Lessons From Mom For Your Blogging Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yesterday I took off to play taxi driver and take my Mom’s cousin to Mom’s house while she is recovering from hip replacement surgery. This is not the first replacement for her. At this point she has both hips and a knee replaced. (Why she is now the bionic Mom .)

There is something big to be learned here. One of Mom’s favorite things is to get out shopping. When they coined the phrase “Shop Till You Drop” they had her in mind.

Obviously problems with her hips and knee were keeping her from her favorite sport.

If you aren’t familiar with joint replacement there is always a good bit of rehabilitation that takes place to get things back to normal. Mom attacks it like a man that is thirsty crossing the desert upon finding an oasis. Often times, too much too soon but despite her age (no I won’t say how old as I want to be able to continue to visit her) she always ends up being a therapists dream patient.

She follows the routines to the max and the only problem they have with her is slowing her down so she does not over do it. We had that problem yesterday when we brought her home.

Now at this point I am sure you are wondering what the heck this has to do with anything about blogging. There really is a point here.

As your blog grows you will have things break down and not work well. It is a given.

It may be…

• the way you are monetizing things.
• problems with your theme
• lack of your voice resonating with your readers
• and many more things

You can attack them head on knowing that it will take some pain and it will take effort to get comfortable with doing new things. It often is not pleasant to make changes or you can stay comfortable and suffer because of it.

Are you always ready to address the things that seem to be stopping you from having the blog you want? Are you willing to go through the “rehab” of learning new things and making them part of your repertoire?

That is how you will improve your blog. Being wiling to go through learning curves for new things and being uncomfortable for a short time to become better is the key.

Guarantee you that Mom will be in perfect shopping shape in a few months and back to her “Shop Till You Drop” philosophy. Will your blog be improved over that time frame?

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, hip replacement surgery, learning curves, rehab

3 Ways To Attract And Connect With New Readers [ 3:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Now it is no secret to regular readers that I read a lot of blogs. Personally, I think it is one of the keys to writing better blog posts.

Feeding your mind helps you to get more ideas and often to take a slant that is uniquely yours.

There are 3 things that will increase the likely hood that I will read your post.

1. The headline

The first thing that attracts me is the headline. Whether I find a blog from my reader, Twitter, Facebook or Buzz that is the absolute first thing that gets me to open that blog.

Just like a sales letter, the headline creates an immediate response from me as to whether this post is something I want to spend my time with or not.

If you don’t sell me right then and there I am off to something else. After all you are competing for my attention with a lot of other content.

My reader on an average morning just for the topic of blogging and WordPress usually has over 150 new posts each day. Out of that number I usually only open and read 15 – 20 at the most. So only 1 in 10 is likely to get read.

Add in the social sites and the number of opportunities is massive. Time is our most valuable commodity so if you don’t have a rock solid headline the chances of attracting me is nil.

2. Formatting

Once I arrive at your post the next thing is how it is formatted.

Is it easy to read?

Are there subheads if it is more than 3 or 4 paragraphs?

Just this morning I went to a blog that the headline attracted me from my reader and as soon as I opened it there was one huge block of text. Guess what happened?

Yep I was gone. Now it may have been excellent information and it was definitely a topic I was interested in. After all the headline attracted me. Seeing 300+ words in one block makes it very hard to read and consequently not worth the effort.

It was an immediate turn off.

For me the general look and the formatting are key to getting me to take the time to read something.

If it is not easy to read on screen I am gone.

Now for me that means lots of white space, easy to read (black text on white background works best for me).

3. Use Images

Now this is less important than the formatting but if you are using images it gets my attention right away.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and it often can be.

The big thing that an image does with me though is it shows extra effort. When making the decision to continue to read when I arrive an image can make the difference between whether I continue or not.

The other advantage an image gives you is that sites like Google Buzz, Amplify and others will show the image and a properly selected image may just be the curiosity factor get me to click through.

So these 3 ways that can help you to attract and connect with new readers but it only works if the quality of your content delivers.

These 3 items are less important for readers that you have already connected with but aren’t we all always looking for new readers?

That is my thought. What is yours?

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: 3 things, blog-readers, blogging, formatting, more blog readers, wordpress

Do you ever look at Google Trends before you start getting ready to blog? You should.

Now there won’t always be something there that will fit but tying into something that is trending can be helpful in getting a different slant for your post.

For example some of the things that are trending right now are Al Jazeera with coverage of Egypt, Super Bowl which will happen this Sunday, Cyclone which is hitting my friends down under and Chinese New Year which is today.

Can you use any of these ideas as a twist on your blog post today?

You can not always find things there but when you can it will give you a good idea of what is hot right now. When you do find those topics that will fit with what you are writing you can tap into what your potential readers are already talking about.

Two other places to see what is hot that you can use in a similar fashion are below the search box at Twitter search for what is trending.

You can check out the trends on MyBlogLog if you are using that by checking topics.

