Christian

Why I Use a Pop Up Opt In Box to Build My Email List

By Christian

I recently had a reader ask me about the pop up opt in box that I use on Next Level Blogger. He wanted to know how it was working for me and how I felt about using a pop up. He said he personally didn’t like pop ups and felt that it therefore might not be a good idea to use one on his site. I think this is a great concern, so I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Why I Started Implementing a Pop Up to Build My Email List

I haven’t always used a pop up to build my email list. The reason was the same as what this reader suggested. I personally do not like them. Then a mentor of mine made a really interesting comment to me a few months back. He said he has NEVER clicked on a banner ad in his life. I realized that it is likely true for me too. I cannot remember a single time I’ve ever clicked on an Adsense link or banner ad. But this friend of mine makes bank on banner ads. Obviously, many people DO click on them. Just not me :).

After this conversation I realized that I’m really the last person I should use as a judge when it comes to what I should use on my site. After all, I’m not building it for me. I’m building it for my readers. I’m providing a service for others, not myself. And consequently, I should simply do what works for them!

Fact is, if a pop up opt in box generated a lot of complaints or failed to convert, I wouldn’t use it. So far, I have received ZERO complaints, and the pop up window on Next Level Blogger is the second-highest converting opt in box on the site. Clearly, it’s going to stay up for a while!

I use Aweber to generate the pop up, and I highly recommend using their service as well. It’s super-easy to design and install on your site, and it functions flawlessly for me. Anything that’s not techy and gets great results is always cool in my book 🙂

Lesson for the day: I encourage you to set aside any personal assumptions when it comes to building your online business. Don’t do what you like or think is cool. Do what works. A lot of times it’s the simplest stuff in the world that will make huge results for you.

Blogging vs Internet Marketing

By Christian

There are a lot of articles on blogging out there…and there are a lot of articles on internet marketing. They are mostly treated as two separate endeavors. Are blogging and internet marketing truly two different subjects? Not for my readers. At least I hope not.

Blogging is mostly the activity of posting content on a regular basis in a specific niche, etc. When “internet marketing” is mentioned, most people think of squeeze pages, affiliate landing pages, sales pages of other various kinds, etc. My hope for this post is simple: I’d like to blur the lines a little bit and hopefully get you to realize, if you don’t already…that if you’re blogging to make money online, you are an internet marketer. And it will benefit you greatly to think of yourself as such.

Business blogging and internet marketing are the same thing. It’s important to view every post on your blog as a landing page.

If You Want to Make Money Online With Your Blog…

Bottom line: if you want to make money online with your blog, you need to sell things. This means you are in sales. That’s internet marketing!

Many bloggers do not think of themselves as marketers or salespeople. And then they wonder why they’re not getting the results they want. There is a lot more involved than just writing blog posts.

You Can’t Make Much Money Blogging

The reason I decided to write this post is because there seems to be a line in many people’s minds that divides internet marketing and blogging, and there really needn’t be. Here’s something that may surprise you to hear: you can’t make much money blogging. Really. You can make a bit. If you happen to be building your blog in a high traffic niche, and are successful in building a high traffic site, you might be able to make some cash through advertising. But honestly, this does not apply to most blogs.

If I’m being honest with you, you are probably not going to be the next TechCrunch. I’m not one to be a dream crusher…if you have an idea and a plan, you should work it, and no doubt there will continue to be many huge success stories like this. My point is this: MOST blogs in the vast scheme of things just aren’t going to be high traffic blogs. And that’s OK. You can STILL make a killing!

One more point about this: there are many sites out there that make as much money as TechCrunch does, and you have likely never even heard of them. Popularity does not necessarily correlate to success, or to income. Sales skills, business skills and skillful execution however, usually do.

Low Traffic Blog Niches Rock!

So what about all those innumerable niches out there that just aren’t high traffic niches? Those are my focus and specialty! Look, there are a TON of ways to make great money online. High traffic is just one, and in my opinion it’s far from the best one.

Yes, there are a lot of gurus out there that will tell you magical ways to explode your traffic and build your email list to staggering numbers, but what many of them will fail to mention is that a lot of niches just don’t have the kind of mass appeal that’s necessary to build a high traffic site.

And it’s important to understand that this is NOT a problem…but it SHOULD affect your monetization plan!

