5 Effective Ways To Make Blogging Business Work For You Starting Today

December 29, 2011 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Michael Chibuzor. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Do you want to make money with your blog?

You’re not alone. Everyone has this desire to earn extra income. We’re not just bloggers, but entrepreneurs whose primary objective is to earn profit from our business, and blogging is a business. But the way to go about making money is slightly different from what we’ve been thought. Majority of us came from the affiliate business model and so, B.S. marketing and hype has been controlling us.

In the world of blogging, you don’t make money making flimsy exaggerations.

The Proper Blogging Mindset

Are you really in tune with what blogging holds? Blogging isn’t a hit-and-run affair. It’s a complete business that should be done with utmost care. A great number of internet marketers I know all made their fortunes from blogging.

I’m particularly thrilled with a pro blogger, who bought a house with the money he made from blogging. It shows that blogging works when approached with the right mindset. You start by readjusting your thoughts and thinking like an entrepreneur instead of a marketer.

Marketers are so concerned about making money that they neglect the most important aspect of doing business – meeting needs. If you can meet the needs of others, you will make money guaranteed!

1. Sell Your Own Product/Service

This is the first step if blogging should work for you. You need your own product or service as a source of bait to attract prospects. It’s your products and services that have the answer to the problems in your niche. It’s not your blog posts, neither is it your networking with top bloggers.

The easiest way to create your product today is to package it in a PDF format or video. E-books and short reports are still very lucrative in the core niches like health, internet marketing, family, relationships etc.

I believe that every blogger should have a product. Well, if you can’t create one, then sell your skill for money. It could be writing skill, designing, logo and graphic designs, web development, SEO consulting etc. Just make sure you’ve something that others can exchange their money with.

2. Money Is Not Real

That sounds ridiculous, isn’t it?

The real money isn’t seen with the optical eyes. If you want to make plenty of money online as a blogger, then take your eyes off money making and concentrate on the problems of others.

During a coaching class held in Africa in 2010, I was privileged to be the chief host and speaker for that event. One of the students stood up and asked me an emotional question. He said, “Is money difficult to get?”

My answer was straight forward. “Money is not real, if you want money, look for a value and fill it. It’s not a matter of being easy or hard, everything requires some level of work.” I answered!

What problems do you see around? Why not create a solution and sell it to those in need. You would make more money from this alone.

3. Earn Prospect’s Trust

Most successful bloggers have built a strong bond with their readers. This is why they earn huge income every month from a single product recommendation. While in college, we were advised to rely and trust the advice of an expert. Even when they’re wrong, we tend to draw closer to them. Experts can’t be wrong – it’s the fact in the blogosphere!

In order to earn their trust, ensure you deliver on what you promised. We’ve been told to always “over deliver” on our promises. But that’s not the point here. If you can’t over deliver, fulfill the little promises you made. Write intelligent and quality contents all the time and answer questions as prompt with all courtesy. You would earn buyers trust and that’s the key.

4. Think Outside The Box

You need to think outside your blog. Bloggers that are limited in their thoughts rarely make significant impact in life. Don’t stop at writing and submitting articles that are informative (in your own eyes). It’s about time you think like a sales manager that needs others people’s time (OPT) to earn a living.

You can never succeed in isolation. Get to know other people in the blogosphere. Not just the successful ones, but the upcoming ones. There is so much energy in most beginners that can transform your business if you allow it.

Exchange contents with those in your niche, drive fresh visitors to your blog and strive to engage them. Once they’re engaged, they will buy your products and might subscribe to your service – who knows?

5. Be On The Lookout For Opportunities

I’m always on the lookout for profitable business opportunities. That’s why I launched my recent coupon blog that reviews sittercity coupon codes and 6pm discount deals. Passive and multiple streams of income is the best in this 21st century. What other ways can you touch lives and make money in the process of blogging?

Have you considered running a blog contest or guest blogging contest? Once a monetary reward is attached to it, it’s a lot easier to make money mingling with people in your niche.

You can also sponsor an offline event. Most bloggers are still strangers to their own community, but the growth potential it has is massive. Don’t be like them, start giving to your community monetarily and watch your business soar to the sky.

Marketing Takeaway

There you’ve it, the best five ways to make blogging work for you in 2012 and beyond. It doesn’t matter where you’re right now, the above simple strategies are proven to work and your case won’t be different. It’s time to take action and expand your online business. See you ahead!