Some of the items will be the same but there are differences too. Each looks at a different audience but can be great for triggering ideas to help you take advantage of what is hot.

So the question is do you check Trends before you start writing? Leave our comments below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: al jazeera, chinese new year, cyclone, google, google trends, mybloglog, twitter trends

Blog 3 Pack will be disappearing Sunday morning.

There are 3 things that you must get right to make money with blogging.

• Keyword research
• SEO of your blog
• Monetization methods

All three of those topics were covered in detail in three one hour plus calls complete with transcripts and workbooks.

Each package sells for $27. With the 3 pack you can get all 3 for $37 and save almost 55% over the normal price.

This offer ends Sunday morning so check it out today at

Blog 3 Pack Special

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: keyword-research, monetization, seo, special offer, transcripts

It often pays to think outside the box and I have to give credit to Nicole Dean of Nicole On The Net for what she has done here. Now Nicole is the one who got me doing a blog tour and I recommend her book Blog World Tour Planner regularly for anyone looking to increase their traffic to their blog.

Every so often she does an Expert Brief as a blog post where she asks the same question of a few good marketers and compiles their answers with her own. Another great way to create additional content through using others.

In exchange she links back to their blogs so they get a mini guest post on her blog and she gets additional content.

This is very powerful as I am sure that they are promoting that blog post in some way. I would. Whether it be tweeting or bookmarking or mentioning it on my blog.

All of these are great ways to improve your blog but…

She has taken it a step further now. Check out this free report she has on One Way Link Building. Yes just click the link and download it no opt in or anything like that needed.

Now to the repurposing and how she is really leveraging her efforts. The content comes from her blog post on that topic for Expert Briefs from her blog.

That is an excellent way to leverage your content but she added a bit extra and then took it even one step further. She made it rebrandable and then took advantage of her affiliate network (I am one of them) and allowed us to rebrand some of the recommendations to our links.

This creates a powerful reason for me to distribute this report which I am doing here.

Note: if the information in the report or the recommendations in it were not all first rate I would not do it no matter what it would do for me.

So to summarize -

• Getting content from others with expertise can be a powerful technique for getting quality content.
• Participating in this type of blog post can be powerful for you as you can get links and spread your word further than you could on your own.
• Repurposing the content in this manner is beneficial and allows you to create a nice presell device for your products or products you affiliate with.
• If you have an affiliate program it can be very powerful if you make it rebrandable for your affiliates and get an even wider distribution for your content.

It can be a winning technique for you and your affiliates.

Think about what quality content you already have on your blog and can use this way with a minimal bit of extra effort.

You can download your copy of the report here.

Leave your comments below and let me know what you think about repurposing content below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: link building, Nicole Dean, quality content, repurposing, traffic

If you are like me you are always looking for more ways to get more traffic to your posts and a higher ranking in the search engines is one of the best ways. These 3 tips will help you do just that.

Start using them regularly in your blogging and they will help you get more visitors. They do take time and continuous usage to really kick start your traffic.

• Focused content
• Using tags
• Getting backlinks

Lets go into more detail on each of these.

Focused Content

This starts with proper keyword research. You can rank for any term if you are willing to put in the effort but some are easier than others. I prefer to go for low hanging fruit first. These are terms that have a reasonable amount of searches but not overwhelming competition.

You can get a free trial of Market Samurai along with some great training videos that will show you how to find these topics. Once you have a topic focus on that. Keep your post to a single topic and you will be more likely to rank for that and the higher you rank the more potential traffic you will get.

Use all the tags

Make sure that you are using a title tag on your blog post. The default in WordPress is your blog title so unless your theme changes that make sure you are using a plugin like All In One SEO to customize your title tag.

Make sure you are using the header tags for your keyword you are looking to rank for in your post where it is appropriate as that too will help the spiders decide what your post is about.

Finally make sure you are using your keyword in the alt tag in any images you use in your post.

Backlinks

Get or create back links to your post. This can be done in a variety of ways. Commenting on related blogs that use Comment Luv is one of the easiest ways.

You can use the various parasite hosts (Squidoo, Hub Pages, et al) to create anchor links with your keyword in them to your post.

Article marketing is another way to create back links to your post. For more ways to create back links check out Backlink Flood.

Using these 3 tips regularly will allow you to generate more traffic from the search engines to your blog. After that the key is to convert that traffic into something useful but that is a topic for another day.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, blog title, blog traffic, blogging, header tags, keyword-research, low hanging fruit, search engines, seo, title tag, topic focus

This week I have been talking about the power of guest blogging and how to find places to guest blog. Lets look at taking it up a notch from there.

Last year I had Nicole Dean at another of my blogs come in as part of her blog tour. Instead of a single stop she came in for the week. She even put together a product afterwards to lay out how she did it called Blog World Tour Guide.

