Category: Ideas

Building an online business like most challenges has a lot to do with your ideas. Getting your motivation, frames of reference, and expectations right will have more of an impact on your success than simply following perfect SEO “rules”.
Mindset

Don’t ever forget your blogging roots

One of the small things in life that I take great pleasure in is heading out to the store or running an errand and bringing a few of my kids along with me.   Riding in the car somewhere is a great opportunity to spend some “quality” time with your kids and can provide some great teaching moments.

While riding in the car over the weekend, one of my boys started asking questions about where our family was from, which started a fairly long conversation that he really enjoyed, including a few interesting and amusing stories.

Don't forget your blogging roots

My family, on my father’s side, is from West Virginia.  While for many, this conjures mental images of “Deliverance”, it’s a heritage I’m very proud of.  West Virginia is full of honest and hard working people, that while certainly “country”, they are also people that never forgot you and always put family and people first.  Making sure I never forgot my roots is important to my Dad, and now as a father, it has become important to me as well.

How does all of this relate the blogging?  Surprisingly, remembering your blogging roots is pretty important, or at least to me it is.  Here’s why …

Your blogging roots

I clearly remember the first few months after starting Side Income Blogging.  I remember checking Google Analytics daily to watch for visitors and looked forward to receiving those very first few comment notification emails.  I also clearly remember starting my very first blog on personal finance in 2006, and how exited I was as I started to receive comments and interaction from readers.  I remember many of their names to this day.

As you start your blog and it begins to grow, you’ll meet people that will have a profound influence on your blog.  These people include:

  • Every single one of your readers.  They are the foundation of your blog.
  • Other bloggers that help you, write for you, support you, and link out to you.
  • Your family who will support you and give you incredible ideas if you listen (this article is a perfect example).

Not only will you meet incredible people, your blog will have incredible moments that occur that will help it become more visible and help it grow.   These are moments like:

  • Getting linked from a large blog inside or outside of your niche
  • Being mentioned by a major news outlet
  • Going viral on social media
  • Ranking #1 for some high traffic keyword, even if only for a few days
  • Earning your first few cents

All of these people and moments, I refer to as “blogging roots”.  Someday, when your blog is big and influential, these are the people and momenets you absolutely do not want to forget.  Without these people and events, your blog would not be where it is.

Bloggers are forgetting their roots

Amy Andrews, from Blogging with Amy and I were chatting a bit about a recent change in direction she is making on her blog.  In that conversion, she said something pretty profound that has really made me think:

“Back in the day, we used to follow blogs. Now we follow people.“

When I first read that, I wasn’t sure I agreed with her.  But the more I thought about, the more I realized that she was right.  Gone are the days of anonymous/code name bloggers.  Relationships, especially those we have with our readers and our audience, are becoming more and more important.  Social media has really become the icing on the cake in this trend, almost requiring people to be “real”.  Readers want to know who you are, they want to see your face.

There is a disturbing trend though that I’m seeing in the blogging world: Over the past few months, I’ve emailed and tried to correspond with a number of “A-list” bloggers for various reasons, and unfortunately received very few replies.  A-list bloggers are the top blogging tier, they are the bloggers and blogs that come to mind when you think of high traffic blogs, large income earning blogs, and those blogs that really influence the internet.

The trend I refer to is one where these blogs and bloggers start out like any other.  They have people and events that spur their growth over time and help them become the big success they are.  The problem is that I see these bloggers frequently forgetting where they came from and turning their backs on the people that helped get them where they are today.  These bloggers are also forgetting who is keeping them where they are as well – their readers.  

Sure, I get that large blogs get lots of email and comments, but at the same time keeping up with email and comments has to be a priority.  Unfortunately for many, it doesn’t seem to be.  Sadly, making money seems to be the priority.  The irony here is that it’s the blog’s readers than generate the income.

Don’t believe me?  Think I’m over exaggerating?

Try this: Send an email to 5 really big name bloggers and ask them a thoughtful question.  Send them something on social media.  If more than one of them replies, I’d be surprised.  If you do decide to do this, please leave a comment below and let me know your results.  Feel free to call out the name of the blogger’s that did reply, because I think they need to be recognized.