Michael Chibuzor shares insightful Social media & SEO content writing tips. At leisure, he contributes on a learn french software review blog that makes available free french lessons and French language software. Take french quizzes, play games and become a master at French.

A Simple Way to Keep Your WordPress Admin Secure

August 23, 2010 5 Comments

WordPress is easily the most widely used blogging platform. With the simplicity and ease of use, it is not surprise. When we create blogs, we usually make sure that we have all the best plugins to make our blogging lives easier along with better results in the SERPs. I am sure that there are many of you out there that have many blogs that are setup the same way. Each one as the same plugins, permalinks, and settings. The main issue that many people forget, especially beginner bloggers, is the security of their wordpress blog.

Unfortunately, with the increase of use of any software comes the increase in hackers and security loopholes. Since WordPress is open-source, it can easily be obtained by hackers that can study the code to look for security holes. This happens all of the time and why you see so many updates in your WordPress dashboard. Keeping up with updates can be an easy way to keep hackers out of your blog, but there is another simple way for anyone that has an apache server hosting their website. The main security flaw in WordPress is the use of wp-admin as the login screen. Everyone knows it and can navigate their way to your admin login section at any point. Now, I am aware that we all have user names and passwords that is to prevent unwanted users in our blog, but how many of you don’t change the username from “admin”? This is a common mistake in new bloggers is to keep the tried and true name of “admin” as the username. The first step to securing your blog is to change this name. Next, I will show you the way to add another layer of protection on your admin login page.

This method should not be used for anyone that wants users to register on their blog. There are many of blogs that do not want people registering as it is too much of hassle. If you do not require a registration, then make sure to change the setting in your admin section to make sure people cannot register on your blog. If you have Cpanel with your webhost (most apache webhosts have Cpanel), then you need to login. We are going to password protect the wp-admin folder in order to add another layer of security. This is done in a few simple steps, which I will outline below.

Once logged into Cpanel, you need to scroll down the home page and click Password Protect Directories. This will then give you the option to view the folders in your webroot, or specific directory. Choose which one you want.
Cpanel will take you to a page that allows you to see the directories. You can either go into a specific directory and password protect a folder inside of it, or you can click on the directory name to start the process of protecting that directory.
If you have installed wordpress in your root directory, then you will want to go there and then click the name of the admin folder “wp-admin”. If you have installed your blog in a subdirectory or subdomain, then you will want to navigate to that directory and then click the name of the admin folder “wp-admin”.
This next page gives you the ability to tell your server to password protect your wp-admin directory. You will want to check the box and to password protect the directory and then give it a name. You can name it anything you like. This is what the login box will say when it pops up to login.
You will then want to create a user. This will be what you use to login to access the wp-admin folder. Do not use the same login information as your wordpress admin login. This will defeat the purpose. Once the user is created, make sure you add it to the authorized list.
After you Save and Add the users, your wp-admin section will then be password-protected. It is similar to how you log into Cpanel, but once you log in with the server popup, you will then see the regular wordpress login page. Use your wordpress admin login to get to your blog dashboard.

While I realize that this is another step in logging in, imagine how better you will feel. It can be very heartbreaking to see that when you log into your blog dashboard to see that your blog has been hacked. All of that time and effort gone without any warning. While you many have backups, it is still a major pain to redo the blog. Just by password-protecting your wp-admin folder, it gives you an extra sense of security. While there are many other ways to provide your blog with security, this is a very easy thing to implement. Just remember that if anyone tries to go and register for your blog, they will see the pop-up window. Just make sure to disable registration. Happy blogging everyone!

Looking for Guest Bloggers?

August 19, 2010 6 Comments

Guest blogging can be a great way to receive new traffic to your blog or website as well as provide good content on other blogs. If you guest blog on other people’s blogs, then you should be willing to accept guest posts on your blog as well. It has never really been that easy to start guest blogging due to the time it takes to find a quality blog that will accept your post as well as the time it takes to write the article. It can also be pretty difficult to start accepting guest posts on your blog as most people want to guest post on higher end blogs. Just remember that everyone has to start somewhere and I am going to bring you a little resource that can help you get ahead in guest blogging.

I came across a website called My Blog Guest, which is essentially just a forum of bloggers. It is not just any ordinary forum though as it only pertains to guest blogging. Anyone can sign up for free and fill out their profile just like any other forum. The key difference here is that you are only going to be dealing with other bloggers that either allow guest blogging on their site or are looking for sites to guest blog on. This is a great resource as you can get new people to start guest posting on your blog or you can write an article and have someone post it on their blog. My Blog Guest really takes out most of the hard work that guest blogging has been known for.

