonstrate?
• Look good – Take care over your blog, design and comments, make your confidence visible
• Share wisdom – This isn’t about beating people with your opinions. Offer advice while accepting differing opinions
• Are polite – Say please and thank you, while accepting thanks and compliments graciously
• Achieve and praise – Do not minimize or boast your own achievements, be generous with your praise of others success and news.
• Say their piece – Speak up when necessary while accepting others right to do the same. Do not rant, stay calm and outline your thoughts rationally.
• Know – Have faith in own abilities. If you do not, who else will?
• Succeed – Decide on goals and work towards them. If you do not have goals, how will you know what success means for you? If you are directionless, how will you know you have arrived?
• Ask for help – It is not wimpy to ask for help, it actually shows confidence and courage
• Are not doormats – Value your own time and the time of others. Do not give in to time leaches and freebie hunters. Do not feel guilty about saying no.
• Succinct – Do not waffle, get to the point. If you believe something is true, say it without qualification.

You can be confident now. You owe it to yourself. This is not something you are “allowed” only after a threshold of visitors or technorati ranking.

If you feel like you are not getting respect show that you deserve it! Keep blogging assertively and see the change reflected in others. It works!

Networking is a huge thing for the problogger especially with the web becoming more social. Internet business is now closely mirroring the offline business world. Whoever has the most quality contacts wins. Whoever has the most friends gets the traffic, links, subscribers, and money.

Networking helps in many ways. Whether you need quality links, marketing advice, or someone to keep you accountable, networking can help you reach your goals while also making blogging much more enjoyable. We’re social creatures after all. And blogging for bucks can be a lonely endeavor.

If you’re new blogger, networking is especially crucial because those early days can be discouraging. Maybe you’ve got some experience under your belt. However, your network is not working out as well as you had hoped for. You’re not getting the links. Your current blogger friends are not responding to your emails. It’s time to find better contacts.

Web apps and open source programs are not your biggest asset. Your biggest asset is your IM list, email addresses, and social media friends.

So where can you find quality bloggers to network with? Here are a couple places.

Google Search (google.com)

Search with search terms like [your niche] blog. Also, to network with the big players, try searching with terms like

top [your niche] blogs
top 10 [your niche] blogs
best [your niche] blogs
favorite [your niche] blogs

I especially like the 2nd keyword phrase. Here are some useful searches with this phrase:

top 10 travel blogs
top 10 gardening blogs
top 10 poker blogs
top 10 writing blogs
top 10 business blogs

Google Blog Search (blogsearch.google.com)

In my experience, the best keyword phrase to use for this search engine is [your niche] blog. This search term brings up a list of related blogs.

If you’re in a relatively obscure niche, search with a more general phrase to get more related blogs. For example, instead of searching for hawaii travel blog, search with hawaii blog.

Also, check out the actual search results. You might find some good blogs.

Blog Directories

Check out this list of blog directories. Visit the directories. Browse through the relevant category and use the search box to find good bloggers to network with.

Forums

You might have some forums in your niche. This depends on the size of your niche and the passion of your niche audience. Google this search term [your niche] forum and see if there are active forums.

Forums are great places to network because you’ll find passionate people that want to talk about and promote your niche. Even if you don’t find many bloggers in forums, you can still connect with active forum posters. These posters are hold a lot of influence in your niche. Don’t underestimate them. Here are some tips for doing forum marketing.

Technorati (technorati.com)

I haven’t had too much success using Technorati. It has a lot of spam. Many bloggers spam their Technorati listing by adding tags that don’t relate with their blog. For example, check out this blog search for travel blog. Most of the results don’t have much to do with travel.

Because bloggers spam their listing with unrelated tags, it’s best to search with more specific search terms. For example, hawaii will get you a couple general blogs while hawaii travel will pull up more blogs that actually have Hawaii as their main topic.

Other Bloggers

Once you’ve found a few bloggers worth networking with, don’t hesitate to shoot them an email and ask them what their favorite blogs are. Also, check to see if they have blogrolls. If they do, visit the blogs on them.

Feedback

Where do you find bloggers to network with?