For example, you’re not going to get 100k visitors a month to your Lentil Recipes blog, no matter how hard you try. At least probably not :). I’ll say it this way, if you’re the lentil recipe guru of the world, and your success depends on getting tons of traffic, you do not have a good plan, and you probably haven’t done your research.

However, there are a lot of ways to make that niche profitable. There are good ways to make any useful niche highly profitable, and I’m going to be going over specific ways to do this in upcoming posts on this blog.

The Often Overlooked, Money-Making Benefit of Low Traffic

To suffice for now…how do you make a low traffic niche profitable? You learn to sell! In other words…internet marketing. Personal interaction is king in the low traffic arena. See, you can do that when you have a low traffic niche. You can literally build a great, intimate relationship with your audience. It’s not that possible when you’re getting several thousand visitors a day…the level of personal attention goes down.

Both high traffic and low traffic niches have their advantages. So don’t think because you’re only getting a few thousand visitors a month right now that you’re at a disadvantage. The fact is that you’re in a great place! Use what you’ve got. The fact that you can interact with and engage your audience on a highly personal level means that you can create a lot more value for each individual who reads you blog, and when you create more value…you can make more money.

So I will be covering different ways to monetize like this in more detail in coming posts over the next several weeks. I hope you can bookmark this site or subscribe, so you can get this information when it comes out.

I think it’s absolutely essential to do a few things here:

Stop thinking high traffic and huge subscriber lists are the only way to make a good living with your blog.
Start thinking of yourself as an internet marketer, and open yourself up to the idea that you are a salesperson. Sales skills will be what enable you to make good money online in whatever niche you choose. Realize that if you apply high traffic methods of monetizing on a low traffic site, your results will always be disappointing. However, learn to apply the right techniques to your business, and your results will be impressive.
Study different methods of monetizing that I will be discussing here in the coming weeks, and write a plan for your blog that makes sure you can get the results you’re looking for…don’t just assume you’re going to follow the same model of another blogger you like. Do your own research, and write a plan that’s appropriate for your own niche. Follow your own path!

This is the crux of blogging vs internet marketing…if you’re blogging for business and to make money, you ARE an internet marketer. You are a salesperson. You do not have to embrace these things, and I will admit that most bloggers do not. I will also tell you that there is a REASON most blogs fail :). The difference between blogging and internet marketing? When it comes to making your business successful, there is NO difference!

How to Never Run Out of Blog Post Ideas

By Christian

To make a blog successful, it’s important to write regularly. I’m not one of the people who will tell you that you have to write every day in order to make your blog successful. I write everyday, but I don’t post to Next Level Blogger every day. Tim Ferriss is a big advocate of not working too much, and he posts only once a week or so. Many bloggers don’t post every day, but it’s important to post regularly. At least once or twice a week is really a good standard to keep.

One of the recent commentators on my guest post over at Remarkablogger expressed some concern about running out of ideas to write about. This is a common concern. Everyone runs into a struggle now and then regarding how to keep the content coming.

I suppose there are those of us out there who are comfortable running on inspiration only. I’m not like that. I use systems. Especially when it comes to business, I want something in place to ensure I’m getting results.

There is a very simple system I use to ensure that I always have content to publish, and I hope you can use it, adapt it to your personal situation and benefit from it.

A Couple Important Points

Before I describe the content system I use, I want to preface this with a couple important points. You really have to be running a blog about a subject you love. You need to have a strong intrinsic interest in what you’re doing. You can apply this very simply content system to any subject, but if you don’t love what you’re doing, it’s still going to be plain drudgery, and that is going to show up in your writing. You can’t sell something you’re not sold on yourself.

With as simple and quick as it can be to get a new business fired up online these days, you really shouldn’t ever think of yourself as locked into something. If you hate what you’re doing, just do something else, or take your current project in a new direction. Seriously.

Second, it’s essential to have faith in yourself. As silly as that may sound, it really is important. Experts in any field routinely underestimate what they know. They think everyone knows what they know.

Why would anyone be interested in reading something that you consider to be very remedial? Because they’re not the expert! YOU are the expert. The reason you consider some things to be very simple and boring is because this is what you do; this is what you work on every day, so of course YOU think it’s simple! Your readers want more of that expertise. Share it with them.