Here are the top mistakes I see big name, A-List bloggers making::

  • Not responding to comments
  • Not responding to email
  • Not responding to questions
  • Not responding and engaging on social media
  • Only engaging within their cliques and frankly even being part of cliques

Since blogging is now more about the blogger than the blog itself, maintaining two-way and beneficial relationships is critical to your blog’s success. The two fastest ways to make me unfollow you and your blog are:

  1. Not replying or recognizing a comment I added to your post.  Recognizing can be “liking” or giving a “plus one”.
  2. Not engaging on a post I publish on my blog or create on social media.

When was the last time you saw an “a-list” blogger share something on social media and there were lots of comments and none of them from the blogger ?  Or even worse, they respond to comments, but only from comments made by other “a-list” bloggers in their clique?  I had this very thing happen a few weeks ago on Google+.  I responded to the blogger’s post and even asked a question.  There were other comments from “a-list” bloggers than received replies, but my reply was completely ignored by all of them.  I felt like I wasn’t even part of the conversation.

I’ve seen all of these scenarios far too often lately and I’ve stopped following most of these bloggers too.  Not just due to one instance, but due to repeated instances.  This will probably hurt me some, but I refuse to support “elitest” bloggers.

When was the last time an A-List blogger responded to one of your social media posts?  Oh, and responding due to you sharing one of their articles doesn’t really count.

My grandmother used to refer to all of this as “Getting too big for their britches“.  Many A-List bloggers have definitely gotten “too big for their britches.”

Never forget your roots

Don’t turn your back on the people that helped you grow and become successful.  Don’t ever forget the people that read your blog each day and take the time out of their schedules to add a thoughtful comment on your blog and your social shares.

When one of your readers takes the time out of their life to write you, respond.  Those people are writing you because they respect you and nothing says “I don’t care about you” more than not responding or not giving them a little of your time.

I’m not one to call out people often, but there are two bloggers that immediately come to mind as text book examples of putting readers first:

  • Sean Ogle of Location 180 – Sean has replied to every email I’ve sent him, and also engaged me on social media.  He even proactively sent me an email!  Sean is very approachable and clearly appreciates how important his readers are.  
  • Darren Rouse of ProBlogger – Darren is a name that would probably make it on the top 5 successful blogger lists of most anyone.  His blogs are incredibly popular and I can’t even begin to imagine how many comments and emails he gets everyday, yet me manages to reply.  I’ve exchanged a number of emails with him over the years and when I’ve mentioned him on social media, he almost always finds the time to reply.

Sea and Darren are two shining examples of bloggers that haven’t forgotten their roots and understand the importance of putting their readers first.

I sincerely hope that all of you reading Side Income Blogging and working to grow your blogs become huge successes.  Just make sure once you’re there, that you don’t forget the people that helped you get there and the people that help you stay there.  You have my word, I’ll never forget.

Always put your readers first

Photo by: stephen bowler

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Jon June 10, 2013 11 Comments
Team Management

10 Steps to Outsource the Development of a WordPress Plugin

Here is the story of how, with no coding knowledge, I outsourced the creation of a WordPress Plugin in under 2 weeks for $150.

If you are waiting for my monthly income report – it should be out by the end of the weekend – I apologize for the delay!

I have been wanting to develop a WordPress plugin for over a year and have had several ideas. Finally I decided to give it a go and create a plugin which would help me make more money through my affiliate sales.

Both the success of the plugin creation and the effectiveness of the plugin is outstanding – the marketing of the plugin could do with some work!

(more…)

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Jon April 12, 2013 17 Comments
Team Management

How to set-up one inbox using Gmail

I was chatting with some fellow bloggers in the Blog Tips Google+ community (Ryan Hanley and Sarah Arrow) about how we spot spammy guest post requests. I had commented that a possible spam sign for me were guest post requests coming from a Gmail, Yahoo or MSN account and not from a real domain.  Ryan responded that he uses his Gmail account the most and had never had a problem but probably due to him working to establish a relationships before requesting a guest post.  I completely agreed with that.

This conversation got me thinking about how I work around this issue, because, like Ryan, I use my Gmail account the most as well.  I have Gmail set-up so that I can use Gmail but send the email from any of my domain specific email accounts.  I manage and use one inbox.