Sometimes I will have discussions with people I know about blogging. And they will tell me that they like the idea of having a blog but don’t really know what they would do with it. Finding a subject to blog about on an ongoing basis can be a challenge. I know it was for me. Because I really didn’t have anything that I was passionate about except my wife. And she didn’t want me to blog about her for some strange reason.

And then one day I bought a camera and started taking some photos. That was a step in the right direction. I started an account on Webshots and put the photos there. Soon I had nine or ten albums. But what to do next?

Well along came Jordin Sparks and she solved that problem. I enjoyed watching American Idol a great deal and noticed they had a message board and a simple opportunity to start a blog on the web. That was where I learned to paste a photo into a blog. But not my photos. They were mainly photos of Jordin found on the AI website as she worked her way up through the competition and finally won it all! She was and is the youngest competitor ever to win the AI title. So after awhile I figured out how to put some of my own photos on the AI blog and write about them. That was really the turning point of this whole adventure. Because I enjoyed doing this a great deal and got some very good feedback from other members.

But then the AI season ended and this left me with an issue to resolve. I wanted to continue blogging but had no earthly idea about what to blog. And I had rudimentary blogging skills at best. Reading various posts more or less like this one led me to believe that WordPress.com was a good place to start building a blog. But I was also reading that it was important to have your own domain such as this one, Virginia Breeze, and a WordPress.org blog. But this leaves you in the awkward situation of having to fix things if something breaks. It’s a lot like a renting vs. owning a home kind of situation. I was having trouble making up my mind at that point about what to do. So I decided to do both.

WordPress.com started out well and WordPress.org was pretty shaky for a long time. They were both personal journals and I would write in one and then use the Admin panel to save everything and transfer it all to the other blog. I had duplicate blogs and felt that if one of them sank at least I could find shelter in the other one. And WordPress.org did stop being able to post for several weeks. Nobody could fix it. And so I had WordPress.com to fall back on and directed my readers there. Eventually WP.org healed and has been the focus of my blogging activities ever since.

Do I recommend this approach in hindsight? Not exactly. It’s a lot of work. Plus I found out along the way that Google is highly suspicious of this type of activity. WP.com eventually achieved a Page Rank of 5 from Google. And that was surprising considering that six months ago I didn’t know a weblog from a cranberry bog. But WP.org continues to suffer from Google suspicions and has never achieved a page rank over 3. At least this is my assumption. They don’t call you up or send you a registered letter about your blog(s).

My suggestion would be to start out with a community type blog at WP.com for the first month or two. And then buy a domain and start a WP.org blog. Take what you have learned and just start over. But don’t duplicate material. And if your new blog sinks you can always go back to the security of the WP.com world for awhile until you are ready to try again. Because having your own domain is probably going to be very important some day. And you get to try out all kinds of cool plugins that WP.com does not allow. It’s your home and you get to tear out walls or put a huge garden in the back yard if you feel like it .

But all of this leads back to the original question about the focus of the blog. What is it going to be about? I have wrestled with that thought for awhile now and tried out a lot of different things. Basically it is a question of just discovering what you enjoy doing. And then somehow figuring out how that can be a blog. I don’t believe you can happily blog about something you don’t really enjoy doing. There are too many distractions and misadventures along the way. Why would you even want to try?
In my case I know that I enjoy taking photos and writing. I don’t enjoy researching topics. I like trying to be spontaneous. Lately I have discovered that I enjoy writing poetry. And I enjoy seeing the world through the eyes of other bloggers. So if you take great photos and live somewhere that’s very different from Virginia I want you on my blogroll.

I put all these things together and came up with a blog that attempts to reflect what it’s like living in Virginia and show people the many beautiful things in this state including mountains, the ocean and everything in between. Maybe I can be someone else’s eyes. And I am also trying to write about things that will help others in some way I write about medical stuff that I know about like migraine headaches and restless legs syndrome. I may start writing about depression in the future. And in a more lighthearted vein I try to encourage folks to slow down on the highway or take time to smell the roses. All of this has nothing to do with life in Virginia. But then my wife and I took a trip to Cape Cod last summer to see my dad and I blogged about that. Virginia is the main theme but there are related themes as well. And I am still learning how to integrate them into the main theme like garlands on a Christmas tree.