You know more than you think you do. You have a lot more to share than you think. When you have faith in yourself, and you’re confident in your expertise, the more you share, the more you’ll want to share. 5 years from now, you’ll have published hundreds of posts, and you will still have only just begun.

The idea that there really is only so much to say about a subject is just plain wrong.

There is No Limit to How Much Content You Can Produce

Think about nearly any subject that exists, and there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people writing about it for generations. And if it’s a brand new subject, then the ball is just getting started.
For example there have been innumerable reports written about the digestive processes in fruit flies, and right now as we speak…there is surely a scientist busy writing the next one… and he absolutely cannot wait to release it, because it’s going to ROCK! Point: you can go as deep as you want into any subject, there is no limit to how much content that can be produced!

The more you dive into a subject, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more there is to learn. Not enough to write about? Seriously, you’re just not looking hard enough. I don’t mean this to criticize you if you’re having trouble writing right now; I mean it to empower you. Trust me, you have plenty to share. The challenge is not that there isn’t enough to write about. The challenge is that there just simply is not enough time to share everything you have to share. Once you learn to tap into your expertise and have faith in yourself, you will be unstoppable.

My Blog Content System

Here’s what I do to ensure I always have a large amount of content and ideas to write about.

Step one:

In the morning, when I’m most creative and uninhibited, I sit down and brainstorm article ideas. I do this by just writing titles. I don’t expand on them at all; I just write titles. Not all of them are great of course, but my goal is to simply take a few minutes and write 20-30 titles or so. In a short amount of time, this has produced a very sizeable list of article ideas.

This may sound intimidating up front, but it’s really a lot easier than you might think. Coming up with titles is fun, creative and simple, because you don’t have to concern yourself with research, what exactly you’re going to say or anything. Just write titles that you’d like to read yourself. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not. Just crank em out.

After you have this list, it’s easy to revisit it, and after just a few seconds of scanning, you will get more ideas for new posts. Write them down. Again, don’t write anything but titles.

Step two:

When it’s time to get a post together, simply visit your list. There’s something magical about a good title. When you have a title, the post often writes itself. Getting inspired is often the trouble, and this way you have a tool to stimulate that inspiration any time you need it.

That’s why it’s been so beneficial to me to separate the thought process from the writing process.

When I sit down with your list of hundreds of article ideas, all I have to do is scan that sucker and look for something that excites me. Many, many ideas may not be doing anything for me at the moment, but then I’ll see a title that grabs me, and bam…20 minutes later I have an article to post.

Results

Admittedly this is a very simple system, but if you’ve had trouble coming up with content, I encourage you to try it out. There really is no magic out there, but simple systems in my experience are the ones you can understand and implement immediately, and that’s why they work. Just doing something with a little structure can free up your mind to produce good content whenever you need.

It’s very intimidating to look at a blank page with the need to produce an article. But when you have pages of ideas to look through, it’s easy to simply scan it and look for something that’s interesting. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling and the writing process started.

After doing content this way for a few weeks, I found that I have more ideas than I can reasonably produce for Next Level Blogger. So what’s happened is that the ideas have spilled out into other products. I created Professional Blogging Roadmap that way. A free ebook you can download here. It’s essentially a collection of about 30-40 different article ideas that I put together and organized into an ebook. I have another ebook coming up that was produced this way as well, and a paid information product I hope to release near the end of the year or early in 2010. And Next Level Blogger has only been up for a couple months or so. The way I see it, if it’s produced this type of results for me, it’s worth sharing, and I bet it can help you as well 🙂

Other Sources for Ideas

• You’re subscribed to all the top blogs in your space, correct? If not, you definitely should be. Writers read. And bloggers…read blogs. If you’ve not yet developed a strong voice and an ability to crank out quality content at will, make sure you’re reading other writers in your niche. Being regularly exposed to quality ideas is a great way to develop your senses for great article ideas. Just scanning your rss reader can be a great way to get inspired as well.
• Ask your readers! I did this recently with my email subscribers…I really like to converse with my subscribers as much as possible. I simply said “Hey I’m writing an ebook…” And I described the topic I’m covering, and I asked, “…anything you want to see covered?” I got a ton of great ideas in response. I really appreciate that feedback! A lot of that feedback is going to end up being in the new ebook, and a lot of it will turn into future posts on Next Level Blogger. Don’t overlook your subscribers; believe me, they’ll tell you what they think if you just ask!