After having her as a guest I liked the idea and went on my own tour at the end of the year. I visited 8 different blogs and stayed from Monday to Friday so that I could do a series of blog posts on a topic.

Now this is much more powerful in my opinion because you can go into more detail over 5 days of posts and I found that it helped increase readership too.

I had some people that were following me around the blogosphere and did pick up some new people each week that liked my style and followed me from then on through the tour.

Hopefully, some of those are still regular readers here or one of the other blogs I write regularly. Maybe that is how you found me here.

Now it was a lot of work doing it but it was fun to get to interact with a new audience each week. Add in the other promotion I did for the tour on Squidoo and on my own blogs and it was a win win for the people I visited and for me.

I am looking to do it again in August and if you would like me to visit your blog drop me a note at the support desk. I will write on any of the following topics…

• Blogging
• Blog SEO
• List building
• Affiliate marketing
• Traffic generation
• Private label rights
• Product creation

And if you are considering your own blog tour I recommend you check out Nicole’s guide Blog World Tour Guide.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: Blog Tour, guest blogging, increase readership, Nicole Dean

You have decided that guest blogging makes sense to you now you have to figure out who would want your posts.

If you provide quality content there are lots of blog owners that will but finding them takes a bit of that nasty 4 letter word that we tend to not want to hear – WORK.

Uh oh there went half the readers I can feel the cursors hilting the back button right now. I just said one of the unmentionable words.

So you are one of the half that stayed. Congratulations! You understand the truth.

Now if you are actively blogging I would expect (not assume not going to use two bad words in the same post ) that you are actively commenting on blogs on your topic. You know who has quality blogs on your topic.

The first step would be to contact them and offer your services. Some of those blogs may be actively soliciting guest bloggers. If they are you can follow whatever instructions they have given you to submit your articles.

There are forums and sites that allow you to meet and up and find people who are looking for guest bloggers. I use one called My Blog Guest and have found it to be useful.

You can do a search on Google and find quite a few different places that are looking for guest bloggers. A quick search this morning came up with 117,000,000 results for guest blogging forums.

You can see that with a bit of effort it is quite easy to find places to guest blog.

Take advantage of the people that left as soon as I mentioned that 4 letter word and put in the work and you can help generate backlinks and traffic from others by guest blogging and getting exposure you could not get otherwise.

You can use this same process to find others that can supply you with additional content and alternative viewpoints to as hosting a guest blogger has advantages too.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: alternative viewpoints, backlinks, bloggers, blogging, guest blogging, traffic

Guest blogging is an excellent way to get more exposure for your blog. There are lots of people that are more than willing to let you provide content for them.

So why would you give your content to someone else? What’s in it for you?

See it is easy to understand the blog owner wanting more content. We never get enough but why would you want to give yours away?

Here are 3 reasons why…

• Exposure
• Backlinks
• Expertise

When you guest blog you reach a different audience. Providing quality content on another blog on your topic allows you to get exposure to people that may or may not find your blog normally.

If they like your material and your style they will go check you out and may become regular readers. Quite often if someone guest blogs on a blog I regularly read and impresses me I add their blog into my regular stops.

You can control the backlinks in your bio and get links from the blog you visited using the anchor text you created. These are the best types of links to help you rank in the search engines.

Finally you can leverage off of the expertise of the person accepting your guest post. The blogger that you are guest posting for is letting their audience know that you are someone they trust to add content for their site.

This is a personal endorsement of sorts and definitely will increase the expertise you are viewed to have to their audience. Obviously the bigger their following the more this helps you.

So there are 3 reasons to start guest blogging. I will be talking about how to find places to guest blog in another post.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: anchor-text, backlinks, blogger, blogging, blogs, personal endorsement, search engines

If you are like me you may be a bit lax on setting up 404 pages. I was reminded of this when I was going through my reader when I found a new plugin mentioned Bing 404 for WordPress. You can read more about it here.

404 pages are actually quite a valuable piece of web real estate. Bing obviously knows this so they want to take advantage of them. They have made it easy to help your readers find something on what they were looking for which is better than the standard 404 page but you are better taking advantage of the real estate for yourself.

Now the theme on my PLR blog (Flexibility 2) has a nice default page that will give the reader a choice of topics.

This blog runs on an older version of that theme so I use a custom 404 page. In this case I will be changing it because of the recent release of my Profitable Blog Steps and using it as a place to promote that.

It is easy to do if you have made your theme files writable from the dashboard (chmod to 666). Go to Appearance – Editor.

Then select the 404 Template (your theme may have a slightly different name such as 404 page but it will usually be 404.php).

Then edit the theme files to create your own page and update. Now every time someone mistypes a url or clicks on a bad link they get to see an offer.

And I have added additional promotion for my site.

Took me about 3 minutes or less to do and something I should have had up when I first changed themes quite a while ago. Don’t make the mistake I did and make sure you are using your 404 page in a constructive way.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: 404 page, chmod, flexibility, web real estate, wordpress