I have my Gmail set-up so that all domain branded email ids forward to my Gmail account.   I can also have Gmail set-up so I can send emails using my domain accounts as well.  I prefer to use domain specific email addresses for two primary reason, first and foremost: branding.  Secondly to protect my personal email a little.

Using one Gmail inbox makes managing your email easy.  Interested in how to set-up one inbox using Gmail?  Read on, it’s really simple and only takes a few minutes.

How to set-up one inbox using Gmail

As I mentioned, I have various domain email accounts.   I have a few for this blog and the other sites I run, along with email accounts for my Empty Cabin Media development business.   All together, I probably have 15+ email accounts that I needed to check on a daily or weekly basis.  Seems like a lot of email accounts to manage right?  Well it was until I started using an often unknown feature in Gmail that gives me one inbox for all of my mail.

Setting this up is easy and involves two primary steps:

  1. Routing all of your incoming email to your Gmail inbox
  2. Setting-up your domain specific emails in Gmail so you can send email from them within Gmail.

Many people don’t realize you can do #2, but you can.

Forward all of your mail to your Gmail account

The first step in having the “One inbox to rule them all” is to configure all of your email accounts to forward to your single Gmail account.  The way to do this is dependent on your hosting company, but generally there are email settings and the option to forward your email is in the specific email addresses settings.  Here’s a screenshot of it on Media Temple.

Media Temple Redirect Setting

After you’ve set this up, send a test email to make sure you you set-up everything correctly.  Assuming you did, you should get your test email in your Gmail inbox.  Step 1 towards email domination, complete!

One note: By default, if you reply to these emails in Gmail, the reply from address will be Gmail account’s email, not the email address the email was sent to.  This can be a problem for a few reasons:

  • Since people sent the email to one address, they won’t be expecting to receive a reply from other email address.
  • You may want to keep your personal email priviate or restrict who has direct access to it.
  • For branding, it’s better to respond to emails sent to your blogs and business from the blog or business domain.
  • Responding from a domain branded email can be perceived as more professional

We’ll resolve this in the next.

Set-up Gmail so you can respond from your email accounts (the real trick)

To set-up Gmail so you can respond from different email addresses, do the following

    1. Login to your primary Gmail account, the one you’re setting up to be your “One Inbox”
    2. Click on the settings icon, just below your profile picture in the top right corner.
    3. Select Settings, you’ll see a screen like this:

gmailsettings2

  1. Next, click on Accounts and Imports. Where the green arrow is pointing in the screen shot above.  You’ll see a screen like this:

gmailaddanotheremailaddress

  1. Note the Send mail as section.  This is where we’ll add the additional email accounts.
  2. To add an email, click on the Add another email address you own link, pointed to by the green arrow above.  A pop-up will appear.  If you have pop-ups disabled, you’ll need to enable them to complete the remaining steps.
  3. In the pop-up, enter the name and email address you’re adding.  Note, the name will be seen by people you reply to.  For example, on my newsletter email account for Side Income Blogging, I don’t put my name.  I put “Side Income Blogging Newsletter” instead.
  4. After entering the name and email, press the Next Step button.
  5. On the Send mail through your SMTP server? page, just use the default settings and click the Next Step button.
  6. You will then be prompted to verify your email address.  Confirm that the email address you want to add is correct, and press the Send Verification button.

Assuming you set-up forwarding correctly above, you’ll receive a verification email in your Gmail inbox.  Follow the instructions in that email, and you’ll be all set-up.

To confirm your email is set-up and working correctly, compose a new email in your Gmail account.  The from section of your email will now have a drop-down containing all of the emails that you set-up in the steps above.   Slick huh?

One catch though, and I personally don’t worry about this at all, but just in case some of you might.: Anyone that knows a little about how email works can view the raw email header and get your original email address.  Most people wouldn’t even think to do this and if they do, it’s not a huge deal.

One Inbox = huge difference

For me personally, having one inbox where I can send and receive everything has had a huge positive productivity benefit for me.  Before I had this set-up, I had about 10 different email accounts I had to keep track of.  I had to check them frequently and deal with the often less than intuitive mail interface.  The biggest issue for me was remembering to check them.  I always forgot and would miss important emails.

