Guest Writer

Article by Gregory Ciotti.

Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.”

Ron Swanson

Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the importance of Being Everywhere and I’m not knocking that advice, but I will warn you that spreading yourself too thin (especially during your blog’s early stages) is your one-way ticket to failure.

Take Twitter for example. I use the service and it sends me some decent traffic, but I could really give a damn about my Twitter account. I have no desire to share 20 things a day like most people recommend, because I’ve seen the numbers: it’s not worth my time.

In fact, in all of my time doing content strategy (for startups, for personal projects, even for local clients), I’ve yet to come across any ‘tactic’ that actually works that doesn’t somehow involve creating epic shit or doing some sort of promotion on another big blog/website.

In short, to maximize the ROI of your blogging efforts, spending most of your time researching how to create outstanding, unique content will give you far better results than learning that “one simple YouTube trick” that will end up doing jack squat for your bottom line.

As for that title up there? I’m going to show you how it went down, along with 2 other traffic tactics that are actually worth your time. [Continue reading…]

This is a post by Robert Farrington of Beat the Nine to Five.

Believe it or not, I’ve been blogging since 2009 – almost 4 years.  However, last year I hit a plateau.  My traffic growth stagnated – I was hovering around 16,000 visitors per month, and my audience wasn’t growing.  I needed a change – I needed new readers and a compelling reason for them to stay.  So, I embarked a personal journey to find my audience, which resulted in me increasing my year over year audience by 2.5 times.

I primarily blog in personal finance and investing, but these rules and tactics apply to every niche.  I simply asked myself the following questions:

• Where else are readers in my niche?
• How can I get them to find my site?
• If I get them to my site, will they stick around or convert?  

Working backwards, I knew I needed something different on my site to get readers to stick around.  Of course, the first thought that came to mind was Write Epic Shit.  Pretty simple, but it was actually harder to do than I thought.

I typically wrote 500-600 word blog posts that in hindsight, were pretty superficial.  I didn’t dive deep.  I just wrote to post an article Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I made a point to change that.  I set a minimum word count at 700 (I’ve since bumped it up to 1,000), and asked myself how or why at every header.  If I could answer that question, I included more in the blog post.

I also made more shareable content by linking more to other blogs and resources, and collaborating more with my peers in the personal finance and investing space.  I also invested time in reading Headline Hacks by Jon Morrow to write better titles and outline better articles.

With a few months of better content on my site, I set out on finding my audience. [Continue reading…]

Launching a podcast is no small feat, but you can definitely make it happen. I’m going to tell you some key milestones you must hit to launch and grow a podcast to 1,000,000 downloads and beyond.

Question…

Have you struggled with identifying your podcast and how you will differentiate it in such a crowded space?

Do you have a cohesive plan to build a platform once you launch?

How will you continue to grow an engaged and loyal audience in order to pave the way to 1,000,000 downloads and beyond? [Continue reading…]

In May 2011, I was contacted by Penguin Books, who asked if I was interested in turning my e-book, How to Travel the World on $50 USD Per Day, into a printed publication that would be available in bookstores nationwide.

At first, I thought someone was pranking me, but after I found out it was a genuine offer, I thought about it for about 5 seconds before I decided to say yes.

Note: this post is by Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt. We love the way he lays clear the details of this launch. If you have any kind of launch coming up, you’ll definitely want to pay attention — Matt has some key insights here. You can find out more about him at the end of his article.

As a travel writer, there is a certain amount of street creed that comes with having a printed guidebook. It gives you an aura of legitimacy that a self-published e-book does not. Plus, I’d receive a lot of media attention I might not have gained otherwise and it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Yet having a publisher doesn’t mean I can just sit back and relax. In this day and age, you are responsible for all your own book promotion. Sure, Penguin helps put my book in front of traditional media, but if I want this book to succeed, the launch is up to me. I think most book publishers expect that from their authors these days; when they contact online personalities, they are really buying that person’s audience, as having an established online fan base means some guaranteed sales. [Continue reading…]

If you design a course for everybody — and try to sell to everybody — you’ll dilute your voice, neuter your material, and be stuck with lackluster sales and unhappy customers.

One size has never fit all!

You probably know this already, right? You know about targeting your market, nicheing down and all that.

But if you’ve created a product, you also know the the desire to share your creation with the whole world, the desire to wield a wide net for more sales instead of a sharp knife.

Here’s 5 ways to stay sharp and, ultimately, make more money being brutally clear about who your course serves — leaving everyone else out. You’ll find tips here to help with both your program design and your copywriting. [Continue reading…]