This would be a good place to start discussing keywords. But that would take us too far afield. Lets just say that there are ways for you to make your blog a coherent whole using your rational and imaginative faculties. Just remember that all the parts that make up the whole should be things that you love to do.

Mine is still an eclectic mix but it becomes more coherent over time. And it’s a wonderful challenge and hobby for someone who is drawn to this type of activity. You meet interesting people. And you never know when you will produce something that will make you almost instantly famous! At that point there may be income opportunities that await. But that’s a whole different topic and not one that interests me now. I remain a lowly blogger who is hoping to crack the top 100,000 blogs at Technorati in the near future and get down into five figures. Making five dollars a month now would remind me too much of my youth and we don’t need to go way back there.

Except that blogging does remind me of one type of youthful activity . I can remember what it was like to sit on the bank of a river and cast a fishing pole into the water. Sometimes hours or days would go by without much happening. But you always knew that there was something out there with a big reputation and when it decided to give your line a tug all the hours spent sitting there were worth it.

And I’m not saying those hours were a waste of time if you didn’t land the big one either. Because they were time spent thinking and dreaming about life. They were an ongoing reverie that kept the “real world” at bay. Somehow blogging has reawakened some of those moments for me. And so I share my experience with you and hope you will look around you and find something that is beautiful in your beautiful state. And then share it with us.

Bloggers and selling. You probably don’t put those two words together, but I think they fit well.

Now I’m talking about established bloggers – bloggers with a good amount of traffic and steady stream of RSS subscribers. If you’re one of these bloggers, you can greatly increase your income by selling.

I’m not talking about selling advertising or text links. The problem with advertising is that you’re not selling to most of your readership. In most niches, only a very small percentage of your readers will be interested in buying advertising. These are readers with websites that want traffic or better search engine rankings.

But what about the rest of your readers? How will you monetize them? Sure, you can use AdSense and similar cost per click programs, but don’t neglect selling products to your readership. You can keep the AdSense while testing selling. Oftentimes you’ll find that selling products is more profitable than AdSense.

A Quick Disclaimer

Obviously selling is easier in product driven niches like real estate and travel. Travel is a good example. There is always something to sell in the travel niche. You can sell plane tickets, luggage, books, hotels reservations, cruises, and even travel insurance. However, with some creativity, you can create products in niches that are not product driven. These niches include entertainment, politics, sports, and spirituality. These niches are content driven. If you’re in these niches, don’t be afraid to charge for some of your content. People will pay for excellent content. Here are some ideas: create a membership program, record a video or audio product, or write an ebook.

Why Bloggers Make Great Sales People

Back to bloggers and selling. Why do established bloggers make great sales people? Here are two reasons.

First, these bloggers are trusted. They have a good reputation within their niche. Because of their trustworthy reputation, they can sell much more effectively. Internet users are more likely to buy from people they trust. It’s human nature.

Blogging is the personal medium, and I’ve found that as I keep up with bloggers for a couple of months, I feel like I know them even though I’ve never met them. If they recommend a product, I will check out the product and buy it if I need it. But with bloggers I don’t know about, I probably won’t check out their recommendations.

This works offline too. I have a friend who’s a car salesman. If I need a car, guess who I’m buying it from?

Second, bloggers are good at getting repeat visitors. RSS subscriptions and fresh, new, timely content drives visitors back to blogs. Also, some bloggers have email lists, which brings in even more repeat visitors. Repeat visitors is a key to getting sales. It usually takes a person a couple of exposures of a product before they buy it.

For example, let’s say you have a banner ad where you sell an affiliate product. A visitor clicks through and checks out the product. They probably won’t buy right away even if they’re interested. But if they like your content, they’ll keep coming back to your blog. And they’ll keep seeing the banner ad. Each time they see it, they’ll move closer to buying the product.

Here’s another example. I’ve been following Brian Clark’s Copyblogger for a couple of months. He’s written a lot of great content, so I trusted him. He recently started a membership site. I didn’t join right away. He posted about it multiple times. He didn’t spam. He just connected his membership site to his posts in a relevant way. Each mention made me consider joining. After a couple mentions, I joined.

Conclusion

Sell.

It may be hard for you to think of yourself as a sales person, but realize that bloggers make good sales people. They have great characteristics: they’re trusted and they get repeat visitors.