As a member, you can easily start asking for guest posts on your blog in the forum. All you need to do is provide the other members with a little description of your blog and what type of post you are looking for. Other members will then reply if they are interested and you can work out a deal from there. My Blog Guest also has a feature that allows you to submit your own articles for bloggers to post on their blogs. This is a simple way of getting your article published without having to find anyone to do it. Once your article is live, anyone can offer to post your article and you can accept or decline their request. It is all up to you.

So, if you are looking either to be a guest blogger or want to have people write on your blog, then check out My Blog Guest. You will be pretty happy with the results and the ease of the forum. This is a resource that has been a long time coming and it looks to be taking off pretty quickly. I was made aware that they already had to upgrade their servers due to the influx of new bloggers. That is always great news for an online community. If you are interested, then sign up today!

SocialSpark 2.NO!

July 14, 2010 3 Comments

SocialSpark has been a quality Get Paid to Blog platform for some time now. It has features that other services do not and advertisers seem to enjoy the service. While SocialSpark has not been used on this blog, I have used it before on other blogs. The service was good, but obviously needed to be revamped. Well, everyone welcome SocialSpark 2.0!

I got the email about this change on July 12th, so I figured I would check it out. After I read their blog about the changes, I can honestly say that I was NOT impressed. Most features and changes were great until I stumbled upon their Direct Publishing requirement. This is exactly what it sounds like, where SocialSpark will use your username and password to your blog to automatically upload your post to your blog. You actually write your post in SocialSpark and then the advertiser gets to look at it and ask for changes. This does reduce the amount of times that you have to deal with non payments after you run your post, which was a pain for everyone.

While you do get guaranteed payments, you also give up your login credentials to SocialSpark so they can automatically post to your blog. I am not sure about everyone, but that does not happen on my blogs without careful consideration. We don’t even allow guest authors to have access via different logins. It is to make sure that we have full control over the quality of the content. I think SocialSpark made a huge mistake with this crazy requirement and with other people commenting on this, they agree with me. This is a no-no for most bloggers.

SocialSpark…..Change this crazy requirement and make it optional for bloggers. Do the right thing!

Blog for You, Not for the Money!

July 13, 2010 0 Comments

Over the years, I have come across many different people in the online world. People that are dedicated to their cause, people that just want to make a buck, and others that just learned how to use email. I tend to not really deal with too many people that have just learned the great wonders of the internet, but still come across them. I know that they will catch up with technology at some point. My main concern is with the people that are just online to make a buck through blogging.

There are so many different ways to make money online that it tends to lean toward ludicrous. A good majority of people start blogging online just to get their feet wet and then find out that they enjoy it. These are the people that I applaud. If you are working on a project online that you enjoy, then go for it and keep doing what you are doing. The reason why most people fail to make a name for themselves or make any money is because they are trying to make money doing something that they do not enjoy, or know nothing about.

There are thousands of sites out there that will show you the “secrets” of making money online, but most are just sites that are making money off of you. Will you make money with their software or idea? Most likely not. The main reason this is true is because you are looking at this with pure dollar signs in mind, not if you actually enjoy it. The thought of making money is on the forefront of minds these days with the massive US recession, but doing it online is very difficult. There is so much competition to contend with that you will quit before you make any money. Most people that I have spoken with spend more starting up the website or blog than they ever will make. This is just not a good business practice.

Creating blogs based off the most popular keywords or highest margin adsense topics will only result in failure in the long run. There are millions of sites that are already established and running for the same thing you are. Starting in this type of environment is a leading cause of failure. If you want to succeed online, the one thing I ask you to do is stay true to what you love. Blogging was created in order for people to voice their opinions, concerns, and views about anything that they pleased. After a while, people found out you could make money blogging. Then everyone tried to cash in and the industry became over saturated.

If you want to make money online with blogging, then stick with a topic that you are knowledgeable in and you actually enjoy. If you can do this, then blogging will become fairly easy. Remember that it can take a year to start getting good traffic to your blog and then you can start monetizing it. Once you build a solid reader base, then you can start showing them ads for things that are relevant. People respond better to ads if they know the site well and understand the topics that are being discussed. Knowing the topic that you are blogging about will keep you blogging for a long time because posts will be able to be created with ease. If you try to make a blog just to make money, you will spend more time researching, then writing. Keep true to passions and the money will come in later.

iMark Interactive