Ways To Make Extra Money

Friday, June 8, 2018

What is the Future of Blogging? Exploring Some Ideas

With blogging being such a vast industry, it’s important that you stay ahead of the curve. This means to think about the future and start making the tweaks right now instead of later. This is how some of the MOST successful people in the world started because they visualized the world now and where they think it’s heading. With that said,

You have to explore and understand what direction blogging is going toward. For example, if many of us would have visualized mobile usage then we would have made mobile-friendly tweaks earlier on instead of waiting last minute…right? I’ve worked with many bloggers over the years, all with several different years of experience. Here’s what I noticed happening and what you can do to better equip yourself going forward. Let’s look at blogging and where it is heading…

Brand Awareness

Have you noticed many of the top bloggers are focusing more on brand, which is mainly their personal names? Here are some of the MOST popular blogs I can think of from the top of my head: JohnChow.com, ZacJohnson.com, NeilPatel.com and MatthewWoodward.co.uk. It’s not as valuable as to use a keyword as your domain like SEO.com, etc., because people still find it hard to identify with the author. However, by building your brand around your personal name, it means more when people throw around your name in forums, content, and other communities.

In the future, more focus will be given to your brand equalling your personal name because it’s this aspect that will build your credibility as someone valuable within your niche.

SEO

Over the years, we have seen enormous changes within Google and this has been catered toward the user experience. Search engines are all about the user experience and making sure people find what they are looking for. However, this is not enough because searchers have to find valuable content and one that provides a complete solution so it’s up to search engines to provide this. Google has already announced changes like LSI keywords, valuable content, freshness, “target” keywords, and mobile-optimized. What’s next?

Keep focusing on SEO and make sure you add a combination of different keywords within your content. For example, long-tail keywords, LSI keywords, and those that are highly targeted. Next, make sure you use a combination of different anchors to build links to cover all the different keywords you have within your content. This will help your page rank for different more “targeted” keywords, increasing the user experience.

Content = Value

It’s all about value because something has to separate the best from the mediocre…right? Google has invested a lot of resources into finding out which sites and content is providing the best value. For example, they look at things like activity, bounce rate, links, DA, and PA to establish some sort of value bar. Going forward, you should be focusing on writing the best content for your readers even if this means cutting down the frequency at which you’re posting. Nothing can replace value, no matter what niche you’re in, so follow these steps before you write:

Research
Outline
Write
Edit
Share
Tweak

This will allow you to have enough information to find out when you have created something special or simply mediocre.

Relevance

How do you stop websites from manipulative link building? You can give people control over links pointing to their website like the introduction of Disavow. You can also strategically make sure it’s difficult for them to build unnatural links by focusing on things that really matter. Google has put enormous value on relevance because this shows the right intent. For example, websites will only link to relevant websites when the value is there…right? Why else would anyone link unless they are trying to manipulate the search engines? Going forward, relevance matters and will continue to grow in importance, but there is a great way to make sure you find value in this. How? Write the best content because then people have no choice but to link to you.

Click Here To Download John Chow’s New eBook, The Ultimate Online Profit Model!

from John Chow dot Com https://ift.tt/2JlRQ4G
via Daniel

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Because You Want To (Not Because You Have To)

I try my best to read a good variety of books in my spare time. Part of this has to do with leisure and entertainment, because reading for pleasure is one of life’s greatest joys. Part of this also has to do with personal and professional development, as I seek key insights that I can apply to my own life to improve it in some way or another. I also find that reading a good variety of books helps to inspire new ideas that I can explore and write about myself, which is precisely what leads me to today’s post.

A Real Life Hack?

It is certainly true that you can learn a lot from reading books by successful entrepreneurs and marketing experts. It’s also true that you can derive some terrific insights and inspiration from what may otherwise be perceived as a guilty pleasure. A good example of this is a work of fiction called An Unwelcome Quest. It’s the third book in the Magic 2.0 series by American author Scott Meyer.

The basic premise behind this satirical science fiction series is that the world as we know is nothing more than a computer program. It’s a simulation and we are nothing more than lines of code. As such, the program can be adjusted and changed if you simply rewrite some of that code, which is exactly what a number of characters discover they can do. They “hack” the program, effectively granting them a series of “magical” powers, like levitation and time travel.

Whether or not you are personally interested in these types of stories, you can see how they can be fun to read for people who do like them. There’s a healthy dose of comedy thrown in there, as these works are meant to be satirical, and there’s plenty of “geek appeal” for people who like that kind of thing too. But reading a book like this can’t possibly be useful, can it?

A Walk in the Park?

The men also agreed that the woods were quite nice and that hiking through them might be rather pleasant if they had a choice, but they did not. Unfortunately, human nature dictated that anything, no matter how pleasant it is, can become hateful if you feel you must do it. Just ask anyone who’s ever entered a pie-eating contest.

That’s a short excerpt from An Unwelcome Quest when a group of the characters are forced to trudge through a forest trail, slashing away at wolves and staying on guard for other possible, life-threatening dangers. The context is less important here than the actual message we can all take home and apply to our own lives.

Let’s say that you enjoy writing and you enjoy telling stories. You decide to get yourself a free website on WordPress.com or on Tumblr where you can share these stories with your friends. You do it for fun, because it makes you happy. Then, somewhere along the way, you learn that you can actually make money from blogging. Maybe you stumbled across this blog and it opened up a whole new world of possibility.

So, you start to learn about what it takes to be a successful blogger, paying much closer attention to considerations like SEO and ad networks and affiliate marketing and list building and mobile friendly design and all the rest of it. You learn about content strategy and how you probably should be blogging at least once a week, if not more often.