Not only is the prospect of continuously producing new content an occasion hurdle for bloggers, but it’s also something that intimidates would-be bloggers. It can keep some people from getting started blogging, when in fact, setting up a new blog just might be the most powerful and smart thing they can do to promote their business. Hopefully this post can show how simple it can be to crank out an unbelievable amount of quality content for your readers. There really are no limits beyond your personal energy.

My Most Embarrassing Day Blogging

By Christian

I’m a big advocate of being involved with your community in any way you can. Guest posting is one way of doing this. It is a fantastic way of gaining new eyeballs for your content. I recommend it.

I recently sent David Risley a guest post, and he graciously accepted and published it. That same day, I sent a guest post to Michael Martine, and he also accepted and published a few days later. Two original articles, two guest posts. I couldn’t think of a better way to help get this new blog off the ground than by sharing it with the awesome readership of these two great blogs. Unbeknownst to me, and them, I had sent them the same post.

It was an accident, but the effect was still terrible in my mind. Duplicate guest posting is really not cool. David had published the article first, and then Michael followed, and I didn’t realize my mistake until the post went live on Michael’s site. David sends me a tweet basically saying “what’s up with this, fool?” He had every right…even an obligation…to call me out. And my stomach sunk when I visited Michael’s site to see that I had submitted a duplicate post to him.

I apologized, and both guys were terrific and gracious as always. It seems to be water under the bridge. But I walked away with a terrific lesson I wanted to share with you. One of those damn lessons you need to learn more than once in life. Details matter. Pay attention to what you’re doing. Also, when you make a mistake…own up to it as soon as possible. No one is perfect; God knows I’m not.

Thanks guys for the opportunity to appear on your blogs. It’s an honor, and next time I promise not to screw it up : )

Top 10 Myths and Mistakes About Blogging and Internet Marketing

By Christian

As more and more of my peers in small business come online and start trying their hand at blogging and internet marketing, there are a number of common myths and mistakes that need to be addressed.

If you’re considering starting a blog or using social media to promote your small business, I applaud you. My goal for this post is to simply dispel some of the biggest lies, misunderstanding and obstacles I’ve come across that you will likely run into.

Hopefully you can use these as a way of saving yourself some time and get straight to the business of making your blog or website reach your goals.