But no more – Honestly this whole set-up is so seamless, I often forget I’m using multiple email accounts.  Google is even smart enough to recognize where the original email was sent to, and when you reply it defaults to that same address.

If you don’t have this set-up, I would highly advise you do – You’ll thank me later when you’re spending more time writing great articles and less time managing email.

Photo by: herval

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Jon December 14, 2012 8 Comments
Mindset

Treat your blog like a business, because it is

One of the big mistakes I see new bloggers making is they fail to treat their blog like a business.  If you’ve started a money making blog, than you should be running your blog as if it were an online business.  Why?  Because it is.  Many new bloggers start a blog on the promise of earning money.  They make the mistake of thinking they can start a blog, publish a few articles and suddently begin earning hundreds of dollars a month.  Unfortunately, this mindset is far from the truth.  Growing a blog to the point where you can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month takes a tremendous amount of hard work and, as I’ll discuss in detail, a business focused mindset.  To be successful, you must treat your blog like a business.

Treating your blog as a business

Treating your blog as a business involves:

Remember, you are the owner and CEO of your blog and in order to make it successful you must do all of these things and do them well.  How often and how well you do each of these is directly proportional to how quickly your blog will grow.

I put “providing high quality and varied content” first for a reason:

You can do everything else perfectly, but without high quality and varied content, your blog won’t grow. http://bit.ly/XO548K – @larryecm – Click to Tweet

Just like any normal business, if you don’t provide a service or product that your customers will consume, nobody will visit your business.  On the other hand, and also just like a real business, you can have the best content on the web for your niche but if you fail to do the other items above nobody will know about your content or if they do, their experience when they arrive at your site may not be good.  Doing all of the above, with a primary focus on providing great content is the optimal combination.

A few examples

Here are just a few examples of some common mistakes I see new bloggers that fail to think of their blog as a business seem to make:

  • Posting great on-topic content for the first week or two, then sharing a story about their visit to the park with their kids that has nothing to do with their blog. Don’t get me wrong, sharing a personal story on your blog can be great, BUT only if it’s tied into the topic of your blog.  Even worse?  I’ve seen a few bloggers post these huge rants about their friends or neighbors that was completely off-topic.  Doing this a few times won’t kill you, but do it too much and you’ll lose readers, quickly.
  • Failing to realize that all of that income you’re getting is taxable.  Embarrassingly, this particular example was me.  The first year my blog earned income, I was so excited.  The more I earned, the more I optimized my income and added additional income streams.  I literally made close to $3000.00 my first year.  What I failed to consider was that the income was taxable and I would have to report it on my taxes.  Reporting income was no problem, I had W-2s, but I wanted to reduce that taxable income, so I spent almost a week pulling together numbers for all of my expenses for deductions.  The next year, I tracked it to the utmost detail to make it much easier.
  • Over the past 5 years, I’ve seen many blogs come and go.  I’m not sure exactly why, but if I were to guess it’s one of two things: Lack of vision and planning, and misunderstanding how much work blogging really entails.  The internet is a constantly moving and changing place, and those that lack vision and planning for their blogs will be caught off guard and ultimately fail.  This has been particularly evident with the recent Google Panda search engine changes.  Many of us saw significant decreases in search engine traffic  For those of use that had a plan, and multiple streams of income, we fussed, fumed, complained and moved on.  Those that didn’t have a plan, quit.

Of course these are just a few small examples of the many I’ve seen and unfortunately personally experienced.  Regardless of how much you plan, and how much experience you have, you’ll develop your own list over time as you blog and strive to earn an income.

I’ll be publishing more detailed articles on each of the items related to treating your blog as a business over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out.

Photo by: tinou bao

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Jon October 19, 2012 2 Comments
Mindset

4 Internet Marketing Cornerstone Beliefs

With the amount of crap on the internet and my plan to build multiple websites to earn money I didn’t want to be part of the problem. So a couple years ago I started with 1 belief “Always Add Value” I believed that whatever I did online as long as I added value I would be helping to make the internet a more awesome place. (more…)

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Jon September 4, 2012 12 Comments