This isn’t a problem at first, but then your well of ideas starts to run dry. You feel like you would rather go shopping or play video games or ride your bike than sit down at your computer to pump out your next blog post. What was once a pleasurable experience — writing something on the Internet for everyone to read — has turned into an obligation. A chore. A burden.

Do What You Love?

No matter how pleasant the original activity may have once been, it can “become hateful if you feel you must do it.” At that point, you might feel like you’re not blogging because you want to, but rather because you have to.

Does this mean you should give up on blogging entirely and go chase some butterflies in the park instead? No, not at all! It just means you need to recognize why you are experiencing these feelings in the first place, so you can figure out how to work through them. The truth of the matter is that doing what you love doesn’t mean that you’re going to love every moment of it. There are going to be hard times and frustrations.

You just need to remind yourself why you WANT to do this in the first place, whether it’s blogging, Internet marketing, app development, web design… or a quiet hike through the woods.

Click Here To Download John Chow’s New eBook, The Ultimate Online Profit Model!

from John Chow dot Com https://ift.tt/2HpbRkZ
via Daniel

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

How to be Mentally Tough in Blogging – Part 2

Welcome to Part 2, where we’ll be discussing the importance of having a tough mentality when blogging. If you haven’t read Part 1, then I encourage you to go back and go through so you can view other important elements before moving forward. For those of you who are new to blogging, it’s important to understand the importance of having a tough mentality in the online business. Just like any other endeavour, blogging can be very tough, especially when this is your main source of income. You need to be strong to deal with competition, your audience, answering questions, research, etc. However, many people don’t consider mental toughness an important element of success and they are setting themselves up for immediate failure. Let’s jump into Part 2 and we’ll be looking at the following:

Embrace failure
Never regret mistakes
Sleep and exercise
Positive

Embracing Failure

To toughen up your mentality, it’s important you embrace failure and consider it a learning process. Many bloggers, when they fail at something, will let it emotionally drain them, but the successful ones will learn and find ways to use it to their advantage. Just like embracing change, failure is a great way to bring out change within your business while making changes for the best. I believe everyone will fail at something when starting a business and it’s how they handle it that will define their success going forward.

Going forward, if you hit a roadblock, make sure you write it down and find ways to overcome it. This way, you know what to expect when going forward.

Never Regret Mistakes

I talked about this above and want to go into this a bit further. Everyone will make mistakes and it’s important to never regret them. I believe it’s your mentality that defines one thing as a mistake and others as a success, but what if you can change all this? For example, let’s say you can consider mistakes as a success as well simply because you have learned something. This means you’ll always stay positive and be able to make the right decisions to continue growing while moving forward.

Always remember that mistakes are a learning process and you should try pull value from these mistakes. The next time, you’ll avoid them and even turn them into a positive outcome.

Sleep and Exercise

I can’t do any work without enough sleep and exercise, which is why this is very important to me. This is also important to ensure your mind stays strong at all times. Exercise has been proven to release endorphins within your body, which is your body’s natural pain killers. Both sleep and exercise will help you stay positive during tough times and this is very important if you want to build a strong mental connection with your business.

Here are some other benefits of sleep and exercise:

Clear thinking
Motivation
Better sleep
Positive energy
Creativity

Staying Positive

Above, I mentioned having a positive mentality and how important it is to your success. This is because having a positive mentality will ensure you push forward when all else is failing. This will also allow you to push forward in the right direction when you are around negativity, especially those telling you to give up. Either way, the importance of having a positive mentality is important to build a strong mentality. For example,

In blogging, having a negative mentality will force you to say the following:

It’s taking too long
No one is reading my content
I want to give up
My business will never grow

However, with a positive mentality, you’ll be saying the complete opposite, which will help you move forward.

I’ll get it done
Business growth will come soon
It takes time
What else can I do to attract an audience?
Where can I go for help?

From the above, you can see how a slight difference in your mentality can mean the difference between success and failure….right?

Click Here To Download John Chow’s New eBook, The Ultimate Online Profit Model!

from John Chow dot Com https://ift.tt/2sM1yls
via Daniel

Saturday, May 26, 2018

I'd like to start marketing for a friend's decal business, any advice?

Hi! So my best friend has a business selling decals. He does single-color vinyl decals and also has this huge, $10,000 printer that can print out on any kind of material, but he still mostly does vinyl and canvas. I'm TOTALLY new to marketing, like legitimately have no idea about marketing, but I'm a pretty quick learner and I think I could do a good job at it if I had some resources. Anyone have any ideas? His business is called Old 17 decals, he uses instagram, facebook, etsy, and ebay for most of his sales. He doesn't have a website apart from those. His business has grown a whole lot, but now he can't do a whole lot of advertising, because almost ALL of his time is spent actually creating, printing, cutting, packaging, and shipping all these decals, and I think that if I was able to do a good job of marketing, that it could be profitable for the both of us. So yeah, where do I start? I'd greatly appreciate any advice you guys could give me!

Also, first time poster here; sorry if this is breaking any rules. It doesn't seem to be, based on the rules section, but yeah.

If you want to check out his stuff to give me a better idea on how to market, here are some links:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/Old17Decals/

Yooying? (I don't know what this is lol): https://www.yooying.com/old.17.decals

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Old17Decals?ref=shop_name_search_sugg

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/old.17.decals/

Thank you guys so much if anyone is willing to offer advice!

Submitted May 25, 2018 at 10:59PM by trustyadam https://ift.tt/2Lvqoi4