Internet marketing as an afterthought: It’s a great idea to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. For many business models (dare I say nearly ALL business models) a customer’s most common point of interaction with you is your website. Your internet presence should be given a proportional amount of your time and attention. Many businesses ironically spend very little time on internet marketing. They’ll have a site that gets thousands of visitors a month, but they do very little if anything to effectively engage them. Instead, they expect people to call them and wade through an automated phone system in order to get information. You may prefer to do business a certain way, but it’s likely that your customer would prefer your website to be a lot more usable. And it may interest you that if you help them out in this regard, they will likely reward you for it : ) Don’t let your internet marketing be something that you’re just trying to squeeze in. It needs to be as integrated into your business as your customers would like it to be.
Let me just slam this website together. Let’s get this sucker DONE! This is a powerful myth and mistake many people make! Your internet marketing is an ongoing process. Think of it more as a dialog than anything else. When you walk away, the conversation stops. Ideally you want to be as active and engaged in your internet marketing as possible. Trying to crank out a website and then thinking that it’s going to keep pulling results for you without any additional effort is the wrong way of looking at it.
Marketing online is not the same as traditional marketing: Traditional marketing is interruption-based, which means that advertisers have always concentrated on grabbing people’s attention however they can. Getting a response was key. In online marketing, people are already paying attention, so trying to cram a message in front of them is just rude. Cultivating a relationship with your visitors is hugely important. That’s why blogging is something I consider to be pretty much mandatory for most small business owners, because it enables you to communicate with a large number of people very effectively and in a personal manner. Applying traditional marketing methods to your internet marketing most often comes off badly for you. It’s important to embrace the fact that a social approach to your marketing, while it takes more time, really is going to be the best approach.
Failing to build an email list: You want people to come out to your site, correct? And after they visit, you want them to come back. The number one way to get people coming back over and over again is by getting them to subscribe. And the number one way people subscribe is still via email. RSS is very convenient, but most readers still use email. If you’re not building your email list from day one, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. For email listing building tools and campaign management, I personally use Aweber and recommend you get in on that action as well.
Failing to have a coach or someone on your team who specializes in new media: Let’s be real. You have a business to run. You’re not a SEO expert. You’re not a web designer. You’re not going to be. You don’t have time. Too many business owners try to do too much. Consult with someone from time to time. Get someone on your team, whether it’s an employee or a virtual assistant, a coach or whatever asset your most comfortable with, and use their expertise to make sure you’re being effective. Have them critique you and tell you where you can improve. Talk with someone whose job it is to stay on top of these things, and take their advice. You will be 100% more effective by not trying to do everything yourself.
Focusing on design and SEO over content and communication: Everyone, especially business owners, want their site to look great. Yet look at some of the most successful blogs on the internet today, and not all of them look all that great. Why are they popular? How can you possibly create a winning online marketing plan without a $20k custom built website? Because believe it or not, all consumers really want is quality content. And they want it to come from you, because they care to know if you’re actually as cool as you want people to think you are. A glitzy website doesn’t impress many people any more. But quality, genuine content always will get the job done. What’s nice is that you can produce quality content for free. It just takes a little time and introspection. It’s highly worth it. Design is important, but content and quality interaction with your customers is WAY more valuable. It’s what your customers care about, so it’s what you should focus on.
Spending too much time and money on marketing that doesn’t work: This one isn’t so much of an internet marketing thing as it is a business thing. So many of my friends in business are still locked into a mentality that they HAVE to pay for certain forms of marketing that they’ve always done in the past, even when they’re not pulling results anymore. On the flip side, I know some forward thinking business owners who have literally cut out their print advertising completely, and it has had NO negative effect on their business whatsoever. Obviously I’m not telling you specifically what to do with your specific business, but I urge you to look at the results your marketing is getting you. Are your customers flooding your websites, but meanwhile you’re still spending thousands a month on billboards and space ads? It happens a lot. If your advertising is not working, CUT IT! And put your money into your online business; it’s where your customers are most likely to find you anyway : )
Not having fun: Fun is likely the most important element of this business. With all the options and tools at our disposal (blogs, websites, SEO, Twitter, Facebook, blah, blah, blah), it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But there’s an underlying opportunity here that most people seem to miss. You can do anything you want! You can literally make a great living doing anything you want, and as long as you’re willing to work like crazy you can do very well. Don’t become overwhelmed by your options; revel in them! Don’t be all stiff and proper with everything you do; have fun! With the amount of work that needs to be done, fun is mandatory. It also enables you to tackle the next step…
Not diving in: There’s a lot of concern amongst business owners as to the value of Twitter, for example. I get a lot of comments regarding how it just doesn’t make sense. There is a reasonable concern over wasting time on something that is not going to produce results. Time is valuable, and that concern is prudent. However, things change quickly these days, and it’s important to act if you want to get results. Instead of using your lack of understanding as a gauge, I recommend using something else. Look at the value of the network. If there are millions of people all in one place, and the community is very active, there is a huge amount of value there, and it’s a good idea to tap into it. Dive in. Trust me, after you’ve spent some time conversing with people on Twitter (or any valuable community), it will make more sense. And so it goes with the internet in general, the biggest community of all. Being committed to getting results is key to actually getting results. Being tentative with your internet marketing endeavors will only ever produce tentative results. Don’t focus on what you don’t know. Yes, there are things to learn, but the most important thing is to dive in.
Wanting results fast and automatically: I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get turnkey results from their internet marketing work. But it’s essential to measure your results properly. Measuring results from a blog or a social media profile in the same way that you measure results from a space ad you run in a magazine is not going to make you a happy camper. It doesn’t work the same way, and it doesn’t produce the same kind of results. Measure results using web analytics. Measure results via how many subscribers you’re getting and how many of them are buying from you. The details of this are certainly a topic for another post, but to suffice for now, don’t set up a blog and expect the orders to start pouring in automatically. Trust me, there are many points of data that you can use to keep your analytical mind more than pleased with the results you’re getting. Results are trackable using new media. But setting up a website and then sitting back and waiting for the money to start rolling in is going to lead only to disappointment.

Using new media is a little interesting…you basically cannot ignore this shift in the way of doing business. You really can’t. You have to learn to use these tools, and learning to use them is basically going to force you to rethink a lot about your business, how you measure results, etc.